EXECUTIVE ORDER: if you add 1 rule you have to remove 2 other rules

@skhande2

I my view, tanks, artillery, and infantry units don’t just represent those things, but rather their units. Most tank, artillery, and infantry units during World War 2 contained some organic AA guns. While there are obviously differences in the size of divisions between the powers (Soviet divisions and corps were smaller than Western ones, one reason they were able to rack up such large numbers), I think a unit represents X number of soldiers, tanks, AA guns, etc. (while actual AA gun units are for dedicated anti-aircraft units which exist semi-independently of other divisions).

I’ve heard suggestions of giving artillery anti-tank capabilities, similar to anti-aircraft artillery in Global 1940 (North Africa’s anti-tank gun piece has something similar too). I think different win rates between different units is mostly represented well (as I hope I’ve somewhat demonstrated above).

Panzer Grenadiers: 3-2-2 costing 5 ipc. Germany can have no more than 6 of these at any time.

Super Battleships: 5-4-2 costing 24 ipc and takes 3 hits to sink. They fire preemptively each round (losses are applied and do not get a chance to return fire) Cannot be built until turn 3.

Heavy Carriers: 2-3-2 costing 18 ipc and takes 2 hits to sink. Three planes can be carried, and while damaged they cannot launch planes. Cannot be built until turn 3.

Q-ships: 1-1-2 costing 10, these are armed transports and can be used to take combat losses like any other warship. They carry the same cargo as regular Transports.

Optional starting Technologies: UK gets Radar, Germany and USSR gets Self Propelled Artillery, Germany starts with Mobile Warfare Doctrine, USA gets Naval Radar on turn 3.

@Imperious:

Ok here is the gist of it… you want a unit that can “target” another unit for removal? This is the domain of either armor units ( tank destroyers, SPA, or even heavy artillery)

Infantry would only have it in terms of a commando or special forces unit that goes in and takes out an installation or special tech unit. Use my rule for SPA or allow a unit like a commando unit to choose what it hits if it rolls a one.

Forgot to mention this will be in my D12 games so the hit on a 1 will work.
Elite Guard Inf, SS Inf, Bravo Inf or Black Shirt Inf, Veteran Inf, Commando, and a Marine, A3FR A2 D4 M1 C4 A roll of a 1 can pick target first round only. Can build 1 per turn only.

I think 2 a turn may be to strong. I can put a token under a inf piece or stack showing how many get the special shot if you can build 2 a turn but only 1 gets the special shot.

I played another game with India at 5, but I played against myself instead of the AI (first time doing that!).

Russia got absolutely diced in the heavy Ukraine strafe, and so West Russia was abandoned R2 and with no fighter support (Iceland gone G1, no other good routes) Germany rolled over them on turn G5.

Once the fighter route was gone I went heavy tanks in India, hoping to swing out against the Japanese and provide defence for Moscow.  I did have 8 UK tanks about to rush in to Moscow for defence (on UK6), but that would have exposed India on J6 AND Japanese tanks were closing in on Moscow as well, so it would have been a 1 or 2 turn delay at most.  Japan had the luxury of building a factory in Manchuria for north route tanks and just stacking Yunnan with art and inf (with their fleet in the adjacent SZ) and deadzone Burma, so the UK troop buildup in India couldn’t really pivot out of India as much as I thought.  Any foray out of India, and the 5 IPC factory would be gone, so the two armies stayed in the gravitational pull of one another.

I’ve never really done a KJF, but I think that might work a lot better with 5 IPC India.  I might read some KJF strategies and try it out.  So far, 5 IPC India is a failure, haha.

@UltimateChaos:

Yea you are correct. I guess POWs would never really work in this game because unlike real war it does not matter how many men you lose

I’m not convinced the idea couldn’t work, only that the current idea of it wouldn’t work.

How about a situation where, for every 3-5 infantry you kill, you gain a PoW that can be placed anywhere. PoWs need to be protected from liberation and every PoW in a province over it’s IPC value costs you 1 IPC/turn in support.

Results:
You don’t muck with the balance around attack/counter attack and amphibious assaults.
You’ve got incentive to distribute the PoWs you capture and risk their liberation, rather than stock them in your capital.
The Axis, generally considered the stronger side, will take brunt of the downsides since they are killing large numbers of Russian and Chinese infantry. Might actually balance the game.

@toblerone77:

@Uncrustable:

I almost exclusively play using low luck dice

What’s the formula for that? Do you play that F2F? I’m not totally familiar with low luck. I’m looking to get some F2F games going during the holidays.

Thanks.

I play F2F very rarely, but i do when i can. I mostly play online.

But LL is pretty simple, add up the combat values of your units, divide by 6, roll for the remainder. Battles involving submarines sometimes get a little interesting
Even AA rolls use LL. So if your attacking with 5 fighters roll one dice a hit of 5 or less one of the planes dies.
i prefer to remove some of the luck and rely more on long term strategy deciding the outcomes of games, rather than a few crazy rolls.

Of course a casual f2f game will almost always be with regular dice.

LL dice is played differently from regular dice though, different strategies, as you can actually look quite far ahead and predict outcomes. It comes down to efficiency and mistakes.

I like!  :evil:

Yes, I am quite insane  :-D

As for how I got it all to fit, I typed it into a Word document, and then copied and pasted.

I plan to playtest these rules and modify them as needed.  I was trying for as much historical accuracy as I could with the starting forces, while making the minimum number of changes to the official rules.  I got the idea from World in Flames, which is a great game, but, practically speaking, unplayable.  Even if you read and understand all the rules, finding one or more opponents who also have read and understand the rules is pretty much impossible.  You can, however, play Axis and Allies while you’re drunk (Been there.  Done that.  Got the T-shirt.)  But I like the idea of having the same basic problems, options, starting forces, and deployments the real military and political leaders of the time had to face.

Now, I’ll admit that the Vichy France rules are a bit more detailed than most A&A players prefer, and I understand why the game disigners decided to just leave them out.  But, if I was going to give the French a realistic starting fleet, I had to have the Vichy option to keep the combined French and British fleets from blowing the Italians out of the water on turn one.  It also gives the Allies the same uncertainty about what the Vichy French forces would do if their territories were invaded.  Historically, it was a major concern for the British.  Remember that they actually bombed the Vichy French fleet in port in North Africa, killing, IIRC, a couple of thousand French sailers , because they were afraid of having it fall into Axis hands.