1941 House Rules

Well they would be counters for each nation in a cup that you draw randomly. say 1 inch wooden chits with a decal on it. Icons of say a tank or Battleship if the commander effects those. If you draw a chit and don’t own that piece, you just lost that advantage that turn. The next turn you draw another chit. The used chits stay out of the jar, so the design features will balance in total for both Axis and Allies…or not. Depends on the game played…

@Imperious:

Unit on both sites are drawing board, partially developed, or fully developed naval and air units. The LZ-135 was never built, only drafted on paper and in this sense it was real.

A fair point, though it should be remembered that some on-the-drawing-board concepts are less real than others.  Germany’s proposed H-Class battleships began as realistic designs in 1938 or 1939, and one or two of them were actually laid down.  When the construction work was suspended, however, drawing-board work continued on-and-off until 1944.  The design kept getting upgraded, and kept getting more and more unrealistic; from about 1941 onward, these designs can be regarded as purely paper studies, with zero chance of being built and thus little need to keep practicalities into account.  But at least they were being designed by competent naval architects, in contrast with Hitler’s propensity for sketching battleship designs on the back of envelopes.  (This fondness was an odd one, in view of his land-warfare orientation, but wasn’t entirely out of character: he believed that he knew more about warfare than his professionally-trained generals, and he similarly felt that he could come up with better battleship designs than professional naval architects.)  Hitler once proposed building a battleship armed with 800mm guns of the Gustav / Dora railway artillery type; in a rare example of common sense winning over Hitler’s fondness for gigantism (as illustrated by the 188-tonne Maus tank), an admiral managed to talk him out of the idea by pointing out that no existing German harbour was large enough to accommodate a ship big enough to carry guns of that size.

Sorry for the late feedback. I was pretty occupied during the last weeks.  :-(

We did playtest the “Island Hoping” VO and in our opinion it worked very well. The Axis decided to do a G1 Barbarossa and a J1 Pearl Harbor. The idea was to force USA into a Pacific war and that way provide Germany the needed air to crush Russia. This idea worked and the US player did heavily invest in the Pacific to prevent Japan from getting the islands and later even more to get the islands himself. Because of this fact we would say that those new VOs are very good, because before there was not much to lose in the Pacific for the Americans, but a lot to win in Europe.

Resume, we will keep playing with the new VO in our next games and keep you informed!  :wink:

@SouthsideCH:

It seems every time we play there are certain things we just don’t understand. While we understand the rules sometimes they just do not seem rational.

Does anyone have house rules addressing the following?

Artillery supporting infantry during an amphibious assault.

If I move a sub or a destroyer-less navy into a convoy sea zone, forcing the enemy to submerge, why can they convoy me?

It does not make much sense that scramblers are defenders, especially in some cases involving tac bombers.

I get that Kamikaze attacks have to choose their target. But if I bring in 3 cruisers, 2 battleships and a carrier and they choose to hit the battleships, shouldn’t the cruisers get to bombard? They can’t take part in the defense against the Kamikaze.

Convoy Disruption seems easy. There are no ill effects to the disruptor. If you can intercept when facilities are being attacked it makes sense a navy in that sea zone should be able to do the same.

I would love to hear some input on these as well as any house rules ideas.

In terms of house rules, are you looking for balance or realism?

I always argue realism before balance so.

1:No, Artillery should not be able to support infantry during sea invasion, that’s why battleships should be used.

2:I argue they should. The sea territory is vase and submarines are loved during WWII because they are a pain to track down, they are basically the naval sniper.

3: I am not sure the exact issue. Fighters and Tacts can be used offensively and scramble protects your navy. I personally think all allied aircraft should scramble regardless of what nations navy is being attack as long as the nations allows it.

4: Kamikaze wings traditionally went after Battleships and Aircraft Carriers first because taking those out would give the IJN fairness as the IJN had a lot of smaller ships. I personally think Kamikaze wings should also be allowed to target transports.

5: So what’s the issue with Convoy Raids then? It makes you force yourself to deal with an enemy navy.

@der-kuenstler For some reason I’m just finding this thread now. I mostly agree with what others have said. The only thing I want to add is that if you want to play with more than the simplest of house rules, you should feel good about creating play aids to support those rules. Seriously, go out and print your new rules, in full color. Put some thought into how to design and lay out a chart or a cheat sheet that will help players remember and use your rules. Cut them out so they’re the right size, and then laminate them or print them on heavyweight cardstock. If your rules involve any special pieces, buy sculpts for those pieces or use some paint or something to convincingly alter the closest available piece; don’t just slap a chip underneath artillery and say “OK, now it’s a self-propelled artillery.”

If you’re not willing to put in that work to make things easier on your players, then why should they put in the work to test out your house rules? It can take 8+ hours for a single playtest; if you invite 3 friends over, that’s 24 hours of other people’s time. You should be willing to put in at least 10% of that (2 hours) on creating play aids to improve that experience. If you’re not, maybe that’s a sign that you’re having so much fun imagining new rules that tickle your fancy that you’re not really thinking hard about whether those rules will be fun to play with for others.

I’m sorry, 1942 is the edition I always play now and I had a brain cramp and thought they were priced at 16. It’s the price I think they should cost, but you’re absolutely right, they’re at 20 and so we never buy them!

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome to this forum  :-) !  I’ve been following the posts
as a guest for a while and finally got around to registering last night.  I live near Syracuse
NY and we have quite a few gamers within our radius with a strong center at a hometown comic/boardgame store.  Of course “real” life limits time I can spend on my hobby which is
one reason why it took me so long to register; but you have to keep a healthy balance.
I have probably over 50 games of various kinds in my collection but A&A 1940, War of the
Ring and the various Catan scenarios are my favorites.

Well, the reason why I would like it a little bit better than decent is so that tech tree 1 is actually worth using. It takes a lot to convince people away from heavy bombers, jet fighters and LRA.