New Global WW2 Game From Larry Harris

I think the point is to save time in global games. By far round 1 is the slowest round because you are shuffling and merging and re-stacking everything. Even though you more or less know the set up after a few games it takes time because there are units everywhere. This is very much true for Germany, Russia and japan but goes for all other nations too. For france you set up a bunch of units which are removed instantly.

After Round 1, there are units in maybe half of the initial territories and this must save a lot of time.

We use the houserule, that Axis has to win or is to strong on turn 10, then they win and otherwise they lose.

@italiansarecoming:

@empireman:

@Gargantua:

Even After I’ve removed every axis piece from the board, I keep playing.

I start sending units to South America, to look for escaped war criminals, and hold nuremburg trials.

I also start doing stupid things with the middle east, like carving out new nations, JUST because I can.

It’s this whole new Axis and Allies Experience…

Yah me too…… I have cold war, I go to korea and Vietman, I also head to the middle east to!

Have you guys tried bombing ghaza with israel troops. Or have had fights in Africa where dictatorships get over thrown?

Heck yeah!

17, the bid follows classic bid. you can go 20-13… jeez

STOP MAKING THIS MORE COMPLICATED. HE ASK SIMPLE QUESTION AND YOU MOCK HIM. THEN WONDER WHY FORUM HAS ONLY THE SAME PEOPLE.

But yeah I’d house rule against japan cheese and give axis a bid. It’s simple, you move in allies sz territories you declare war. thada!

What he is trying to say at least I believe is that the strategies will always focus around capturing VC. He prefers creative strategies where VC are unimportant and the idea is to knock out your opponent. The problem in his logic is that this is a historical game and historically there were certain cities that were essential to winning the war. Capturing Paris won the war against France, the German failure to take Stalingrad was a turning point in the Eastern campaign, so on and so forth. While I can understand his point the fact is that the victory cities are located in the strategic centers (for the most part) even if there were no VC in them those are still the territories you would want to attack and take over so it kind of makes the arguement null and void.

A long time ago, back when we just had the Classic MB version of A&A, I started working on an idea to break all territories into smaller sections so it wouldn’t just be one battle and you get the whole territory.  For example, the Eastern US territory would be broken down into all the different states so if an Axis attacked it, they would have to fight state to state in order to win that territory, and maybe some of the larger states could be split into two or three sections.  I thought this seemed more realistic than just one battle and you win the entire Eastern half of the United States.
However, many problems became apparent fairly quickly.  First of all, I couldn’t always find more detailed maps of some of the territories like those in central and eastern Russia, territories in Africa, Southeast Asia, etc. 
Also, going from the World map to a single territory map you would have to change all the units.  For example;  you have 10 infantry, 2 armor and 2 fighters defending Eastern USA.  If you shrink this down to just that territory broken up into many territories,  it would have to be something like 100 infantry, 20 armors and 20 fighters spread out amongst all those territories.  Plus you would have to figure out where to put them and it wouldn’t necessarily be an even amount.  You wouldn’t have the same amount of units defending Washington or New York as you would some empty space.  The same would hold true for the attackers.  How many units would you have attacking each territory?  Plus, I didn’t have a clue as to how to break it down like this for Naval warfare.  How many actual ships does 1 battleship on the World Map represent on the smaller maps?
Finally, it occurred to me that this would make just one game of A&A take literally MONTHS to complete.  Attacking a territory would be like opening up a whole new game.  Granted, there are a number of unoccupied territories that you could simply “blitz” and not have to refer to the smaller maps, but any substantial combat would take hours to complete as your forces move to take a territory a piece at a time.  Also, this would possibly mess up some attacks and leave a territory in a “contested” state for some time.  For example;  Germany invades Eastern US.  Germany has 20 Inf, 8 tanks, 2 fighters and 2 bombers.  The US has 10 inf, 2 tanks and 2 fighters plus the AA gun.  Now, depending on how the forces get laid out on the small scale map, and also depending on luck of the dice rolls, there are any number of outcomes.  On the World Map, it would be one big battle and over, likely with Germany winning .  However, on the small  map, it’s possible that say the Germans did well in the north.  However, in the south the US forces defeated the invader and still have good forces intact.  Also, on this scale, there will likely be more US forces farther inland as reserves.  So now the territory of Eastern USA is basically half German controlled and half US controlled.  This would drag this one battle out even longer.  Now, it’s possible that the triumphant German forces in the North could possibly get whittled down to nothing as they try to work their way south.
Anyway, my point is that doing a game like this would make it take way too long and I would imagine most people would lose intereste after a while.  It’s an interesting concept but if you get too detailed the game loses its fun.

SHARED THIS ON LARRY’S SITE ALREADY, JUST WANTED TO SHARE THOUGHTS HERE ALSO:

Ok Larry,

Me and an official playtester of yours here in Michigan (his name is mentioned in the rulebook for Europe 40) played Global with the new setup given with all the aircraft taken away and such. Here was a short summary of what happened:

On the Europe side:

Germany played pretty predictably, sinking most of the UK navy, taking France and the Eastern European pro-allied and pro-axis neutrals with Italy. They continued to build on their air force to keep the UK from building ships right away. Began to stack some ground units as well. Italy expanded into Africa and shored the Middle East slowly controlling the Med.

UK responded by NOT attcking the Italian navy and pulling back the rest of the navy it had left until it could come back to England with a strong navy that included the US. UK took the Pro-allied Brazil and shucked the troops to Africa to help the SAfrican force which slowly pushed the Italians back up to Egypt turning the tide in Africa.

Russia stedily built a force consisting of infantry spiced with some tanks, artillery, tacs and mechs. Stacking behind some dead zones and waiting for the declaration of war.

US spent about 70-80% of its cash in the Pacific since it could not even approach Africa/Europe before a state of war.

Now for the Pacific side:

India with little cash built mostly infantry and stacked. Combined navy near India and activated the Persian troops to bring back and help defend India. In Global, India has a little more help from some extra troops west and a few ships, including one French destroyer to help defend. Also, it can fall back with its stack to West India if needed.

ANZAC naval base is much needed and I am glad it is there- balances nicely.

China was stonger, but does what it normally does and stacks at Yunnan to wait to wear down Japs. China units are really used as a delaying tactic for the India crush.

Japan didn’t see an advantage to the India crush in J1 but felt that the initiative came to them in J2. They didn’t want to wait until J3 because they felt the Allies would have established a long-term defense of India. So with that the Japs declared war on J2 taking back the Dutch East Indies and unleashing the fury. Japan built transports J1 and J2 and built more planes to replace the ones missing from the new setup in J2.

Now even though both Japs and Allies have the same amount of planes removed, Japan can build them faster and move them closer to the action (India). US could also build their planes back but it takes them longer to get them to the battle scene (India). Brit India and ANZAC can’t build much of an airforce because of the typhoon of Jap units coming fast, so India stacks and ANZAC tries to distract and/or try to send some units.

Japan can make the US wait longer to send ships and planes down to ANZAC by using its navy as a shield. I as Allies, I made tactical blunder ruining my chance to meet the Jap onslaught of India from behind through Australia. However, if not for this the setup seems very balanced and gave some options to both sides.

A hot topic question will be “what to do with the Russian inf on the Pacific side??”
It is very frustrating for the Russians, if you attack immediately, Japan will bring the heat to wipe them out with now China and Russia give large concessions to Japan $$$. If you stack and sit. Japan has to garrison Manchu with a small force but continues to spearhead to India. I figure as the Russians, you have to attack with the 18 inf at some point. The hard part is when. Timing is everything in this decision.

With US entering the war at turn 2, the US began to throw a good amount of cash to the European side, mainly because of the blunder in the Pacific- India would not last long now- 2-3 more rounds. I recovered nicely putting pressure on the French coast quickly until I made another tactical error involving Gibraltar- arrggh!!!- new rules and new map takes a little while getting used to.  :-(

Besides these 2 blunders, I thought the Global game was pretty fair and balanced with a slight edge to the Allies. I definitely think the Allies are a little easier to play because that sides is spilt into 6 sub parts (countries) that are easy to prepare while you are waiting for the Axis to finish. The Axis with so many more units in the beginning, take longer and you have to be very efficient both in the short-term and the long-term planning.

Anyway that was are anaylsis so I hope it helps.  :-)

@13thguardsriflediv:

May adjacent ‘pro allied neutrals’ be blitzed and taken over in one go? In other words could the Soviets move a tank to Caucasus and from there take both ‘Iran’ territories in one move?

No.  You have to stop in the first one.