AARHE: Phase 3: Revised NA's

@The-Captain

Didn’t know your team was so impressive. I look forward to the update.

Hey Young Grasshopper,

Can you say a few words about why you’re writing these house rules, who they’re for, or what you hope to accomplish with them? Hard to offer comments in a vacuum.

Because there are no neutral victory cities in Anniversary, I’m not sure your VP system changes anything beyond just counting up each victory city as one point. Any time I take a city, that means you lost a city, and vice versa. Normally, when I take a city, I gain +1 VP and you lose -1 VP, so the total VP swing per city is 2 points. Under your system, when I take a city, I gain +2 VP and you lose -1 VP, so the total VP swing per city is 3 points.

That’s it – you’re changing the swing from 2 points to 3 points, but it’s not like you can conquer half a victory city, so it really doesn’t matter if the swing per victory city is 2 points or 3 points or 50 points. I’m pretty sure it all works out the same in the end. No? I imagine you’re trying to reward players for being aggressive/proactive, but I don’t think your rule actually accomplishes that.

Also, to echo Baron Munchhausen’s concern, I don’t like the idea of allowing intercepts against bombers that only deal 1d6 damage, because then it virtually never makes sense to launch a bombing raid. It really doesn’t pay to launch more than 2 bombers against the same factory (you wind up wasting some of their power because the damage gets maxed out, but you still risk losing them to flak). So if I can defend my home factory with 2 or more fighters (really not that hard) then there is no point in bombing anything – between the 2 pips on the fighter and the 1 pip on the AAA gun, you have almost a 50% chance of losing your bomber on each run. 50% chance of dealing 3.5 damage vs. 50% chance of losing a 12 IPC bomber is a terrible trade-off. Sure, you could escort your bomber with fighters – but nobody in Anniversary has that kind of air power to spare. If you can spare 4 planes for a mediocre bombing raid, you should be using them to take territories. Just my two cents. If you’re going to import the interceptor rules, I’d like to see some kind of buff to the bombers.

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:

And instead of giving the US an extra $10 for having the Philipines and Hawaii, they should start off with $10 extra and lose $10 due to a massive loss of morale when they lose them. A penalty as suppose to a reward. The loss of morale can truly result in a loss of production. That would make it more realistic.

I am probably going to post this topic in another section. I would like to build more support for this for any future revisions to the rules.

@Uncrustable:

I think you should play some games of G40 on here before making these assumptions.
I do, and I see many SBR involving fighters.
Germany sometimes will send 5 or more bombers on Moscow alone, where Moscow has 2-3 fighters to scramble. Odds are better that Russia will lose a fighter before Germany loses a bomber in the air combat. And  Il trade a German bomber for a Russian fighter, Russia can’t afford it.
I also see many games where G2 Germany sends 2 bombers 2-4 tac bombers and 2-4 fighters to London where there are sometimes up to 5 fighters that can scramble.
Italy will also heroically send its lone bomber to London in an attempt to disable the airbase on London before Germany’s turn.

Even with interceptors SBR is a touch too powerful in G40.
This is mainly because bombers are getting +2, meaning 1 bomber auto disables bases and minor facilities once past AA and interceptors.

I would propose taking away bombers +2, while halving tacbombers damage.
Bombers SBR at 1D6
Tacbombers SBR at 1D6 /2. Rounded up.

Now I better see why you wanted to give defending interceptor D2 instead of D1.

Attacker have the advantage of picking which units will go SBR and to concentrate firepower on a single IC.

The defenders are overwhelmed by the sheer number.
In addition, on defense you have often more than just only 1 IC to protect, and you cannot keep all the Fgs in the same territory, have to split them usually.
D2 interceptors can counterweight the advantage of attacker and hindrance of defense a bit.

Reducing attacking bombers to only 1@1  for the whole group is also a way to preserved the defending fighters against destruction by a large number of StBs. But we both know, that is not A&A standard rules, each unit usually get 1 roll…

…unless you treat StBs/TcBs the same way as AAA!!!. :-o
So each defending Fgs can never have more rolled against them than 1A@1, if there is at least the same number of StB/TcBs vs Fgs.

It can be rationalized to get an historical accuracy somehow in the way:
intercepting fighters are not able to attack all groups of StBs/TcBs flying over the territory but only one unit (flight group) at a time.
When interceptors fly around StBs they are under an intense and concentrated AA fire coming from the flying fortress. But all others group of StBs are not chasing actively Interceptors, they are just flying toward the IC/AB/NB target.
So if interceptors are overwhelmed by the StBs/TcBs, it will be in essence 1:1 combat.
1 TcBs A1 vs 1 Fg D2, all other additionnal StBs/TcBs cannot shoot anymore.
In fact, all intercepting Fgs are already busy, other StBs/TcBs have pure and simple an open road toward IC or NB/AB.

What do you think of this one?
When StBs/TcBs attack fighters on SBR air combat, they get A@1 for each StB/TcB or intercepting Fgs wichever is less.

Escorting fighter attack as usual, 1 unit get 1 roll.
Based on 1942.2, I will keep @1 First Strike
Based on G40 rule, if Interceptor has D1, then A1.

(I really wonder why I haven’t think about it, even back in the old thread about StB spam strategy. :?)
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=31373.0

@Vance:

Thanks YG.  If you don’t mind I think I will post “espionage” as a separate house rule that could work with your tech system, or with just about any tech system for that matter.  You never know someone might use it or get an idea from it.  I love the idea of STEALING the other guy’s tech LOL

Hey man, feel free to use any of my ideas for separate rules, I just ripped off some good ones from Axisplaya and I didn’t feel bad about it one bit 😏 As for espionage, I thought stealing a tech from an enemy might be to powerful for the 10 spot, so I modified it to say develop any tech that an enemy power possesses.

Got a few more
Fritz X bomb (Germany) 5 points
Attack Britain with the rockets tech

United we stand (U.S and U.K) 10 points each
Preform a joint strike
This would only happen if there was a joint strike NA

All fail the commonwealth (Axis) 25 point
Control both British capitals at the end of turn three
25 points for the powers that captured the territories

Resistance what resistance (Germany) 10 points
Capture all three of the French home territories in Europe