"East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion

Variant Rule: Round Zero Breakthroughs

A while back, I had posted a topic on the idea of an “impulse turn” for the USSR, as sort of an expanded “round zero.” Admittedly, the implementation is a bit clunky (mostly for balance reasons) so I’m still trying to workshop it a bit. However, there is one aspect from those rules that I’d like to pluck out, since I think it could be applied independently from the impulse turn.

This is the idea of “round zero breakthroughs” – the Soviets being able to gain additional techs, and readjust the diplomatic situation – for some different options at the start of the game.

1. Diplomacy: The USSR can move China up one space on the influence chart, or they can move the other two neutral alliances a total of two spaces on the influence chart.

This allows for some interesting options:

• The Soviets can move China to +8, giving them some more income and making Chinese support in North Korea a little bit more secure against NATO spies.
• The Soviets could move the Arab League to +0, meaning that the Suez Canal would be closed to NATO at the start of the game – potentially providing for some alternate strategies using the Soviet fleet in the Black Sea, but also preventing NATO from combining their ships from the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.
• The Soviets could move the Arab league to +3, giving them almost the same amount of income as if they had increased Chinese support instead, but also allowing Soviet troops to move into Arab territories, providing a gateway to attack Africa.
• Moving the OAS would mean that an errant complication roll for a Soviet nuclear attack won’t immediately lead to more income for the USA.

The 2nd part of these added breakthroughs would be granting additional tech to the USSR:

2. Technology: The USSR gains two full-steps at submarine technology, or two half-steps towards any other tech trees.

What this does, in practical terms:

• The USSR can move their subs through hostile sea zones, bypassing enemy ships and potentially setting up offensive moves deeper into NATO supply lines.
• With the “straits rule” in place, the USSR can use the Black Sea or the Baltic Sea almost like sub pens, to protect these units from NATO naval units.
• Soviet subs can potentially link up, by crossing underneath the ice sheet at the top of the board – to project greater force into one theatre.
• This gives the USSR the option to develop Fission Weapons, as a counter to NATO naval power, or to progress further along the armor tech tree with the goal of eventually gaining total superiority on land.

Since I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that nukes are the best counter to NATO’s navy, I’d probably want to revise this rule a bit, to reflect that; submarine tech should be treated as a fun option, rather than a viable balancing / war-winning feature. I haven’t really nailed down what that implementation should look like, just yet.

@jwlbigdog said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@the-janus A fourth option would include making the use of paratroopers without other land units present a researchable technology.

At that point, I would just staple it onto the Helicopter tech.
My own personal inclination is to just not allow paratroopers at all, but there might be other satisfactory solutions that I don’t want to shut the door on.

@imperious-leader
I unfortunately am one of the few Imp gamers who never once played a game of The Great War. I think I had a copy of the rules, at one point, but as far as I can tell, I’ve lost them to the sands of time.

Not sure if @jwlbigdog @tacojohn or anyone else might have a copy buried somewhere…?

@tacojohn said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

I think I may eventually try to recreate the E&W Cold War-era scenario on one of the more recent A&A maps - either the Anniversary map or maybe Siredblood’s or one of its offshoots - and work up the starting set ups, territorial control changes, etc. since finding new copies of the old E&W map seems unlikely. And then I’ll just use existing pieces I already have, plus some new pieces from HBG.

As I’ve touched on previously in the thread, the E&W map looks like it’s a modification of the Xeno Games “World at War” map – some obvious Cold War changes are included, like east/west Germany, Yugoslavia/Greece, and North/South Korea.

Typically those changes are hard to come across in a map expressly meant to run a WWII game, but something like Bloodbath (IIRC? whatever the cool kids are playing these days…) might come close.

On a related topic, I always thought the TGW map would be handy for a WWII or even an E&W scenario. I liked the mechanic of infantry entrenching, that was something I had wanted to borrow and expand on, for a homebrew idea I had.

@jwlbigdog said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@the-janus I do still have a PDF copy of the 9.1 rules for TGW, even still have the CD for the map view file. Not sure where my copy of E&W is though…

I have the “2nd Edition rules” doc for E&W.

To make a short story long, I had misplaced my physical book, so I went to order a replacement – back when the Imp Games site was still up. They emailed me saying something like, “here, just take this instead, we don’t really want to have to ship anything.” But suffice it to say I explained that I wanted the physical book, so now I have both the physical and the electronic versions. P.S. to that story: I ended up finding where I had misplaced my original book – so now I actually have two physical copies of the rulebook.

@tacojohn said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

Yeah, it might be that. But right now, the only TGW map is in MapView, right?

FWIW, I was able to dig this out of archive.org, from the Imp Games website; I probably have it saved somewhere, but it was just quicker to dig it out that way. (Obviously not high-res, but was freely available online, when the site was up.)

“The 2nd Great War”

My idea for using the TGW map for a WWII scenario basically involved breaking the war into phases, starting in 1939 (after the surrender of Poland); in hindsight, 1940 (after the fall of Denmark and Norway, with the USSR annexing the Baltic states) probably makes more sense.

Basically, most countries would be inactive, until certain triggers happen. (I never got deep into the rules/setup, so this is mostly just a thumbnail sketch.)

Phase 1: Germany invades Belgium and Netherlands; once conquered, Italy becomes an active Axis power
Phase 2: Germany invades France; UK becomes an active Allied power; once France is defeated (Axis capture 50% or more of French territories by IPC value, OR capture Paris) Vichy France is established
Phase 3: the minor Axis countries (“Danubian states & Finland”) becomes an Axis power, allowing Axis units to move through their territory; they become an active Axis power after Germany conquers Yugoslavia
Phase 4: After conquering Greece, the Axis can invade the USSR; after the USSR is attacked, the US joins the war (as an active Allied power/contributing full income/etc.)
Phase 5: Once Vichy France is defeated (Allies capture 50% or more of Vichy territories by IPC value) Vichy France is absorbed by Germany
Phase 6: Once Italy is defeated (Allies capture 50% or more of starting Italian territories by IPC value) Italy is absorbed by Germany

Major Neutrals: (all use 8 IPCs for purposes of influence scale?)

• Spain: favours Germany or France(?)
• Yugoslavia: favours Italy or USSR(?)
• Turkey: favours Danubian States or UK(?)

Territorial Changes (to reflect 1940)

• Germany: add Austria, Bohemia, Carinthia, Tirol, Poland, Galicia, Denmark, Norway; remove German Africa Convoy
• UK: add Mesopotamia, Palestine, German Africa Convoy; remove Ireland, British Africa Convoy
• Italy: add Albania, Carniola, British Africa Convoy
• France: add Syria
• USSR: add Armenia; remove Finland, Poland

New nations:

• Danubian States & Finland: Finland, West Hungary, East Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria
• Yugoslavia: Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro
• Turkey: Thrace, Anatolia, Ankara, Kurdistan

On the topic of homebrews, would anyone be interested in my rules for playing an E&W scenario, using the RISK: Reinvention boardgame?
It’s definitely a lot more of an abstraction, but the idea was to keep some of the same feel as the original.

Let me know if you’d like me to share it here; if so, I’ll go look at my notes and clean them up a bit, then do some posts about the scenario.

Minor gameplay adjustments:

Having had the opportunity to start playing E&W regularly again, I would like to share a few observations:

1. I think the Soviets are capable of winning under the standard rules/setup, but they must play a very strict, 100% IPM strategy. Also, using the straits rule and not allowing aerial retreat from amphibious assaults greatly benefits the USSR.
2. The “Operation: Underbelly” India strategy for the Soviets is (at best) a pyrrhic victory; you’re required to dedicate so many resources to the battle, that you cannot possibly win the war.
3. The Soviets are strongly incentivized to start attacking China, if China is not providing income to the USSR – even in a case where the Soviets are still doing well in the game.

To address some of these things, I have a few suggestions for minor gameplay changes which (if not necessarily capable of fixing any perceived imbalance) could at least open up more gameplay options, and thus allow the game to be fun for longer:

• Change the Soviet’s free counter-intelligence roll to be a free spying roll of any kind.
• Start the Arab League at +0 Soviet, instead of neutral; change the Suez rule such that the canal is only closed to your alliance if the Arab League is contributing income to the other alliance.

In concert, these changes address a few issues.
Since the Soviets cannot really afford to invest in spying (while NATO has an easier time of doing so – and I would argue they must invest in it, to some degree) changing the counter-intelligence roll allows the USSR to participate in the diplomacy game. It also makes it so that this roll is usable even if NATO chooses not to purchase spies. Changing the Suez rule also brings it more in line with the general rules for moving through neutral territories; it always seemed like kind of a weird outlier to me.

This also opens up two distinct options for the USSR: focus on influencing China to increase your income (and maintain the other benefits that come with it), or start influencing the Arab League in order to provide a route of attack into Africa.

Typically, if there is any action in this region of the world, it is the USSR invading the Arab League as basically a “game ender” towards the objective of an economic victory. It is difficult to do a complete, successful surprise attack on the Arab League, since the USSR likely has no navy after the first round or two. By making the Arab League easier to bring under Soviet influence, a different Africa strategy now becomes more viable. I think this is important for gameplay variety, knowing what we now know with regards to going after India or attacking China.

Tech/Spying revamp: Breakthroughs

Coming back to this, the 2nd half of my previous house rule thread outlines what I call the “breakthrough” system; this replaces both the spying and technology phases.

Each nation can make a number of free breakthrough rolls equal to:

the number of free tech rolls they get, under the baseline rules + the maximum number of spies they can have on the board at a time, under the baseline rules

This gives us the following numbers:

• USSR: 3
• WE: 1
• UK: 1
• US: 2

Each nation may also purchase a number of additional breakthrough rolls on their turn, up to the number of free breakthroughs roll they can make; the cost of an additional breakthrough roll is equal to the cost of an infantry, for that nation (2 for USSR, or 3 for any of the NATO powers.) Being that E&W is fundamentally still an IPM game, this is intended to make purchasing breakthroughs competitive with purchasing infantry.

Breakthrough results:
on a roll of 1, you may do one of the following:

• gain a diplomatic success at a neutral alliance (OAS, Arab League, or China)
• gain a full step in one technology tree

on a roll of 2, you may do one of the following:

• gain a diplomatic success at any minor/independent neutral
• gain a half-step in one technology tree

You may only apply one breakthrough to any tech tree, per turn.

Optional rules:

• The USSR may use a 2 to influence China
• (revised NATO tech sharing) If a NATO partner uses a 1 to gain a technological advancement, both other NATO partners may each gain a half-step in that same tech tree. This is still not allowed for the nuclear weapons tech tree.
• (revised USSR counter-intelligence) The USSR may make one free counter-intelligence roll on their turn; if the result is a 1 or 2, this roll can be used to foil a matching NATO breakthrough on the same round, only. The USSR may also purchase 1 additional counter-intelligence breakthrough on each of their turns.

These optional rules combined, would in theory make it easier for the USSR to keep China in the fold, since it also encourages NATO to use their 1s on technology rather than diplomacy.

Essentially, I’ve come to the conclusion lately that nuclear tech is supremely important for the USSR, and the only viable NATO counter is diplomacy. The problem is that the USSR gets free tech rolls AND free rolls to foil NATO’s spies (i.e. their attempts at diplomacy.) In my opinion, this is where the late-game imbalance lies, and short of just completely removing tech/spying from the game (or imposing nerfs on the USSR) the only other real fix is to move towards something where all sides can make any type of rolls they want (i.e. in the base game, US having a free tech roll when they really need a free diplomacy roll, IMO.) Allowing for more rolls overall, should also decrease the randomness by flattening the bell curve. It’s also just fun (in my experience) to get to see more techs in play by more countries, and more neutrals getting active – and allowing that to play into your strategies more reliably.

Analysis of the Early Game

So after getting resoundingly thumped by our forums’ very own @The_Good_Captain (in roughly half a dozen games) earlier this year, I find myself having another big think about E&W lately.

(One thing I should mention was that we hadn’t yet dug up the Imp Games E&W FAQ while we were playing; probably the most significant rule clarification in there was that aerial retreats are allowed. So that will have an impact if/when I ever get rolling with an opponent again.)

Anyways, what we learned is that is it is very plausible (with the round 0 bonus of 20 IPCs) to have the USSR capture basically all of the frontline territories on round 1:

• Norway (2)
• West Germany (4)
• Greece (2)
• Turkey (3)
• Pakistan (1)
• South Korea (2)

What you end up with is an income tracker like this:
USSR: 62 (+4 more, from China)
WE: 21
UK: 32
US: 41

Since this is a Classic-style IPM game, we can translate this pretty easily into units:

33 inf for the USSR, vs.

• 7 inf for WE
• 9 inf, 1 arm for UK
• 12 inf, 1 arm for US
  = 30 ground units for NATO

NATO starts out the game with a sizeable advantage in infantry; even taking into account 10 inf being added in round 0, they’re ahead of the Soviets, 92-70. However, this advantage is largely flattened out through combat on the first round, and by the fact that US and UK are typically going to be producing transports on round 1, rather than landing many units in Eurasia.

Where this starts to tip into imbalance is the fact that the USSR can begin attacking neutrals to increase their economy, right away on round 2. Conversely, it is difficult for NATO to be taking territory away from the USSR by round 2, because they are reliant on transports to do so – in both Siberia and Scandinavia.

I’ll qualify this by saying I haven’t attempted a full-blown Scandinavia focus as NATO in these most recent games (although this is what I’m looking into now.) But with that being said, I’m essentially counting on the aerial retreat rule to tip the balance enough in NATO’s favour, that other house-rules won’t be needed; I’m skeptical that this will be the case.

I think that having some reliability in the round 1 outcomes is important, but it’s becoming clear that maybe the USSR shouldn’t get to win all of the battles. My first instinct is to tinker a bit with the initial setup, but possibly a better starting point is to go back to playing the game without any purchases on round 0, and then slowly start adding a “bid” back in, to see where the numbers fall.

Turkey is probably the hardest nut to crack in the starting setup, and the Soviets using control of the straits to defend their backline has been a cornerstone of the game for the longest time. It’ll be interesting to see if the game still “works,” under a paradigm where the USSR isn’t expected to take Turkey right away. The larger problem is that if every battle on round 1 is a 50/50 proposition between clearing the territory and strafing it, NATO can potentially end up with a lot more air power (i.e. South Korea, Greece, and West Germany) – and that would also throw the balance completely out the window. It might just be time to shake up the status quo.