Global 1943 Expansion, Revised

@FranceNeedsMorePower

There’ve been many country-specific national advantages proposed over the years (many historically based). A great place to start is The Captain’s House Rules Expansion (I don’t find his implementation of many of the rules completely accurate, but he has some really good ideas):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SRDOsOwlO4Aa13cULwkWrorrXEmCmiN-/view

Specifically, there are some great Soviet ones in those rules.

Not saying these are at all perfect, but I posted about some potential Vichy house rules for 1940 a while back as well! Just thought I’d share here in case it sparks anything for you as well or anything to go along with your own!

I explain my thoughts in this post, but my hope was to avoid any massive deviations to the standard A&A game play. By that I mean, I didn’t want to go crazy adding or changing a ton of specific rules or anything that exist in the game already.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/26099/vichy-france-global-1940?_=1688593330283

@barnee I also suggest that kamikaze planes get to ignore scrambles. So if I catch a sole transport, my kamikaze should be able to target it without a “dog fight” hahaha.

@magnum I’m not yet convinced that letting them pick what they want, and potentially the same thing, is a problem. If anything, this will give them the opportunity to try out different strategies, involving research, and see how they work.

@CWO:

@taamvan:

I am not sure what the British government’s back up plan was anyways if Sea Lion was successful.

The British government may not have had an actual “backup plan”, in terms of something serious and concrete and specific.  My impression is that Britain’s civilian and military leaders were focussed on preventing an invasion in the first place, and on defeating it if it did actually occur, and that they were sufficiently confident that they could accomplish one or the other of those goals that they didn’t need to give any detailed consideration to what to do if Britain ended up facing defeat.  Hitler, similarly, didn’t give serious consideration to invading Britain until he was forced to admit that Britain wasn’t going to come to terms with him after the defeat of France.

It’s quite possible that British government considered the possibility of setting up a government-in-exile in Canada (or elsewhere), but “considering the possibility” isn’t the same thing as preparing a functional contingency plan.  And in fact, there would have been two good reasons NOT to work on such a functional plan.  First, it would have taken up time and resources that could have been better used elsewhere, even if it only amounted to a small number of staff.  More importantly, preparing such a plan – even in secret – would have been politically very dangerous.  Churchill had famously been proclaiming in the House of Commons that “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”  If word had somewhow reached the public that the same Churchill was secretly preparing plans to decamp to Canada, it would have had two very serious negative effects: it would have told the public that Churchill believed that Britain genuinely risked being conquered by Nazi Germany (which would have been very bad for morale) and it would have convinced people that Churchill was hypocritical on a monumental scale (which would have ended his political career).  It would also have destabilized the British government, which was the last thing Britain needed at that time.

No, I completely understand why Churchhill did that, he was a very ballsy man and someone who was needed for UK but you’d still think you want some kind of back up just in case. I am sure his staff and the Royal Family would AT LEAST retreat to Ireland if need be.

Thanks SS.  I re-read the report: minor clarification:  It looks like I’m recommending that Britain can’t be attacked at all R1, but actually meant that Italy specifically needs to wait until R2 to attack (preventing the total annihilation of all UK forces from the mediterranean on R1).  Also, I thought there was little the UK could do with these house rules to prevent a takeover if Italy was allowed to attack the UK in R1, but this was assuming Italy could set up their fleet and transports to attack England on R2 with Germany, but skilled Allied players could put naval ships in the path to block Italy from joining in on R2.  With that, I think it’s appropriate to play that Italy can attack the UK on R1… especially since the Italian player only earns 10 IPC’s at start and with no National Objectives, it could be a slow climb to more income if Britain has a chance to maintain it’s fleet and holdings in Africa.

@Der:

Hi Marc -

I put in the possibility of removal of the chips in case the player was faced with a huge attacking force and wanted to withdraw everything but did not want the enemy to capture and use all of his entrenchment. (kind of a scorched earth thing)

I put some entrenchment in the Causasus because on my map Stalingrad is located there. I didn’t put any in Hitler’s Atlantic wall because my map starts in 1942 and the player can always add some later. Plus the German player gets an automatic 3 entrenchment anyway when the Allies try to land from the sea.    Â

Okay, thanks for the clarifications.  About the scorched earth thing, the ideal technique (and I’m just kidding here) would be to wait until the attacking enemy infantry falls into the abandoned entrenchments, then to fill in the trenches by blasting their walls with pre-set charges of TNT.  Sort of killing two birds with one stone.  :-D  In fairness, U.S. troops sometimes used a variation of this technique in the Pacific.  When confronted with a particularly tough dug-in Japanese position that would cost a lot of American casulties to clear by conventional assault methods, the troops would simply use a bulldozer to fill it in or collapse it.