Global 1940 & 1943 Expansions Game Reports

@The-Captain You’re absolutely right, but as the Russian player I’ve been glad to see those factories bombed out. Germany has moved the Southern Italy, Berlin, and Paris factories underground as they consider those the main factories they’ll be producing from. The Allies learned this the hard way too the India Industrial Complex took a lot of bombing damage. It’s kind of late but UK may finally put that factory underground.

@Franklin_Cain The problem with a 6+5 rule is that the Axis are almost always at or near 11 cities after 6 rounds. Germany with a simple crush Russia assault should have Novgorod (Leningrad), France, Germany, Poland + Italy has Rome = 5 with Volgograd as the relatively easy 6th VC. Japan has Japan, Kiangsu, Kwangtung, Philippines, and with some effort India = 5.

If the Axis don’t have to get those extra cities (8 Europe or 6 Pacific), then they don’t have to extend themselves to get the “last” VC. India is a stretch for Japan, but not terrible if that is all they need. They can afford to lose a few aircraft if they never have to go get Australia or Hawaii. Similarly, the Germans can easily take Volgograd and leave Moscow alone. The Russians don’t have the flexibility to defend both against the Germans so one of them will fall.

Bumping up the number to 7+5 is still putting a lot of pressure on the Allies. The Germans should be able to takedown Moscow by maintaining a good focus in the East. The Allies might be able to defend Egypt and have a sizeable force in the Middle East, but they may not (probably won’t) initially be in a position to takeback Volgograd immediately after the fall of Moscow. So again the Axis “win” without really having to exert themselves. The magic number of 8 was developed after lots of game testing and is a surprisingly good rule.

That all said, changing the VC count is another way (besides the bid) to level the playing field between players of dissimilar abilities. If you wanted to let the newer player take the Axis and lower the VC count, then you could have a competitive game.

Axis gets full advantage in the early turns, this forces them to get more aggression there for no reason for them to use peace as a shield and if I am playing as the allies, I’d rather have them be aggressive at turn 1 than turn 4.

@argothair

An interesting idea, to be sure! But where will we get the new units? Thank you!

@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.

I would give America Shipyards and Russia Improved Artillery. I really don’t think Germany or Japan need anything. They have so many territories, which equates to too much income. It should be easier for the Allies and I worry it will not be.

Well I’ve well expanded out of the A&A universe though it is still a first love. There is a HUGE world of games that we especially as US gamers have overlooked outside of A&A. WWII has a plethora of games out there if you’re willing to explore.

However, in the UK market especially, there are many, many, many games covering even the smallest and largest battles of history varying on complexity.

I would encourage anyone to take a dip in this pool. I actually got my wife to not only play but ask for more of Memoir '44. Sure it’s not A&A but it’s WWII and some day A&A may be “go to” game.

So, while A&A is a favorite, a smaller, weirder, not necessarily A&A game can be the gateway to WWII without “overwhelming” potential a “war game junkie” with the likes of G40 or even AA41.

It seems backwards but more “complicated” games with a smaller scope can really convert people to the thought “well this is really fun, what else have you got?”.

The new map is an uneasy compromise, with some tts values reflecting oil wealth, others not.

Personally I prefer adding industrial base and mineral resources together to create a single economic index, but the separate oil values have been tried:

http://www.basesproduced.com/aaa.html

The big problem is that the Allies always have more than enough oil, the Axis hardly ever enough.  Forcing the Axis to take oil centres to keep going makes their moves very predictable.