Global 1940 & 1943 Expansions Game Reports

The Set Up for the entire game board in G39 has been clarified.

Please refer to the first post in this thread.

@FranceNeedsMorePower good point

@barnee
Thanks for the feedback. Currently we do not have a printed technology sheet. We just write the name of the technologies on flash cards and place a national control markers and chips to keep track of progress.

As for them being too involved, for a first-time player we disagree. We played with a couple people that had never played Axis and Allies, but after a single game of G40 (keep in mind this already entails 8+ hours of practice) and they were all ready to implement our house rules on the next game.

Our house rules started as a question of how can we re-work the existing research rules to encourage the use of all out of box units.
It was never our goal to have unique technologies/units for each nation. The work done by @The-Captain and company is more complex than what we attempted to do, so kudos to them as it looks like they did a terrific job developing their house rule expansion. We should give their rules a try one day.

@all-encompassing-goose

By the way, do the US and Japanese neutral rules still apply? As in the rules prohibiting the US to park ships near Japanese territory or the rules prohibiting Japan to move ships within a certain amount of sea zones to the continental US.

Can nations remain neutral if they want to?

See I thought about changing Mongolian values to be a standard pro-Soviet neutral so each territory gets a value of one while the capital territory gets a value of two and then keep the original rules, that way, if Japan decides to get imperialist on USSR, they will gain their military, 7 dollars, and a spot to place a minor should they choose.

I’ve always felt the same way as the jetset. For me the dice rules are an important part of the narrative aspect of the game. They allow for more surprises or turn arounds or crushing upsets at the last minute, the kind of thing that allows you to build out a uniqur story around what just happened in a given combat.

I understand the appeal of Low Luck, but the gameplay is substantially different.  A build or combat strategy that is guaranteed to come off in LL, could fail miserably in a dice game. Sure you might be able to model averages for expected results using an LL scheme to map your strategy in a dice game, but there’s always a chance that the dice end up disagreeing with you ‘that time.’

In that respect I don’t see a huge amount of cross over. Playing 100 dice games won’t really prepare you or teach you a whole lot about what to expect in an LL game. As mentioned before low luck alters a lot of things, with respect to deadzoning and strafing, the number of defensive units required to back down an attack entitely, the way the airblitz works, the way anti aircraft fire works, etc. Just too many differences to really say that a strategy that anticipates the one style of combat is going to graph onto the other consistently.

I think after playing a few games, most players are able to determine which style of gameplay they prefer. If you love the consistency of LL, and hate the unpredictably of dice, then wait for a match with another LL player. If you hate LL, but love dice, then wait for a match against a dice player. Especially in a long game like global, if you start a playing with a combat system you dislike, then chances are that the game won’t be very satisfying for you. There are enough players out there who enjoy both ways of playing that you can probably find a likeminded opponent if you just stick it out for a little while.

To the initial question about why LL isn’t used more often, the answer is probably just because the manual doesn’t offer a description of how Low Luck works, or provide the kind official endorsement for that combat system that would probably be necessary for a larger groundswell of support. In regular tournament play it foes have a bit more cache, since that is where the systemperature was first put into practice… Fortunately for those who do enjoy Low Luck, tripleA  created simple “click tab” option in the game options menu, that allows any game to be played with universal LL rules, which I think has done a lot to popularize that style of play. There are also tripleA scenerios out there which were designed from the ground up with the LL playstyle in mind, which helps. I don’t know if the G40 designers took LL into account when they created the set up. If it was designed for LL, I imagine some of starting unit distributions might have been a little different. But again the game is pretty flexible, so even a game that wasn’t created with LL in mind, can still be adapted pretty easily, although the playtime required or the usual bids might be slightly different.

Thanks Lars.  I went ahead and took the plunge and ordered the French, Italian, ANZAC and Chinese units from HBG.  I took a look at each power’s starting units and then made an education guess as to what I would need.  They arrived yesterday and I’ve got them all sorted out and ready to go.  Just waiting for the boards to come in and I’ll get a game going.  But good thoughts on the classic units, if I need anything extra all those classic pieces will be coming out of retirement.

:-)

This sounds interesting!  Can’t wait to see the final product.