Monsieur Murdoch's House Rules Pack Announcement

Well they would be counters for each nation in a cup that you draw randomly. say 1 inch wooden chits with a decal on it. Icons of say a tank or Battleship if the commander effects those. If you draw a chit and don’t own that piece, you just lost that advantage that turn. The next turn you draw another chit. The used chits stay out of the jar, so the design features will balance in total for both Axis and Allies…or not. Depends on the game played…

China Factions:

Mao’s Red Guard Take clearly different soldiers from another Axis and Allies game you own. 1 troop may spawn in either Ninxia or Chingai per round.

Chaing’s Nationalists: 1 troop spawn per Chinese coastal territory controlled. Take clearly different soldiers from another Axis and Allies game.
*The rules for Anniversary edition still apply (half of territories rounded down) representing unaligned Chinese units. These may attack with either the Red Guard or Nationalist but not with both. If a Communist force loses to Japanese and retreats, it must attack a Nationalist army if there is one adjacent. This represents the infighting which crippled Chinese forces and suspicion the two factions had against each other during the conflict.

Zhang Xueliang: son of a powerful Manchu warlord Zhang Zuolin who wished for the restoration of Manchu dominance of China. Northeast Chinese forces pledged loyalty to this Independent opiate infused warrior. Who will he align with?
Discuss: If the majority of players decide to engage Zhang in the game, he overcomes his opiate addiction and womanizing ways. His loyalty to either Japan, Chinese Nationalists or Chinese Communists will be determined by the dice. Place an industrial center on Manchuria if not one already, or fully repair one. The IPCs for this region are now worth 4.

1 Zhang politically embraces communism and joins Mao’s forces. Place a tank, and three soldiers on the area.

2-3 “Communism was a cancer while the Japanese represented a superficial wound!” Zhang screams while surging onto the board with five soldiers allied to the Nationalists.

4-5 Zhang allies with the Japanese to restore the Qing Dynasty. Two Japanese soldiers and two artillery pieces placed. An attack on Soviet forces must occur within two rounds or Zhang will ally as a neutral Chinese force.

6 Zhang dies from an overdose

My Manchu grandfather was a destroyer captain for the Chinese Nationalists and passed down stories from this time. Manchuko’s politics were more independent than many realize. Historically Zhang sided with the Nationalists to help key victories and recognized as a hero by all Chinese. The scale of this struggle was as large as any European front, therefore, more infantry should be represented!
Have fun :)

I’ve finished my video series on house rules and I’m ready to move on to something else. The last one that I uploaded is turn 2 through the rest of the game playing all 10 of my house rules. It gives you a good idea of how they work in a game situation in case you would like to try them or maybe they will give you some ideas of your own on how to improve upon my ideas to fit your vision of what G-40 should be. Here is a list of them;

Special Forces Unit/Airfields
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkbTDATv1bI&t=1408s

Japan vs. Russia
I decided to go with a rule that split Asia from Europe. The only passage is south of the Himalayas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JoMX7mwLy0&t=9s

Heavy Tanks/Tankograd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aET6BEPAXNQ&t=6s

Heavy Tanks 2/ Partisans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8K4Vo5lORA&t=15s

American Minorities at War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO8gcDu6Pw4&t=24s

Railways/Hospitals/“The Spy”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSz5Il0CRyE&t=12s

House Rules First Turn Run Through
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjWCCiFYgzA&t=21s

House Rules Turn 2 Through the Rest of the Game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUl4bBxZbfg&t=13s

Mr. Piscolar;

the fortress idea is OK, but it seems OP when you can build them to defend key VC strongholds like Moscow.  Your point about inactivating them is interesting, but that’s not how the rules for Airbases work, you can’t disable them right before the scramble.  It is sort of interesting to imagine a fighter intercept/bomber part of that transaction, but at some point you simply need all your planes in order to overwhelm, you can’t split them off to wrack the forts first, or the defense becomes too favorable (because you have increased defensive power by +1 or reserved the planes for this task, either outcome increases the defense vs offense pretty dramatically).  When you are talking about potentially adding +1 defense to 40+ units, it becomes OP.

Actual fortresses are not realistic in WW2, as they were captured by paratroops, reduced by bombing, surrounded and besieged, or simply bypassed and ignored.

Your ANZAC idea is fun and interesting, but unless ANZAC takes the risk of moving its assets to Brazil, there wont be much coordination there.  Not sure why you would cleave off a second grey team.  Why not just clarify your original idea by making the ANZAC team better (by giving them Canada and 1-2 ships 1-2 units) at the expense of UK Atl.?  UK isn’t really a viable team at that point but neither is a 7 income independent team with split forces…

I like the special NOs from Balanced mod, but I’m not sure why you’ve added NOs that are active based on what teams already pretty much have or go for from the get-go.  NOs should draw the players into an unexpected alignment to incentivize new play, not reward them for doing what they were already going to do.

Adding German Units seems very odd since they are usually getting a bid of 20+ against them, now the required bid would be even higher.  You have offset some of the Axis advantage with other NOs, but I wouldn’t make the Germany start position even more advantageous its extremely powerful as is.

You also added several Axis NOs for just being Axis, these aren’t necessary to bolster their already dominating economic position and they aren’t dependent on what the Axis choose to do.  Giving Japan an NO for attacking allied zero $ islands or for Germany to attack Iceland are some examples of encouraging the player to do something that otherwise he would rarely or never choose to do.

the VC condition is messed up OOB, good effort on trying to change it

Tech/Cruisers/Bombers; these are similar to other suggestions, I think the tech doesn’t need new incentives to go after it, several of them are awesome and the rest are junk.  Unless you nerf the good ones and improve (all) the bad ones, making them easier to get doesn’t really balance anything.  Smart to reshuffle the Charts, but the “Land” one is packed with junk.

Crusiers are OP if they are 10 AND AAA.

Bombers are OP at 12, but if they cost 14, SB isn’t viable and buying them in bulk isn’t either.

These are just a ton of interesting extra rules, which are all fun and creative but they don’t seem to balance Axis vs Allies any better than standard rules.

There’s no official answer that I know of.  A&A is such an abstracted game that, in one sense, it would be meaningless to say that game unit X corresponds to real-world military (or naval) formation Y.  Given the scope of A&A Global 1940, however, the various unit types on the map would roughly correspond to large formations if we were to assume that the allocation of units in the rules corresponds to real WWII numbers.  As an example, Germany’s invasion of the USSR was carried out with over 150 divisions – so from that perspective, the small number of sculpts on the actual board could at best only correspond to army groups.  At that level, it shouldn’t even be possible to differentiate between the components of the army groups, nor even of their consitutent armies or corps; the highest-level tank formations in WWII were, I think, armoured divisions and (one level further down) tank brigades.  So one way to look at the game would be to imagine that we’re not actually seeing the military formations themselves, but rather a patchwork picture showing some of the elements of those formations, with some of these elements being high-level ones and others being lower-level ones (like tank brigades).

its another house rule that I had dug up in another forum that allows artillery to “shell” or bombard an adjacent territory for 1 ipc per shot

I was unable to sleep tonight and suddently an idea came to my mind. I don’t think the game truly reflects the importance of SBR’s. Superfortresses were primarily designed for strategic bombardment, not tactical battles as we always use them in the game (or do we….hummm?)

So, I thought of the following rule:

Strategic bombing raids
The mighty 8th air force conducted tousands of sorties against German industry throughout the war, inflicting considerable losses to the Reich’s economy.
For every bomber present on the United Kingdom territory, the German player must surrender 2 IPC’s from his money to the bank at the begining of his turn. This rule is similar to the “U boote interdiction” rule. Bombers can conduct tactical battles as normally but they must land on UK territory for the rule to take effect on the next turn.

I agree the simple version is better. I’ll try to talk my buds into trying it.

Yup, HBMRs outa Russia (RUS) is one of my favorite moves. The problem is that you need to leave 1 INF there and maybe 1 ARM to cover it.

The possiblity of BMRs in RUS is why I build an IC for Japan in KWA if I do at all(about 1/3 of the time.)

A funny story: The first guy who tried that on me had moved 2 UK BMRs and 1 US BMR to Russia without protection by the end of UK2. On G2 I flew 1 BMR and 2 FTR to Russia, lost 1 FTR on the way in, and destroyed his BMR wings!!! Glory! Glory! Glory!