MOVED: Honor and Infamy (Commander upgrade for A&A)

I’m glad I cleared your principle concern and I do take your point with regards to world-wide naval redeployments. I think, from a purely historical perspective, I do have to concede that what I am proposing does require a suspension of disbelief. Even today, that sort of operation is incredibly difficult to plan for, let alone execute, (although it is only a concern for the USA at the time of writing).

If I may touch on your examples, my limited understanding is that thanks to the Dogger Bank incident, the British closed the Suez Canal to the Russian fleet, which they were hoping to do anyway. The Brits had recently signed treaties with Japan against Russia, so Dogger Bank just gave them a pretext, which has always made me wonder if the British had something to do with the whole mess. So, on top of the two other major problems you previously mentioned, the required transit distance was increased by thousands of kilometres. Had that not happened, I still think the Japanese would have just as easily and completely annihilated the Russian fleet, but every little helps.

The Great White Fleet and Force Z are good examples too, although Force Z was defeated largely by lack of air cover, not so much to do with logistical challenges, again, as far as I am aware. I agree that this sort of thing is likely done in stages, as you mentioned in your last paragraph, not as one trip only stopping for food and fuel, but I did consider that for the House Rule.

As for the colossal US naval builds and deployments, again I think you are correct. In GW36, to build cruisers and light carriers takes 18 months and battleships and fleet carriers take 2 years, that is, 3 and 4 game rounds respectively, so that aspect doesn’t detract from reality when taking my House Rule into account, IMO.

Ultimately, I do agree that the whole thing is a little hard to swallow, but a ship can travel from Liverpool to Bombay, through the Med, and it still takes 1 year in game time. I think if each nation gets 1 Naval Redeployment per turn, things become much less fantastic. I had to try to balance realism with the in game mechanics to address something that I felt was a bit odd, and it can’t be 100% believable, but we are talking about a board game that has to make it at least feasible for the Axis to win the Second World War, which I believe to be a total impossibility.

If you and/or your friend are really upset about the loss of the original MB A&A tech chart, pretty sure that method and chart are still 100% compatible with the current 1942.2 game if you really wanted it (I’m not talking about game-balance, but mechanically speaking, it would still work).

The old method was spend 5 IPCs per die you wanted to roll… if you spent 20 IPCs, that’s four die rolls. You’d roll the dice… each result of “6” was a breakthrough and you’d then reroll for each breakthrough and apply it to this chart:

Jet Power (fighters defend at 5) Rockets (1 rocket attack on enemy industry a turn for any AAA within 3 spaces of an enemy Plant… 1D6 IPC loss to enemy) Super Subs (subs attack at 3) Long Range aircraft (all aircraft have 2 more range) Industrial Technology (all units are 1 IPC less) Heavy Bombers (all bombers roll 3 dice instead of 1… note this essentially ended the game… lol).

If it’s really a big deal to you guys, all the above rules would work mechanically with A&A 1942.2… however, not all are balanced, especially Heavy Bombers, but that could be changed (maybe roll 3 dice and choose your favorite of the three).

There’s lots of custom rules for tech research… its not hard to either add the original rules, use someone elses posted on the forum, or just make up your own house rules. In any case, this is one of the easiest rules to add back into the game if you really miss it.

AandAtech.jpg

This seems like a very interesting system, I’m definitely going to explore this concept with my buddy next time we get a chance. I remember I once tried to play Classic with my friend Oddie using a full fog of war secret move concept. Basically we tried simultaneous phases (ie. all nations purchase at once, then all nations move at once etc.) Roughly modeled things on Risk II’s system (the old cd game by Microprose of the classic RISK boardgame) for “Same Time” Risk.

We used a screen for each player (similar to the old Dungeon Masters screen, a tri-fold that stands upright.) Purchase was planned, written down, and then hidden behind the screen, not revealed until placement. Movement was written down on an index card and kept secret until both players had recorded all their moves. Same thing for Non combat. It was very important in this case to enforce strict separation of game phases, and to write down everything, which was rather involved.

For combat we always rolled the “border clashes” first, so if both players tried to move across the same border (territory to territory) then that combat was always rolled first and both sides as if their units were “attackers.” After border clashes was the normal combat phase for all players, at the same time, with standard attack and defense. Going basically from the left of the board to the right in order.

It was not a terribly successful approach on game balance, since the game is balanced for tbs, but it was fun for a trial. The main issue we had was trying to find a way to take a TBS game, and make it into a “Same Time” game, this necessitates a completely collapsed turn order and more money HRs to work. And after my buddy moved, I just never had anyone around who was motivated enough to try and figure this stuff out.

Trying to do a Same Time Classic game was also the first one where I ever tried to include variable income bonus rolls, and set bonuses to starting cash. Since the turn order advantage was nonexistent, it was necessary to introduce more money for the game to work on a practical level. Basically finding that if you double the starting cash values for each player, and then randomize bonuses thereafter to about double normal income per round, it gave nations enough money to each to basically counterbalance the effect of trying to do all phases at the same time for each nation. (Since everyone is throwing units everywhere, and since the destroyed TUV in round 1 could then be replaced, later in the game, instead of being lost irreparably in the first round.) It was fun, but required a lot of rethinking, in terms of the basics of how the game operates. The "Same Time idea always seemed a better solution for me than a collapsed TBS order that has all Allies going at once, and then all Axis. Same time had it so that all the purchases, moves, combats and placements occurred at the same time for all Nations.

The ideas CWOMarc is suggesting seem like they might offer something similar in the way of secrecy, but without requiring the full “Same Time” dynamic, where everyone does the same phase at once. I’m intrigued to try it out.

As for the cards, I tried my Income bonus rules again last monday, and again I am convinced that Global can support this fairly well. I have yet to introduce the rest of the gamephases into the card game, but feel confident that given the right set up, Axis and Allies can support a random draw mechanic. Just need to keep drafting and testing until I get the right mix

Haven’t done the research on this, but I’m just throwing it out there.

What if the Axis powers together needed a total of 12 VC, instead of 8 in Europe, or 6 in Pacific? Also, Allies only need to capture 2 Capitals to win.

Thoughts?

Another way to consider this is the BOTB/D-DAY style models, were units can occupy the same territory.  With one round of ensuing combat.

If units become totally encircled… they can’t move and operate poorly.

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.

goto thrashers site ill bet you find it there.

http://www.wargamer.com/axisandallies/EUROPE/AAE-AAP-combined/aae-aap_combined_MAIN.html

try this…

GG