Explained: Axis & Allies Global 1940 House Rules Expansion

@skhande2

I my view, tanks, artillery, and infantry units don’t just represent those things, but rather their units. Most tank, artillery, and infantry units during World War 2 contained some organic AA guns. While there are obviously differences in the size of divisions between the powers (Soviet divisions and corps were smaller than Western ones, one reason they were able to rack up such large numbers), I think a unit represents X number of soldiers, tanks, AA guns, etc. (while actual AA gun units are for dedicated anti-aircraft units which exist semi-independently of other divisions).

I’ve heard suggestions of giving artillery anti-tank capabilities, similar to anti-aircraft artillery in Global 1940 (North Africa’s anti-tank gun piece has something similar too). I think different win rates between different units is mostly represented well (as I hope I’ve somewhat demonstrated above).

@general-spengler Very interesting. I think having conscripts cost only $1 and be totally unable to attack is both a little sleepy and tends to give too much of an advantage to the defenders.

What about conscripts that cost $2, move 1, defend at 1 each, and attack at 1 as a stack? In other words, no matter how many conscripts you have in an attack, they all collectively only roll one die per round of battle, which only hits if the die is a 1.

This should naturally discourage players from building too many conscripts, since a stack of 5 conscripts is less cost-efficient than a single conscript.

You could also limit production of conscripts to 1 per factory and/or recruiting center per round. So if you have both a factory and a recruiting center in the same territory, you could buy up to 2 conscripts there per turn. If you have only a factory or only a recruitment center, then you could only buy 1 conscript per turn in that territory.

I believe this thread below may provides some additional ideas and concept such as “double dipping”.
So I bumped it to reactive this TT income bonus thread.
Territory Income Bonus: for Classic, Revised, 1941/42.2 etc
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=31978.msg1190315#msg1190315

@der-kuenstler For some reason I’m just finding this thread now. I mostly agree with what others have said. The only thing I want to add is that if you want to play with more than the simplest of house rules, you should feel good about creating play aids to support those rules. Seriously, go out and print your new rules, in full color. Put some thought into how to design and lay out a chart or a cheat sheet that will help players remember and use your rules. Cut them out so they’re the right size, and then laminate them or print them on heavyweight cardstock. If your rules involve any special pieces, buy sculpts for those pieces or use some paint or something to convincingly alter the closest available piece; don’t just slap a chip underneath artillery and say “OK, now it’s a self-propelled artillery.”

If you’re not willing to put in that work to make things easier on your players, then why should they put in the work to test out your house rules? It can take 8+ hours for a single playtest; if you invite 3 friends over, that’s 24 hours of other people’s time. You should be willing to put in at least 10% of that (2 hours) on creating play aids to improve that experience. If you’re not, maybe that’s a sign that you’re having so much fun imagining new rules that tickle your fancy that you’re not really thinking hard about whether those rules will be fun to play with for others.

Hi all,

Been a long time reader on the boards, but this is my first time posting! Been an avid AA player and history buff for a long time. Sorry to post here at such a later date, but I wanted to get an opinion.

My take on adding Canada to the game without too much drastic effects on the playability involved a couple of moving parts.

Give Canada the 7 ipc income of the Canadian territories to spend each turn, but that same ipc value still counts towards the UK as well, with the UK also able to build from IC’s there.

Do the same thing for South Africa, giving them both South Africa territories and Rhodesia for a 4 ipc total. Again, UK still controls the money as well, with UK also able to build from IC’s there.

Both Commonwealths still play as part of the UK, buy, move, combat, etc. Essentially just adding 11 ipc income.

To counter this so it’s not unfair to the Axis, do the same thing with Romania, Finland, Bulgaria, and Hungary (Slovakia-Hungary on the map of course). Those four powers would have a total of 9 ipc value between them. I figured the extra two ipc’s would have minimal effect.

Essentially all I did was add ipc’s and therefore troop numbers to the game, just forcing them to be used at their respective locales.

My only thought with this was would the immediacy of the minor Axis powers being on the front lines basically effect gameplay on the Eastern Front more so than the added Commonwealth powers would in Africa and Europe? I don’t want to hurt the USSR unfairly.

Any feedback would be great! Glad to finally post and be a part of the community!

Bumped due to changes made to original post.

You could use the same general rules for AA50, but you would have to pick one of the AA 50 setups (1941 or 1942) then add up the total cost of starting units to get the starting cash for each country. For one thing, I think there are less starting pieces for all the nations because AA 50 has a smaller map than the 1940 games so there are less pieces. Another thing is I think the prices are a little different in AA50 than in the 1940 games, plus you won’t have Tac Bombers or Mechanized Infantry as those units didn’t come out until the 1940 games.
Also, I’m not sure how you would handle China, since in AA50 they don’t actually get IPCs but rather 1 infantry for every 2 Chinese territories still under Chinese control at the beginning of their turn.
Other than a few small changes though, I think you could still adapt this idea to AA50.

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