Explained: Axis & Allies Global 1940 House Rules Expansion

@SuperbattleshipYamato said in [Global 1940] Balance idea for the Allies:

Give all the technologies of one row (the Allied player(s) chooses) to one Allied power (Allied player(s) choose), free of charge. These technologies apply at the beginning of the game on Germany’s very first turn for those powers. These powers cannot research further. Other powers research normally.

Do this twice with two different Allied powers.

If the Allied player(s) cannot make a decision the Axis player(s) choose (s).

For example, the Soviet Union chooses the first row and therefore has the technologies Rockets, War Bonds, Improved Mechanized Infantry, Advanced Artillery, Paratroopers, and Increased Factory Production, at the start of the game, and the US chooses the second row and gets the technologies Improved Shipyards, Super Submarines, Radar, Jet Fighters, Long Range Aircraft, and Heavy Bombers.

I think this can balance the game significantly for the Allies instead of a bid. If the game still isn’t balanced enough, do this with more Allied powers.

My contention is that Global 1940 is NOT a World War 2 game without technology. It is stuck in 1940l

@CWO:

Depicting a single regiment would be problematic in terms of game scale.  In general terms, a game on the scale of Global 1940 represents (admittedly in very abstract terms) the actions of units that are mostly the size of army groups and fleets – and, furthermore, of army groups and fleets which have no specific identity other than their nationality.  It would be hard to justify saying that one particular regiment-sized unit, with a specific name, ought to be added to the game; by that rationale, there are hundreds of other regiments that could be added too.

The obvious exception to the above principle is the single fighter which represents the Flying Tiger squadron in China…so it’s not an ironclad rule that units smaller than army groups and fleets are never represented in the game.  It can be argued, however, that the Flying Tigers are a special case because of their high profile, and because in the game China lacks aviation forces of its own.  China doesn’t lack infantry, however, so adding a USMC unit doesn’t bring anything distinctive to China’s forces.

Additionally, Global 1940 has no rules that govern riverine operations – which is understandable, because the game map doesn’t depict any rivers.  Even the Saint Lawrence, which is huge in real life, isn’t depicted: on the map, it looks like a strip of land.  There are a few lakes depicted, plus a few canals and narrow straights, but no rivers.  So a river patrol unit in China would literally have nowhere to go.

If you just using A&A Pacific, 1940 (2nd Edit.) as a “Stand Alone” game only, and using this as a “Special House Rule” scenario it wouldn’t be problematic and would make this interesting for the folllowing reasons - By the rulebook, the U.S. and Japan are not a war yet until Japan attacks first (which would be stupid to do outright) and if this is played in the “House Rules”, Japan may place their all of their units in the Sea and Land zone of Kiangsu Province. HOWEVER, they DO NOT recieve the IPC for it until either ALL American Forces in China (the 4th Marine Regiment and the Yangtze River Patrol at Shanghai) are either evacuated out of China and headed towards either the Philippine Islands (which both actually did do in 1941) or eastward towards Hawaii or one of the outlaying Island outposts before war is declared or Japan decides to “sneak attack” and goes after the American Forces in China and wins, that is when they finally recieve the IPC for the Province. Until then NOTHING, it would be a “Eyeball to Eyeball” scenario in the “Special House Rules” to see who blinks first. And thanks for reminding me about the AVG (the Flying Tigers") in China, i will definitely add them in the “House Rules” as well.

Yes, I am quite insane  :-D

As for how I got it all to fit, I typed it into a Word document, and then copied and pasted.

I plan to playtest these rules and modify them as needed.  I was trying for as much historical accuracy as I could with the starting forces, while making the minimum number of changes to the official rules.  I got the idea from World in Flames, which is a great game, but, practically speaking, unplayable.  Even if you read and understand all the rules, finding one or more opponents who also have read and understand the rules is pretty much impossible.  You can, however, play Axis and Allies while you’re drunk (Been there.  Done that.  Got the T-shirt.)  But I like the idea of having the same basic problems, options, starting forces, and deployments the real military and political leaders of the time had to face.

Now, I’ll admit that the Vichy France rules are a bit more detailed than most A&A players prefer, and I understand why the game disigners decided to just leave them out.  But, if I was going to give the French a realistic starting fleet, I had to have the Vichy option to keep the combined French and British fleets from blowing the Italians out of the water on turn one.  It also gives the Allies the same uncertainty about what the Vichy French forces would do if their territories were invaded.  Historically, it was a major concern for the British.  Remember that they actually bombed the Vichy French fleet in port in North Africa, killing, IIRC, a couple of thousand French sailers , because they were afraid of having it fall into Axis hands.

In terms of movement the port works the same as AAP, its not a new zone.

Under these rules the only way to get them out of port forcibly is by “dislodgement” by taking the territory by land, the naval units are put out to sea which will cause a naval battle on the following turn if enemy ships are blockading.

Also, i would limit air attacks at one round, with AA providing flak fire if present in the territory.

So under these rules the only time a port would be under attack is if you have like a single ship defending or overwhelming odds by air power knowing these planes will be loses

Someone voted please tell me your reasoning(rakeman most likly)

well it is KISS.

just have defenders fire first in every round and remove loses then attackers fire.

for more realism…

You can also limit the number of units landing each round limited by the IPC value… so in france you can land 6 units 1st round, 12 second, 18 third.

The attackers cant get all the pieces on the beach in one load.

also cost the attacking player one IPC for each land unit used for this purpose. ( this is not a picnic son)

Another thing is to roll a die for sea conditions. 1-3 you can land, 4-6 you cant. Its not like "hey lets invade today… hows the weather?.. why do you ask?.. isn’t it enough that we just decide we are gonna land 1 million men today with no care in the world?.. To me this is asinine that they don’t have something in the rules to cover this.

Hi, just joined the website, but I have been playing A+A for a long time.  My friends and I played with our own rules, but they  were all even balanced for the most part.  And ohhh boy did we play!  Did all of you get the dreams?  I swear some nights I would have these dreams like “I had three tanks, 5 guys, and 2 fighters….”, replaying these battle sequences in my dream!

We used 8 sided dice, 18 different units not counting artillery, AA gun or IC, 3 different Tech charts with 8 techs each. We had Auto buy which were free units at the star of your turn and Capital Surplus which was a roll at the end of your turn, if you get a good roll then you get a free piece.  We used the Cards of War, which is a deck of cards that I made which help on offense, defense and misc situations.  And of course we played on a home made map.

Before Artillery was introduced in the AA Europe Expansion I think, my friends and I had a custom piece called an Artillery that  was different than the official rules when they came out.  It all started with Germany…how times has an Axis player faced endless UK and American transports just carting dudes in.  And how many times has there been a wall of Russian troops in Karilea?  So I came up with an Artillery…which was an AA gun with a country marker under it.  And it was ruled like a typical AA gun…only one per territory, one on a transport…etc.  but the special thing about the Artillery was that it rolled one die for every defending unit, and hits on a roll of a one.  That’s right…it cost 10 bucks and moved one space and had a range of 2 spaces.  If that isn’t strong enough it could also be used to attack naval units!  As long as a fighter or bomber attack the boats also, an Artillery or two (if in range) could be used as well.  So if UK had 5 transports and a battleship, Germany could attack that fleet with 1 fighter and 2 artillerys.  The artillerys would roll 12 dice total!  Oh yeah, they only fire once per battle.

But in time the aritllerys got used and abused, we even made a new tech called Long Range Artillery to make it really crazy.  Another tech we had was Gunboat Technology, which let transports holding an AA gun or an Artillery and fire then at land or air pieces.  Then another tech we had was Defensive Artillery which meant if you attacked one of my properties and I had an artillery in it, then before you rolled your attack my artillery would first attack you and roll one die for each attacking unit you had.  Any ones that I roll will eliminate one attacking unit.  That was a pretty cool, but not very reliable tech.

I played it for years and loved it.  I made many many maps, ordered countless extra units.  One of the custom units we had was a Chinook.  It carried one Infantry 5 spaces, it attacked at a 2 and defended at a 5, but that is using an 8 sided die.  I made it by cutting the props off of the choppers (special ordered with other pieces)… then I would cut a carrier in half and trim the edges down, then I would glue the chopper blades to the top sides of the destoyer piece and make a nice Chinook with it.

So many good memories with it, I have never played the revised, updated or any other expansion, but I am putting the 50th edition one on the Xmas list for sure!  Thanks for reading!

But I haven’t played it in years, and my stuff is in a storage place in New Jersey, so I don’t have access to all of my custom rules and new pieces.