Axis & Allies: 1942 Third Edition

@hengst This house rules forum is full of ideas. To avoid scripted games you need a varaiety ways to win or lose a game in a reasonable amount of time ,eg 8 to 12 rounds.BBR and 3G40 are rulesets that encourage you to win by achieving various victory objectives.(not just victory cities)
3G40 changes turn order,merges Anzac into UKPacific,and sticks pretty close to oob rules.BBR is more complex than oob and is real popular.Both are designed to play in 1 day and to be able to declare a winner.

That actually does sound like a good idea for coastal artillery. I think that’s more inline with the D-Day game as well I can’t recall.

The Allies may indeed have problems getting numbers of units into Europe and Asia, but the whole reason they need to do this in the first place is because Russia has such woefully inadequate starting attack power!

The Soviets can barely trade with Germany or Japan for 2 territories a turn, before they start hemorrhaging ground units in the process, forced to make terrible trades at a loss just to prevent Axis blitz paths or landing spots. This means that the Germans can advanced along a broad front, with only modest sized stacks, and Russia is totally unable to contest them.

Instead, because they cant attack on their own, the Soviets are almost completely reliant on UK/USA to run direct counter attacks for them, against a relentless Axis advance. And this all happens in their own backyard, right in their own core Russian territories!

And its not as if Russia collapses only when they receive zero aid from the West (which might be understandable) but they collapse when they don’t receive the full maximum aid. Like literally almost all the UK/US ipcs from the early rounds dedicated just to holding the center.

The western Allies routinely send dozens of fighters and as many ground units as they can to prop up Moscow. And even then Moscow gets hammered.

Honestly if I was designing this thing from the ground up, I’d give Russia an airforce on par with the other powers. Like 3 fighters AND a bomber. Or hell even 4 fighters AND a bomber!

They’d still have the weakest starting airforce on the board.

I just think its rather lame, that the Russians are so nerfed in A&A. It feels totally ahistorical.

They had superior tanks to the Germans, even by the time this game is supposed to start, and yet it is the Germans who always tank drive. They had some the best fighter aircraft in the world by the time this game is supposed to start, and yet it is the Luftwaffe that always crushes. They had the numbers, and yet it is Germany who always pushes the massive ground stacks.

It just doesn’t look like World War 2.

The way the Royal Air Force is always camped out in Russia, and Monty is taking his tank columns on escapades through the Caucasus. For real?

If you want their income so low, they should have starting TUV. Or conversely, if you want them to have low starting TUV, then give them more income. But if you shaft them in both areas, then the game turns into this weird deal, with the western Allies running the show in Red territories.

The Russia design is just silly OOB. They have low income and as such will buy infantry and artillery as a matter of course, almost exclusively. They don’t need more inf, what they need is air power, so they can trade that infantry effectively, the way the other player nations do.

I think a single additional Russian bomber is a decidedly modest expansion compared to what they should really have, if you want to reflect their historical position during this period.

I think its worth it, just for the warhawks hehe. Though I agree that the game would have been a much better investment (and a better play too) if it had included a unique artillery sculpt. The OOB 1941 game benefits immeasurably from the inclusion of artillery in the roster. I use 1942.2 art sculpts when I play it.

Depends where you buy the game, but if you can pick up two copies and ship them at the same time, you get a decent number of fighters and tanks. You’re still left holding the bag on Italy, Anzac etc unfortunately.

Revised has some nice colored units for UK and Germany, with lime greens and grays. I still like the mini stukas. The limes for China and the Grays for Vichy or Romania can be cool, you could probably get some mileage out of them.

I wish HBG made a few more pieces to supplement the older boxed materials in similar sculpt colors. But you can still find some decent stuff there, might be cheaper. I like 1941 though. Its map is a crazy shuck-fest. Sucks to buy 2 or more copies just to get sculpts, since then you have another map you don’t need, but hey at least you can snap up a couple extra roundels in the process  :-D

I’m still surprised that A&A doesn’t put out supplemental materials for the regular boardgames. They did it for the miniatures game with the larger sculpts, but not the boardgame, and the boardgame is the only one I play! I like my sculpts tiny and matching the official materials when possible. ;)

@EnoughSaid:

1. "Blockhouse Fortification 0/3/0/8 1940+ "
It’s horrendously overpriced. Why would anyone buy that instead of 4 Whermacht Infantry? It needs an extra ability, such as the ability to soak hits (several, at that price) like capital ships.

No, you should not buy that Blockhouse if you want to win the game.

What is a Blockhouse ? Infantry + a concrete bunker ? In that case it should cost 3 IPC + 1 IPC for the concrete, a total of 4 IPC, and defend on 2, and take two hits to kill. The whole idea with a bunker is protection. All units that are protected by armor or concrete are hard targets that absorb hits, or negate hits.

And what is a Fortification ? Is it a heavy artillery gun in a casemate ? In that case it cost 4 IPC for the gun + 1 IPC for the concrete, a total of 5 IPC. I think it should defend on 3 or less, and for sure take two hits to kill.

Ooops, forgot to add a pic of the HBG Atlantic Wall fortifications and the Blockhouses from D-day

P1010163.JPG

Hello all,
I just decided to make this account to ask these questions:

I get together with my dad, my cousins, my uncle and myself every year on vacation, and we play A&A Spring 1942. Honestly, myself and my uncle are better players than my cousins and my dad. I was thinking that it might be fun if we can get a “challenge” setup. Does anyone have any different setups that might give a large advantage to the allies? It would be more fun for myself and my uncle to team up, because we always play on opposite sides.

Also, does anyone have any extra rules we can add to limit the time games take? We added a timer, and a max time limit of 2 hours to our last game, and it worked out very well.

Also, these have to be for the Spring 1942 version. (Not sure what edition, think its second.)

Thank you for any help ;)

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.

@Trusty-Sapper
Wow, you’ve responded to my reply from a year ago, on a very old thread. I checked my PM’s and I was able to send Bass my most recent version of AARe.

I do agree with you Trusty, that “National Advantages plus bid makes every game a strategic puzzle”
Don’t forget the targeted tech rolls too. No chance to develop super subs when my scientist were working on long range!

I was a bit upset when it was only a short 5 years after Revised was released (and we fine-tuned Enhanced) that AA50 (Anniversary came out). Everyone ran for the new release and Revised was left to rot.