A&A50 Alternative Set-Up

@Imperious:

Why did you make this set up anyway? Is it for a different period your covering? or you are trying to go for Realistic?

We as a group are trying to go for fun (and maybe a little historical reality). We want certian aspects of the war represented in our set-up regardless of when they exactly happened like the Bizmarck and Hood battle, German U-boats praying on allied shipping lanes, Rommel in Africa, U-81 sinking the Ark Royal aircraft carrier just east of Gibralter and of course the raid on Pearl Harbour where there should be at least 1 American Battleship.

We like that the game begins with extra elements such as a German Battleship, a British aircraft carrier, a Russian and Italian bomber and American battleships. The British fleet is still vulnerable to a compleate wipe out (as ussual) however, a German Submarine might survive this round 1 battle which would be fine given their historic presence in the Atlantic. We are not 100% going for historic acuracy as much as we are trying to include all the great stories of the war into our set-up without worrying about perfection. We think the nations are ballanced give or take a cruiser here or there but we don’t want a player to feel defeated before they even get a turn playing a certain side.

I understand that 1 Battleship in history dose not nor should it represent 1 plastic piece in the game. There was alot of thought and play testing by the designers who carfully ballanced history with game play however, Our group is under the opinion that it is more fun to have a Battleship and lose it in the first battle than to never have a Battleship at all.

@Cmdr:

If we give Germany a BB, I think it should be in SZ 5 (playability wise) and England should get +1 BB +2 CA to bring their fleet up to date power wise. (Bismark took out some UK BBs, but the Bismark was also lost, if we revive the Bismark, it’s only fair to revive the British ships too.)

Using our set-up above, do you think the British should get more starting boats?

@Imperious:

Classic and Revised both include the Bismark though.  It’s stationed in the Central Med, but it’s represented.

I too think the set up should be changed to a scenario where all players have somewhat a complete army

for the Germans this would be the BB, and perhaps another bomber

For Italy its one more DD

For Russia definatly they need the 2 fighters and 1 bomber and some tanks

for Japan i think they are ok

USA is ok except perhaps one more ship

UK needs another BB and another CA or perhaps a carrier

but everything needs to be balanced.

Well our set-up addresses everything you listed so maybe we are on the right track after all…. as for being balanced only time will tell but I think it is important not to keep making changes. Make house rules to best improve the quality of the game and than force players to deal with the challenges those new rules bring. That being said we have made 1 change already… instead of adding a British boat we have taken away 1 German Submarine. I have already modified the list above.

As for German boats in the Med… When the British sunk the French fleet, didn’t Germany salvage anything after they occupied France?

Imperious Leader…. could you build my alternative set-up on your board and tell me if there are any game balance problems you can see?

Thank you very much…. We will be playing our new set-up tommorow so I will let you know how that goes as well.

We played our alternative set-up today and it went very well.

Germany did not hit the British aircraft carrier with everything they could so after some bad dice rolls and a late retreat from the Germany, the UK was left with 2 fighters that flew to Gibralter and later sunk the Italian destroyer. A better battle from the Germans would have balanced the Atlantic but the 2 British fighters didn’t cause too much damage in the long run.

In a strange twist the German player decided to lose the battleship as a casualty in SZ2 and instead kept the 2 submarines (which stayed in the Atlantic for 3 rounds harassing the British and American efforts),

Japan was as strong as ever but the US was not far behind with the starting battleship in SZ56 and it wasn’t a problem as far as balance. The pearl harbour ships were destroyed without shooting down a single plane but the Japanese submarine was sunk.

If there was one negative, it may have been how easily the Germans invaded Russia with below average dice rolls so we are considering adding 1 Russian infantry in East Poland.

@Imperious:

ok ill make you guys a deal…

I will make a setup file using your ideas

You guys then work on 1943 scenario, but you have to come up with something special:

1. knowing the axis will lose the question is some minor modification of the Victory conditions, also some of the technologies should be on and favor the axis but appeal to historical realism as well as balance. The purpose of 1943 was to make a shorter game played in a few hours… so keep that in mind.

2. some other rules may be necessary.

So…. you want us to create a new set-up reflecting 1943 with a few rule changes naturally creating a shorter game?

I will put it across the group and see what they think (I believe they would welcome the challenge) but it will take us about a week or two to do it properly.

@Bardoly:

Trisdin,

I like your group’s idea of replaying some of the more historical battles of WWII.  I also like your alternate setup, but have y’all thought about adding some more ICs to the starting setup?

My point is, buying and than placing a factory is the most strategical and creative decision a player can make, where to place it, when to place it and how many should be placed. Sometimes good players are very predictable in the way that alot of strategies are no brainers but placing a factory can be spontanious that is a great thing (IMO). I’m sure some of the guys would love an extra starting factory, that way they won’t have to pay for it and they can dump units on it right away (I’m not a fan of any of that).

I understand your argument about the historical merit of certian countries deserving a factory however, game balance is very fragile when dealing with factories on the board. Canada produced an astonishing amount of destroyers and frigits that basicly turned the war against German U-boats and yet there is only 1 in their sea zone.

If I were to suggest to my group 1 starting factory for Britian, America and Japan (only 1 per/country) Where do you think the best territories would be to place all of them?

Thanks for the compliments on our alternative set-up.

@Nickiow:

You might also want to consider adding communist China.

After the Japs turn, any empty Chininese zone aquires and imobile  ( ie its a normal Inf unit but has no movement capacity) Inf Red China piece up to a max of 4 per zone, use the ones from Pacific if you have a copy.

I like the idea of chinese infantry not moving after they have been placed.

@Nickiow:

To clarify, atm you have the USA controlled Chinse, i use the different green units from Pacific, what im suggesting is to add a neutral faction, the communist of the North and east who in real life take over. For these you can use the red figures from Pacific to represent them taking the filed whenever no one elkse controll any chinese zone, making them imobile is due to them not wanting to get into a shooting war as they were waiting for the US to win and the japs to go away and then they would take over, and because as a game mechanic you dont want them as anything more than blocker to SU back door by filling up regions.

I understand what you mean however, as a group we don’t wish to get into political diferences between chinese units especialy if it means having different coloured pieces. We are however, considering a rule that once chinese units are placed on territories they must act in defence only and may not be moved.