Love the work you’re doing.
My major gripe with the OOB maps (as well as the HBG36 map) has always been the names for the territories.
For example, “Volgograd” should be Don Basin or Don Valley or Don-Volga in my opinion. Perhaps they think it sounds too much like a mafia boss? :?
Compared to that Samara/Kuybyshev and Thailand/Siam are minor issues.
I know, for gameplay the names could conceivably be considered irrelevant, but that “Volgograd” thing I just cannot let the issue go :x
But i will generaly give up if there is no chance to win anymore, ofcourse if by delaying the inevitable on 1 side i gain time to maby win on the other side i will do that.
I was once losing badly as Axis in Europe to the point where the Allies had reactivated France. The saving grace was I could delay because Russia was weak on account of having a huge GE/RU battle that resulted in a mutual wipeout of two large stacks. The Allies were so focused on Europe they forgot to pay attention in the Pacific where I had built a little transport fleet, seized Hawaii and since the allies were short of transports in the Pacific there was no way they’d be able to get any of the VC’s back during the next full turn.
Won on a technicality despite certain defeat in Europe.
I can recall once having an “epic” battle in Bessarabia where the French infantry originally from Syria attacked the resident Italian supported by the French fighter that started in London.
That same game there was also an ANZAC infantry in the Caucasus (not the ones from Egypt, but from Malaysia which had been landed in Persia with the transport that started off Sydney).
I’m reading some revisionist history here.
Emplacing an oil embargo on Japan for murdering Chinese civilians by the bushel is hardly “enticing” Japan to attack the US on purpose.
From Japan’s point of view, it did not “have” to attack the US, but BELIEVED that they would eventually go to war with the US due to their war aggression. They’d been better off not doing so because America came at them with extreme vengeance. The power of the US was so great that one Japanese admiral described it as going to war against the world. In Pittsburg, PA, home of the Pittsburg Steelers football team, named after the steel manufacturing, more steel was produced in just that one area of America than Italy and Germany combined!
Since Japan lost a source of oil, they decided that they would seize other locations that contained oil like Java or Borneo. Doing so would essentially be “attacking” another western nation. Still, they could have done that without also simultaneously attacking the US at Pearl Harbor. The US public sentiment was really against going to war anywhere.
There was some limited activity in the Atlantic, but not widely publicized amongst the US population. And it wasn’t “war” like another poster suggested. They were naval operations which protected US Shipping from submarine attacks. The US did have a right to remain neutral and sell or provide war materials to whomever it wished. That in itself may be helping the war capabilities of an ally, the UK, but doing so is not in and of itself an act of war. Defensive naval operations is not essentially war. These types of actions happen daily out on the vast expanse of the ocean’s navigable routes and are not considered “acts of war.”
Sure the Soviets weren’t exactly nice to people whom they suspected of disloyalty but it was little compared to the industrial level genocide that Germany perpetrated or the casual mass killings done by Japan.
The Soviets lost 25-27 million people in the war, China lost 10-20 million and there is a very clear reason for that as I expressed.Are you serious?!?!?! The Soviets, under both Lenin and Stalin, killed millions - more like tens of millions - before WWII even started, over eight million Ukrainians alone in the forced famine, millions more by firing squad, slave labour camp, and gulag. Not to mention the bungled invasion of Poland by Lenin and the even more bungled invasion of Finland by Stalin. Just because the “intellectual” class doesn’t talk about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
I believe 11-14 million under Stalin. Makes him one of history’s worst criminals, but still far less than Hitler with 30 million plus in the war he started and escalated (thus most victims in Europe can be assigned to him). Hitler is responsible for more Soviet deaths than Stalin is, even if the latter was complicit in Poland 1939-1941). Please don’t cite Cold War propaganda numbers.
A new generation of German historians also keeps finding that the Wehrmacht was far more aware of war crimes (and participated therein) than previously known. Throughout the Cold War Germany was allowed to uphold the “clean Wehrmacht” myth (and Soviet deaths in WW II were all counted as “killed by Stalin”) but that has by now utterly fallen apart.
I like to put any bit of fleet I am not using on J1 on or near the Carolines since Japan has a naval base there and can threaten ANZAC and Hawaii or even move quickly to Philippines and back to Japan should the USA invest heavily and feel frisky. Best thing for Japan is to spend enough on land units in Asia to keep China under control and threaten India (with aid of some transport and as little surface fleet as you can and as much as you need), and the rest on fleet to either face off with the US or maybe knock out ANZAC when you can and convoy them with subs.
I’d be willing to help kickstart it. We need a good WW I game.
I like this idea. Gonna play with them next time with my group.
Just transports? No surface ships/airbase + ftrs to defend said transports? Kiss those transports goodbye then (Red Airforce from Moscow or Leningrad). And then there’s a lot of German IPC’s down the drain which makes uncle Joe happy.
The author argues that the removal of the jews was (at least in Hitler’s mind) a rational consequence of a certain world view. Hitler supposedly didn’t believe in the concept of countries as entities defined by borders, but only in “nation” as in a racial community, and all foreign elements had to be eliminated for such a nation to thrive.
Also that the great crimes of the 20th century, especially the holocaust required statelessness and de facto anarchy, it could not have been done anywhere in western Europe. This is why the countries of eastern Europe needed to be disbanded so the great project could be completed. In western Europe the governments were overthrown but the states more or less maintained, in the east not just governments were overthrown, but states were obliterated creating the very environment in which the deed could be done.
Less known is that after winning the war Hitler and friends also planned to do to the Poles what they did to the jews (after assimilating maybe 5-10% into the German nation) and then also vast population reductions across the Baltic States, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia itself to establish his dream of a German racial empire.
Another book of his that is really good is Bloodlands (eastern Europe between Hitler and Stalin).
8th Guards,
I welcome a debate and or discussion regarding anything WW2 as I find it very interesting. But I think you kind of side stepped the main gist of my post which was arguing against what I believe to be revisionist history (which often has a blame America first slant) saying that it was US’ fault it was attacked by Japan because it put in place embargoes just to provoke Japan to attack itself on purpose. I was countering that. Japan conducted an unprovoked attack. The other part was about saying the US was in essence already at war with Germany in which I was saying, no it wasn’t.
I completely agree with it, no one forced Japan to do anything against the US Pacific fleet (or elsewhere), they had to decide between peace, war with Britain/France/Netherlands or war with the aforementioned three as well as the US. Their choice was of course #3 and it was their choice, not forced on them by anyone.
The US put an embargo on materials like Oil due to Japan’s murderous aggression and behavior towards China. That’s a fact. Japan was the aggressor from start to finish. Manifest destiny or colonization of other island nations being right or wrong occurred or began in a different century and or is not relevant to the comments of my post. Western allies being “hypocrites” about Japan seizing islands they “owned” and being pissed about their armed forces being attacked at places like Singapore or Borneo is also irrelevant. Again, Japan was the aggressor here. I got your moral argument point about no one should control another people’s land western allies or Japan’s ‘Asian for the Asians…’. But that is not relevant to my post. All western nations and Japan had colonies at this time except maybe Germany who was stripped of them after WWI. The US had colonies over there too, one being the Philippines which Japan attacked.
I wasn’t contesting your point. Japan chose war and in the end suffered the consequences accordingly.
You mentioned about who was bad or lost a lot of people during the WW2 era. Don’t forget that the Soviet Union starved to death millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s on purpose and murdered several million others. � Under Lenin and Stalin they led their own version of a Holocaust which could be arguably worse than Nazi Germany’s. In terms of sheers numbers or murdered people, Russia beat Germany. Up until Russia was attacked, the Western Allies considered Russia an enemy just as much as Germany. For example, France and the UK wanted to send a contingent to fight Soviet aggression alongside Finland in 1939 (coincidentally, the German public wanted to do the same but Hitler stopped that as the Soviet Union was their “ally”). Japan likewise murdered a million civilians in the city of Nanking. That’s just one location. � This is of course is still not relevant to my post. I wasn’t commenting on who has or had a higher moral authority as a nation.
Also, I wasn’t contesting that Stalin (or before him, to a lesser extent Lenin) was a criminal with the blood of millions on his hands. About 14 million deliberate deaths as far as I know (source: Bloodlands by Tim Snyder). That includes the deliberate starvation part in Ukraine (holodomor), purges, show trials, forced labor and NKVD shootings.
For Hitler the total is a bit higher than that. There’s the mass killings of Jews (holocaust), deliberate starvation/work to death of Soviet POW’s, mass shootings by einsatzgruppen (by some accounts thousands of settlements and villages across eastern Poland and the western Soviet Union were razed to the ground, occupants mostly murdered), shooting of “hostages” across the Balkans. All for a combined total of some 17 million or so. And that leaves out the # of deaths in military combat or through socalled “war deprivations” such as food supply not functioning because of the war, all in a war that for all intents and purposes Germany started. Sure, the Soviets helped them in Poland (1939-1941) but it was Germany that violated that agreement and started a genocidal war the likes of which have never been seen before or again in the industrial age. In fact, most of the 40 million deaths in the European theatre of war are caused simply by Germany getting the ball rolling in terms of war. There are some others who helped it along (Stalin among them) but there can be no doubt that Germany started it.
The Cold War has distorted the view of the war on the eastern front as well as the deprivations committed by Hitler and Stalin. For western purposes German crimes (apart from the holocaust) were downplayed as much as we could feasibly get away with, whereas the numbers killed by Stalin were exaggerated (and they were high enough even without the exaggeration). Often the Soviet casualty count of World War II is added to the numbers of Stalin which accounts for the often bandied about 35 million number.
But the point you made I do not contest. Japan started the war in the Pacific, and then they expanded it. Therefore they are to blame. They were the prime driver of that war, as was Germany in Europe.
@Young:
Hello everyone,
I would like to share with you my card deck customization in hopes that it improves your G40 gaming experience. It’s a professionally made deck of 54 cards which are now available through artscow and can be accessed by clicking the following link…
http://www.artscow.com/gallery/playing-cards/grasshopper-n15lei8zzj4y
It includes all 37 oob national objectives, all 12 oob research & development breakthroughs, 2 reference info cards, and 3 blowup space cards for large fleets.
Cheers,
YG
Got a set of them, they look great. Would have preferred the HBG Italian fasces roundel but it’s awesome the way they are anyway.
Ik zal me ook maar outen als Nederlander. Regio Rijnmond, met name AAG40 (Eur+Pac). Live spelen is toch het leukst.
Another one… Does Colombia border seazone 89? It looks like Venezuela, Colombia and Central America converge.
Your research card says “benifit” instead of “benefit”.
Those little round tokens are sweet! I love them.
I have a house rule of my own where you roll a D12 instead of a D6. First you buy the research dice as normal, select research chart 1 or 2 (only one can be selected regardless of how many dice you bought), then you roll.
Only the highest number you rolled with your D12(s) counts.
1-9 is research failed, dice lost.
10 is one die carries over to next turn.
11 is you roll the D12 on the research chart you chose. Where normally it would be 1-2-3-4-5-6 it is now 1/2-3/4-5/6-7/8-9/10-11/12.
12 is you can pick the one you want from the research chart you chose.
You can buy as many research dice as you want but only the highest roll counts. So if you would have two or more rolls of 12, still only one counts and the rest is disregarded.
You quickly learn not to do Str bombing once you lose both japans strat bombers on their first run against india vs the AA gun :)
It is a risk reward thing that once you get unlucky a few times with it you are hesistant to use again.I normaly dont Strat bomb if i can use the bomber more productive. In support of an attack it will kill 1 or 2 inf which is 6 damage with 0 risk, against a factory it will do 5.5 damage on average with a 14% risk of total loss.
But it really depends on the player, some by their nature cannot win with the axis unless they change their way of thinking. Others cannot win with the allies because they cannot react to whats happening on the board and can only follow standard strategies.
How to save russia is basicaly how to best use the income ( 40) of UK europe against germany to do maximum damage. And how to make sure that Russia keeps enough income.
You have to hurt germany every step and place you can, drop those 2 inf on norway if you can. Sure they take it back but it will cost them 2 inf that are not going towards russia.The axis sometimes trade planes for inf just to capture a country or gain a strategic advantage, so should the allies sometimes throw away a transport or destroyer to hamper the axis.
Russia cannot win a straight up fight against germany alone, So dont make it a straight up fight, It might even be beneficial to use your northern troops to take scandinavia to allow UK planes to fly into russia that way. Is the expense of 14 units worth the difference of 26 ipcs a turn?
I think it is nearly always worth it to march into Scandinavia as Russia. You take Finland R4 and Norway R5. But you are out of 12-14 units that would normally help defend Moscow, that could be a loss of 28 hit points. However in turn 4 (at the latest) your gain would be 7 IPC (2 + 2 + 3) and from turn 5 it would be 21 IPC (2 +2 +3 +3 +3 +3 +5). By turn 6 that is a gain of 49 IPC that costs Germany 12 mech or 4 strat bombers.
Unless of course Germany buys fleet to try retake Norway, but any investment in that would mean less land units versus Russia.
And if I have a spare bomber or two in London then I will strat bomb the hell out of Western Germany. Forcing huge damage to a factory can be game changing.
I don’t think I have any “I will never…” principles guiding my gaming strategy in AAG40. Allies main problem remains Pacific.
I’m reading some revisionist history here.
Emplacing an oil embargo on Japan for murdering Chinese civilians by the bushel is hardly “enticing” Japan to attack the US on purpose.
From Japan’s point of view, it did not “have” to attack the US, but BELIEVED that they would eventually go to war with the US due to their war aggression. They’d been better off not doing so because America came at them with extreme vengeance. The power of the US was so great that one Japanese admiral described it as going to war against the world. In Pittsburg, PA, home of the Pittsburg Steelers football team, named after the steel manufacturing, more steel was produced in just that one area of America than Italy and Germany combined!
Since Japan lost a source of oil, they decided that they would seize other locations that contained oil like Java or Borneo. Doing so would essentially be “attacking” another western nation. Still, they could have done that without also simultaneously attacking the US at Pearl Harbor. The US public sentiment was really against going to war anywhere.
There was some limited activity in the Atlantic, but not widely publicized amongst the US population. And it wasn’t “war” like another poster suggested. They were naval operations which protected US Shipping from submarine attacks. The US did have a right to remain neutral and sell or provide war materials to whomever it wished. That in itself may be helping the war capabilities of an ally, the UK, but doing so is not in and of itself an act of war. Defensive naval operations is not essentially war. These types of actions happen daily out on the vast expanse of the ocean’s navigable routes and are not considered “acts of war.”
You are absolutely right about Japan and its atrocities in China.
However, once the war vs the “western allies” started it was hypocrisy for Britain/France/Netherlands to complain about Japan essentially taking over their colonies as the new colonial power (under the guise of the “greater eastern asian co-prosperity sphere” or whatever that propaganda thing was called).
Still, Japan was by no means an innocent nation being bullied by big bad USA, it was in fact doing some serious bullying (mostly in China) itself.
I won’t claim that USA/Britain/France/Netherlands etc have/had a clean history (the former with manifest destiny and the latter with colonization) but in terms of World War II only two nations decided that killing people by the boatload was a swell idea (Germany/Japan) and in Germany’s case even an explicit war aim.
Sure the Soviets weren’t exactly nice to people whom they suspected of disloyalty but it was little compared to the industrial level genocide that Germany perpetrated or the casual mass killings done by Japan.
The Soviets lost 25-27 million people in the war, China lost 10-20 million and there is a very clear reason for that as I expressed.
I’ve seen very few games where the USA had to actively declare war on all three axis powers in turn 3 income phase, because usually you will be at war with Japan already and then you can declare war on Adolf and Benito.
I personally have little issue with a little glare as long as it isn’t too much, I do like to have a protective layer on my maps.