Topics created by aftertaste

@theveteran
That would be great, if we knew what they were.

@gen-manstein IMO if we are talking about improving techs, fighters scrambling should be added to Heavy Carriers, as they are weak enough.

@linkler thanks I didn’t know that.

@trig I should add, the reasons I said 4/4/4, then 3/3/3 or 8/4 are:

6/6/6 is a Fast Battleship, so there’s no benefit. 5/5/5 is a Battleship, and why upgrade a Battleship when for the same price you can have two Battleships, even if they’re slower? 4/4/4 is 12 IPC’s total, which isn’t a lot, compared to options 1 and 2, but it is just about costly enough that other options are just as viable (such as a tactical bomber) so there are pros and cons to weigh up.

It should always be three turns (without Improved Construction) because improving a Battleships speed by 6-7 knots with the same armour and weaponry is a job and a half!

@aftertaste:

The Germans had blockade runners that would take technical specifications and equipment to Japan in exchange for exotic and rare materials. Now, I know almost nothing about the specifics historically, so I am on unfamiliar territory, but I was thinking of a rule where Japan and Germany exchange, say, a certain number of free technology rolls for Japan and a one time boost of IPC’s for Germany. This rule is even less fleshed out than the Maskirovka, so feedback is welcome.

If you’d like detailed information on the subject, a good source is the book “Reluctant Allies: German-Japanese Naval Relations in World War II”, by Axel Niestle and Yoichi Hirama – but the short version of the story is that German-Japanese cooperation in WWII was minimal.  As the first two words of the title suggest, Germany and Japan didn’t provide each other with very much tangible help duing the war; there were a couple of cases of Japanese long-range submarines bringing valuable shipments of raw materials (such as important metals and rubber, if I’m not mistaken) to Germany, but I don’t think it amounted to anything of significance given the minuscule quantities involved.  Germany, for its part, was reluctant to provide Japan with sensitive technical information, as I recall.

There were a few reasons for this lukewarm (in both directions) relationship.  Part of the explanation is simple geography: Germany and Japan were on opposite sides of the world, a factor which even in peacetime would have been an inconvenience; in wartime, with the overland and oceanic routes between the two nations controlled by enemy nations (mostly the USSR and the UK), it became all that much more of an obstacle.  There’s also the fact that Germany and Japan weren’t fighting a single grand unified war (the concept conveyed on the Allied side by Churchill’s phrase “the grand alliance”), nor even separate but coordinated wars (which is, Churchill’s rhetoric notwithstanding, a better description of what the Allied war effort was really like), but rather separate and unoccordinated wars that were tenuously connected at best.  And there’s also the ideological context – specifically, the racial prejudices of both regimes against each other.  The racist element of Nazi Germany’s political policies and military actions requires no elaboration, but a less obvious point is that Japan too was fighting a war with racist elements, i.e. a war purportedly aimed at freeing Asia from white European colonial imperialism.  (The “purportedly” part refers to the the fact that, while Japan did indeed want to get rid of white European colonial imperialism in Asia, and said so quite publicly if I’m not mistaken, Japan also wanted to replace it with Japanese colonial imperialism, a detail about which they tended to be a little less forthright.)  So Germany and Japan at the time, while both authoritarian and militaristic regimes, were hardly natural ideological partners and were suspicious and disdainful of each other to various degrees.

I’m glad I cleared your principle concern and I do take your point with regards to world-wide naval redeployments. I think, from a purely historical perspective, I do have to concede that what I am proposing does require a suspension of disbelief. Even today, that sort of operation is incredibly difficult to plan for, let alone execute, (although it is only a concern for the USA at the time of writing).

If I may touch on your examples, my limited understanding is that thanks to the Dogger Bank incident, the British closed the Suez Canal to the Russian fleet, which they were hoping to do anyway. The Brits had recently signed treaties with Japan against Russia, so Dogger Bank just gave them a pretext, which has always made me wonder if the British had something to do with the whole mess. So, on top of the two other major problems you previously mentioned, the required transit distance was increased by thousands of kilometres. Had that not happened, I still think the Japanese would have just as easily and completely annihilated the Russian fleet, but every little helps.

The Great White Fleet and Force Z are good examples too, although Force Z was defeated largely by lack of air cover, not so much to do with logistical challenges, again, as far as I am aware. I agree that this sort of thing is likely done in stages, as you mentioned in your last paragraph, not as one trip only stopping for food and fuel, but I did consider that for the House Rule.

As for the colossal US naval builds and deployments, again I think you are correct. In GW36, to build cruisers and light carriers takes 18 months and battleships and fleet carriers take 2 years, that is, 3 and 4 game rounds respectively, so that aspect doesn’t detract from reality when taking my House Rule into account, IMO.

Ultimately, I do agree that the whole thing is a little hard to swallow, but a ship can travel from Liverpool to Bombay, through the Med, and it still takes 1 year in game time. I think if each nation gets 1 Naval Redeployment per turn, things become much less fantastic. I had to try to balance realism with the in game mechanics to address something that I felt was a bit odd, and it can’t be 100% believable, but we are talking about a board game that has to make it at least feasible for the Axis to win the Second World War, which I believe to be a total impossibility.

I believe though that aircraft should have the ability to fly over these zones.

just some suggestions, but maybe the rule should say, that you can only non combat move through a narrow strait if both adjacent territories are not hostile. They can be friendly, neutral or yours, but they can not be hostile.

Now, if one or both adjacent territories are hostile, you must combat move through that narrow strait.

I dont know exactly how this should be played out, but I believe the owner of the hostile territory should be able to scramble fighters, and the attacker can of course use his fighters as escort, just like in the real war Channel Dash. Maybe even a minefield rule, but 2 or less as hits are too much, maybe each 1 is a hit, same as AA fire. We could even use some modified rules from A&A Guadalcanal and let Artillery units on land act as coastal guns and fire at the ships. The only drawback would be like you want to cross the English Channel, but Germany has stacked like 20 Artillery units in Normandy, or something.

Some good ideas here.  This got me to thinking… if someone really wanted to play France as a country, buy units, etc.; then you could play it this way:

French player starts out with the Allies, but once Germany takes the capital, they play with the Axis.  The capital and all territories remain in French hands and they still retain their income and build on their factories.  When/if the Allies liberate Paris, the French player then joins the Allies.  Each time Paris in taken, any French units in territories occupied by other nations remain Allied and usable by that nation (like the French fighter and soldiers in England and boats in the same territory as the British).  If the Allies take Paris, any French units with German/Italian/Japanese combat units in Russia/Germany/the water/wherever are usable by that nation.  The rules are mirrored for if the Allies take Paris: France retains control of their income and all their territories that they control and simply fights with the Allies.

Aspects of this would actually be similar to how it was in the war.  Although you didn’t have stacks of French soldiers defending Normandy from Allied invasion (though some French soldiers fought for the Axis), you also didn’t have the French Mediterranean fleet, Morocco, and southern France fighting against the Axis after France capitulated.

I’m not sure if this might even be balanced or whether it might swing to Allies or Axis.  The push towards Russia would be hampered as some units would need to come all the way from France and those units would attack out of turn from Germany, but on the other hand the Axis would have more total income and a D-Day invasion would be much harder.

We always play with all the Axis playing at once and all the Allies playing at once, so that would likely give the Axis an advantage, but you could compensate by giving the Allies more money.

As an optional rule, you could allow the Japanese player to conquer French Indo-China (just as in the war and just to spice things up) or leave for the French player (maybe France could build a factory there?).  This decision could be strategic by the Japanese player: allowing money to flow where it’s most needed, or it could be cordial: gentlemanly to leave it to your new co-belligerant, or it could be playfully poking fun: haha, it’s mine and you can’t do anything about it.  It might make the Japanese player less ‘lonely’ to have some interaction with their co-belligerants.

The French player might have some disconnection with who wins (or might slightly favor Axis since that’s where their reputation as a skilled player is on the line), but on the other hand, it might be a happy ending to be on the winning side no matter which side won the game.  Another plus is that for a Europe only game, the sides would be an even 3 on 3 for the nations for most of the game and it might allow you to have a 6th player on the Europe only board.

Hi everybody,

I am looking to play online through my Steam account (Tabletop Simulator) with someone over the next few weeks/months. I would prefer G40 2nd Ed, but there are other versions on the Steam Workshop and I would be willing to play them too.

I’m usually free at least one day a week but I could possibly manage a day or two more. I am currently on British Summer Time which is UTC +1, but I am flexible on start and finish times for those a few hours either way.