Best posts made by Argothair

@Stucifer Thank you! I thought the playtest went great; I had a nice time, learned how to improve the game, and got some positive comments from the players.

If you do like @weddingsinger and DoW early but fight conservatively, saving your planes and focusing on the money islands / SZ 6 rather than India, how do you respond to a UK buildup in the Middle East? It seems to me that a pair of factories in Iraq and Persia cranking out a balanced mix of units can restore India’s offensive threat even if Japan owns Malaya and Borneo.

Also, does anyone want to be more specific about how they knock out those last 6 to 9 IPCs of the UK Pac economy? Maybe I’ve just had terrible luck, but I can’t seem to bomb India without losing a bomber to AAA fire and/or interceptors, and you only start with 2 subs, one of which sometimes dies fighting over the money islands / Philippines, and one of which can be sunk by the starting UK Pac destroyer. By J2 I have some spare income to buy a sub, usually, but that sub won’t make it to the West Indian Ocean until J5 or so…by which time the UK can often build another destroyer in Egypt, South Africa, or Persia.

That seems kind of boring, axis_roll. I mean, I love the look and feel of Anniversary Edition, but what’s the point of the extra territories and extra rules if the game still winds up as a traditional tug-of-war where the whole game boils down to whether Germany can dump infantry into France (or Italy) faster than the USA and UK can stockpile infantry in London (or Algeria)? Why not just play Revised?

I got so mad about this that I drafted an alternate set of National Objectives for the 1941 scenario – I’d be grateful for any feedback you can offer, both in terms of whether they’re reasonably balanced, and in terms of whether they’re likely to open up any alternate big-picture strategies besides KGF vs. German Turtle.

SOVIET UNION

Murmansk Convoy: 5 IPCs for Allied control of three or more of Norway, Finland, Karelia, and Archangel if there are no Axis ships in sea zones 3 and 4.
Persian Convoy: 5 IPCs for Allied control of two or more of Persia, Caucasus, and Kazakh SSR if there are no Axis ships in sea zone 34.
Vladivostok Convoy: 5 IPCs for Allied control of two or more of Buryatia SSR, Stanovoj Chebet, and Soviet Far East if there are no Axis ships in sea zone 63.

UNITED KINGDOM

Defense of the Commonwealth: 5 IPCs for Allied control of all of W. Canada, E. Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
Mediterranean Sea Lanes: 5 IPCs for Allied control of all of Gibraltar, Egypt, and Trans-Jordan if there are no Axis ships in sea zones 13, 14, or 15.
China-Burma-India Campaign: 5 IPCs for Allied control of three or more of India, Burma, French Indo-China Thailand, Kwangtung, and the East Indies.

UNITED STATES

Monroe Doctrine: 5 IPCs for Allied control of all of Alaska, Hawaii, W. Canada, E. Canada, Mexico, Western US, Central US, Eastern US, West Indies, Panama, and Brazil.
Pacific Liberator: 5 IPCs for Allied control of Philippines or Manchuria
European Liberator: 5 IPCs for Allied control of France, Italy, or Balkans
South Sea Lanes: 5 IPCs for Allied control of three or more of Hawaii, Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and Caroline Islands.

GERMANY

Atlantik Wall: 5 IPCs if Germany has at least one land unit in each of Norway, Northwestern Europe, and France.
Lebensraum: 5 IPCs if Germany controls three or more of Poland, East Poland, Ukraine, and East Ukraine.
Mideast Oil: 5 IPCs if Germany controls two or more of Trans-Jordan, Persia, Caucasus, and Kazakh SSR.

ITALY

New Roman Empire: 5 IPCs for Italian control of three or more of Balkans, Libya, Egypt, Anglo-Egypt Sudan, Italian East Africa, and Rhodesia
Mare Nostrum: 5 IPCs if Axis control Gibraltar and France, and there are no Allied ships in sea zones 13, 14, and 15.

JAPAN

Barrier Islands: 5 IPCs for Axis control of three or more of Midway, Iwo Jima, Wake Island, and Okinawa.
Strategic Resources: 5 IPCs for Axis control of Borneo and Kiangsu if there are no Allied ships in sea zones 49, 50, 61, and 62.
East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere: 5 IPCs for Japanese control of India, Australia, or Hawaii

CHINA

Over the Hump: If the Allies have at least one fighter or bomber in India, then you may place one Chinese artillery unit in Chinghai or Sikang or Yunnan while placing Chinese reinforcements. You cannot place the artillery in a territory China does not control.
Burma Road: If the Allies control India, Burma, and Yunnan, you may place one additional Chinese infantry in Yunnan while placing Chinese reinforcements.

In Revised, Anniversary Edition, and 1942 Second Edition, by far the most popular and successful strategy is for all of the Allied powers to concentrate their forces in the Atlantic/European theater. By far the second most popular and successful strategy is for all of the Allied powers to concentrate their forces in the Pacific/Japanese theater. Almost nobody recommends splitting the American forces 50/50 or 60/40 or even 70/30 between the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.

People seem to agree that if you concentrate the Allied forces in one theater, you can seize an enemy capital and knock that enemy out of the war, whereas if you fail to concentrate the Allied forces in one theater, you won’t make progress quickly enough to stop Germany and Japan from uniting their forces against Russia, seizing Moscow and knocking Russia out of the war.

That all makes plenty of sense as far as it goes – I’m sure there’s something in Sun Tsu’s The Art of War about concentrating your forces and striking where your enemy is weakest, and so if we keep issuing rule sets that allow players to concentrate forces from all over the globe against a single ultra-important enemy capital, then the smart players will do exactly that.

But if you ask me, this business of concentrating your whole global army against a single enemy capital winds up wasting a major opportunity for fun. It’s fun when the US Pacific Fleet faces off against the Imperial Japanese fleet and they’re equally matched and it’s not clear who’s going to win control of the Pacific, and a brilliant tactic or a series of lucky rolls could help you build momentum and expand your borders. It’s fun when the US/UK invasion force squares off against the German Atlantic Wall, and they’re equally matched, and it’s not clear whether the Anglos will establish a beachhead in France, or whether they’ll get pushed back out to sea. It’s fun when the Germans divert every unit they can spare to defend the western beaches, leaving them equally matched with the Russians on the eastern front, and it’s not clear whether the Germans will break out at Stalingrad or Kursk and start pillaging the Russian heartland, or whether the Russians will break the German tank corps and start inexorably pushing the Germans backward.

It’s not fun when everyone at the table knows the Allies will win in the Atlantic and the Japanese will win in the Pacific, and the only question is who wins first. It’s not fun when you sit around counting out whether you’re three turns from the capital or four turns from the capital, and the game turns on whether or not your opponent can put a lone destroyer in your way to slow your fleet of 15 ships down by one crucial turn, so that instead of you sacking your opponent’s capital and using the proceeds to drop a stack of fighters to defend your capital, your opponent sacks your capital and uses the proceeds to drop a stack of fighters in his capital. In other words, winning the game should mostly be a matter of outfighting your opponent, not a matter of outracing your opponent. Yes, speed can and should matter in a wargame, but it shouldn’t be the only salient factor.

So here’s my question: what kind of house rule(s) would we need to encourage players to split their forces more or less evenly between the Atlantic and the Pacific? What’s the smallest set of changes we could make to the game that would make it an optimal strategy to split your forces, and make it a risky, unusual strategy to concentrate all your forces in one theater?

@weddingsinger Agree; I won an in-person game recently after buying 9 mechs on R1 and 8 mechs / 1 tank on R2 against a German Sea Lion. The Germans took London, along with heavier-than-expected casualties, on G3, but the Germans never pushed the Soviets out of Romania and the Russians wound up out-earning the Germans (trading 4+ of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Finland each turn) by about R5. The Axis scooped when they saw that the US didn’t even need to liberate London; Russia could hold Germany off all on its own while the Western Allies contained and rolled back Japan.

Granted, this involved some luck on the defending dice for London (Germany should have had additional air force survivors) and some sub-optimal positioning for German defenders (with a bit more advance planning, Germany probably could have held more of Eastern Europe), but it still felt like a board where you definitely wanted to be playing the Allies.

I would say that mechanized Russia makes a much weaker defense of London possible. I bought 2 inf, 1 ftr for London while sending away 2 infantry to Gibraltar and sending the entire British starting air force to either Taranto or to pick off a sub off the coast of Canada (meaning that the fighter had to land in Canada and couldn’t return in time to defend against a G3 Sea Lion). I think that was slightly too weak; if I had that game to do over I would have bought 3 inf, 1 ftr for London and perhaps not sent the fighter to Canada (sending only a DD instead) to kill the German sub…but the fact that my pathetic defense worked anyway was a sign of just how powerful MechaRussia is against Sea Lion.

@cheezhead1252 You’re welcome!

No, I think it is counterproductive to worry about attacking Egypt on G1 – especially with NOs off, it is just not that important, and you need every plane in the German air force to win 2 naval battles + 3 land battles on turn 1 at reasonable odds.

If you want to go heavy in the Med, you can get excellent odds on taking Egypt turn 2 by instead using the German med transport to shuffle another inf + tank to Libya on G1, where it will be protected by the Italian navy for a turn. Italy will do the same, shuffling another 2 units to Libya on I1. If you pre-position another 2 units in Italy / the Balkans on G1, then on G2 you can ferry them to Egypt with your transport, allowing you to attack with ~8 land units, plus the German bomber, which can now be spared from anti-British-navy duties, plus also a German fighter that should have landed in Morocco. This is far more than anything the Allies can bring to the region, and if you somehow roll poorly, the Italians are there to follow up with an equally hard punch (~7 units, 1 plane, and 2 naval bombards).

Italy can build any land units it wants for the eastern front; it’s just a style preference. Tanks allow you to threaten a ‘can opener’ for Germany in a larger number of territories, but they tend to be a one-and-done attack, since Italy doesn’t have enough cash to build many tanks; sooner or later Russia will call your bluff and force you to either attack with the Italian tanks into a stack of 2-3 Russian infantry, or else retreat. If you send in the tanks and Germany can’t take Moscow that turn or stack up with the survivors, then you’ll lose the surviving tanks next turn to a Russian counterattack, and you won’t be able to replace them anytime soon. But, if you build all infantry, then it takes longer to become relevant, and Russia can clearly see where it’s headed. There are pros and cons. I usually build a mix.

Good luck against your old man!

Well, I think your comment about “unfun” gets at the heart of the matter. Every new rule has to balance simplicity, fairness, excitement, and accuracy. An otherwise exciting rule that’s too complex to easily remember or that’s too fiddly to easily apply is probably not going to enhance the average player’s experience.

Keeping in mind that your new ruleset functions by adding several new unit types (and mechanics) to the game without removing much from the game, you may already be at or near the limit of how much complexity you can include in a house rule and still have it be fun. My advice would be to ruthlessly streamline your pricing scheme so as to minimize any further complexity, even if that means losing a bit of accuracy or excitement.

In other words, pick one pricing system and stick with it. A flat fee, or a flat fee plus a per unit premium, or a flat fee plus a one-time conversion fee…and apply that scheme for every single one of your technologies on every turn of the game.

That’s just my two cents. Ultimately, it’s your rule!

Maybe Canada would be more interesting with the option to provide lend-lease! It gives them a reason to maintain a navy beyond just chasing German subs for the heck of it.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/33666/supply-token-for-lend-lease

@cheezhead1252 Good luck, and have fun!

…oh, and congratulations! :-D

Have you ever wanted a training scenario for Axis & Allies? Something that can help newcomers decide if the game is right for them, or a way to break in new players who need some practice, or something to use to teach your kids how to play one step at at time? Hasbro publishes the “1941” box, but in my opinion the production quality is kind of cheap, and it’s still not really fast enough for a proper training scenario – you don’t want to play a 2.5 hour game; you want to play a 30 minute exercise that could serve as a warm-up or a test run for friends to check out after a weeknight dinner.

So, I designed a couple of scenarios for just that purpose.

The rules for both scenarios are:

• 1 player vs. 1 player

• Each player gets 3 full turns

• Each player has only 1 nation

• Only limited territories are in play

• No capitals present or necessary

• Each player starts with IPCs in hand based on territories controlled at start

• Whoever controls more IPCs on the map at the end of the third turn wins

The basic scenario, on the European side of the 50th Anniversary map, also has the further rule that the only units allowed are infantry, artillery, tanks, and fighters. The idea is that you can play the European scenario first to learn the basics of land warfare, and then if you want more practice you can play the Pacific scenario to learn how to use your boats. All unit types are allowed in the Pacific scenario.

European Scenario (Germany goes first with 7 IPCs, then Russia with 8 IPCs)

HUNGARY: 1 factory, 1 infantry, 1 tank
ROMANIA: 1 factory, 1 infantry, 1 fighter
POLAND: 3 infantry, 1 artillery, 1 fighter

vs.

EAST POLAND: 3 infantry
UKRAINE: 1 infantry, 1 tank
EAST UKRAINE: 1 infantry
CAUCASUS: 1 factory, 2 infantry, 1 artillery, 1 fighter

Pacific Scenario (Japan goes first with 10 IPCs, then Britain with 14 IPCs)

JAPAN: 1 factory, 1 infantry, 1 tank, 1 fighter
SZ 62: 1 transport, 1 cruiser, 1 carrier, 1 fighter
IWO JIMA: 1 infantry
SZ 59: 1 submarine
FORMOSA: 1 infantry
OKINAWA: 1 infantry
WAKE ISLAND: 1 infantry
CAROLINE ISLANDS: 1 infantry, 1 fighter
SZ 51: 1 submarine

vs.

AUSTRALIA: 1 factory, 2 infantry, 1 artillery, 1 bomber, 1 AAA gun
NEW ZEALAND: 1 infantry, 1 fighter
SOLOMON ISLANDS: 1 infantry
SZ 46: 1 transport, 1 battleship
NEW GUINEA: 1 infantry, 1 fighter
EAST INDIES: control marker
BORNEO: control marker
SZ 49: 1 destroyer
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: 2 infantry

Players may use any sea zones they wish, but no other land territories other than the ones named above are considered to exist. For example, you cannot conquer or land on Hawaii or French Indochina.

As in the real game, the Axis start with slightly more total unit value, but less income, so they will have to rapidly conquer some territory (and briefly hold it) in order to win. But, really, winning isn’t the point – the point is to help bring up a new generation of Axis & Allies players. That’s the real victory.

All comments welcome!

The way to think about losing Moscow is: “what compensation am I getting?” It’s like losing your queen in chess. Can you still win? Sure. Are you going to win if you can’t point to the massive, obvious advantages that you’ve accumulated that outweigh the value of the queen? No. You’re not going to just ‘get lucky’ or ‘have a fighting chance’ if you lose Moscow and don’t get much in return.

On the other hand, if you can trade Moscow for 5 or more active, sustainable Allied factories in Normandy, Southern France, Southern Italy, Norway, Finland, Leningrad, Egypt, Persia, and/or Iraq, then that’s probably a good trade, especially if you also hang on to India and Australia.

If Moscow isn’t lost but is merely misplaced for the moment in that Germany is sitting in Moscow but can’t necessarily afford to keep it, because there are 50+ Russian units camped in the Urals, then maybe only 3 of those factories would be needed to even things up.

We could (and should!) quibble over exactly how much compensation the Allies need, but claiming that losing Moscow is “no big deal” or that losing Moscow is “game over” is at best an oversimplification, and often quite silly.

@cheezhead1252 I enjoy playing with NOs, so I very rarely play without them, but I really don’t think they make much difference to who has the advantage – on a typical turn both players will earn about the same amount of money from NOs.

For example, on turn 3, you might get something like this:

Germany – $5 from original W. Europe territories, $5 from Leningrad
Italy – $5 from clearing the Med
Japan – $5 for Chinese seaboard, $5 for money islands

USA – $5 for heartland US territories, $5 from central Pacific islands
UK – $5 for an original Japanese territory (US can grab Carolines to help the UK out)
Russia – $5 for Archangel / xenophobia

So on average we’re talking about a $5 difference; it’s not game-changing. And on turns 1 and 2, sometimes the Allies will get more NO money than the Axis, because Leningrad is still holding, the UK might earn its $5 for Gibraltar/Egypt/South Africa, the UK might be able to trade France, and so on.

That said, the solid and reliable Axis strategy for out-of-the-box 1941 Anniversary on turn 1 with no bid is for the Germans to sink 2 out of the 3 British fleets and take Baltic States, Belorussia, and Ukraine, paying careful attention to where you send the tanks so that the tanks aren’t lost as casualties or in a counter attack. The Germans build a carrier for the Baltic Sea and land both fighters on it; this defends it very well against early British airpower and puts enormous pressure on Leningrad, because next turn it can be hit with ~3 inf/art from Baltics, ~6 tanks from eastern europe, ~2 more land units from Berlin via the Baltic transport, a cruiser bombard, and the entire German airforce. The Russians usually have to pull out of Leningrad on their first turn or lose it; once you start trading Leningrad, you rapidly get to the point where the Russians can’t afford to keep attacking it. Other than the carrier, Germany mostly buys infantry; the infantry march into Leningrad and sit there. Once the Leningrad factory is operational, you no longer need the carrier to survive; if the British want to trade their air force for it, great, that’s that much more money they’re not earning by trading France. With Leningrad in German hands, you can trade Scandinavia, France, and eastern Europe for the rest of the game and play defense.

Meanwhile, Japan takes over the world based on an extremely aggressive first turn. Japan can and should sink the Indian British fleet while also doing Pearl Harbor, taking two money islands, and seizing the entire Chinese seaboard. Sink the US Philippine fleet, but save the actual conquest of the Philippines for J2, especially with no national objectives. Land at least one transport in Burma to put immediate pressure on India. Like Leningrad, Britain will have to evacuate India on its very first turn or lose it. Once the Japanese are in India, they can build a factory there, which puts enormous pressure on the Caucasus and the 2-IPC russian territories in central Asia. Don’t build a Manchurian factory; it’s a waste of space because you have troops sitting in Japan that are waiting for sealift, and you can’t afford to build 11 units a turn anyway until after you’ve conquered most of Asia. Instead, build mostly transports, with maybe one destroyer if you need it to cope with Allied subs and a few infantry to make sure the transports stay full.

It is unbelievable how quickly and reliably Japan can expand in this game with no bid. You should be in both India and Australia by turn 3, and in Egypt / Caucasus / Hawaii by turn 5. Germany can afford to play defense because Japan will win; there’s nothing the US can do about it because the entire US economy is smaller than Japan’s starting on turn 2, the Allied Pacific fleets get crushed on J1 before they can move, Japan starts with a huge advantage in air/sea power, and the US is too far away from Japan’s most valuable territories anyway, so by the time they can rebuild a fleet worth moving west, Japan is outproducing the US by 50 or 60%.

(Pacific photo)

Very interesting; thanks for sharing the concrete example! I hadn’t seen anyone throw their entire stack of infantry into Belorus before on R2 (you’re abandoning Scandinavia without a fight), but I can see why you’d want to.

One minor tweak that I would suggest is sending 1 infantry to Bessarabia to partially block the Italian tank – otherwise it can blitz through Bessarabia into Western Ukraine on I2, and then your 3 mechs in Ukraine can’t reach Eastern Poland on R3. Alternatively, the Italian tank can blitz through Eastern Poland to Bessarabia on I2, and then the Germans can send one mech to cut you off in Western Ukraine while landing planes in Eastern Poland on G3.

The fact that you are actually able to nearly stalemate the German player in this way is part of why I strongly prefer to take Greece with Italy if at all possible, and to try to strafe Yugoslavia with Germany on G1 and wind up in Romania with extra forces…if the German player were just a little more detail-oriented about getting his forces onto the front lines of eastern Europe, then your mechanized forces would not in fact be able to deadzone Eastern Poland.

@simon33 (Allies +0 BM3) over Argothair (Axis) after a failed G2 Sea Lion, an utterly Pyhrric Japanese attack on Amur, and a failed Italian attack on the combined Allied Western Mediterranean fleet.

There was also an entertainingly failed American attack on Norway, but with only 3 German units left on the board for the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe combined, Russia was able to just walk in and claim Norway anyway. Good times.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/33036/argothair-axis-0-v-simon33-allies-bm3/67

@SS-GEN That’s very relevant commentary, and I’m interested, so, thank you, SS Gen.

I agree that many A&A games have an issue where Japan becomes a monster if ignored by the US – some might see that as a problem, and some might see that as a feature – maybe the USA should have to pay at least some attention to Japan to keep them contained.

What bugs me about Anniversary 1941 is that, at least in my experience, even if the USA focuses 100% on containing Japan, sometimes Japan still grows big enough to be a huge problem for the Allies. For the most part I like Anniversary better than Global, but one thing I think Global gets right is that the USA, at war, is cranking out 80+ IPCs a turn even before they have any major conquests, whereas Japan, even after grabbing the valuable territories in their immediate neighborhood, is still only making 50 IPCs per turn – so if the USA focuses entirely on Japan early in the game, then the USA will still have the stronger economy and will be able to reliably beat Japan down – the only question is whether that beatdown will happen fast enough for Moscow and/or Cairo to hold against Germany and Italy. By contrast, in Anniversary, Japan can singlehandedly outearn the entire American economy, even when America is spending 100% on the Pacific…and because (with no bid) there aren’t any suitable territories for an Allied factory in the Pacific, America is the only Ally that will be spending any money in the Pacific, so Japan can still dominate even when all the Allies go 100% KJF. That’s crazy. I didn’t believe it at first, but @axis_roll pounded me into the dirt repeatedly in the process of showing me how and why it’s true, and now I’m a convert. So that’s the problem I’m trying to solve; I’d like to see an Allied Pacific force that’s capable of meaningful resistance to the Japanese expansion.

I completely agree with your criticism about Japanese tanks in, say, Axis & Allies 1942 Second Edition, or Axis & Allies Revised, or, even, to a lesser extent, in Axis & Allies Global 1940. Japanese tanks blitzing through the Gobi Desert, the Himalayas, or the frozen swamps of Siberia should not really be a major theme of this game. Japan did not have and could not have built a logistical infrastructure capable of delivering spare parts, fuel, and ammo for tanks over 2,000+ miles of hostile, snowy, mountainous terrain.

That said, I’ve never noticed Japanese tanks in Anniversary to be a major problem; my Japanese opponents typically use transports to conquer coastal Allied territories, as well they should. If you or anyone else is having trouble with Japanese tanks in Anniversary, I suppose it’s perfectly reasonable to nerf the Japanese tanks down to A2 D2 M2 C5 – they were, after all, mostly light tanks and somewhat outdated relative to other superpowers’ models. You could also just have a house rule that there’s no blitzing (for anyone) in western China or central Siberia.

I will often buy 1 or 2 battleships as Japan at some point in the middlegame – carriers are always better if you have free planes available to land on them, but sometimes most of my airforce is busy deep inland, e.g., taking India, or Yunnan, or Siberia. Because Japan is often the victim of a one-two punch by US + UK or US + ANZAC, it’s important to develop a fleet that has defensive staying power, and BBs can help with that.

A typical carrier group might be something like CV, fighter, tac bomber, DD, SS – total cost is 51 IPCs, you get 6 HP and 12 pips of defensive power.

For similar money, you can buy BB, BB, DD, SS – total cost is 54 IPCs, you get 6 HPs and 11 pips of defensive power.

As you can see, the stats are less favorable for the battleship group, but the battleship group holds up much better against one-two punches. If the carrier group takes 3 hits, then you have to either lose an expensive plane, or take a hit on the carrier and land both of your planes, assuming you even have a friendly island handy on which to land them. After taking 3 hits with the carrier group, all you have left is probably CV + fighter – which only has 6 pips of defense and can then be eaten alive by the Australians or the British. You’ve lost a total of 25 IPCs worth of material in those 3 hits (SS + DD + tac).

On the other hand, after the battleship group takes 3 hits, you have damagedBB, damagedBB, DD, with a total of 10 pips of defense, meaning that it might be too risky for UK or ANZAC to do their follow-up attack. Plus, you’ve only lost a cheap sub to the initial attack, for a total loss of 6 IPCs.

So in the particular case where I plan to be in range of one-two punches and a large part of my air force is busy in Asia, I think buying a couple of BBs can make sense for Japan, although even then, I would still buy more CVs than BBs over the course of the whole game.

The only reason to buy a cruiser is if you’re constrained by both a minor factory and your budget. E.g., Australia might buy a cruiser and 2 infantry for Queensland; the cruiser isn’t even slightly efficient, but maybe you need a warship right now and that’s the best you can do with your money.

For what it’s worth, I also miss the old bombardment rules, but we’re already playing with ludicrously easy amphibious invasions. In real life, getting soldiers off of a boat and onto a contested island or beach was incredibly hard and created a huge advantage for the defender. DK solves this neatly by giving the defender free notional hit points that help defend against amphibious assaults – like a bunker that has 2 or 3 HP and rolls nothing on defense. If your group has a high tolerance for house rules, you could try introducing DK’s imaginary bunkers and also re-introducing the pre-emptive bombardment, and capping the bombardment by the number of ground units that actually unload, e.g., if you have 1 infantry unloading with support from 7 battleships, you still only get 1 pre-emptive shot. This is maybe not the highest-priority thing to fix about A&A, though.

@wizmark I don’t know if “take over the Middle East” counts as a cunning plan, but I’m sure having fun with it! :)

@axis_roll said in Balanced Mod [Anniversary 41]:

Do defending ftrs have to intercept? In other words, they can decide to not go up to avoid the risk of being lost.
Does the AAA flak only shoot at remaining bombers, not fighters?

Nope, defending fighters are not required to intercept; that’s part of where the strategy comes in – it’s your choice whether to try to protect the factory or protect the fighters.

Yes, AAA flak only shoots at remaining bombers; the escorting fighters are assumed to be operating at extreme range, and therefore they begin returning home immediately after protecting the bombers from enemy interceptors (if any), and do not stick around to hover over the factory, so escorting fighters never interact with ground-based flak.

what (if any) is the difference between a warship and a ship? There’s several references to both in these.

In my personal vocabulary, I consistently use the following definitions:
“Ship” includes TT, SS, DD, CA, CV, BB.
“Warship” includes only SS, DD, CA, CV, BB.
“Surface ship” includes only TT, DD, CA, CV, BB.
“Surface warship” includes only DD, CA, CV, BB.

That said, for this variant’s NOs it is not very important to distinguish between different kinds of ships, so if you want to just say that the list is always “warship” for simplicity, that’s fine with me.

If so, do you have a side you prefer to play? I will go with either one. One last question… Low Luck or pure luck for battle outcome?

Once we decide these, then I can start to strategize more seriously and then we can arrange a date to start.

Nope, I’m happy to play either side! I cut the cake, so you get to pick your slice. :-)
I have a mild preference for low luck and no tech allowed so that we can more quickly arrive at a sense of where the game is unbalanced, but I certainly don’t insist on it. We can use a slightly tweaked version of your rules for low luck bombing, too – just add +1 to the damage table.

So @Argothair, this is the list we’re using to game play test?

Yes, I’ve been keeping the list at the front of the thread current. This is version 2.1; I had to nerf the Russian NOs heavilyi and nerf the UK NOs slightly after a live playtest with my buddy Corpo24.

@Slip-Capone Can you elaborate a little bit on how or why these rules opened up new strategies? It looks like almost every territory worth 2 IPCs or more is a Victory Territory. How does playing with this list of Victory Territories change the strategy compared to just saying “whoever has more money after 6 rounds wins?”