LHoffman, thanks for engaging with my ideas in so much detail. It’s good to get this stuff out in the open.
I cannot speak for anyone else, but my motivation in attacking Russia with Japan is not to get money from Moscow; it is to win the game. The easiest and most reliable way for the Axis to win the game is for Germany and Japan to jointly pressure the USSR and head for Moscow. If the Axis can eliminate the most reachable major Ally, and the only one on the Euro-Asian land mass, they become very, very difficult, if not impossible for the Allies to beat.
I have two questions here: (1) do we want the Axis to become virtually impossible to beat after they capture Moscow? (2) do we want there to be other ways for the Axis to become virtually impossible to beat, e.g., capturing London, or capturing India, or capturing Hawaii, or capturing Brazil?
If your answers are yes to (1) and no to (2), then the race to Moscow really is inevitable, and there’s just nothing we can do about that – if you give a player one goal that’s obviously more useful than the other goals, then of course that’s what they’ll try to do. Personally, I find having only a single major goal boring, and not worth the 10+ hour investment required to play a game like G40, but if you enjoy it, that’s fine.
If your answer is no to (1), then we need to work on giving the Allies at least one plausible base from which to fight for Eurasia that works even if Moscow falls. That could be a Russian base, like a factory and secondary capital in the Urals or Kazakhstan or Amur, or it could be a non-Russian base, like India, Persia, Egypt, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, or Norway.
If your answer is yes to (2), then we need to work on giving the Axis exciting goals that can lock down the game for them other than conquering Moscow. The most obvious option is probably changing the starting units so that Germany has a chance to take and hold London if it makes that its top priority. Another option is to bring more of South America into play and providing starting naval bases in, e.g., Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, and Morocco, that shorten the width of the south Pacific (so that moving southwest into Africa / South America / ANZAC becomes a more realistic strategy for economic victory). A third option is to loosen the restrictions on building on island territories, so that if Japan takes Hawaii it has a chance to continue on to Alaska, Mexico, and Panama without losing too much momentum.
As far as France, China, and ANZAC, I think most of the boost they need is just a chance to go before their respective Axis opponents. France should go before Germany, and China and ANZAC should go before Japan.
How is this a good idea? Or historically accurate?
It’s a good idea because there’s no point in setting up the blue pieces only to mechanically wipe them off the board on turn 1 before anyone gets to move them or choose how they’re arranged. You may as well use neutral white pieces if France literally never gets to issue orders to the troops in metropolitan France. Having one turn to set up a French defense after your own stylistic preferences, even if the defense is ultimately doomed, is way more fun than having zero turns to set up the defense and watching the French pieces get picked off in exactly the same way game after game.
In terms of game balance, as we’ve discussed on other threads in House Rules recently, there’s no need to give France all of the same starting units – if you want to nerf France a bit to make up for its turn order advantage, you can. Another option is to give France only a noncombat move on its first turn, so that it can’t attack Italy. Personally, I would prefer to have Italy be neutral (!) on turn 1 and not get activated until turn 2 unless Britain or France attack it. That way, France can attack Northern Italy if it wants, but it brings Italy into the war a turn earlier, so that’s a gambit at best for the Allies.
In terms of history, check out the Saar Offensive on Wikipedia – it’s a little known fact that after Germany invaded Poland, France responded by invading Germany, without waiting for Germany or Italy to invade France. They didn’t get very far, but there’s no special reason why the French couldn’t have attacked harder or done better in their opening attack.
I understand that sometimes the historical aspect must be slightly compromised for balanced gameplay, but your reasoning is purely emotional. I would propose the ability for China to somehow obtain a second fighter if the first is destroyed. For instance, the USA or Britain flying one of theirs to China and having it then belong to China. This isn’t the same as your fun idea, but it gives China a second chance at more diverse firepower.
I’m not emotionally worked up about China having a second fighter; it’s not like I’m Chinese-American or something like that. I just think it makes for better gameplay, for the reasons Black Elk was pointing out: with 12 territories in play, it’s boring to have to pick only one of them in which to attack. I wouldn’t mind if the second Chinese fighter had to come from some kind of American lend-lease, e.g., you start with a fighter in the Philippines, and you can send it to China, where it becomes Chinese, or retreat it to Hawaii, where it remains American. However, I think restricting the gift of a second fighter to situations where the first fighter has already been killed is far too weak: the point isn’t to ensure that China keeps its fighter (generally not too hard, because the fighter can keep landing in safe territories and Japan doesn’t have many AA guns to work with in China), the point is to give China the interesting decision of whether to make one attack or two attacks per turn.
Even though Axis and Allies G40 technically has 9 or 10 independently playable powers does not mean that they all should be played independently or that they should be played with the expectation of having similar amounts of action or import to gameplay.
I strongly disagree. If you don’t want 9+ playable powers, don’t have them: nothing wrong with a game that has Germany, Italy, Japan, USSR, UK, USA, and a bunch of neutrals. If you treat the Australians and the Chinese as pro-Allied neutrals, the game can work just fine. On the other hand, if you have 9+ playable powers, you have to make them freaking playable! Adding extra player powers that don’t actually get to play is a waste of expensive chrome, a waste of setup time, a waste of brainpower spent thinking about a more complicated turn order, and a trap for the unwary: even if you and your friends know that the minor powers aren’t supposed to be interesting, there will always be newbies who reasonably assume that the designers wouldn’t have put a country like France in the box and the rules unless France was meant to be playable, and those newbies are going to be bored stiff. As G40 stands, you could give France, China, UK Pacific, and ANZAC all to the same player, and he’d still have way less fun than the guy playing even a medium-sized power like UK Europe. That’s crazy.
I am just against a secondary capital rule as a general practice. To me, it would make the game a little more convoluted and, ultimately, I don’t think it would mean very much. Once you go to a secondary capital your whole objective will still be to re-take your original capital. Being able to collect your remaining income and spend it (if able) will likely just delay the inevitable (defeat) in many cases.
I don’t see why everyone working out of a secondary capital will be obsessed with recapturing their original capital. As, e.g., the Free French, I might be perfectly willing to work on retaking French North Africa, or Trans-Jordan, or just on supporting an attack on Italy. As a British player operating out of Ottawa or Calcutta, I might be perfectly willing to let the Germans hang on to London for a few turns in favor of a strategic bombing campaign that helps the Russians take Berlin.
Also, I think having a meaningful ability to build units after the fall of your capital will change the point at which players abandon their capitals. Right now, players hold on to their capitals until it becomes abundantly clear that their entire army will be handily wiped out if they try to hold it. By the time Germany has 60+ troops adjacent to Moscow, the Russians barely have any territories left besides Moscow, so the best the Russians can hope for is a wandering nomadic horde that holds one territory at a time. On the other hand, if Russia had the option to fall back to a more defensible position, maybe they would take advantage of that opportunity and therefore be able to trade/hold more territory. A Russian stack holding at Omsk could reunite the Siberian and European armies faster and would be stronger relative to the invading German and Japanese forces. A Russian capital at Omsk wouldn’t have a huge income, but it could reasonably trade and deadzone for 15+ IPCs for a few turns, which could be interesting. I don’t see that as “delaying the inevitable defeat,” because if the Germans or the Japanese have to pull their stack back to defend their own capital, then the Russians could increase their income and sustain themselves indefinitely, whether or not they recapture Moscow.
That said, I’m not wedded to the idea of secondary capitals per se – what’s important to me is that powers have a way to place units after their original capital is lost. I could live with the infantry-spawn idea.
