Posts made by Argothair

Any rule changes to France have to take into account the range of bids for G40, which is what, in the neighborhood of 15-30 IPCs for the Allies?

As Shadowhawk points out, 19 IPCs is a minimum estimate for the value of letting France play before Germany – not only does France get to drop new units onto the board, they also get to consolidate their existing units and block some of the early German attacks. I don’t think consolidating the 2 inf, 2 art is worth a full 14 IPCs, because if you stack everything in Paris, then you help Italy by letting it waltz into Marseilles. Call it a 10 IPC boost. Blocking the German attacks might be worth another 12 IPCs by forcing the Germans to bring in and sacrifice an extra plane. So the total value of France going first is something along the lines of 36 IPCs. Those 36 IPCs will be placed suboptimally compared to an Allied bid that can go where-ever the Allies want, e.g., Egypt, New Guinea, etc. So overall I’m not seeing that the value to the Allies is radically high. The Axis might need a bid in the range of 5 - 10 IPCs, or they might not. If you wanted to, instead of giving the Axis a bid, you could nerf Paris a bit by removing 2 starting infantry. The point, after all, is less to turn France into a powerhouse than to give France some flexibility and a chance to make at least some decisions before they get obliterated!

I look forward to hearing Argothair’s answer to your question about the intended purpose of his proposal, but for whatever it’s worth my impression is that he wanted to speed up the game by taking advantage of the G40 map’s Europe / Pacific geographic split to eliminate the time wastage that’s caused when the action on the whole board gets held up by the turn of a player power which, for all practical purposes, operates on only one side of the board.

On the other hand, the higher workload of the 4-person option might be seen as an advantage in that it would keep people busier and reduce the boredom of waiting for one’s turn to arrive.

Couldn’t have put it better myself – my main two goals here are to save time, and help keep players occupied.

Every power piling as many units as possible into Stalingrad/Moscow is something seen altogether too many times in Axis and Allies…

Couldn’t agree more.

…and an effective NAP is the only solution.

That’s crazy talk. For any game design problem, there are always dozens of potential solutions, several of which will be interesting and fun for at least some types of players. I’m just going to brainstorm some other solutions that could help avoid the repetitive rush to Moscow:

1. Give Russia lots more starting infantry and slightly less income so that conquering Russia is relatively less attractive
2. Give the UK fewer starting infantry and slightly more income so that conquering London is relatively more attractive
3. Shift the Axis starting troops toward the extreme periphery, e.g., in France, Norway, Morocco, Midway, and New Guinea, so that attacks against the USA and the UK are easier to pull off and attacks against Moscow are slower.
4. Change the capital-capture rules so that conquering Moscow doesn’t automatically prevent the Russians from mobilizing new units or provide the Axis with a massive economic windfall
5. Write a house rule for partisans and revolts so that ungarrisoned territories have a chance to shake off enemy control, making it less attractive to try to occupy all of Russia’s low-value territories
6. Use national objectives to give Russia and Japan incentives to attack other nations
7. Use national objectives to give Russia and Japan incentives not to attack each other
8. Treat the USSR as a ‘third faction’ that isn’t necessarily on the same team as either the Allies or the Axis, so that if the Axis gang up on the USSR and ignore the US/UK, they risk throwing the game to the US/UK
9. Write a house rule for supply lines so that it’s difficult for Germany and Japan to project power across 4+ land territories to get to Moscow, but relatively easy for them to project power across sea zones to London, Rio de Janeiro, Calcutta, Capetown, Sydney, and Honolulu
10. End the game after a set number of turns, and put more victory cities in US / UK / French / Chinese nations than in the USSR, forcing the Axis to attack other nations besides just Russia if they want to win

That’s really just off the top of my head. If you want a non-aggression pact, fine, enjoy it, but don’t pretend like the only way to get an interesting game is to force players into a rigidly scripted version of history. Some players enjoy alternate histories, and that’s a legitimate part of what Axis & Allies is about.

You’re absolutely right that there would be the same number of turns, or even more turns, depending on how you look at things – there’s no reason to expect that a simultaneous game would end on turn 4 instead of on turn 8.

I do expect that there would be a decrease in hours per game, simply because you are using all the brainpower at the table more efficiently. In the standard game, only one player is allowed to touch the pieces at a time. The other players are encouraged to think ahead about, e.g., what kinds of purchases they want to make, but it’s often difficult or impossible to plan out your moves in any great detail – your moves might depend on what happens in another player’s combat, or you just might be the kind of person who needs to physically move the pieces around to figure out what you want to do.

In the simultaneous variant, a minimum of two humans would be allowed to touch the pieces at any given time, and they’re likely to have all the information they need to conduct their turns without having to wait on other player’s combat results, because the Japanese turn shouldn’t affect the French turn very much, and vice versa. Potentially, you could get up to four humans touching the board at the same time, e.g., one player moving USA Europe, one player moving UK Europe, one player moving France, and one player moving Japan.

That probably won’t speed things up fourfold, but it’s got to be a lot faster than just having one player touch the pieces at a time.

Has anyone tried to deliberately arrange the turn order and the player assignments so that two players can always be taking their turns simultaneously?

I’m imagining that every turn would have four major phases:

1. Allied players move and battle in the Atlantic while Axis players move and battle in the Pacific
2. Allied players collect income from and deploy reinforcements to Atlantic territories while Axis players collect income from and deploy reinforcements to Pacific territories
3. Axis players move and battle in the Atlantic while Allied players move and battle in the Pacific
4. Axis players collect income from and deploy reinforcements to Atlantic territories while Allied players collect income from and deploy reinforcements to Pacific territories.

This means that at the start of “the turn”, the British player could direct troops from London to invade Norway while at the exact same time, the Japanese player could direct troops from Manchuria to invade central China. Later in the turn, the German player could direct troops from Libya to invade Egypt while the American player could direct troops from Hawaii to invade the Philippines.

It’s not quite fully simultaneous play, but it should run almost twice as fast as a standard game.

Each nation would have a unified economy, but you would only collect and spend about half your income at a time. For example, in the first half of the turn, the British player would collect income from Canada, the UK, and British Africa, and would be able to spend any cash it had to put troops in its factories located in those regions. Any cash not spent would just stay in the (single) British treasury. Later, in the second half of the turn, the British player would collect income from the British Mideast, India, and ANZAC, and would be able to spend any cash it has to put troops in its factories located in those regions. Any cash not spent would just stay in the (single) British treasury. This would allow the British player to shift some income from east to west or vice versa, but (a) this is realistic, because it actually happened during the war, (b) it incurs a noticeable delay, since if you try to spend European income in the Pacific, you will have to wait until your Pacific enemies get another chance to attack you before those troops actually show up on the board, and © it is limited by the unit caps on minor factories; you probably can’t spend a whole board’s worth of income in Pacific-only factories if you intend on building a significant amount of infantry and artillery.

You could use a similar system for other players, e.g., Russia could collect and spend income from Moscow through points west on the European turn, and then collect and spend income in the Urals, Siberia, and Vladivostok on the Pacific turn. America is already split pretty obviously between the two maps. France, Germany, Italy, China, and Japan can each be treated as belonging to a single side of the map only – even if Germany somehow acquires a territory on the Pacific side of the board, it could just continue to be activated on the German turn.

Proposed Player Assignments:

2 Players
Player 1: Germany, Italy, Japan
Player 2: UK, USA, France, USSR, China

3 Players
Player 1: Germany, Italy, Japan
Player 2: UK, USA
Player 3: France, USSR, China

4 Players
Player 1: Germany, Italy, Japan
Player 2: UK
Player 3: USA, China
Player 4: France, USSR

5 Players
Player 1: Germany, Pacific Japan (Tokyo and all islands)
Player 2: Italy, Mainland Japan (Manchuria, Thailand, etc.)
Player 3: UK
Player 4: USA, China
Player 5: France, USSR

I mostly agree with that; there are definitely some positive elements to the the board split. Another positive element is that it facilitates simultaneous play – it is often possible for a European player and a Pacific player to move at the same time. I suppose they could have designed the maps so as to further enhance the simultaneity, but something is better than nothing.

My main concern about the “infinite variety of house rules” is that the combined map is so enormous, with so many units and so much playtime required for a single game, that it’s very difficult to playtest new variants.

Yeah, I mean a cost for the sneak attacker is more interesting than a bonus payment of IPCs to the sneak attack victim. You could even have a choice of whether to pay the sneak attack cost or just declare war one turn in advance of when you actually invade. The sneak attack cost could represent the added difficulty of stockpiling supplies, ammo, etc. on the border without your rival detecting the buildup.

I think if Japan wants to invade Russia simply because Russia needs cash more than Japan, then the game is broken on a deeper level than NAPs can fix – Japan should also be feeling pinched for cash in the opening. Japan should have lots of fronts they want to invade (potentially including Russia), and Japan should be unable to generate enough cash to invade all of them at once in sufficient force to actually win. Otherwise the Japanese player isn’t making any interesting strategic choices; the only valid strategy is “attack everywhere” and it all comes down to tactics.

CWO_Marc, as you can probably guess, I don’t intend any disrespect for your province or its history. I just think that on a superficial level, Quebec is an attractive choice for a French capital-in-exile because it’s the only industrialized, Francophone region that wasn’t within immediate reach of the Nazis during 1940.

Putting the capital-in-exile in London, as you and Black_Elk have suggested, reduces the importance of the Free French to the point where they’re hardly worth modeling – filling London with about 5 IPC / turn of blue French pieces that can’t join in an attack with the khaki pieces or travel efficiently on khaki boats is just a waste of everybody’s time – if you’re going to have London administer the French colonies anyway, then it makes more sense to just give the British direct control of French Africa like the designers did for Classic and Revised and 1942 2nd Edition.

For players who prefer historical accuracy to the consistency/simplicity of the rules, we could set the French capital-in-exile in the West Indies, which would shift from American control to French control, and which would start with a minor industrial complex even though it’s only got a territory value of 1 IPC.

I like the idea of Quebec serving as the French capital-in-exile very much! It’s not strictly historical; Quebec thought of itself much more as part of Canada than as part of France at the time, but it’s not crazy, either. It lets the Germans loot the French treasury for balance, and then lets the French continue to have an impact on the game. I might even start Quebec with a minor industrial complex so that the French can afford to build some transports and get them back to Europe or Africa before the game is decided.

I also like the idea in another thread to let France take one turn before Germany smacks it down – gives you more options for what to do with the French starting units and starting purchasing power other than just “hand it to the Nazis untouched.”

Just piggybacking off of your idea, what do you think of the following play order and player division?

Player 1: Italy, Axis Minors (Finland, Hungary, Romania)
Player 2: Russia, France (including Quebec)
Player 3: Germany
Player 4: UK Europe, UK Pacific, ANZAC
Player 5: Japan
Player 6: USA, China

The “Axis Minors” player would be a new Axis nation carved out of Finland, Slovakia-Hungary, and Romania. Finland would start the game as an active Axis territory (with its starting infantry fully mobilized) rather than as a pro-Axis neutral. The Axis Minors might get a national objective that gives them +5 IPC / turn if they are at war with Russia and the Axis Minors have no troops in Karelia or Novgorod (symbolizing the Finns’ zeal to defend their homeland and their reluctance to wage an aggressive war against Russia). The capital of the Axis Minors would be Helsinki (Finland), and the capitol-in-exile would be Prague (Slovakia-Hungary).

The Axis Minor nation gives Italy something to do for the rest of the game other than just send two infantry to the eastern front if the UK crushes Italy on turns 1-2.

Dafyd,is there any difference between your cavalry and mechanized infantry? Looks like they both have 1 att, 2 def, 2 move, 4 ipc, boosted by artillery.

The old TripleA scenario for World War One featured Cavalry units that cost 4 IPCs, had an attack of 1, a defense of 1, and a movement of 2. They were not boosted by artillery – their whole point was just to get some cheap, mobile units to mop up poorly defended territories in Russia and Arabia.

I dislike any house rules that outright prohibit Russia and Japan from attacking each other for part or all of the game; it kills the “what-if” historical speculation that makes the game so much fun for me, and it introduces very weird tactical considerations – you can wind up wanting to artificially delay your capture of an enemy capital so that you have time to shift your troops over to a new front against an enemy who you know you will soon be at war with but who is powerless to do so much as raid your transports until after a scripted game event.

I also strongly dislike the idea of magically dropping a large stack of defensive infantry in the path of a Japanese invasion. It totally shatters my suspension of disbelief. I understand that the game isn’t trying to be a realistic simulation, but the commenters above are right – there’s just no way that being sneak attacked would provide a boost to your economy; the opposite would likely be true.  I can imagine the Russians raising a small additional militia in Irkutsk/Yakutsk in response to an invasion (at the cost of supply shortages and hunger), but Japanese-occupied Manchukuo had no loyalty to the Japanese – they might even have welcomed an invading Russian army as liberators.

Leaving aside the issues of theme and story, and considering things strictly from a strategic point of view, I guess 7 infantry is balanced enough, but I would really rather structure the starting units and bonuses in the game so that players are naturally incentivized to avoid an unnecessary Russo-Japanese war. In another thread (the 1943 scenario), I suggested giving Russia an NO for +5 IPCs/turn if Russia controls Amur and is not at war with Japan, and giving Japan an NO for +5 IPCs/turn if Japan controls Manchuria and Korea and is not at war with Russia. That may not be exactly the right number, but that’s the kind of house rule I’d prefer to see – something that makes keeping the peace win-win for Russia and Japan unless one or both of them decide to launch a serious invasion.

I guess that makes sense – you’re not actually trying to give Russia strategically offensive options where they start whaling on an Axis player’s capital; you’re just trying to give them more tactical offensive options where they can pick off a poorly defended transport or trade three territories in a turn, or something like that. Fair enough; I guess that does make the game more fun.

I’m not convinced that giving the Allies 64 IPCs worth of extra units vs. 11 IPCs worth of extra units for the Axis makes for a balanced game, even against expert Axis players. Add in a Russian bomber as well and I’m sure the game’s biased in favor of the Allies. Cow talks a lot about how his setup is scientifically balanced, but so far that’s just marketing – Cow hasn’t shown us any of his TUV calculations or playtest results.

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Black_Elk, as you can probably guess, I’m all in favor of increasing the Russians’ ability to wage an offensive war, and a starting bomber is one good way to do that. What I wonder about is how it could be possible to offer the players the realistic option to have Russia go on the offense (against Germany? against Japan?) while simultaneously having the Axis wage an aggressive war against the UK and/or the USA.

I see five main possibilities here:

1. Russia attacks Germany, and Germany makes attacks based on economic goals, rather than going after a capital. Germany’s extra starting units in the west allow it to conquer all of Africa and maybe even take Brazil, but Japan isn’t in position to deliver a killing blow to either London or Washington, and so the game is slow, at best – the Axis strategy basically involves winning by building up such a big economic advantage that Germany can absorb, blunt, and eventually retaliate against the strong starting Russian attack.

2. Russia attacks Germany, and Germany directly attacks London while Japan seizes on the distraction to gobble up British possessions in the southern hemisphere. This game will be very short, because if Germany heads west then it won’t take long for the powerful Russian attacking forces to make it to Berlin – either the Sea Lion will work or it won’t, and the game will be decided accordingly.

3. Russia attacks Germany, and Germany tries to ignore a still-vigorous British empire, cross the Atlantic, and attack the USA, with or without help from Japan. Britain shoots down half the German transports with subs and planes, and then America laughs and easily defeats the rest of the German invasion; meanwhile, Russia enters Berlin and ends the game.

4. Russia attacks Japan with help from the United States and the UK, as in a standard KJF. Russia is presumably able to seize the valuable territories of Manchuria and Shanghai (otherwise it wouldn’t be much of an attack!), meaning that Russia can afford to let Germany win some territory in eastern Europe and Russia can still build a successful infantry wall. Germany can try to take Moscow before Tokyo falls, as in a standard all-out KJF, but will have a much harder time than usual because Russia has more income, and Germany’s extra starting troops need time to shift over from France and Italy to the eastern front.

5. Russia attacks Japan with help from only the United States, leaving Britain to help defend eastern Europe. Japan can probably hold out for several turns while still defending Manchuria and Shanghai. Germany is probably forced to gamble on an early blitz to Moscow, because it has no other plausible options for linking up with Japan or relieving the siege of Tokyo.

I have to say, I’m not wild about any of these scenarios. What do you think?

Black_Elk, as you can probably guess, I’m all in favor of increasing the Russians’ ability to wage an offensive war, and a starting bomber is one good way to do that. What I wonder about is how it could be possible to offer the players the realistic option to have Russia go on the offense (against Germany? against Japan?) while simultaneously having the Axis wage an aggressive war against the UK and/or the USA.

I see five possibilities here:

1. Russia attacks Germany, and Germany makes attacks based on economic goals, rather than going after a capital. Germany’s extra starting units in the west allow it to conquer all of Africa and maybe even take Brazil, but Japan isn’t in position to deliver a killing blow to either London or Washington, and so the game is slow, at best – the Axis strategy basically involves winning by building up such a big economic advantage that Germany can absorb, blunt, and eventually retaliate against the strong starting Russian attack.

2. Russia attacks Germany, and Germany directly attacks London while Japan seizes on the distraction to gobble up British possessions in the southern hemisphere. This game will be very short, because if Germany heads west then it won’t take long for the powerful Russian attacking forces to make it to Berlin – either the Sea Lion will work or it won’t, and the game will be decided accordingly.

3. Russia attacks Germany, and Germany tries to ignore a still-vigorous British empire, cross the Atlantic, and attack the USA, with or without help from Japan. Britain shoots down half the German transports with subs and planes, and then America laughs and easily defeats the rest of the German invasion; meanwhile, Russia enters Berlin and ends the game.

4. Russia attacks Japan with help from the United States and the UK, as in a standard KJF. Russia is presumably able to seize the valuable territories of Manchuria and Shanghai (otherwise it wouldn’t be much of an attack!), meaning that Russia can afford to let Germany win some territory in eastern Europe and Russia can still build a successful infantry wall. Germany can try to take Moscow before Tokyo falls, as in a standard all-out KJF, but will have a much harder time than usual because Russia has more income, and Germany’s extra starting troops need time to shift over from France and Italy to the eastern front.

5. Russia attacks Japan with help from only the United States, leaving Britain to help defend eastern Europe. Japan can probably hold out for several turns while still defending Manchuria and Shanghai. Germany is probably forced to gamble on an early blitz to Moscow, because it has no other plausible options for linking up with Japan or relieving the siege of Tokyo.

I have to say, I’m not wild about any of these scenarios. What do you think?

Sure, as a matter of combat value, the planes are better. The issue is that America tends to literally run out of combat units in China by round 2 or 3 – all their infantry are dead, so they have nothing to take or trade territories with. Since the point of even a successful Chinese campaign is to delay Japan’s progress west rather than to actually defeat the Japanese army, not being able to capture territories is a huge problem – you can bomb a stack of Japanese tanks to hell, but the tanks will still move an average of 2 spaces per turn. If you can capture a territory, sometimes you can reduce the movement rate back down to 1 space per turn or even 1 space every other turn.

Can you be a little more specific about the big opening battle you’re describing? What troops and planes did the Germans bring to West Russia? What kind of casualties did they suffer? What was the German build on turn 1?

My math may be off, but I’m not seeing how Germany can (1) retake the Baltic States on turn 1, (2) wipe out your forces in West Russia on turn 1, (3) garrison western Europe with enough troops to hold off even a token UK/US attack, and still (4) come after Russia with enough force to beat the 4 inf, 2 arm in Moscow plus the 6 inf, 2 art you can build on Russia’s second turn, plus the 3-4 inf you can bring into Moscow from Siberia as reinforcements. At best, I think Germany can do three of those four things.

I just feel like the 1940 game is crying out for some kind of halfway-meaningful Free French option. How can you have a game that includes a space for frigging British Guyana but that completely ignores the possibility of de Gaulle gaining momentum? There should be enough French colonial income that it sometimes makes sense to liberate Paris so that you can deploy that income at the front, plus a 2-ipc French colony on the Europe board, maybe somewhere in West Africa.

If the Normandy / Southern France mICs are too valuable for the Anglos to pass up, then maybe France needs a house rule allowing you to leave them in Anglo hands even after Paris is liberated – maybe you can choose either (1) four free infantry and factories go back to the French or (2) no free infantry but factories stay in Anglo hands. If you choose (1), then you’re betting on a rapid uprising clinching the game for you (or you’re just desperate), and if you choose (2), then you’re betting on French colonial income making a difference over the long haul. It also gives you a cool choice of whether to spend the French colonial income on a mIC in Dakar, or whether to save it in the hopes of an Anglo-led liberation.

I see important pluses and minuses to your proposed 1942.2 map changes, Black_Elk.

The Good:
(1) It’s now much harder to overwhelm Russia by forcing it to trade for more territories than it can afford on pain of getting Moscow smashed by a Japanese tank stack in Szechuan.
(2) Russia has more tactical flexibility because it can move tanks into Greater Kazakhstan or Greater Siberia and then still use them to deadzone the Caucasus or Karelia

The Bad:
(1) There’s not much tactical flexibility left for Japanese attacks on Russia. With OOB map, sometimes it makes sense for Japan to use a pincer movement, bringing one stack counter-clockwise through Evenki and the other stack clockwise through Szechuan. Now, though, you pretty much just want to make a beeline through Kazakhstan and ignore Evenki and Yakutsk.
(2) Similarly, from the other end, there’s not much tactical flexibility left for a Russian defense of the north against Germany. It used to be that German tanks in Karelia were a serious threat, but not necessarily instant doom for the Russian economy – even if they penetrated to Archangel, there was still a chance to stop them. Now, German tanks in Karelia can reach West Russia, Caucasus, Greater Kazakhstan, Greater Siberia, and Evenki – they can basically hoover up the entire Russian economy minus Moscow, all from their navally-reinforced perch on the Baltic Sea.

The Ugly:
(1) America can now drop tanks into Greater Siberia (via SZ 4, the White Sea) that are one move away from Szechuan, in southern China. That’s wacky.
(2) Conversely, Japan can drop tanks into Yunnan (the southeastern corner of Asia) that are two moves away from Leningrad (the northwestern corner of Asia). That’s also wacky.

I like your overall approach and framework – it’s important to think logically about how defensible a region is going to be, and not just assume that more territories = better defense – but I think the map needs a little more tinkering. How can we re-jigger the territories in ways that make Moscow easier to defend without sucking all of the tactics out of that defense?

It’s pretty weird, isn’t it? I’m not wild about the 1940 start date for exactly this reason – if you let Germany go before the UK, and you have a reasonably accurate historical setup, then there’s no way to stop Germany from steamrolling France on turn 1.

I prefer a 1939 start date so that the Allies have a chance to really dig in and defend France if they want, but failing that, I think the UK should at least get a chance to drop the British Expeditionary Force into Normandy or something before the Germans attack.

Another option is to have a house rule letting the French move their capital to Dakar or Martinique or Syria or Quebec, and fight on (as the free french) with reduced income and maybe a different national objective. I’m not sure exactly how to structure that; A&A 1940 is not my area of expertise.

The overall flow of the 1940 game is satisfying, but it does seem like a huge waste to have all those nice French pieces and not be able to use them.