The mechanics of the game, the size of the board and the victory conditions all combine to make this “EPIC game” a very long, long, LONG a** game no matter how experimented the players are, no matter if you have 2 players or the max number of players, no matter if you purchase your units before the previous players turn is over or even if you start conducting combat moves while the player before you is placing their units and or if your “play fast” and or if the dice are “crappy or good”.
I’ll try to explain my reasoning…
Let’s just say (hypothetically speaking) that the classic game of A&A had 10 territories and 0 sea zones. Yes, I know it has more than 10 and it has sea zones (that s not the point). Remember this is a “hypothetical situation that is designed to help explain/understand why the “EPIC scale” of the game itself and the core mechanics of the game make it such a LONG A** game.
Ok, so again…HYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING…
Imagine that the classic game had 0 sea zones and 10 territories and that the Axis started the game controlling half of those territories and the Allies started the game controlling the other half of them.
Now imagine that the 10 territories are all in a straight line with the axis controlling half the line and the allies controlling the other half of the line (kind of like a game of tug-o-war).
Now imagine the “victory condition” is to have one side control 7 of the 10 territories.
Now, in every “global game” of axis and allies (from classic to the cool a** 40 shhhhtuff we have now) the core mechanic has always been and continues to be that only ground units can capture land, so due to that core mechanic we can eliminate the issues that sea units, sea zones, and air units present to the game because ultimately its ground units taking territories that ultimately determine victory.
Ok so back to the example…
So with our 10 territories lined up in a row like a tug-o-war game we begin the game. if both sides were to also start with no units on the “board” their “first turn” would simply be building units in “territory one at either side of the board”. Becosue infantry have a move of one it would efectivly take 5 turns of play just to get both sides to the “center of the board”. Once there, the side that went first (like in chess) would have a slight advantage becosue they would be crossing the line “first”. If they wone that first battle and than player two countee attacked and lost, than those ground units would have “ganed ground”. In other words it would have taken them 6 turns to to move and control 6 terrtiroies. If player one got lucky enough with the dice and managed to do the same thing on turn 7 and he managed to move and control the 7th territoriy at the end of the 7th turn. It would have taken him 7 turns to win the game.
Please for give me for being such a jurk about how I am trying to explain this (part of it is being done this way to help me rationalize my own thinking and part of it is becosue…well…all this “debate” seems pointless simply due to the sherar EPIC scale of he game and the core mechanics.) Any way…
Now imagine that this little tug of war game is only between two players, and each player (going as fast as they can through their turn sequence) takes 5 minutes to take their turn. One round of this game would take 10 minutes and this simple little 7 round game of tug-o-war game just became a 70 min game.
Now compound that by adding another POWER to each side and the game length for each turn just increased. Notice I didn’t say add another PLAYER but I said add another POWER. Because if each power has to stand in line and wait their turn to get on the roller coaster, it doesn’t matter if it’s the same two players taking turns or 4 players taking turns. It’s the number of Powers that increase the length of each game turn. From the days of classic its been a 5 power game, than 50 made it a 6 power game and now this global 40 makes it a 9 power game. Stand in line in the grocery store, if theirs only 2 people in front of you even if they have tons of junk in their cart or if they only have 1 item in their cart, you still have to wait in line (ok, maybe you don’t HAVE to, but most people do).
Now compound the board by adding more territories and the number of turns to complete achieve victory just compounded, not because of crappy dice, but because if you only had to capture 2 territories before but now you have to capture 6, or 8 or 10 or 14, etc, etc, etc…You need more turns to do it because ground units can only move one territory at a time. You can slightly off set that by using tanks since they have a movement of 2 but hypothetically speaking that’s only going to increase your move “behind the front line” because if both sides had tanks on the front line, blitzing would be a irrelevant. Now you look at the number of territories from board to board and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that its going to increase how long it take to win the game. hell, if the US want to take Egypt its going to take them 7 turns just to march across the top of Africa to get their and that’s just one VC (game of tug-o-war). Every VC in the game is in essence a single and separate game of tug-o-war, so now you compound the games length even more when you make it that there are 14 VC that the Axis need to control and yes, the allies only need to control the Axis capitals (3 VC) but this IS a game of economics as well as a game of tug-o-war so now the game is compounded even further because even new players catch on to the capitalistic principle behind the game…the side the makes the most money the fastest for the longest will most likely win.
ALL that said, so long as the game is played as its intended to be played “by the rules” this game will be a very long game. From my assessment (and I’ve tracked every game our group has played so far…the longest being 16 hours non stop and it still was not finished “per the rules” and I also use a home made spread sheet to track games so I do know how long each game is taking, how long each round takes to play, etc, etc, etc… in other words, I’m not “guessing” how long we’ve played so far…YES…I”M A FREAK!!!).
Anyway, all that said…I ran across a set of house rules for the revised game some time ago that had the Axis taking their turn at the same time and than the “allies taking their turn at the same time. I thought this was a clean way to spread the game up IF you had a separate player playing each power so that they all “did their move at the exact same time”. In other words, if you have a 6 power game and you have to wait in line for 6 people to take their turns you can shorten the time you wait in line a lot because if the Axis took their turn at once and the allies took their turn at once, each side is only waiting in line for 1 person rather than each single person waiting in line for 5 others to take their turn.
I’ve never played a game like that but the idea makes good logical math…on the smaller boards like revised and maybe even 50 and 1942.
Now…I might still try that with something like 50 but I don’t think that would work too well with a game like global 40.
BUT…if two players playing a game of pacific would say take 10 rounds to end that game and if 2 players playing a game of Europe would take say 10 rounds to play Europe, if you combined the Europe and the pacific per the rules than players have to wait in line behind each other and so a global game of 40 still hypothetically takes 10 turns to play but you have to wait in line for 60 turns if there are just 6 powers because when a power on the pacific board is taking their turn, powers on the Europe side are just standing in line and vice verse so by combining the two games you’ve just doubled the time to play a global game.
However, if you had a minimum of 4 players, 2 playing the Europe half of the board and 2 playing the pacific half of the board with each half being played “at the same time”, you should be able to play a “global 40” game in the amount of time that it takes to play just a pacific or just a Europe 40 game.
The turn sequence would need to be paid a little closer attention to…for example…
The Europe turn order is this…
Germany, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, Italy, United States, France
The Pacific turn order is this…
Japan, United States, China, United Kingdom, ANZAC
And the Global Turn order is this…
Germany, Soviet Union, Japan, United Kingdom, ANZAC, Italy, United States, China, France.
If you take the Global Turn and splits it up into Europe and Pacific but keep it in the same order, its like this…
Europe Pacific
Germany
Soviet Union
Japan
United Kingdom United Kingdom
ANZAC
Italy
United States United States
China.
France
On the Europe board things would go like this:
Germany would go 1st
Soviet Union would go 2nd
United kingdom would go 3rd… BUT before they take their turn they would need to see if Japan has units on the Europe board. If Japan has units on the Europe board, Japan gets to move them before UK takes their turn.
Italy would go 4th…BUT before they take their turn they would need to see if ANZAC has units on the Europe board. If ANZAC has units on the Europe board, ANZAC gets to move them before Italy takes their turn.
United States would go 5th
France would go 6th…AND since China has no possible way of getting onto the Europe board, France would have nothing to check before they took their turn.
On the Pacific Board things would go like this:
Japan would go first…BUT before they take their turn they would need to see if Germany first had units on the pacific board followed by Russia. If Germany had units on the pacific board they would get to move them followed by any Russian peaces that are on the pacific board before Japan would get to take their turn.
UK would go 2nd
ANZAC would go 3rd
US would go 4th…BUT before they take their turn they would need to see if Italy has units on the Pacific board. If Italy has units on the Pacific board, Italy gets to move them before US takes their turn.
China would go 5th…and before the next round started players would need to look to see if there are French units on the pacific half of the board, if there are, they move before starting a new round.
It sounds simple enough; there are some minor things that would need to be taken into account, for example, the US player on the pacific half would need to “barter with” the US player on the Europe half since they share income but the UK would not need to do this since they already have “separate capitals”.
And when units of any power “crossed the boarder line” between board halves they would move what they can on their respective half/turn and the player on the other half would take control of them and finish any move on their respective turn of the other boards half. In other words if Russia moved units from Europe into the pacific the Europe player would move them on his Europe turn but the units would not get onto the pacific half of the board until it was “Russia turn” on the pacific board. Russia could most likely even be played by the same player on both boards since they really don’t have much invested in the pacific half like the UK and US do. And the same thing for the Germans and Japs on the “other half” of the world, one player should easily be able to handle the Japs and one player should easily be able to handle the germens since neither of them are really entrenched in the other halves of the globe.
Everything else should work out like a standard global 40 game.
One thing is for sure, you need a minimum of 4 players to do this easily, two players might be able to do it, but I can see how that would get too confusing especially since an axis power takes the “first turn” on both halves of the board and since you would still have to “wait in line” since one person can’t be in tow places at one. For example I just don’t see how one player could play Germany and Japan for at the same time. Heck, even in our global games, the UK and the US players “work the board” in separate halves, it’s just easier that way so having one player o the pacific half that plays the UK an don player on the Europe half that plays the UK should be no problem.
Something like this would NOT work well on a 50 game or a revised game, the boards are not large enough and the units on Europe and pacific in those tow games are interdependent on each other, every one know s it’s a race to Russia for both Germany and Japan. But in the global 40, Europe and pacific truly are two separate “theaters of war” and they are pretty much completely independent of each other.
Well, one thing for sure is that I will be trying this with my game group in a few weeks. The last time we got together, playing for 16 hours straight left me with the worst hang over I’ve had since my drinking days in the military…and I wasn’t even drunk…how could I be with the need to do so much freaking thinking. Don’t get me wrong, it was way cool fun…BUT…it proved to be too long of a game even for an AA junky like myself. And most players don’t have that much time, they want to show up, play a game…FINISH IT…have some beer, and pizza and go home in time to kiss the wife and tatter tots good night (or at least kiss the wife good night).
