Posts made by Charles de Gaulle

Yes, your transport survives.  If both the attacker and defended lose all fighting units, any transports that are present will live.

I like this.  It gives the Allies a boost in a perfect place.  Mongolia can practically be represented as a reserve force for the inevitable Russo-Japanese war without any bad effects on gameplay or historical faithfulness.

There is only one problem…I have no sculpt to represent the air transport.  I have been adding house rules and playing games I don’t even own very cheaply…but now what?

One thing that really makes 1941 a fun, casual game is how easily “crazy” things can happen.  There is never a need to surrender either.  The quick play time and small number or dice allow for total annihilation and everlasting hope (almost.)

Deleting the commando thing and adjusting the price to twevle, would you consider this a good base line?  Perhaps the ability to withdraw the paratroopers is too overkill, or maybe letting AA shoot down the craft before the paratroopers offload is too dicey?

Here is a ruleset that requires no extra units (e.g. commando/elite) or technology.
Air Transport:
Type: Air unit
Cost: 12
Move: 5 (can use airbases for bonus)
Attack: 0
Defense: 0

Air transports may not scramble, intercept, escort, or bomb.  They are not allowed to attack Sea Zones or land on carriers.  An air transport may attack a territory if it is paratrooping infantry there in the combat move phase.  While in combat, an air transport rolls no dice but may be taken as a casuality any time.  Air transports are subject to AA gun fire.

During the noncombat movement phase, an air transport may carry up to two land units (one must be an infantry and no tanks are allowed) to any territory that has been in friendly control since the beginning of your turn.  The air transport must end its movement in the territory it offloads to.   The air transport may also hold its cargo until the next turn, but in such case the units being held cannot fight and die if the plane dies.  Friendly units may use air transports of another nation by following a three step process:
1.  Loading units onto the plane
2.  Having the plane be moved on your teammate’s turn
3.  Offloading your units

Paratroopers:
Air transports may attack a territory by flying in paratroopers.  Paratroopers are standard infantry.  If there are any friendly units on board an air transport (e.g. a French troop on a British plane), those units may not participate in paratrooper attacks.  Paratroopers may work in coordination with amphibious assaults and/or overland invasions.  Paratrooper attacks follow this order:
1.  Load infantry onto air transport
2.  Fly to territory (the air transport must have moves left to land elsewhere)
3.  Parachute your attacking paratroopers
4.  Receive AA fire against your air transport (the paratroopers are able to survive a loss of the plane)
Paratroopers get a +1 attack (two or less) on the first round of combat.

@ABWorsham:

I will have nothing to do with the game.

The world needs more people like you.

Axis and Allies is a human attempt at making a bloody, horrible conflict a mild strategy game.  Zombies are a human attempt at making the final chapter of life a horror story.

I see what you mean Narvik, and I hate what I see.  It’s called the darkening of the world.

As the older generation passes away, so will the innocence of boardgaming?  What was once an entertaining series of order and decent consistency is soon to become a dismal fantasy centered on a degraded form of mankind.

Oh, the drama.

I know I sound conceited, but it pains when I realize that my favorite board game is going to become a mere pebble in the mass of today’s popular franchises.  It won’t stand out.

If you are interested, give it a try, possibly tweaking anything that annoys you.  The NOs are important but can be easily adjusted to suit your tastes.  This variant is great fun to play with nine players.  Nine?  Yes.
Axis:
Germany
Japan
Italy, Vichy
Romania, Hungary, Finland, Bulgaria, Siam
Allies:
Soviet Union
United States
Commonwealth of Nations
United Kingdom, Poland, Greece
China, Free France, Mongolia, Holland/Belgium
(This is only an example)

This makes for a very fun team game.  Note the increase in forces and IPCs that enables more people to have action, and unfortunately lengthens the monster game.

Norway would probably be the only power I would add, but aside from ships (which would be awkward for the setup), action upon liberation, and maybe a partisan rule, Norway has a hard time doing anything at this point.

Also, I should reiterate that most of the new powers have limited buying power as indicated in the setup.  This means that Hungary is not going to be pumping out mechanized infantry with its 3 IPCs and one bonus buck.  It is something else to consider in the question of balance in the Eastern Front.

Sounds great.  Got any ideas as to unit statistics?  I am debating whether or not it should have defensively ability.  Some modifications of the C-47 (or at least a Russian one) did have machine guns for defense.

Just yesterday I read a chapter on Madagascar in Chruchill’s series, The Second World War: The Hinge of Fate.

I don’t know if you can credit this victory to the effectiveness of marines.  Chruchill considered the operation a great success because of excellent planning and execution.  Using a far superior force against a weak colony composed of Vichy, African natives, and even Frenchmen who disliked Vichy was almost a sure win from the start.

Yes, marines are effective, but they are basically regular troops extensively trained for certain situations.

Any well-trained handful of men could have done the same job given the same circumstances.

I do not want to discredits the marines, but there is no reason why they should be counted separate or special compared to other infantry divisions.

First off, I would like to say that 1914 needs more units to make it as interesting as the WW2 games.  Maybe cavalry, armoured cars, or something like that.  However, 1914 really could use more air units.  A bomber and deriglible unit would work well.

As for the WW2 games…

In 1941 I felt that land warfare was too boring.  An addition of artillery fixes this.  (This would also apply to the older games I never played that include no artillery.)

If there were ONE unit I would select, it would be heavy tanks.  Simply for the fact that it would look great, fight well up close, and can use the heavy tank sculpts from 1941 (the Tiger and IS-2).  I have actually used these sculpts as heavy tanks before (in Global, Italy and ANZAC don’t get any but I actually like it that way.)
Here is my simplefied heavy tank unit:
Cost: 9
Move: 1
Attack: 5
Defense: 5
Expensive but deadly.  I am considering lowering the cost to 8 but making them unable to make amphibious assaults.  Other people suggest special abilities like absorbing hits, but I prefer it simple.

Wittman’s mechanized artillery is a great idea, but I would rather make that a tech involving artillery and mechanized infantry.

Marc’s air transport is also great, but paratroopers kind of do this already.

I see an improved tech tree with more economical methods as a good way to implement most of our unit expansions, including heavy tanks.

Some units to pique your interest:
Civilian type transport for infantry only (Queen Mary)
Heavy carrier (for strategic bombers)
Minelayer
Biplane bomber (Swordfish)
Recon plane
Cargo plane/paratroop carrier (Goony Bird)
Rail center
Fortress (France)
Sea defence (Iwo Jima)
Commando/paratrooper
Tank destroyer (Su-152)
Heavy tank

Hey guys, I want to send an assassin against the SS on the grounds of insulting my nation.  Any Frenchmen interested?  I hear he lives in Canada so a Quebecois is preferred.

You raise great points.  Though I won’t pretend this is a perfect setup, I will share the designer’s and playtesters’ thoughts.

Finland has its drawbacks.  It is susceptible to Soviet takeover and can act as a free minor industrial complex for any Allied powers venturing in the Scandinavian. Aside from Karelia and Vyborg, Finland has little to do aside from reinforcing Germany.  Also, Finland becomes quite useless late game because IMPORTANT any victory ciities under Finnish control are not counted in the Axis objective of eight.  Therefore, taking Leningrad is not a good idea at all for Finland.  Unless the Western Allies attack Finland, Finland is only useful versus Russia.

Bulgaria is not intended to be used against Russia.  Doing so will cause Bulgaria to lose its NO’s.  Unless it is actively taking Yugoslavia (a partisan spawns there every turn), Bulgaria will only have 1 IPCs a turn to use.  Even with Yugoslavia, Bulgaria can only pump out one infantry a turn which would much preferably be German.  A drawback with all the minor Axis is that they cannot attack with Germany and are thus only useful for canopeners, minor battles, and reinforcing.

Romania and Hungary are indeed great assets to Germany (as they really were).  They can easily do all the canopeners Italy used to.  They also make decent enough income and face a weak enough front to be able to do serious fighting with Russia.  A recent game saw Romania taking all of the Ukraine and some other Russian territories.  The Romanians pumped out 3 units a turn from Ukraine and opened up the south and even made a suicide attack on Moscow so war torn Germans could move in.  Hungary and Romania do indeed get to build troops right up front, but their inability to coordinate assaults with Germany is a drawback.

In short, Hungary and Romania are a pain to Russia, Bulgaria is best used elsewhere, and Finalnd is more of an independent nuisance to both parties.  I do personally feel that this mod might hurt Russia, but the benefits elsewhere make up for it.  Also, it is much more fun to fight on the Eastern Front with so many powers.   The lack of huge stacks of Germans allows Russia more counterattack potential and less headache around Leningrad and Moscow, but the power of quick mobilization and blitzkrieg with canopeners cam be a deadly tool.

The Russian player will usually get a much more interesting game with plenty of fighting, but their rate of fall might increase.

Bulgaria is an issue, I will admit. I might just say that Bulgaria can never fight Russia unless first attacked.

But it’s not ok!
:cry:
Just kidding.  To be honest, I am getting a good laugh out of this.  It is always fun to plot the downfall of something I am too fanatic to like.
  :-D

I still cannot wrap my finger around the fact that zombies managed to get into the game but the Free French didn’t…I mean they could have even added a sculpt with a guy holding a white flag to represent Vichy.

But no, it had to be zombies.

How am I suppossed to sleep at night knowing that the plastic soldiers in the box under my bed might become undead from being put behind the casuality strip too many times?

I swear I am never to going to roll anything other than sixes from now on!

Another great learning path you can take is 1941, 1942, and finally 1940.  More complicated/bigger usually equals more fun and more time-consuming.

Anniversary is still the most popular among loyal but infrequent gamers.

Or even an alternate scenario like the Axis invasion of the Americas or Cold War goes hot.  There are plenty World War expansions that they could have resorted to instead of some bizarre fantasy.  1914 was a great example, it just needed some more work to be done on it.  I cannot help but think that this new version is not going to cater to the same customers.  I don’t think serious strategists who play with rules as complicated as neutrality for the sake of history are going to play a weird spinoff.  It will probably be more mainstream gamers that will pick this up.  Let’s hope this won’t be another poorly-executed embarrassment.

As an A&A gamer, this comes across to me as a “farewell,” but perhaps the company might make a big hit with this.  Even though it will be minuscule, the title will undoubetedly make some people want to know what Axis and Allies is.  I personally believe there will be fewer similarities to the series than we expect.

Anybody remember Risk: Battlefield Rogue?  Yeah.

Guess I’ll go try War Room when my buddy gets it.

And no, I am not being pessimistic, I am only furious, outraged, sick with anger!

this is the opinion of a highly opinionated teenager that still plays Bf1942 because modern FPS games are garbage

If you want to have the full experience, also use this neutral expansion ruleset along with the new powers:

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=38615.msg%msg_id%

All playtests of this addition of 11 powers used these new neutral rules, and I definitely recommend you play these two house rules together.  It allows for fun things like South Africa invading Portuguese colonies, Bulgaria and Italy invading Turkey etc.

We are currently working on implementing the 20-power ruleset for other Global setups.  If you would like to play this add-on in a Pacific/Europe solo game, I can post the theater rulesets on request.

Sourly disapponted.
:-(
It is a good thing that this game is timeless, because it seems Larry is not the only one who has lost interest in making classic A&A.  All my hopes of the brand owners independently continuing the series are crushed in an odd way—darn zombies.

This is definitely an option if the US is not very active in the south Pacific or if ANZAC does not buy good defensive units in response to a Japanese navy in the Caroline Islands.  Sometimes you can get lucky as Japan and take out Sydney outright with a J3 attack, but usually the Allies see this coming and block it.  Another early option is to take Queensland first and then and then move south (suppossing the capital is poorly defended and an American navy won’t ruin the fun.)

Attacking ANZAC early relies on limited American involvement and liberal purchasing on Australia’s part.  If you are going to do this turn four or later, I would suggest Cow’s method through Western Australia and the outback.