Posts made by Chris_Henry

@bretters Oh, sounds like we’re misinterpreting each other! Or at least me you haha.

I ultimately don’t think it’s a viable strategy. Again, I have not tried this, and so could be wrong, I certainly don’t mean to sound like this is a dumb idea or a waste of time or anything.

I just think that the Allies will have a lot of IPP to be able to utilize in other theaters if they don’t have to fight Italy. Keep a skeleton defensive force in the Med, and match Italy’s IPP output for defenses. After that, all IPP can be focused in Western Europe and/or the Pacific to fight that would have otherwise been used in the Med/North Africa. While it makes a ton of sense for Italy individually, I’m just having a hard time seeing how the extra resources the Allies will be able to have on hand won’t negatively affect the other Axis members. I’d have to see it play out over the course of multiple games with players of somewhat equal experience!

@bretters I suppose that’s the thing about the expansions, and probably why they are just that, expansion! I agree, they certainly slow the game down. But from our perspective it’s this: This game already takes sooooo long to play, what’s a little more time with some detail :) haha.

But I get what you’re saying, if you’re not really into the expansions, then they just aren’t for you! I like a lot of them to try and put more focus on different aspects. The ones I like to roll out are:

Latin America at War
China at War
Turkey at War
Netherlands at War
Canada at War
Partisans
Winter War
Spanish Civil War
Afrika Korps
Manchukuo
Croatia at War

I like these ones because, to me, these ones are the least likely to add a ton of special units, but can enhance game play in areas. That might just be my opinion though. I also love to add the other nations to the game (thus the Canada, Netherlands, and Turkey expansions).

I don’t like the ordinance ones, for example, because they add a ton of specific units that you might have one of each on the map at a time.

I like the idea of the elite units expansions, but haven’t quite yet stomached the idea of having to look at a chart before almost every single battle to see what specialized unit does what!

@vondox So, what was coming from where? The infantry was amphibiously assaulting, and the marine attacking from the ground? Or the other way around?

I guess either way it doesn’t make a difference, it would be the same outcome. If you only had one unit amphibiously assaulting, there’s only one to be taken as a casualty! You wouldn’t apply one hit to the amphibiously assaulting infantry, and then apply another to the marine since “double casualties” are in play. That just means you wiped out the amphibiously assaulting force.

As to the other half of your question, I think you’re reading it wrong! It says the adjacent units are able to retreat, it doesn’t say they have to! That’s just like any normal combat though, attacking units can always retreat if they want to in a ground attack. So even though the amphibiously assaulting unit died, you can still chose to continue your assault with the ground forces if you so chose!

Does that clear it up at all?

@bretters said in Is it best for Italy to stay Neutral?:

@chris_henry Italy can’t tie up the allies, instead Italy will tie up German resources to help defend Italy, not good!

Totally agree! I just think this hurts more in the long run for a lot of trickle down reasons, this one you mention included!

@bretters I agree, the thread got really derailed haha. I also tend to not do a ton of house ruling, just got caught up in the conversation haha.

I agree, I think strategic bombing Italy is probably really worth it. They don’t make much IPP throughout the game, and any IPP spent to repair facilities is going to hurt!

I like to try and use strategic bombing in conjunction with planned attacks to whenever I can. Strategic bombing an airbase in one attack to stop defending fighters from scrambling to help in an adjacent attack, for example, can be really useful!

I also think bombing London is good when you can. Keeping the UK battered some for as long as you can is really helpful towards buying time in the West.

@trig Got it, you’re issue is from a cultural point of view then. Can’t say I disagree with you there at all! I totally get what you’re saying. I would certainly never advocate for a game to be sold with rules like that at all. These are just talks for the hard core gamers here that are trying to simulate the war. Personally, it’s not a rule I would plan on using anyways, I was just chiming in on how cities could potentially be changed in that way.

But it’s just that point isn’t it? There’s a big difference between simulate and emulate, and you blur the lines on what’s considered to be culturally acceptable to emulate if you make it the day to day norm! Putting in a game begins to do that, I would agree.

@Chris_Henry Bombing cites would give more cover, as proved in the battle of Stalingrad.

@David-06 I meant in terms of the city being a “valued” target any longer.

No sense envisioning where to use imagined additional Allied resources. You won’t have any. You won’t have the easy $3 from Italy, in Africa, so Italy will have an extra $3. You can’t abandon Egypt, or Italy can just take it. The Italian threat doesn’t disappear. The Axis aren’t down resources, as the Italian IPPs are lend-leased to Germany. All that it really changes is now you have to fight the Axis forces in France, where they are concentrated strongest, and the Axis doesn’t have to spread themselves out, fighting in Africa, the Med, or Italy, which is where they are always weakest. The Axis income is combined, and their weak link, and soft underbelly, is protected.

I’d have to agree with @bretters here. Sorry @CaptainNapalm, I don’t agree! All Italy would be able to make in this scenario is 10 IPP a turn. Nothing stops the Allies from just matching that output, or putting a little more. Hell, they could even do a bit less if they wanted to knowing they have better odds defending! I think you’d see a lot of extra IPP to be used in other theaters! It doesn’t make sense that the Allies would expend the same amount of Capital to defend against a neutral Italy than they would against one at war.

The point above about Italy’s units not being used is also a good one too.

I think it’s an interesting strategy worth trying, but I just don’t see it working in the longrun!

@timothy-gengarella Exciting! Yeah, a lot of the basic concepts can hopefully come quickly. They aren’t so unlike A&A where you can’t adjust.

The biggest thing will just be remembering some of the intricacies from turn to turn. Remembering recruitment rolls, remembering tech rolls, remembering the terrain feature penalties/bonuses, etc.

Also, try and get out of the A&A mindset of taking the capital wins the game. It’s truly more focused on the victory conditions needed. I know our first few games it was hard to not just focus on taking on capitals as the primary goal, when it doesn’t necessarily need to be that way here!

Enjoy!

I don’t think talking about bombing cities and what not and “war crimes” is such an off base thing to consider in this game. It’s a WWII simulation/themed game. Terrible things happened, and as @GEN-MANSTEIN pointed out, at what point do you hold all sides accountable for their war crimes in a game like this (yes, the U.S. is guilty of war crimes in WWII as well).

Cities were bombed, plain and simple. I don’t see a harm in simulating this in game somehow. While I don’t think taking VP’s away would work, I think you could do something where if a city is bombed so much it losses it’s city defense bonus. Maybe an SBR could be expanded to include bombing cities specifically, as opposed to just the facilities within to accomplish this. It would have a lot of potential negative affects for a the player doing the bombing though too. Maybe you make the bombing power pay 2 IPP to the bank or something to show public opinion going against them for doing it.

Getting really house-ruley for a thread that wasn’t about that though, sorry!

@bretters Yup, that’s kind of what I was getting at too. There’s not a real good way to do that.

I have to imagine this came up in playtesting also, and they clearly decided there wasn’t some massive Axis advantage to this Italian ability to conceivably not declare war.

I think when it’s all said and done, this strategy isn’t as viable as it looks on paper, like we’ve both said!

@bretters Hey, I’m totally with you on this! I’m not fully convinced this is a winning strategy for the Axis (without having attempted it myself) in the long run! Is it a winning strategy for Italy specifically? In every way. But to the greater Axis efforts? Not so sure.

I guess loophole was probably not the right word to use, but I think you know what I mean!

@Timothy-Gengarella glad you found your way to the forums! Hopefully the link I sent you on Facebook the other day was helpful in finding this! I’m sure you’re already noticing a lot of useful info here!

@captainnapalm hahaha. I do like the creativity though, @David-06.

I won’t rehash here my thoughts on this from the thread the other day in full. I totally get how this is a viable strategy for the Italians, but I still wonder if it hurts the Axis in the end by the Allied ability to now devote way more resources to other theaters against Germany or Japan, and just keep a skeleton force against Italy/the Med. Again, I certainly could be wrong here as I’ve never played a game where this happened. But I’d be curious to try it, as I already am envisioning things I would/could do with the extra Allied resources to be used elsewhere!

All this said, I do think it’s a bit lame this can happen. I wish a simple change of something like “Italy has to be at war with at least one major power to get it’s VP’s were to take affect.” Something like that. Or has to have been at war with a major power for “X” amount of turns before the game ends to get the VP’s. That would alleviate this potential loophole, especially if it’s shown to give the Axis a lopsided victory through game play!

@mark-the-shark @Linkler yeah, that’s where we’re at too. The 80’s game pieces become useful for some of that for us too.

Luckily for us, we’ve been slowly adding for a few years now. We’re at the point where we don’t have a ton of backlogged items we need. Meaning, we can start buying some of these pieces if we want to now as well without breaking the bank all at once!

I’m just waiting for tank destroyers and SSP to come back into stock. I haven’t seen those available since we got V3, and we hadn’t bothered having them on hand before since they weren’t part of V2!

Don’t mean to beat a dead horse here. But I agree with the above approach of playing with what you have, and adding incrementally as you see fit.

We started out with A&A Global 1940 as our base, along with the other 2-3 A&A games we had on hand. We did the same thing as above too, and just used chips to denote the different types of units. A tank with a blue chip was a light tank, white chip heavy tank, no chip medium tank, etc.

But over the last few years we’ve dipped in to some pieces. We personally like the aesthetic of a unique unit for each type, but also find it easier to remember that than a color wheel of chips! This is much more expensive of course, but doing so in pieces isn’t so bad. But everyone has different levels of disposable income. Dropping $100-$150 divided between the three of us from time to time hasn’t been so terrible. Using the HBG markers is an obvious great way to go. You can utilize your OOB infantry as Militia, Marines, Airborne, Regular Infantry that way, for only the cost of the markers.

If you do want unique HBG sculpts, I’d recommend starting by getting the base set pieces: Cavalry, Militia, Mountain Infantry, coastal subs (though I think the original game subs make great use for these though too), TBD’s. Get some white “Dutch” units for the minors/neutral powers too to flush those out if you want them.

From there, I’d expand the more unique units. Make the A&A OOB tanks your medium tanks (most commonly used), and buy some light tanks for each. Buy trucks for motorized infantry. Use the OOB Strategic Bomber as your heavy/strat bombers, then buy a few medium bombers. From there you could get marines/airborne as well.

After that, you could focus on fleshing out the rarely used units: heavy tanks, heavy strat bombers, jet fighters, advanced subs, etc.

My biggest hindrance now has been buying unique ship sculpts for V3. I’m having a hard time pulling the trigger on buy unique sculpts for light/heavy cruisers, battlecruisers/battleships/fast battleships. That’s been a big change for me that we’re still trying to decide what’s best!

@gen-manstein I think that sounds awesome!

@vondox For the record also, my original post was based on V2 rules, since V3 wasn’t out yet haha. While I don’t think the rule changed much, I did want to point that out.

But I agree with the other two still, the V3 rules don’t specify that you can’t take a fighter as a casualty first, only that the amphibiously assaulting ground units take double casualties! So yeah, maybe bringing a lot of fighters isn’t such a bad thing haha.

So then how would u do the aa gun defense shot ? Since stg were higher up in air. I can see up to 3 planes per aa gun @2 or maybe @3.

I really like the idea of AA having a worse chance against Strategic bombers! It makes sense. Part of their allure was that they could fly above the range of AA guns, so making AA less lethal against them would be intriguing too!

@barnee I think you’re right. I think it probably has to do with cost a bit more. I think a lot of the problem too though is just what @Aldrahill said above. I think a lot of people might find it “not worth it” for a plane that only attacks facilities. While I think there’s truth to that a little bit, I think it’s also an A&A mindset people need to get out of too. There’s value in bombing facilities in this game more so than A&A. That’s not to say there’s going to be whole fleets of strategic bombers built, but I think having some in your arsenal makes sense to wreck a Lend-Lease port, forward factory, an air base to scramble, etc.

When it comes to planes in this game, I tend to want to lean more towards a bit more historical realism. By that I mean, high level bombing/carpet bombing in WW2 was, by and large, extremely ineffective. And I don’t think should be amplified in game.

Yes, I’m sure everyone can hunt and pick some select instances of successful high level bombing against military formations (as opposed to stagnant facilities/cities). But overall, this was an extremely low efficiency attack. There’s a reason dive bombers/tactical bombers came into existence and heavy use in WW2. For example, I believe at Midway and the Coral Sea, B-17’s were found to have hit 1% of their targets. They were quickly considered not very suitable for that type of warfare.

The problem with high level bombing against targets like this is/was because the targets move. It was extremely hard to actually hit a moving target from the altitudes these heavier bombers were flying at. Hell, it was really hard for them to hit facilities/cities as well from that high even, and they weren’t even moving! The wind that high up comes in to play as well.

I personally struggle to even allow heavy bombers to carpet bomb units in game, if I’m being honest. I know from a game-play perspective it’s more fun to give them more options, but in historical context, it was not the overall norm for a heavy bomber to try and target units as opposed to buildings. Again, I know there’s individual circumstances where this happened. But in the grand scheme of the war on a game of this scale, I struggle to see how that can be shown in game with how little effectiveness it actually had!

To me, having Tactical bombers have target select already simulates pretty perfectly the abilities of planes to hit specific targets, but that might just be me! I think allowing medium bombers something like this maybe would make more sense, but not anything larger than that!