Posts made by Flashman

Four years in the making:

http://www.harrisgamedesign.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=18863&start=64

Must have:

Rail movement for land units

Japan/USSR not at war

Moscow in Europe

Great action finale to this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr3xyEp5zMY

Allow unlimited non-combat rail movement. Then the CPs can reinforce their fronts by rail to wherever they’re most needed, countering the Allies sea convoys and India teleportation console.

After all the Berlin-Baghdad railway project is what started the war in the first place.

Wonder if Roger Mortis has set in yet.

@LHoffman:

I do think there were convenient plot devices, like the black goo, which (as expected) serves the same function in Covenant. Other information is never clearly defined, like Charlize Theron’s character Meredith Vickers and her motivations. She has a subtle arc, but is a high profile person of little consequence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmwyWerz5KI

Oh mah gawd!

Next thing we know they’ll be showing people kissing who aren’t even cousins!

If the CPs control Marseille and Constantinople and a chain of tts connecting them why not move Turks to Marseille? The Allies can make the same move in reverse by sea. It’s up to the Allies to block such moves. Remember you can never rail units into combat, only to reinforce contested tts.

The proposal is to counter the Allies domination of the seas, which they usually get after 2 or 3 turns, and means they can move troops virtually immediately to any front.

Yes, the actual combat in WWI was slow and static, but as I mentioned this came about precisely because they could move troops so quickly from the depots to the front lines by rail.

Requiring German infantry to “march” one tt at a time from Berlin to the front lines fatally cripples the CPs in OOB rules. The Allies can easily see where they’re heading and send troops there by sea. In my view rail movement is essential to balance this game.

But the principle reason for trench warfare was precisely that each side could reinforce their front lines so quickly using rail transport that breakthroughs were impossible. Prussia used this to win the Franco-Prussian conflict; by 1914 the French had wised up and were ready to do the same thing = stalemate.

Units should be able to non-combat move as far as they want along any chain of friendly land territories. Both sides should be constantly railing reinforcements into contested territories ready for the next big push. The only restriction needs to be on aircraft which should have to stop when flying into
enemy/contested tt.

So…

Consider each capital to be a rail hub. After a player’s combat phase, any land and air units in his capital that started there can use rail movement to travel an unlimited distance along friendly land tts, stopping when they enter a contested tt. They may not initiate further combat, but may be used to activate minor neutrals.

This should balance the game back towards the CPs against the fast naval movement that usually favours the Allies after the first few turns.

An alternative has rail hubs roughly equidistant across the map at:

All capitals
Scotland
Marseille
Lorraine
Portugal
Munich
Holland
Venice
Poland
Sevastopol
Serbia
Trans-Jordan
India

In this case a railing unit can only move from hub to hub, creating obvious focal points for the game which can also be used for Victory condition purposes.

Ottoman setup?

I’ve always played with a single movement phase. A separate non-combat movement phase always seemed silly to me, as well as being more difficult to keep track of.

One of the strangest ideas Larry came up with along with:

Collect money at end of turn
Trains carrying tanks move further than trains carrying infantry
Armoured divisions take up more space on a transport than infantry divisions
Russia and Japan are at war in 1942
Moscow sits atop the Ural mountain range
Brazil is at war in 1942
East Prussia is part of Poland in 1914

@wittmann:

Thanks for the link to The trailer,  Hoffman. I Cannot wait.

Unlike Hitler’s panzers, who he told to stop and wait to allow the British army to escape. Amazing that they can dress this up as a triumph.

I agree that the best solution is a “victory curve” by which the CPs must hold X at the end of turn Y to be deemed winners. As long as US entry is automatic the Allies will always win in the long run. The conceit is that if the CPs have gained enough ground the Allies will sue for peace rather than ruining themselves in a long war.
Is you base this entirely on capitals then it’s too easy for the Allies to just pile units into those areas to hold out until the Yanks turn up in sufficient numbers. For me, number of units lost should be just as important as territory in determining the point at which a nation throws in the towel.

Churchill wasn’t evil he was incredibly lucky. He got Britain involved in a war (with Germany) it couldn’t possibly win but ended up on the winning side because:

1. Finland surrendered to Russia just 2 days before British troops were due to land in Finland to fight the Red army, thus he avoided being at war with both Hitler and Stalin simultaneously (we’ll ignore the fact that Britain declared war on Germany for invading Poland, but not on Russia when it did the same thing).

2. Hess landed in the wrong place in Scotland and thus got arrested before he could make contact with the anti-Churchill peace faction (WC was very unpopular at this time).

3. Hitler stopped his armour short of Dunkirk to allow the British army an escape, hoping this would bring about peace.

4. Hitler and Stalin fell out and attacked each other rather than keeping to the terms of their treaty (which involved partitioning the British Empire).

5. Japan attacked America thus bringing the US into the war.

6. Hitler decided to declare war on America thus bringing about American intervention in Europe.

So WC was able to ride to victory despite the poor performance of British armed forces and his own less than brilliant military strategy.

By the by, he also won an election in 1950 with fewer votes than the opposition a la Trump.

Further, he escaped blame for starting WWI despite the fact that he, more than anyone, tricked the British government into going ahead with a conflict that could still have been prevented.

8 shades of grey…

http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/ShowFeature.aspx?id=29

Do they need to be uniform colours? Why not use Napoleonic era pattern for more distinction:

UK - Red
F - Bleu
G - Black
A-H - White
R - Green
O - Yellow
I - Purple
U - Grey

Another factor is supply. One reason Siberia was so unattractive to Japan was that the territory was so poor it could not have supplied the occupying army - a logistical nightmare.

Its essentially the same reason Rome never made a concerted attempt to conquer Scotland; the cost of occupying it was way in excess of any benefit they may have derived.

At the other extreme it’s been pointed out that Axis and Allies as a pure “game” could just as easily be played on a chessboard.

The map is the thing more than anything else that draws me towards a game. If it doesn’t look like a real place I’m not going there. If it shows Vikings with horned helmets it goes straight back on the shelf.

Consider the game as having 4 power “Blocks”.

European Axis

USSR & Chinese Communists

Japanese Empire

Western Allies & Nationalist China

Any two of these blocks can be allied only in the sense that they have a common enemy; they cannot fight together or share territory. This is historical and solves the ambiguities mentioned above regarding the pact.

@Imperious:

US, UK (either board) French and Anzac units can attack, defend and move together.

This will destroy the game, promise

How exactly? I’m assuming the same is done for Germany/Italy/Vichy France etc.

I still think the game should ideally be a 4 player game, with the Western Allies + China as one “block”. Historically this was certainly the case after at least 1942.

On 1914 the borders of Poland and Bulgaria are incorrect, partly because they obviously based the map on Diplomacy rather than a real map of Europe in 1914.

Moscow being placed in Siberia is another howler from many of the earlier versions; though acceptable for some for game balance reasons. Personally I prefer to play on a map that looks something like the real world, though shrinking and expanding some areas is always needed - the curve of the earth means there is no definitive flat world map in any case. But China on the A&A global board does not bear any close comparison with a real map.

The Suez mistake was corrected for the 1914 game. But it’s amazing how many amateur map makers treat official A&A as gospel and repeat the same mistakes rather than researching their own history. Just where is Rio de Oro again? When did Brazil declare war?

I’ve even seen some purported WWII maps include such territories as Bangladesh & Pakistan! FYI New Delhi replaced Calcutta as the capital of British India in 1911.

Another thing I dislike is the Gibraltar territory. For the sake of having this in the game as a vital port a ridiculously large “bite” is usually taken out of Spain. I prefer that Gib is considered as a “Treaty Port”; that is the UK/Allies have use of Gibraltar as a port but it is considered part of neutral Spain. In order to attack Gibraltar the Axis have to conquer Spain itself in which case the port becomes Axis controlled as part of that tt.

Japan attacking Moscow from the east is the single thing that does most to kill the feel of A&A being a WWII game - it sets events in an alternative reality in which Japan risked war with America without securing their backdoor with a Soviet non-aggression pact, and in which Stalin would get involved in fighting Japan before the German war was won. If you want a Pacific war, and Russia having a chance of surviving, then some form of Russo-Japanese pact is a must.

Hard to credit that Stalin refused to believe the Germans were preparing to attack. He insisted it was just a ruse by Churchill to get Russia into the war.