I would like to invite comment on a proposed House Rule. The rule has been proposed after a game in which the British and German forces built over 400 IPCs worth of naval units in Yugoslav and Egyptian Industrial Complexes including 5 Aircraft Carriers and 8 Battleships. The proposed rule is as follows:

1: Capital ships may only be placed at Major Industrial Complexes.

The proposed rule seeks to better balance the required abstraction of a casual war game, such as Axis and Allies, with the authentic recreation of war material production.

This rule is specifically targeting German, British, and ANZAC construction of Aircraft Carriers and Battleships at their captured, hastily built, or extremely new, respectively, Minor Industrial Complexes. The two most expensive and sizable ships in the war were not easy to reliably manufacture which is reflected in the relatively few shipyards which produced them in reality.

We don’t play tournament rules and use Alpha +3. We already have 1 House Rule in place using the Researcher rule from the 50th Anniversary edition.

I would appreciate your considered feedback.

Have to agree that this isn’t a smart play, you’re not capping out your existing industrial capacity, adding more is a loss of throughput.

For unintended concequences it would be hilarious if the Germans take it early and then, while they’re pushing Moscow, lose it to the Brits. However, when your strategy depends on your opponent being an idiot, you don’t have a strategy, you have a dream.

@andrewaagamer 1-2, you killed him and got permanent $5 bonus, 3-5 you failed nothing happens, 6 you failed and you have to remove 2 German Infantry and 2 German Armor.

@squirecam timing was everything. You could maximize your income by trying turn one but you also had to get Poland and France turn 1 so losing a 1/4 of your army would be problematic. You also had to make the attempt during the purchase units phase of the turn.

If it helps, remember this is an extremely abstracted war game. It doesn’t make any less sense that an army taking the same amount of time to travel from Paris to Berlin as Calcutta to Kunming or New York to San Francisco.

However, to everyone confident that this is completely fine and will never change, remember that Wall 'o Transports was canon for 2 decades before that garbage was finally addressed.

There is a question in the Q&A that approaches this but didn’t quite address my question. If US attacks SZ6 defended by 2 Destroyers and 1 Sub with 1 Destroyer, 4 planes (of any description) and 1 transport to amphibious, obviously they cannot ignore the subs because there are surface warships present. My question is that if kamikaze attacks succeed on the US destroyer,

1. As the rules state “the ship will not participate in the subsequent battle” have the planes lost the ability to hit the sub?
2. As this battle cannot be canceled at this point, does the sub get to roll in the first combat round since there is a transport present in the sea zone even if it can’t hit the attacking planes?

Thanks!

@taamvan Thank you for your response as it beautifully sums up the disconnect surrounding this issue. While I certainly can’t speak for anyone else, the arguments that I have advanced here and elsewhere, as well as many of the arguments I have seen over the years pertaining to the overly simplified retreat rule are not based in any way on their reasonableness or their lack thereof from a game balance perspective.

Axis & Allies is a re-creation of an event from our very recent history. It’s not Dune, it’s not Root, it’s not Twilight Imperium. It’s not just another board game that simply needs to be fun, interesting, and deep. Its appeal is that it is simultaneously extremely accessible and attempts to remain true to the spirit of accurately depicting the realities of the Second World War.

Ultimately, over the past 43 years, the game has changed multiple times resulting in a consistent increase of complexity while still remaining one of the most accessible wargames you’ll find. This is a damned challenging tightrope to walk and Larry Harris indeed deserves our gratitude and recognition.

This does not mean, however, that we are not to point out rules that need changing. From the perspective of a game designer one of the most reliable indications that a rule needs to be altered, changed, or tweaked is when it creates extremely non-intuitive gameplay and motivations. In an historical game it also needs to be considered if it is creating clearly anti-historical gameplay situations.

Yes, there are other facets of the game that would certainly fall under these umbrellas, and yes, this is a rule that has been part of the game for years and is a part of making the game relatively simple. But if we can keep track of the movement remaining on planes coming from 6 different territories to the same battle, we can keep track of which units came from which land territories.

@taamvan At least I now understand our fundamental difference. To me, original should be a concise 1 day game, Revised maybe 1 day. Global '40 should be a multi-week 20-30 hour game with its early starting position and rich ruleset regarding individual powers, national advantages, and neutral countries.

I personally prefer Columbus in June but I do hope you enjoy Atlanta.

@superbattleshipyamato when 2 armies approach an opponent from opposite directions, engage in battle, and then retreat, the opponent does not open his lines to allow one army to join the other in retreating in one direction

@arthur-bomber-harris The game is improved by people providing constructive criticism, as it was when transports were made defenseless, battleships stopped by sunk by the same amount of damage as a submarine or destroyer, and addressing the vast distances of Siberia and China dwarf those of Europe.

As I’m not addressing any kind of house rule, simply the flawed logic behind the existing rule in the game, this would seem to be the correct place to discuss it by default. Unfortunately, there is no separate “review” section of the forums to have this discussion.

@AndrewAAGamer thank you, as always, I appreciate it, one group was always going to be unhappy but at least I don’t have to hear it every week now.

Couldn’t find anything in a search or the FAQs clarifying this rule regarding legal movement for planes needing a legal landing place in a sea zone:

“but only if a carrier could be there for it to land on by the conclusion of the Mobilize New Units phase” p.14 Axis & Allies Global 1940 2nd edition

my group has a question about “could.”

One party contends that could means: a carrier has a legal path to the sea zone where the plane needs to land right now, regardless of how combat goes i.e. if the moving player has to win one or more naval battles to open a path for the carrier then you can’t make the air move

The other party holds that could means: if there is any possibility for a carrier to get there, even if combat results in the carrier having no path to the sea zone in the non-combat phase

Is there any ruling on this out there that we’ve just missed?

Have any of the designers ever commented on the reasoning for the Pacific being significantly smaller than it should be? For comparison

New York to Southampton, approx 3400 miles
4 sea zones
New York to Gibraltar, approx 3700 miles
3 sea zones

San Francisco to Tokyo, approx 5200 miles
4 sea zones
Oahu to Brisbane, approx 4700 miles
3 sea zones

Per the rules China can temporarily control Kwangtung if India is conquered. It seems pretty straightforward that China will collect the Kwangtung income in this scenario but I question:

“Chinese territories on the game board have a Nationalist Chinese emblem on them”

“New Chinese units can be mobilized on any
Chinese territory that is controlled by China”

Per these two sentences in the Chinese rules, China cannot build in Kwangtung under any circumstances because it has a British mark on the board, not a Kuomintang marker, right?

awesome, thanks!

"If the combat is occurring in a convoy sea zone containing transports
owned by the defender, they may not be taken as casualties until no
more escorting sea or air units remain in the combat. "

If attacker has submarines remaining but convoy escorts are down to only fighters the submarines would seem to stop firing until the defending fighters are destroyed at which point submarines can roll attacks against any remaining convoy targets.

This is inconsistent with previous rules regarding submarine hits to transports if there are no other legal targets:
“and hits can be assigned to transports only if there are no other eligible units.”
Axis & Allies Europe 1940 2nd Edition

Please confirm if I’m reading the rules correctly and if any insight into why the change

“Defending Ground Units reroll 9s & 10s”

Are AAA & Anti-Tank guns defending ground units and therefore re-roll 9s & 10s during Air Defense?

I know this is errata’d somewhere but for the life if me I can’t track it down. If UK gets War Bonds, us it 1 die split between the 2 economies however UK wishes or is it 1 die for Europe & 1 die for Pac?

@panther to clarify, landing the plane there would not take control of the territory, that would require NCM a ground unit?

@panther thanks Panther! It seemed unintentional but given the comically immense amount of coast Sea Zone 10 covers I couldn’t rule out part of Mexico touching 11.