Posts made by Striker

@thrasher1 said in Thoughts on the Scott Van Essen (Lead Developer for AAZ) Interviews:

@Striker

(1) Japan not strong enough…

Of course more game are needed to determine if this is really the case. What changes would you suggest? Maybe some more infantry units in Asia to start with?

Japans starting position is poor and with aggressive allied play they will be neutered before they even get a turn barring extremes of luck:

Russia can attack manchuria(with 2inf,1art,1fighter) and japan will lose/“Draw”(also lose it to zombies likely) > 9/10 times.

Britain can attack indochina(w/inf,art, fighter) and coastal fleet(w/ 2DDs, 1SS), japan will lose both the territory and the fleet 9/10 times.

Before Japan gets it’s first turn it’s lost a lot of assets. If it uses it’s Transports go to phillipines/the money islands instead of reinforcing coastal china, the Chinese will drive out the last mainland Japanese 8/10 times. Mainland Asia is literally half of the Japanese income.

Their remaining IJN naval strength is now more or less on parity with the UK+US fleet, and the US has a far superior economy.

I know history isn’t the games focus, but where Japan’s setup represents it’s december 1941, pre-pearl harbor state, it feels very weird for the allies to be doing the “first strike” to japan.

Possible changes?: Lets categorize them with either adding units, removing units, or changing rules. (All of these changes would be probably overkill, pick one or two.)

Adding units
-Add an infantry to both manchuria and FIC. This makes these risky 50/50 attacks at the least.

The coastal fleet Im not sure I would change, but I would maybe add a sub elsewhere so that Japan has subs to start with after the fleet is sunk.(preferably in range of the US BB to save a fighter on the attack.)

Removing units:
I would also considor removing a british destroyer, so that UK has to chose between committing its fighter to make an advantageous fleet attack OR an advantageous land attack.(Choices are good things!)

Rules:
Referencing the ooooold “No Russia turn one attack” balancing mechanism of axis and allies classic, perhaps a similar restricion could be placed on turn 1 for Russia/UK vs Japan so Japan can get it’s first strike.

Personal pick: Add a infantry to Manchuria to make Russia think twice about commiting it’s precious fighter to a 50/50 attack, and removing a british DD to make the UK player choose one advantageous attack, would be what I consider the bare minimum to make Japan into a more competent state. I would also still lean to adding another sub for Japan to use as a meatshield at pearl.

Haven’t been able to get people together for a game unfortunately. Most of my local gaming buds are stuck doing 60 hours/week of work and/or university recently, so I can’t make any new critiques with confidence yet. I’ll reiterate my 3 biggest concerns of the balance so far. The need for a slightly stronger Japan(every game see’s Japan struggle out of the gate so far), adjusting the decoy team card, and doing something about overly influential random technology.

@thrasher1 said in Thoughts on the Scott Van Essen (Lead Developer for AAZ) Interviews:

Interesting ideas.
Personally I would (for now) focus more on ‘fine-tuning’ some of the tech-cards. Reducing the power of some cards might be a good idea. Indeed, for instance: be more strict on when (and where) a card might be played. Some common sense approaches might do the job. Like ‘may only be played when you have units there’.

The problem with adjusting the techs themselves is that no matter what reasonable adjustments you make, some techs are still going to be MUCH more useful for certain countries then other.

IE: Any variation of Deadnapper convoys(transporting zombies) is always going to be useless for Russia, who is really hoping for zebra suits the entire game.

Really the two ground combat nations suffer from potentially getting worthless tech, where the other 3 can get at least some benefit from all of them.

Russia: Z.E.B.R.A suits >>>>>>>>>> everything else. Deadnapper and AIR dots are particularly useless.
Germany: Chainsaw tank>z4 explosive>Zebrasuits>>>>>>everything else.(even mind control, moving one zombie a turn is not really a big thing. Maybe change to move a dice worth of zombies of turn?)

The solution would best be adjusting the acquirement of techs themselves. Perhaps if a the random cards allowed you to reroll once for selection of tech.

Or next random idea #46.85: Everyone gets a free tech of choice turn 3*(or whatever number feels right)

I agree that overall the cards/techs are good. On the other end I think some cards are so game changing as to risk making making a player think “Why’d I spend an hour(or more) setting up and playing out a strategy only for one random card to effectively decide the game.”

The randomness reduces the effect of skill gap between players, which may be intended, but it can be frustrating. Frustration at randomness is not exclusive to experienced players, but to any player who is sitting down for a lengthy game.

If I was trying to reduce the “swinginess” of tech cards, I would either provide a non random way of getting tech, or perhaps more simply have each nation start off with one tech(either players choice or some pre-assigned tech that is useful but maybe not “the best” for current country.)

of the 4 games I’ve played I feel balance is tipped in favor of allies barring good axis card draws.
The most solid axis win was when Germany got chainsaw tanks before Russians got any useful techs.
The most solid allied win was when Russians got Zebra suits early while germany had no useful techs. (Try attacking multiple territories of 8 infantry and 8 zombies without chainsaw tanks or explosives!)
The allies, having 1 more player, also gets an advantage(3:2 odds…) in drawing one of the most game altering cards “decoy team”. This always gets used on the eastern front, even if drew by the US or JPN player, so germany has to deal with a lot of zombies on its east territories. (IMO this card should be erratad to only be usable in territories you own and/or adjacent.)

If, due to the drawing of a escalation card, two cards are drawn with both having the hidden supply cache bonus, do the cards “stack”? IE: Would it be be two dice rolls and two extra free units from each liberated zombie territory?
(This came up in a rather game deciding way last time, where russia had this happen and had 5(!) zombie territories within its reach giving a possible 15 free units! We rolled off on interpretation and went with did not stack, but still 10 units…)

Page 24: “move any units that did not…or participate in combat this turn.”, You did it correct, and there is no provision splitting units in a single territory into attacking/non attacking.

This sounds similar to subs, but subs are addressed with rules to say that they may move move to avoid combat during their combat move. As far as I know there is no equivalent to ground units. Page 15 says you can move out to escape combat.

42 is closer to even balance out OOB, and debatably a little quicker. It may be worth looking at that for the first game and try the more unique(compared standard games) 1941 scenario after.

Hello folks, I’m continuing my trend of creating alternate scenario’s to make A&A games quicker for face to face play. This is in part personally driven because most of my local players feel many A&A variants are about an hour too long. I’m pecking at most variants, but today I settled a modification for 1914.

1914 quick-mod
-Summary: Removes ottomamns/africa and modifies turn order to encourage quicker game especially, with multiplayer. Estimated to shave 1-2 hours off a 1914 game while maintaining the core experience.

-Balance was (attempted to be, play testing needed) maintained by examining the ratio of Axis/allied economy and TUV(Ground and sea), and maintaining those ratios fairly closely after mod. (See image at bottom)

Mod rules
-Mod is intended to be applied with the Official Tournament rules/setup as a base. (see http://www.harrisgamedesign.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=18335&sid=46c5a040ae6a0378950ae08747d6f942)
-In addition, apply the following changes.
-You may considor removing the “collapse/surrender” rules from the tournament setup, but I feel that defeats the purpose and I will be utilizing them still.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Setup changes:

-Remove units on from India and the continent of africa. Remove all ottoman units.
-All ottoman, African, and middle eastern territories+India are not part of the game and so do not give IPCs to any powers

Remove the following navies:
Russians in SZ 71
UK in SZ 19, 29

Remove the following units
Wales: 2 infantry
London: 2 infantry
Scotland: 1 infantry(empty)

-You may wish to simply fold the bottom third of 1914 map board underneath as with the exception of the two russian territories it is unused.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Summary of new starting IPCs by power:
AH:26
RU:25
GE:31
FR:18
UK:18
OT:N/A
IT:12
US:20
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Summary of timed events(including changes)

-UK gets bonus income of 2 multiplied by the turn number to a max of 10 IPCS(representing historical and typical standard game gains in africa/mideast and resources coming back to europe)
-Tanks buildable beginning turn 3
-US enters enters war and at beginning of turn 4

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Turn order changes(optional)

To encourage again quicker play (particulary in team games with 4-5 players), use this portion for an “axis go, allied go” game, allowing alliance players to perform all actions at once.

(In effect, every nation by russia is basically already doing this)

Turn order will be a 3 step process:

1)“special turn 0: Russia Only”
-Russia alone performs a turn.
2)- After this Russian turn, the turn order is now Axis powers.
3)- followed by all allied powers(including russia).

• All powers in an alliance build at same time, then perform there moves as a single turn, etc.
• However…
• To maintain balance in the combat phase, multinational attacks are still disallowed.
• To resolve these combats, attackers will perform their attacks one country at a time, using the order from the unmodified rules
  (Allies: Russia followed by France,UK, Italy, US)
  (Axis: Austria followed by Germany.)

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Numbers!

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

You asked so…

-It looks as if you interpreted two rules incorrectly which may have altered the outcome of the game significantly.

1)“Zombie attrition” Zombies only attack the territories of whoever’s turn it is. Looks like you had,for example, zombies attack norway every player turn, when it should have only happened on the german player’s turn.

2)Zombies always die on a regular hit plus the zombie special hit. IE an infantry can kill a zombie on a 1 or skull on any combat round if there is only zombies left, not just during the “spillover” round.

Playing another game with those corrections I’m sure you’ll find zombies easier to deal with, though still problematic.

-Other comments:

Based on my data point of 1 game so far where, short version, germany successfully conquered moscow and won…

Japan
-I agree Japan seems to be in an odd spot. Its fairly hampered by a number of things.
-1941 setup but Russia+Britain goes first…
-Somewhat lacking in units in asia, and with average luck on the russia/UK turns it’s only Asian territory will be just coastal china before it even has a turn, cutting off a lot of income. If it doesnt reinforce china it can lose it as well the american turn.
-Can only really influence the game by doing the tired siberian express as it’s historical objectives don’t matter much.

apocalypse
-I agree its a case of “simple does not equal good”. It might as well be called “alternative allied victory condition”

Zombie warfare
I think indirectly screwing over your opponents with zombies is the most fun/novel thing about this new iteration. A lot of unique strategies present themselves.

Current overall impressions:
Concept is great, zombies do add a unique and fun dimension to the game, but another pass at balancing the rules needed to be done and the game is somewhat let down due to that.

Short term, I’ll be houseruling my version to include victory cities so that Japan can achieve an axis win by completing the India/Australia/Hawaii triangle of influence. I’ll be keeping an eye out for slight changes in setup as well. I feel for Japan to be relevant against aggressive allied play their turn either needs to be changed to go first, or for a little extra units to be added in setup.(An 1-2 inf/art in asia and maybe a sub in the pacific would probably be all they need though).

I took another look at the house rules I’m considering, and hopefully will get a chance to test it out over the coming Christmas holidays. This mod is definitely intended for games with 4+ active players so that multiple people can be “active” at once and encourage a quicker, less downtime game.

If you only have 2 players, then of course use the the standard turn order.

My 2nd pass of writing it up has resulted with this. Rules/changes in bold, with discussion following.

-Start of game, the “one weird turn”: Russia and Britain take one simultaneous turn. Russia acts as normal. Britain only starts with 12 IPCs and can only move pieces from or into territories east of and including Persia. UK can only buy/place units on the pacific side of the board during this turn

-After this turn finishes, the turn order becomes: All axis powers followed by all allied powers

-The above change allows simultaneous turns while preserving the general flow of each theater and keeps the usual critical opening strikes intact.

Consequences and clarifications: A couple situations will pop up due to the changes.

1)Multinational attacks:
Still not allowed, instead if more than one nation attack a single territory, battles will be resolved one attacker at a time.

IE: If Russia, Britan and US all combat move to a single axis territory, the attacks happen one at a time. Russians fight untill they win/lose/retreat, followed by UK, followed by US. The allied player 2nd/3rd in line may decide to immediately retreat before dice are rolled if they don’t like the results of the previous players attack.

2. Can opening: No longer possible. Losing this “trick” is an acceptable loss IMO.(Personal taste: It’s very “gamey”)

3. Loss of landing planes/strait use. IE: US cant land planes on territory UK just conquered. In practicality, this is a minor nerf to allied KGF play.(landing planes in west europe. If there is an example of strait use that happens in a “typical” game I’m unaware). Is this a big enough deal to warrant additional changes? We will see. Easiest solution for balancing may be modifying the British “bid” introduced for first turn pacific spending.

Anything I missed?

My WIP: All members of an alliance move simutaneously.
(If I should have split the thread between here and mods, apologies. I was going to wait till I finalized something)

Goals:Each side goes as a single turn to reduce downtime/playtime and try to make as minimal adjustments as possible to keep balance intact.

-how it works:
(1) First turn of game goes as normal for Russia through Japan.
(Too much of the flow and balance depends on first turn openings to change this I think)

(2)After Japan, America does not get an individual turn. Instead, at the start of round 2 all allies move in a single turn followed by the axis.

Multinational combat behaves as before(not cooperative attacks, resolve one at a time according to old turn order)

Challenges of (2):
2a) Consequences of turn order. Russia still gets its 2nd turn before germany(good) and US is not getting 2 turns before the axis(good). However…
Britain. Britain is the challenge. Effectively getting two turns in the atlantic before Germany gets it’s 2nd is problematic. A 3rd change will be needed with (3)…
2b)Loss of can-opening. A niche competitive tactic for the most part in 1942. Minor nerf(?) to allies but I can live with that.

(3) Adjusting britain, the most finicky bit.
Best I can think here is:
-Britain’s turn one: Britain is only active on the pacific side of board. They can only move/fight/build units there. Britain’s starting money on turn 1 is (some number between 9-15)* IPCs.

*Britain needs to maintain the ability to reinforce India turn 1 if it wants, without effectively getting a bunch of extra income compared to base game to overwhelm germany. What exact number to use is up for debate

Change (3) Seems very arbitrary but is best I can think of for maintaining the balance/flow of the game.

Anything critical missing? Thoughts?

The group I get games with enjoys pulling out A&A occasionally, but the biggest downside mentioned about A&A is significant downtime between turns in a multiplayer(3+) face to face game.

I’ve been experimenting with creating a ruleset to have each side go all at once(so two turns per round) to decrease this (details below), though I am curious if other players have experimented with adjustments as well.

What did you try, and how well did it work? Was it based on all teammates going at once, or all players going?

Lazy way: Use the 1942 cards. Pull two(or 3) cards each time you would have pulled one card in AAZ. When you pull a card that has multiple territories contained within it(because global has more) randomly decide which territory the zombie goes in amongst those those that fit into the 1942 territory on the card.  (IE: Pull french indochina/thailand from the 1942 deck?  That has Malaya, french indochina and siam in it on the global board.  Roll a D6, 1-2 malaya ,3-4 FIC, 5-6 siam)

@zooooma:

Obviously the Zombies add rules.  The question is, what have they added those rules to?  And the answer is a simplified version of A&A.

You keep saying simplified, but i just explained its at least as much, and debatedly more, rules complexity to it than 1942.2.  Zombies,research,recruitment centers > cruisers,buildable ICs, AA.
Don’t mistake quicker to play(due to less units) for simplicity. Otherwise we can start calling 4 hour sessions of classic risk comparable to axis and allies.

Why do you think SBRs, new ICs, AAAs, etc were not included?

1. Because WotC thought this would improve the game for seasoned players?
   Or,
2. because they wanted a more newb friendly product?

possibly 3): They didn’t want to make a game more complex than 1942.2 and were trying to keep the overall experience broadly similar in rules complexity.

As for the complaint that the Pacific theatre is downplayed, that sounds like almost every A&A game I’ve ever played. It’s almost always KGF.  If you don’t like that, I (again) recommend using your Zombies as a 1942.2 expansion.  The base game was clearly not intended for those of us who want a deeper experience.  I’m surprised anybody here is even playing it, other than to get a feel for the new mechanics.

“accept it or walk away” is a terrible attitude.  Again, there is little reason better victory conditions couldn’t have been made to satisfy more experienced players without taking away from beginners.  You can convince yourself that it was only meant for newbies and that somehow excuses it for silly victory conditions.  I will believe that i had multiple audiences(looking for an alternate experience, or important for my play group,audience looking for slightly quicker experiences)

It is hard to bring IRL friends together for a 5+ hour 1942.2 game due to time free time being limited and heavily competed for for as an adult(Adding zombies to 1942.2 would make it even longer so it is not a good option).  3-4 hour sessions for a AAZ session may seem like only a slight difference, but it does get below what seems to be some sort of line. There’s been interest in my social circle here to play some AAZ over other variants, particularly after they ask “How long is this one” and I say it is a hour or so quicker than 1942.2.  Maybe in larger cities it’s easy easiar to find clubs with people interested in dedicating more time, but in smaller cities like mine in Sydney(nova scotia, not the Australian one!:P) you have to work with your social circle and what time they have available.

Reduced setup and territories yes, but I’d say the rules themselves are probably as equal to or more complex than 1942.2.  You lose the simplest naval unit in the game(cruisers), d6 based income loss with strategic bombing, aa guns and buyable ICs(though there are now recruitment centers in the game).  The addition of zombies I’d say easily outweighs the loss of a few niche rules/units.  Oh, and technology returns to AAZ.

There is a larger variety of events going on in a typical AAZ game round, but not necessarily larger quantity of things.  I think this a good thing in terms of game design.

And regardless of whether or not it’s considered purely an introduction game that doesn’t excuse lazy victory conditions/making the pacific an afterthought.  Its so out of tune with the rest of the rest of the game.

Even 1941 saw better than to make Moscow an instant win button. Even D-day had “hold multiple objectives to win”.

@zooooma:

Note this is an entry level game.� Deeper strategies should arise in A&A&Z: 1942.

I’ve always felt “entry level” is a poor excuse for poor scenario design.  Other board games of similar or less complexity to A&A (IE: many of the scenarios of memoir 44, catan, etc.) aren’t locked into an optimal strategy that seems counter-intuitive to history/reality/“fun”.  I had hope for zombies being a shorter to play version of 1942 but with near equal depth.  It comes close to that with smaller setup but still with a variety of units, but fails in the victory conditions.  Getting IRL games with friends is difficult more due to the time commitment then the complexity.

I understand sacrificing historical accuracy for fun’s sake, but JTDM/KGF are neither historical nor fun.
A player looks at Japan and picks them to play generally because they want to have a tense fight with air and navy in the pacific.  It’s disappointing when that’s a far less ideal strategy then optimizing a slog through Siberia.

There are a number of slight changes that could have been added to provide much better balance and opportunities for little added complexity. (If we can have an entire page’s worth of text throughout the rulebook dedicated to the intricacies of subs, can victory conditions be paragraph?)

Some suggestions:
Victory cities similar to 1942 SE, with emphasis that Japan can get enough non-russian cities to win as long as german keeps it’s important bits intact.
Dont want to bring VCs in full? Axis wins if India, Australia and Hawaii are captured and held for a turn.(The triangle of pacific influence for Japan.)

While yes, you can always “add a houserule”, games tend to get judged poorly when they require “fixing” from the players.

With Larry not involved I’m not sure we will see a revisions like previous games but I can hope some kind of tournament rules are released that get good support form the community.

/rant

@RogerCooper:

Some rules questions

1.  Do Zombies stop Blitz moves?

2.  If you are attacking zombies, does the 6 (zombie) roll count for kills as well as the usual roll?

3.  If the defender is destroyed and there are only attacking planes and zombies left, is there still 1 round of anti-zombie combat with just planes?

I would expect the answer to be yes for all of these, but the rules are a bit vague.

1.If the first move is into a zombie or opponent controlled territory, yes.
-Though a related question, does a tank attempting to move two spaces have to stop after the first movement if it goes into a friendly territory that contains a zombie?

2.Yes, both the “6”/zombie  and the usual to hit roll will kill them.

3. I also expect yes, but the rules don’t explicitly say yes to this.  The only reference I have found is it is 1 round is when initiating a combat against zombies with just planes.

-My own question:  I understand in an attack against a player controlled territory that contains zombies you can end combat and claim control as soon as the (living) defenders are dead.
What about attacking a zombie only controlled territory?    I assume you have to clear out the zombies before claiming said territory and getting the liberation bonus.  Though I can’t find an explicit reference in the rules though supporting that over,say, walking into a zombie only territory and claiming it without fighting.

Text is not searchable on the pdf :(