Topics created by Striker

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.
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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.
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Summary of new starting IPCs by power:
AH:26
RU:25
GE:31
FR:18
UK:18
OT:N/A
IT:12
US:20
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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

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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.)

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Numbers!

b5d02a1e-d6cd-4b34-831f-34fc9ca0ff07-image.png
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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.

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

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?

The main problem with the reinforcements mechanic is that of the “pinning” trick, whereby the attacker can send a single infantry to attack stack B in order to prevent units defending stack B from reinforcing stack A during that combat phase.

Possible solutions:

1. The defender always chooses the order in which battles are resolved;

2. An attack is not allowed against a force more than 3 times that of the attacker (in total units);

3. The defender is still allowed to reinforce even from tts under attack; this creates other problems, effectively giving the defender a “free retreat” option.

4. Fight all battles in a combat phase simultaneously by round, only allowing reinforcements from tts clear of enemy units.