Posts made by theduke

what if we had the following 3 divisions of optional rules:

national units:
Russian t-34s
German type viis
British spitfires (possible conflict with fighter advantages?…see below)
Japanese infantry (rename)
us CVs

national tactics:
katyusha rockets (maybe)
German blitzkrieg
British intelligence (enigma decoder)
Japanese long lance torpedoes
us marines

national fighter advantages:
Russia: cheap planes through lend-lease (maybe cost 7 instead of 10?)
germany: fighters can perform strategic bombing
UK: spitfires defend +1 in capital. (if we do this then change the spitfire for another UK national unit)
Japan: kamikaze attack (special restrictions to portray it as a last resort)
US: +2 movement for P-51s (effectively starting with long rang aircraft… if we use this we should probably remove LRA from tech list. This would mean no other nations can improve their fighter range… did other nations even significantly improve range of aircraft after 1942?).

how does the lance effect japanese fighters? i read that long passage and didn’t catch where they talked about fighters. please just cut and paste the part that justifies the lance modification to japanese fighters.

What’s more well known, even among people who don’t know history that well? Kamikazes, banzai infantry or lance torpedoes. I think we can all agree it’s kamikazes. I think people will be more likely to raise a fuss if we omit kamikazes rather than lance torpedoes.
We can always modify kamikaze rules to portray any additional ideas we want to include, like Japan being desparate.

I think we still need some modifications to the national attack. As with the Russian tanks, I don’t think the the national unit and national attack should apply to he same unit/s. This is why I don’t think Japanese inf should be the unit and the attack. It’s effectively just double ‘counting’ for that warrior code advantage no matter how it’s justified. I still like kamikazes best even if that means they have to be redefined from what they are now.

Minor point, but we need to be sure to change London to UK in order to be consistent between capital and territory.

I think it’s important that the national units only apply to costs, defense and/or movement and not apply to attack in order to clarify its distinction with national attack advantages. This distinguishes Japanese Warrior Code (defense +1) from kamikazes (suicidal attack).

I also think it’s important how we present this set of rules to minimize the debate between other players that we went through while designing the rules. I think we should define the national units to symbolize that nation’s military production strength. By defining it as such I think people will agree that the units should be the Russian t-34, German type vii u-boats, UK spitfires, Japanese infantry, and US CVs. Some could argue that German Tiger tanks might also symbolize Germany’s strength, but since they don’t symbolize productive strength as well, the type vii subs are a better candidate.

As of now I prefer rockets for Russia, but we’ll have to redo how it’s presented so it has more of an attack advantage feel to it, if you know what I mean. IMO rockets are the best idea we have yet.

We will continue to disagree about allowing the nation’s unit advantage and attack advantage to apply to the same unit/s. I put in my 2 cents, that’s all I can do.

I really like the idea of limiting Russia’s adv. to 2 arm per turn, Germany’s to 1 cheap sub per IC where no surface unit is built, and UK’s to 1 cheap fighter in London per turn. For japan, i think inf is the best cheap unit. i think allowing 1 to defend at 3 for every yellow territory is a good idea.

From wikipedia on spitfire:
Another contemporary, the German Luftwaffe’s Messerschmitt Bf 109, was similar in attributes and performance to the Spitfire. Some advantages helped the Spitfires win many dog fights, with maneuverability the attribute most often quoted. Good cockpit visibility was probably a greater factor, as these early Bf 109s had narrow, paneled heavily framed cockpit windows. Where possible, Spitfires were assigned the task of taking on the Bf 109Es, while the Hurricanes intercepted the bombers. Nonetheless, seven of every ten German planes destroyed during the Battle of Britain were shot down by Hurricane pilots.

Even though the Hurricane seemed to perform better, for some reason the Spitfire is the symbol of the British resistance in the Battle of Britain and is better well known. This might be because the spitfire is the ‘most beautiful’ plane ever made.

So we haven’t sorted out how to model convoy at sea yet.
But these two should be easy and less controversial.

1. Isolation
(When Russian cities when surrounded by German forces, all they have and can raise is infantry.)
When an inland territory is completed surrounded by hostile territories it may not transport IPC outside nor spend IPC from outside. Unspent IPCs are forfeited.

2. Interruption of production
(Fighting were not done at  US homeland in WWII. US production goes uninterrupted.)
Collect one less IPC from each of your territories attacked by enemies since your last turn.

Do we need this russian isolation rule? I don’t think so, because when they are surrounded they should buy mostly inf anyway. the purchasing costs already take care of this, we don’t need an explicit rule here IMO.

What about territories surrounded by SZs and territories? I think this “surrounded by hostiles” idea could be a good start but needs to be fine tuned.

What’s with this uninterrupted US production? How is the game affected with/without fighting on US soil?

I don’t like automatically subtracting 1 no matter the size of the attacking force. Attacker could possibly exploit this. This could be a good start though.

I’ll try to avoid +1 modifiers whenever possible so I wouldn’t nec. say  I’m for +1 rtl.

I’m not totally attached to DDs. I like spitfires also. I just don’t want unit for UK and Japan to both be fighters.

I like marines better than mech infantry.

I don’t like a nation’s unit and attack to benefit the same unit. example: russia with tanks. key is to diversify advantages to stimulate variety of purchases whenever possible.

Does SS stand for sub??

There’s a lot more that I personally debate with than just UK unit.

Why does Russia have strong tanks? Their tanks weren’t stronger, just much cheaper when mass produced. Give Russia Katyusha Rockets. More rockets but less accurate and used together to create shock effect. So we could somehow let the advantage be better the more rtl there are in a single battle (ideas?). Since they were important more in the star of the battle than the end, we could have it so they roll 3 1’s in the first round of an attack (include advantage on defense?).

I’m still not on board with the other attack advantages.

How about enemy with nearest capital to neutral gets to defend it with 3 inf and gets to sum the roll of 2 dice to determine the number of IPCs that can be spent on non-inf units. Only neutrals on the board are swiss, sweds, spain, turkey, Venezuela, Argentina. I think this will give a realistic distribution of units per neutral while still leaving enough up to chance.

historically rockets weren’t that good. too many of them missed their target  for one reason or another. this is why rockets should be just a minor advantage and therefore a ‘cheap’ tech. IMO it should be 1) rockets 2) nuclear missile (not actually made during wwii, but possible)

remember that playtesting for revised came back with the conclusion that heavy rtl was ‘too good’ (meaning too powerful). why have a powerful tech as a ‘cheap’ stage 1 tech? mech inf might be weak enough to just switch them.

super dreads are too weak to be a stage 2 tech. rolling 2 dice is real good, but no one will ever have more than 3 of them on the board at 1 time, let alone using all 3 in battle every time.

IMO these techs need some work. :-D

Too powerful was #1 on my list. If I had a list it would be:

1. too powerful so everyone should go for it

2. not realistic… when bombs dropped on Japan how many infantry units died? how many tanks and fighters destroyed? …exactly

3. makes techs even more unbalanced among each other

4. not dependent on heavy bombers. can medium bombers carry that much weight?

5. why is it dependent on an IC being down below if it kills all units?

how about we can only build ICs on territories with an income of 3 or more?
would that be more realistic?

how about if ICs cost more to build in territories with fewer IPCs and/or VCPs?

Apparently. In terms of all the things that are wrong with that rule, that’s probably 1 of the less important wrong things.

Realistically, no new ICs were built… at least not on the scale as represented by what can be done by an IC unit vs. no IC unit. So, I guess we’re not going to have any new ICs at all.

I think you’re overly simplifying the issue of cost while over complicating the issue of resources.

If you found any info on IC costs could you post it? I’d be more than happy to look it over.

So do you want to ignore the greater amount of manpower that goes into building an IC at a heavily populated area vs. in a rural part of the world?

Looks like great minds think alike… the original A&A game had 1 national unit per nation too (they called them special forces). Funny, they called an IC a special unit  :lol: I think giving UK infantry as the special unit is probably just cause they didn’t want to give them fighters cause they thought fighters were better for Japan and didn’t want the same unit type for 2 different nations (just my guess).

The following are interesting rules from the Nova version of Axis and Allies (found at http://www.kw.igs.net/~tacit/aanda/origins.htm#Original)

What follows next is a very short summary of the article mentioned above. Lee sent me a copy from the magazine, a copy of one page from the original rule book and a photocopy of the part of the map that had the ‘technology’ legend.

First the Map and the Technology. Originally the map is a bit more strategic than the 2nd edition MB version. I only see a part of the Indian Ocean but there are at least five differences here. The Red Sea and Arabian seas are distinct. The French Indochina-Burma territory is split with Siam worth 100 (= 1 IPC). The Sea Zone beside Siam does not touch Burma and India has its own Sea Zone too. Madagascar has no worth. One big Sea Zone in the middle of the Indian Ocean instead of the two surrounding the compass (MB version). Also Italian East Africa (1 IPC) was separate from British East Africa (separate from yet another new province -Tanzania maybe).

The Technology:
1 Jet Power - Ftrs defend 1 thru 5.
2 Rockets - One free Strategic Bombing attack per turn on one enemy Ind.Complex up to 2 provinces away from friendly AA.
3 Super Sub - Defends 1-3
4 Long Range - Add 2 to all aircraft range
5 Fifth Column - Many enter any one neutral per turn at no cost
6 Atomic Bomb - One Strategic Bombing attack per turn destroys everything in enemy province.

(A bit different there ! 5th Column does little for me personally but the ABomb - ouch)

From the rule book.

14.1.3 Jets are not effected by enemy AAguns!

This is from the rule book and deals with Special Forces something left out of the game when moved to MB. (I will omit extra characters and summarize to save space :)

14.2 Special Forces - Each player is given one type of special forces to simulate his branch of the military that was most highly developed, or exhibited unusual characteristics.

14.2.1 Movement of Industry - Soviet player may move one of his Ind.Complex units each turn at a rate of 1 movement point. (nothing on moving and production simultaneously)

14.2.2 The Panzerkorps - German player may designate one of his armour as SS Panzerkorps during each of his player-turns. May designate any Armour as SS at beginning of the turn. Attacks at 1-4 and defends at 1-5.

14.2.3 Home Guard - UK player Infantry on the United Kingdom territory defend at 1-3.

14.2.4 Kamikaze - Japan player may move one Ftr per turn its full movement allowance and attacks at 1-4. Whether it survived the attack or not it is eliminated.

14.2.5 Marines - US player can designate all Infantry units (beginning of the turn) in one amphibious assault as Marines. Attack at 1-2.

Lee asked me to post this if I posted the above rules.

Rules by Larry Harris and Joe Angiolillo. Provided by Lee Enderlin and the Wednesday Night Fights Wargame Club of Connecticut.

http://www.kw.igs.net/~tacit/aanda/origins.htm#Original

Atomic Bomb - One Strategic Bombing attack per turn destroys everything in enemy province.

I don’t know if players will want to keep track of the number of rounds of combat. I don’t think keeping track of whether there has been 3 or 4 rounds of combat for every battle is worth the added realism.