Atlantic wall

Originally there was talk of including pillboxes in the Europe/global 40 games. I’m personally disappointed this didn’t happen. I feel it’s way too easy for the Allies to keep on invading coastal (German) territories. I mean, just think of a case like Dieppe. The Overlord invasion really needed to work right away, otherwise a following invasion would have had to wait for at least a year or perhaps longer. In A&A you can basically do it every single turn forcing the Axis to guard the coastline and to withhold substantial forces from the eastern front. I think pillboxes would have made for a great addition, in this respect. I’m considering adding those from the D-day game as a houserule. They’d work something like this:

Pillbox (Germany only):

Cost: 2
Attack:-
Defense: Each matching (regular) infantry unit defends on a 4 for the first round of combat against an amphibious assault.  
Move:-

Atlantic wall: Pillboxes may only be built in the following territories: Normandy/Bordeaux, Holland/Belgium, Denmark and Norway while under German control. No factory needs to be present in order to be allowed to construct them. If there is a factory present, any pillboxes built don’t count against the placement limit

Gradual construction: No more than two pillboxes may be built per territory per turn.

Pillboxes may not be chosen as casualties. When a territory is captured all pillboxes in it are automatically destroyed.

When a territory containing pillboxes is attacked both via land and by amphibious assault, the beach defenses are considered to have been outflanked and the pillboxes don’t contribute their first round bonus to matching infantry.

@The:

The Germans/Italians will just see the Brits and Americans build trannies and move units into coastal territories.

This would be their protection and if the Germans are able to build them everyone should. Wouldn’t the British have them as well they need to protect from a German Sealion so would the Italians from the North Africa campaign now made easier with the Mnr IC in SA. The Japanese would need them to protect from a American assualt on the Asian mainland. the Americans would need them for the KAF (http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=20191.0) and the ANZAC would need them from a Japanese invasion against Australia. Wait not everybody would need them the Chinese wouldn’t be allowed to build them and the French would have surrendered by their first turn.

Agreed on most points. However, the Germans were the only ones to construct a large scale defensive coastal network ( The Atlantic wall), unlike the other nations. Also, the Germans are the only ones to have the pillbox pieces in the first place (D-day, which I don’t play too often anymore. I feel it’s the weakest game in the A&A series, so I thought I might just as well inmplement them in A&AEurope/global40). Finally, I think the Germans  could use some help. A decent Russian player wont allow the Axis to push very far into Russia without sustaining severe losses and/or forcing them to build (costly) forward industrial complexes. Don’t forget that they’re limited to 2 per territory per turn and that they’re not free. If you buy them up to the maximum allowed per trun you’d be spending 16 IPCs per turn. That’s an aircraft carrier or two tanks and a mech or 5 infantry with one IPC left. I don’t feel they’d be overpowered. The reason why I think Germany needs them is also that the US is ready to invade on turn 4 (whereas they are supposed ot to be at war till then, but they’re fleet is usually already parked two sea zones off the European coats ready to invade… :?. It’d be better to force the US to stay in the sea zone bordering the Eastern seaboard until at war.