Free French Mod and BEF Mod

Hey guys,  I laid out some rules to make France a more viable power, with an income and some viable strategic moves (that hopefully could be used in lieu of using the bid).  lots of people laid out various ideas that contributed to this so I’d enjoy some feedback and hope that this could be used to make the game more interesting without any major changes, I have extensive notes on the dynamics here but here are the two rulesets, they are meant to be very easy to integrate and not change the piece or combat rules in any way.  The two mods were meant to be used together, but that’s not required.

BEF (British Expeditionary Force Mod)

The BEF is expanded and mobile.  Choose one of the following:

1. Place the Armor and Artillery that was in Paris on West India or London OR
2. Take 2 Armor and 2 Artillery.  Place these four units in any combination in Paris, Southern France, or Western France.
3. In lieu of the expanded BEF, leave the Armor and Artillery where they are.  Place one French Transport wherever there is a French warship or off New Caledonia (SZ 93, SZ 102, SZ 110).

Free France Mod (Thanks to the group for inspiring this idea)

After Paris falls, France has no IPCs.    On France’s turn, if though it does not have a capital, it still collects income (starting with 15 (of 19) and usually going down to 8 by turn 3 or 4)

Without its capital, France does not purchase units as a normal country.  It may purchase only four units; Infantry, Cruiser, Destroyer, Transport.  These units represent the Free French and Free Polish, Norwegian, Danish and other naval forces coming together to fight alongside the Allies.

Infantry may be placed as only as follows,

1. not on a newly captured or recaptured territory, must have been French at beginning of FR turn.
2. one per listed region per turn.

Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia)
Sub-saharan Africa (FWA, FCA, FEA)
French Indochina
Madagascar
Southern France
Western France
New Hebrides
Syria
Madagascar

Ships must be placed in one of the following sea zones

1. Adjacent SZ to a French controlled territory
2. Only 1 per SZ per turn

Oran/Morocco;  SZ 91
Lorient/Normandy Bordeaux; SZ 105
Oran/FWA; SZ 87? maybe
New Hebrides/ SZ 53
Toulon/South France  SZ 93
Madagascar; SZ 72

1. If an ally or Free French liberate an originally French territory, it becomes French at all times.  Other Allies can no longer recapture French territory in order to get its income for themselves.
2. If France takes an Axis or Pro Allied territory, it gains the income.  (it can never place there however).
3. If Paris is liberated, France immediately gains the NO and places the units.
4. If Paris is liberated, it immediately returns to having all the rules of a normal power, as it did before, and cannot place in the colonies.  At this point, all of the French IPCs that were protected are now capable of being captured.

Thanks for the input guys, I made some adjustments and changes, and will republish a new version with some updates based on your suggestions as I integrate them.

BEF:  I agree that putting them in London is easy.  I think those two UK pieces on Paris are some of the fluffiest on the entire board, yet they are always killed on turn 1.    I wanted there to be a flexible choice;  keep the pieces in france and make taking france a bit harder (thus altering the basis of the G1 opener), or put some pieces somewhere else to keep them guessing.  This is different than a bid because part of the purpose is to make France a bit riskier to take, and to make a new reason for Germany/Italy to want to kill it quickly even though there are 4 UK units there.  Also, UK can counterattack Paris on UK1…

French Guiana;  a friend mentioned this; I added the concept that they can place naval units offshore.  However, I didn’t want to give the French the ability to place infantry there because I don’t want them to be able to simply walk to brazil and take it over.

New Hebrides; isn’t a territory.  New Caledonia is.  I wanted FIC and new Caledonia to be potential new places to put a small French thorn in Axis’ side

Cruiser vs Fighter;  Great point; 12 is pretty much their entire budget.  I didn’t think it was very apt to give them fighters, because armor, fighters and tacticals are bread and butter offensive units.  I wanted to make France more like China, where its choices are limited and it cannot build an attack stack in the same manner as a regular power.  If we permit the French to have fighters, we would have to come up with a different explanation of why they get them (not assorted naval forces but secret aircraft factories?) and they are extremely gamey (fighters do a lot.  adding them in means that I would choose them over anything else.  Id buy fighters wherever I was allowed to and send them on desperate defensives and sorties).

Part of my thinking here is that France already has 2 cruisers, which occasionally live.  This and the single fighter from UK would be their only “3” attacks, and then only during an amphib, and therefore be the only offensive contribution france could make.  I didn’t want to give the French the full range of choices because I like the idea of them remaining a nerfed power, but one that could raise a force of infantry and even transports, but not much more punch or mobility than that allows.

Thanks for the discussion and please continue.  Taam.