• I’ve been playing this game for a long time now and I can’t for the life of me understand why the UK income is separated by Europe/Pacific. UK/Canada makes more sense to me, or just one total UKall income like every other power. It seems to balance the game out nicely if Japan can’t do an India crush.
    How would this work for 1940 2e vs. 1942? If you guys could try it and let me know I’d appreciate it. My gaming group is a bunch of old guys who fear change.


  • If you allowed UK to spend all of their money in India, the combined China + ANZAC + India could hold back any Japanese progress.  Meanwhile the US could focus 100% on the European side of the map.  To me, that would make the game deviate too much away from history.  Try it out and let us know if the game is more enjoyable or becomes a bit silly as India builds up a massive air force, combined with some cheap fodder, obliterate any land or sea units that are within striking distance.  I could easily see four planes a round being built in India.


  • Luckily for you, it’s not an original idea. Check the houserules section, especially topics by Young Grasshopper. Even better, PM him on this since he has probably experimented most with this idea. This might convince your buddies to try something else.


  • I guess I’m not looking for a house rule, I’m looking for a revision from Larry from the out of the box rules. At least an errata. I think it’s alot better than most other ideas.


  • @robbie358:

    I guess I’m not looking for a house rule, I’m looking for a revision from Larry from the out of the box rules. At least an errata. I think it’s alot better than most other ideas.

    Sometimes you’ve just got to play by your own rules.  :evil: By the way I quite like the idea.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    We have recently suggested a fun tweak that breaks UK/ANZAC into Dominion and Island.

    Anzac starts with 10 income.  Change Canada to Anzac Dominion Forces (replacing all tan units with grey)  Canada is worth 7 I believe, making the new Dominion team have 17 and reducing UK Atlantic… it loses these units, territory and income, reducing it to 21 (or 22 I forget).

    The other fun part about this re-tweak is that you could make it an “Allied Option”, so that they decide at the beginning of the game but after the allocation of the teams and bid determination whether to play “Dominion Forces” or “Classic OOB”


  • @taamvan:

    Change Canada to Anzac Dominion Forces

    “Commonwealth forces” or “Commonwealth Dominion forces” would be a better term.  Having Canada be part of an “ANZAC Dominion force” would imply that Canada is part of a political alliance that’s controlled or led by Australia and New Zealand.  The Commonwealth is a British creation, not a creation of Australia and New Zealand.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    Grammatical/Punctuation Correction:

    'Change possession of Canada to ANZAC; and deem them “Dominion Forces” ’

    largely because Dominion Forces sounds awesome.  Commonwealth sounds like a bunch of woosies.

    ANZAC is a euphemism, and it refers to the Australasian Army Corps in WW1 and the specific proper name of any aus + nz units/forces after that, which is not the name of any empire, state, country, entity, so the entire team and its name are even less accurate and realistic than my characterization, and despite the fact that the term Dominion is an anachronism when applied to 1940.  Not all forces associated with Australia and NZ were called ANZAC, such as the 5th Light Horse Brigade.

  • '17 '16

    @robbie358:

    I’ve been playing this game for a long time now and I can’t for the life of me understand why the UK income is separated by Europe/Pacific. UK/Canada makes more sense to me, or just one total UKall income like every other power. It seems to balance the game out nicely if Japan can’t do an India crush.
    How would this work for 1940 2e vs. 1942? If you guys could try it and let me know I’d appreciate it. My gaming group is a bunch of old guys who fear change.

    Well in 1942SE the UK can have a world-wide income because India and Australia are severely limited by how many units they can produce a turn… major factories in India would change that in 1940.  If you really want a world-wide UK economy in 1940, you could try putting some sort of production cap on India and/or ANZAC.

  • '18 '17 '16

    It would be much more accurate to call them Commonwealth Forces. Each nation is it’s own Dominion before becoming a nation. We used to celebrate Dominion Day in Canada, now we refer to it as Canada Day. Together the British Empire is known as the Commonwealth.

    When the U.K. declared war on Germany all of the Commonwealth nations declared war on Germany. That’s the law in the Commonwealth, when you attack one of us you attack all of us.The Queen of England is our head of state even to this day. All Commonwealth nations have an obligation to defend the Crown. Anyone who thinks we are “woosies” will find out pretty quick that they bit off much more than they can chew, lol.


  • @GeneralHandGrenade:

    It would be much more accurate to call them Commonwealth Forces. Each nation is it’s own Dominion before becoming a nation. We used to celebrate Dominion Day in Canada, now we refer to it as Canada Day. Together the British Empire is known as the Commonwealth.

    When the U.K. declared war on Germany all of the Commonwealth nations declared war on Germany. That’s the law in the Commonwealth, when you attack one of us you attack all of us.The Queen of England is our head of state even to this day. All Commonwealth nations have an obligation to defend the Crown. Anyone who thinks we are “woosies” will find out pretty quick that they bit off much more than they can chew, lol.

    Just a few historical/legal comments about the above.  Nation status, dominion status and full self-governance are actually three separate though interrelated concepts.  Canada, for instance, became both a nation and a dominion in 1867.  The six Commonwealth Dominions of Canada, Newfoundland, Eire, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand were granted full self-governamce under the 1931 Statute of Westminster (in part in recognition for their service in WWI).  All six dominions were automatically at war in 1914 when Britain declared war, but in 1939 as post-Statute independent self-governing dominions five of them (Eire was the exception; it stayed nominally neutral) declared war on their own.  They were under no legal obligation to defend the Crown from 1931 onward because they were now fully independent states; the fact that they recognized (and still recognize) the King or Queen of Great Britain as their head of state is largely symbolic, and is in no way a military obligation.  (If it were otherwise, Canada would have ended up at war with Argentina in 1982 when hostilities broke out between the UK and that country.)  And as was illustrated by Churchill’s famous wartime quote "…if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, " ‘This was their finest hour’ ", the British Empire and the British Commonwealth are not the same thing.  To put it crudely, the six Commonwealth nations were sometimes referred to in those days as the “white dominions”, the idea being roughly that if the population was primarily of European descent then it could be regarded as more or less an autonomous nation, whereas if the population was primarily non-European then it was simply a colonial/imperial possession.  But I quite agree about the non-woosieness (is that a word? I guess it is now) of the Commonwealth Dominions in WWII: Canada, for example, fielded very substantial numbers of troops in Europe in  the last year of the war – an entire army, or roughly a quarter-million men – and ended the war with one of the largest navies in the world (admittedly consisting mostly of escort vessels).

  • '17 '16

    @GeneralHandGrenade:

    Anyone who thinks we are “woosies” will find out pretty quick that they bit off much more than they can chew, lol.

    I’m fine with that… I think the US should send a million troops into Canada and see what happens!  :wink:

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    I would never denigrate their contribution as woos, its the name that’s a problem.

    Do you run in fear when Commonwealth troops land on your shores?  Are you worried that they will slaughter thousands in their quest to build iron bridges and institute strong social welfare systems?  That you might be mortally wounded only to be taken care of your enemies free government hospital?

    When the Dominion lands, you should be fearful.  That’s a name that commands some respect.  Just because you pointed out that rump Ireland was part of the Dominion im going to put 2 ANZAC (yes, ANZAC) giant infantry troops there to support the Dominion’s quest for Dominance.

  • '18 '17 '16

    Haha good one.

    My comment was meant that if a nation thought they were only attacking one other nation they would be unpleasantly surprised to find out that they were now at war with much more than that nation.

    @Marc. Even though there is not a legal requirement to go to war for the Commonwealth nations, there will always be a unified response on behalf of those nations. When WW2 broke out the french Canadians did not want to join because they didn’t feel the same responsibility to defend the Crown that the english Canadians did. After considerable debate they were convinced that it was in all of our best interests to join the war against the Nazis. It’s a good thing that they did too because the vandoos (22nd Regiment) are among our best units. Every once in awhile a right wing politician suggests that we should remove the Queen as our head of state but they don’t get very far because there is not much appetite for that in our country. After she dies though people probably won’t feel the same way about Prince Charles, we all kinda hope he abdicates in favour of Prince William but nobody’s holding their breath.


  • @GeneralHandGrenade:

    @Marc. Even though there is not a legal requirement to go to war for the Commonwealth nations, there will always be a unified response on behalf of those nations. When WW2 broke out the french Canadians did not want to join because they didn’t feel the same responsibility to defend the Crown that the english Canadians did. After considerable debate they were convinced that it was in all of our best interests to join the war against the Nazis. It’s a good thing that they did too because the vandoos (22nd Regiment) are among our best units. Every once in awhile a right wing politician suggests that we should remove the Queen as our head of state but they don’t get very far because there is not much appetite for that in our country. After she dies though people probably won’t feel the same way about Prince Charles, we all kinda hope he abdicates in favour of Prince William but nobody’s holding their breath.

    Frankly, I’m a little worried about whether the value of the Canadian dollar will be affected if it ever ends up carrying a portrait of King Charles III, and as a matter of fact I happen to be French-Canadian, though that has nothing to do with the fact that I have no strong pro-royalist (or for that matter no strong anti-royalist) feelings.  But at any rate, I don’t think the historical record supports the notion that “even though there is not a legal requirement to go to war for the Commonwealth nations, there will always be a unified response on behalf of those nations.”  As I pointed out in my previous post, Canada did not end up going to war against Argentina in 1982 when the Falklands War broke out, even though it involved the UK and a Commonwealth territory.  The UK has been embroiled in quite a few shooting wars since the end of WWII – some of them large affairs like the Iraq War that began in 2003, others smaller conflicts with decolonizing overtones – and I don’t recall Canada rushing in to stand at the side of Mother Britannia on every occasion.  Take for example the Iraq War, in which Great Britain was a major participant.  How many Commonwealth nations joined the UK in that conflict?  Precisely one: Australia.

  • '18 '17 '16

    In regards to Argentina, they didn’t need any help as they were an they had overwhelming forces to defeat their opponents in the Falklands. It would have been an embarrassment to them if anyone had to rush to their aid, and I don’t recall them requesting any help. As far as Iraq goes, the entire world outside of the U.S. knew that the Bush administration was trying to pull a fast one and Chretien, in his lame duck status as a P.M. told them to go pound salt. Even the British citizens were 95% against sending troops to Iraq, Blair only went with Bush to try and improve Britain’s status in the hierarchy of the E.U. and ended up looking like a fool for doing so. In hindsight now, all those who abstained from the coalition of the coerced have been vindicated for correctly calling Bush’s B.S.

    You can bet that if it were a necessity and if they were requested to defend the Crown in a justified war then Canada would show up ready to do just that. The status as a nation that we now enjoy is that we can make our own determination as to whether or not a war is justified or necessary. In Afghanistan we decided it was, in Iraq were decided it wasn’t.

    Queen Elizabeth is the only head of state that most Canadians have ever known and she means a great deal to most of them. You may be right about the dollar though. Charles is a tool.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    The Malvinas War was a pyrrhic win.    The political objectives were met, at the cost of losing several multimillion dollar modern warships with many more very nearly destroyed.  The land battles were fought without the full benefit of combined arms, which then required WW2 style tactics that caused WW2 like causalities, and several of the land battles were fought solely to meet timing objectives about British progress in the UN/public sphere.

    The British ships were shown to be virtually helpless in the face of even unguided bombs dropped from 2d-3d generation export fighters that cost 1/100th as much as a warship.  There was no more practical air defense from ships than in WW2.  If the Argentines had access to better fuses and a few more sea skimming missiles, the outcome would have been the loss of a dozen or more warships and a forced UK withdrawal.

    The Falklands may have been the last war fought by UK forces but primarily to foster an Imperial English agenda without regard to the costs of that to the Union or anyone else.  That English agenda has, 30 years later, made the UK a dying concept where Scotland is more attached to the EU than England, which is about to leave England as a rump country…

    Canada would have been unlikely to have any assets other than air refueling that would have been any less vulnerable than UK assets.  Canada has its own agendas, having contributed more overseas ‘peacekeeping’ troops and aid supplies to Afghanistan and other conflict areas in the 00s than any other relatively small nation.  Canada has always been inviting to refugees and the oppressed.  However, like Germany and France, it had little motive to be drawn into a US/England alliance of chaos so it has continued to quietly advance that agenda in wise correspondence to its actual strength and motives to do so.

    I admire your patriotism but from the point of view of an objective observer, there is no Crown left to defend.  England has long ago charged off on its own course to enhance its own prestige and resolve at the expense of its junior partners (the former empire) and to the benefit of its senior one (the US).  That’s what the “Special Relationship” is all about.

    And Canada may stand alone in its sentimentality about that, few of the other former British Empire/UK have any faith that England will ever do or act any different(ly).  England has always seen itself as a leader but having pompously acted that way since WW2, there is precious little left to lead.

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