Fog of War

Active Nations:

USSR: 45 IPCs
Would include all starting USSR territories, plus the following:
Germany, Poland, Slovakia Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania

Western Europe (WE) : 23 IPCs

Portugal, Portuguese Guinea, Angola, Mozambique Holland Belgium, Suriname, Belgian Congo Greenland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway Northern Italy, Southern Italy, Sicily, Sardinia Turkey, Greece, Crete

So in E&W, a bit ahistorically (as the game is set in 1948) Greece and Turkey are part of WE, despite not joining NATO until 1952. For now I’m lumping them in here, but my other preference would be to have them as strict neutrals – more on that later.

Also in E&W, Greenland and Iceland are treated as US territories; since both are worth 0 IPCs on the Europe 1940 map, the only real important distinction is whether they are hostile or friendly, so I wanted to include them under WE instead.

UK: 31 IPCs
gains the following territories:
Italian Somaliland, Tobruk, Libya, Western Germany

UK loses Trans-Jordan, Egypt, Alexandria to the Arab League UK loses Iceland to WE

US: 38 IPCs
gains the following territories:
Greater Southern Germany

US loses Southeast Mexico to the OAS US loses Greenland to WE

Neutral Powers:

France (pro-NATO) : 16 IPCs

France loses Syria to the Arab League

What I’m proposing for France would be sort of a hybrid rule between the activation rules for pro-neutrals, and a house rule I proposed for China, in E&W.

Essentially how this works is that France would contribute income to WE, based on the IPC value of French territories containing NATO troops (WE, UK, or US) at the end of Western Europe’s turn. If France is attacked by the USSR, all French units and territories would convert to WE ownership.

The reason for doing this is primarily to keep France as part of NATO, without making WE so huge economically that they don’t need any help. Also, by weakening NATO a little bit in this way, I’m hoping to avoid needing to use the E&W rule whereby USSR gets infantry for 2 IPCs instead of 3 IPCs.

Organization of American States (OAS) : 9 IPCs
(Essentially, all of the neutral South American countries except Suriname, plus Southeast Mexico)
If the OAS is attacked by the USSR, all OAS units and territories would convert to US ownership.

Arab League: 8 IPCs
(Alexandria, Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia)
If the Arab League is attacked by the USSR, all Arab units and territories would convert to UK ownership.

…
So, in addition to possibly including a diplomacy mechanism similar to classic E&W, I was wanting to incorporate one of the house rules I had suggested for E&W and apply it to this scenario:

All remaining neutrals are considered “strict neutrals”
However:

The USSR may attack any neutral at any time. If the USSR attacks a strict neutral, rather than having ALL strict neutrals side with NATO (as in classic Europe 1940) instead NATO gets to shift either the OAS or Arab League one step on the diplomacy scale.

Now, if Greece and Turkey are kept as strict neutrals, rather than being part of WE, this rule could potentially have large consequences if/when the USSR chooses to attack them.

I was thinking instead of the classic E&W diplomacy scale, it’d make more sense to have it like -8/-6/-4/-2/0/+2/+4/+6/+8

Strict Neutrals:
Probably a good “hard and fast” rule would be that if attacked by the USSR, strict neutrals in Europe would join WE, while strict neutrals in Africa or the middle east would join UK; Rio De Oro would be considered part of Spain, for these purposes. If Turkey is neutral…? I’d probably consider them part of the middle east.

Europe: Eire, Spain / Rio De Oro, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland Africa: Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ethiopia Middle East: Northwest Persia, Persia, Eastern Persia, Afghanistan

What this all means:

Starting Income:
USSR: 45
NATO: 92

Maximum potential income, including neutrals:
USSR (plus Arab League, OAS*, and all strict neutrals) : 71
WE (plus France, and all strict neutrals in Europe) : 46
UK (plus Arab League, and all strict neutrals in Africa + Middle East) : 42
US (plus OAS*) : 46

*Assumes OAS income is capped at 8 rather than 9

@general-5-stars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq9hEmdJIno

@all-encompassing-goose thanks mate

One problem with 1914 is warfare on the western front. It usually just dissolves into two giant stacks going at it in one territory, and the allies win that battle 90% of the time because they can get units there faster. One reason this happens is because people aren’t aggressive enough. Also, its too easy for people to combine their forces because flanking maneuvers aren’t very deadly in Axis and Allies. So I would make on slight adjustment to the moving out of contested territories rules:
When a unit moves out of a contested territory they may not battle. They may still move into contested territories containing units belonging to their power, but they may only reinforce not battle there. Also, I was really intrigued by @Arreghas idea about contested territories. You can see his forum here: https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/34163/1914-contested-territories-an-interesting-tweak

If the CPs control Marseille and Constantinople and a chain of tts connecting them why not move Turks to Marseille? The Allies can make the same move in reverse by sea. It’s up to the Allies to block such moves. Remember you can never rail units into combat, only to reinforce contested tts.

The proposal is to counter the Allies domination of the seas, which they usually get after 2 or 3 turns, and means they can move troops virtually immediately to any front.

Yes, the actual combat in WWI was slow and static, but as I mentioned this came about precisely because they could move troops so quickly from the depots to the front lines by rail.

Requiring German infantry to “march” one tt at a time from Berlin to the front lines fatally cripples the CPs in OOB rules. The Allies can easily see where they’re heading and send troops there by sea. In my view rail movement is essential to balance this game.

You’re correct CWO marc, that was more or less exactly what I was suggesting.  :-D But its just a suggestion.

I find that a collaborative approach is generally stronger, than trying to strike off and develop a bunch of independent competing systems that are trying to achieve similar goals. House rules likewise are more fun when you get a couple houses trying the same thing to see how it plays out.  Forums communication is slow sometimes, since we have lives outside of A&A, but I’d trust YG to pull in the reigns, or excise the extraneous, if I’ve gone too far left field.

The main reason I think it’s cool to try and attach values to the standard deck, is that it’s very easy to tweak and test the advantages this way. So from a development standpoint, it is possible to test things right away before we plug in values and set the deck. Rather than drafting rules first and sending it out to the printers in China, only to find a week or two later, that it would be awesome to add something or tweak some aspect of it.

@Young:

Sorry for my absence here, I’m working on many different things at once.

My plan is to create a deck with 54 cards…

2 of each nation specific strategic advantage cards = 32 3 of each community specific strategic advantage cards = 15 1 of each nation specific progressive advantage cards = 7

If all this can be easily translated into a generic playing card deck, than all is good… However, my custom cards look much better than a regular deck.

Thanks for all the comments and interest in this idea, I will address all your post’s in detail soon.

Cheers.

Oh cool there’s the man! So with a 54 card deck planned that matches exactly a full deck including jokers! I expect also that the printers print with those numbers in mind for their boxing. This is a strong start because it means you’d have the same number of total fortunes cards as you have in a normal deck.

So picture this, to achieve a specific 1:1 card to card ratio, all you’d have to do is flag the joker… (You mark it with a felt pen on the face side.) Now you have 54 distinct cards, and you could match every card in your fortunes deck to a card in the flagged standard deck (both jokers in play.)

Now consider that all you would need at that point, to make the fortunes deck a standard deck (a deck that could function just like a real deck as well as a fortunes deck), is to include one small graphic in just one corner of the card!

It could be very small, and doesn’t need to be mirrored (not on two sides,  head and foot, just at one or the other.) Tiny as you like.

Envision a small K inside a Heart, or an A inside a spade, a 10 inside a diamond,  or a 2 inside a club. All small and tucked off to the lower right hand corner of the card.

These symbols would look badass anyway, like tiny war code designations!  :-D The sort of thing one might paint on the side of a bomber, or draft up in a patch. It could look cool and unassuming, but provide addition functionality, while retaining the overall aesthetic cohesiveness of a WW2 era Fortunes Deck. It could even provide a shorthand reference for the individual cards.

Manhattan Project = Suicide King, K inside the Diamond
Or things of that sort. For each card

You know like code hehe

It wouldn’t dominate the card aesthetically, it only needs to be large enough that it can be read by the player holding the card. This doesn’t seem like too tall an order, considering that this one minor addition of suit/number info, would expand the potential use of the deck considerably.

Think of all the things you could do with a standard deck of cards, one that had cool art and cool R&D bonus rules. It just seems fairly easy, so I thought I would make the case. Not only could you use it for R&D, but you could do R&D and anything else you can create with a full deck of playing cards. It just seems like an easy win on all counts.

And it would make testing the fortunes pretty easy.

There are only two conditions you need to meet for this to hold up in translation.

First: Uniform backs
If the backs of the cards in the fortune deck are not uniform,  then the fortunes deck could not function as a normal deck (even if they all have suits/numbers). However, a normal deck could still have the fortunes values translated onto it in that case. Going one direction fortunes translates to standard (but not the other way round unless the backs are uniform.)

Second: Each card is distinct.
No two cards in the fortunes deck are exactly alike. (Unless you want just 2, in which case you could use unflagged jokers.) This would make translation pretty simple. We could start playing with it tonight if wanted :)
Again you could translate one direction, but not the other unless all cards are distinct.

Anyhow, these are just suggestions, but I think it could be cool. I like the first edition Delta deck a lot. I’d play black jack with it or crazy 8s or poker, if I could!

Sounds interesting. How about just using “1 player/ turn” option, where if a player owns both UK and France, but none else, he can move with just those two in an attack? Not as extreme (or interesting), but a little more realistic in some ways.

U.S.A income schedule                                            Turn                        IPCs                          Balance                    #1                          30                              22                        #2                          30                              44                        #3                          40                              56        + NOs        #4                          50                              58        + NOs        #5                          60                              50        + NOs        #6                          70                              32        + NOs        #7                          84                              00        + NOs        #8                          52                              00        + NOs