Axis & Allies Global 1942(An alternative to Larry Harris's Global 1942)

[Karl7]

anything is better than Larry’s 1942 setup.  It made NO historical sense whatsoever.

[HeinzGuderian]

I hear you man!

[taamvan]

You made china into a beast holy crap!  Not much chance of taking it over now.  With no diplomacy the UK and Russia should send as much as they can to support it as early as possible, it doesn’t feel like Japan has any more than G42 to attack china with at least.  Its like 36-40 Chinese units as opposed to ~15 in the G42.  Without a MiC Japan cant really alter the balance in time, also the reshuffle of the navy, air and adding Japan troops to Burma doesn’t alter how much pressure Japan’s china $$ will be under starting C1.

Eliminating france doesn’t change much but having played G42 quite a bit, I would note that having the single blocker that goes after all the other allies has nearly foiled the most critical Japanese attack in the game for me.

Like your research ideas but shouldn’t Russia choose Heavy Bombers to deny it to the axis even though they cant really use it themselves?

Glad to see someone putting fresh ideas out there.

[HeinzGuderian]

Ya China is a lot stronger but the Japanese can still over power them quite quickly since the Chinese units are pretty spread out.  I’ve done a little play-testing of this set up and I find that it’s pretty balanced.  For Russia I would choose the Advanced Artillery cuz you can really boost your offensive capabilities.

[Ozymandiac]

You should probably state your goal: do you want to be able to enjoy a balanced game among friends, or do you want to spread this setup to the entire community?

Because people will only start playing this setup if it’s had a lot of feedback. If you want more (in depth) feedback on the setup you should think about setting up the pieces in TripleA, and post the setup as a savegame on the forums. No promises, but it will be easier for people to see what the board looks like and maybe try playing a couple of turns.

[Guymyer]

@Karl7:

anything is better than Larry’s 1942 setup.  It made NO historical sense whatsoever.

What’s wrong with Larry’s 1942 setup? My group tried it last weekend and had fun.

[Kreuzfeld]

The limiting of the techs to one nation makes it too gamy.

If I where russia, I would then take rockets, to prevent germany from taking rockets and killing me.
If I where germany, I would take Improved Shipyards, because, NO WAY i am letting usa have 15% discounts on ships, that would just end the game right there.
US is then either taking super subs, long range aircraft or, increased factory production, just to prevent japan from producing 4 units in each of the main land factories of japan.
japan will then take the one US didn’t take
and UK takes Warbond.

The long version is: US, UK and Japan gets something good, USSR gets something decent, and germany screwes over US.

Improved shipyardes for US from round 1 is just insane.

If you wanted to balance it, you could have each side get three techs, and they would get to chose which power would get them. but, the clinch is, the least important powers would chose first. Important is determined according to the scenario. What way, you can chose between getting a good tech, or getting it with an important nation. Improved shipyards is great with US or japan, not that good with USSR, italy or anzak.

as a suggestion:
Anzac(/china?)  chose first
Italy chose second
USSR Chose third
Japan chose fourth
UK chose fifth
Germany choose sixth
US choose seventh.

Different suggestion:
Anzac(/china?) chose first
Italy chose second
UK chose third
Japan chose fourth
USSR Chose fifth
Germany choose sixth
US choose seventh.

[HeinzGuderian]

Here’s the issue with not limiting the techs to one nation.  If I’m the US and I did get the Improved Shipyards tech I don’t want Japan to be able to pick it up as well and just cancel out my tech.  However I do kind of agree with you I’ll consider making changes.

[HeinzGuderian]

I should mention that I have a group of friends who are going to try playing this set up with me on the 11th of November so we’ll see how it goes.

[HeinzGuderian]

@Kreuzfeld:

The limiting of the techs to one nation makes it too gamy.

If I where russia, I would then take rockets, to prevent germany from taking rockets and killing me.
If I where germany, I would take Improved Shipyards, because, NO WAY i am letting usa have 15% discounts on ships, that would just end the game right there.
US is then either taking super subs, long range aircraft or, increased factory production, just to prevent japan from producing 4 units in each of the main land factories of japan.
japan will then take the one US didn’t take
and UK takes Warbond.

The long version is: US, UK and Japan gets something good, USSR gets something decent, and germany screwes over US.

Improved shipyardes for US from round 1 is just insane.

If you wanted to balance it, you could have each side get three techs, and they would get to chose which power would get them. but, the clinch is, the least important powers would chose first. Important is determined according to the scenario. What way, you can chose between getting a good tech, or getting it with an important nation. Improved shipyards is great with US or japan, not that good with USSR, italy or anzak.

as a suggestion:
Anzac(/china?)  chose first
Italy chose second
USSR Chose third
Japan chose fourth
UK chose fifth
Germany choose sixth
US choose seventh.

Different suggestion:
Anzac(/china?) chose first
Italy chose second
UK chose third
Japan chose fourth
USSR Chose fifth
Germany choose sixth
US choose seventh.

Okay Kreuzfeld I’ve made a few changes to the Research and Development Rules.  Please tell me what you think!

[WILD BILL]

Instead of giving a couple weapons development to each power from the start that would greatly effect the opening round, would you consider giving them a free break-thru on turn 2 and turn 3 according to the turn order to bring weapons in as the game goes on (Italy and Anz only get it on turn 2). So on R2 Russia gets a free break-thru and can either choose its weapon like you said, or you could have them roll a dice, then choose the weapon that corresponds to the roll from either chart (get two to pick from). You could eliminate weapon’s as they get taken, or allow overlap (up to you). �

You could still allow each power to buy development dice starting on the first turn and try to get a break-thru for 3 IPCs each.

[Kreuzfeld]

@HeinzGuderian:

Okay Kreuzfeld I’ve made a few changes to the Research and Development Rules.  Please tell me what you think!

Hi!

I like it.

I liked the idea behind the original idea too, it was just a little bit too exploitable. I like the decrease in cost from 5 to 3 ipc for the die. As wild bill have suggested, there are many ways of making the techrules, but it is important that the rules are not too complicated.

Great job in making a new scenario, I hope it works out into a well balanced game.

[WILD BILL]

I agree with Shadow about tech being a possible game breaker. The big thing about oob tech is you can invest heavily, but come out with nothing, or a lucky roll gives you the game (oob really sucks IMO). If you are going to mandate tech into the game though, then I would integrate it into the game over a couple turns, not from the start.

I think that if you give each power a break-thru to then roll for a tech, it levels the playing field some, because every power would get something (most get two), instead of one power gets the key to victory because of a lucky break-thru roll. With most powers getting two techs they should get something useful to their cause.

I also think that the entire tech chart should be open for each power, I’m just not too sure that they should be allowed to pick because that might be too much of an advantage. Considering that the allies will be getting more tech because they simply have more powers should also be looked at.

[CWO Marc]

The following would be too complicated for actual use in a game (because you’d need to differentiate and track too many things), but tech upgrades would be more realistic if they worked differently from the OOB rules in two ways.  On the plus side, they’d be more or less automatic for everyone: as the game progresses over the span representing 1939-1945 (a span during which technology progressed enormously), technology would evolve upward automatically (though not in identical areas for the various powers), without any need for research investments or dice rolls.  On the minus side, tech upgrades would only apply to the units bought after the upgrade, not to every unit already on the board.  It’s that minus factor which would make this idea too complicated for general use.

On the other hand, a managable variant (whch would make use of any special extra sculpts that players own from HBG or othere sources) would be to allow every power to automatically introduce at one or two pre-defined rounds of the game one or two special units with special abilities.  These units would not necessarily be the same for each power.  The use of different sculpts would solve the visual differentiation problem, and limiting the concept to just one or two special units per power (rather than, say, half-a-dozen tech upgrades) would prevent things from getting too complicated.  Players would have the option of buying these special units, but would not be obliged to do so.

[HeinzGuderian]

@CWO:

The following would be too complicated for actual use in a game (because you’d need to differentiate and track too many things), but tech upgrades would be more realistic if they worked differently from the OOB rules in two ways.  On the plus side, they’d be more or less automatic for everyone: as the game progresses over the span representing 1939-1945 (a span during which technology progressed enormously), technology would evolve upward automatically (though not in identical areas for the various powers), without any need for research investments or dice rolls.  On the minus side, tech upgrades would only apply to the units bought after the upgrade, not to every unit already on the board.  It’s that minus factor which would make this idea too complicated for general use.

On the other hand, a managable variant (whch would make use of any special extra sculpts that players own from HBG or othere sources) would be to allow every power to automatically introduce at one or two pre-defined rounds of the game one or two special units with special abilities.  These units would not necessarily be the same for each power.  The use of different sculpts would solve the visual differentiation problem, and limiting the concept to just one or two special units per power (rather than, say, half-a-dozen tech upgrades) would prevent things from getting too complicated.  Players would have the option of buying these special units, but would not be obliged to do so.

I really like your idea of ‘special units’.  Which special units would be most beneficial to Axis & Allies Global 1942, in your opinion?

[CWO Marc]

@HeinzGuderian:

I really like your idea of ‘special units’.  Which special units would be most beneficial to Axis & Allies Global 1942, in your opinion?

It would depend on individual player preferences, and on the availability of special sculpts, so I don’t have any specific recommendations to make.  Just to give an example: my A&A OOB sculpt collection includes (in Germany’s current black colour) some older-model Panther tanks (the pre-Battle of the Bulge type), some older-model small Stukas (dating back to when they were serving incorrectly as German fighters) and some older-model small 88mm AAA guns (dating back to when they were serving incorrectly as German field artillery).  If I were planning to use them as special units, I’d designate them respectively as the Jagdpanther tank destroyer, as the cannon-armed anti-tank version of the Stuka, and as the antitank gun (PAK) version of the 88mm AAA gun (FLAK).  This illustrates the concept of taking an existing sculpt and working backwards to invent a plausible special unit function for it.  But players could instead work in the other direction: think of a special unit function they’d like to use in the game, then try to find a sculpt on the market (such as at HBG) or in their collections that looks roughly right for the part.

One point to note is that, unlike the basic units that every power has access to under the OOB rules, the special units could be power-specific.  This could lead to some interesting battle dynamics.  For instance: while I would have prefered every nation in A&A 1941 to have its own sculpt models, I’m happy that the game designers choose the German Tiger and Russian IS-2 as the tank units for the Axis and Allies respectively.  The black Tiger and marroon IS-2 sculpts would work very nicely in 1942 or 1940 as special heavy tank units for the Germans and for the Soviets, since both the colours and the designs are appropriate for those countries.  Only Germany and the USSR would have special heavy tank unit available to them, which is more or less accurate historically because such tanks were rare or nonexistent for the other powers.  (Personally, I’d feel very strange using an American-green Soviet heavy tank or a Japanese-orange German heavy tank.)

On a related point, a way to combine practicality with diversity would be to develop quite a few of these special units for each power (assuming the right sculpts could be found), but to have the associated house rule state that each power can only use a maximum of two types in any given game.  Each player could choose which ones to use, but would have to limit himself to those ones.  This would save the players from having to keep track of too many combat performance statistics in any given game, while at the same time creating variety between games as different choices get made in each one.

[taamvan]

Here are some fun, not too playtested ideas I’ve been brainstorming.  Doesn’t add a ton of flexibility/flavor to the game (the existing unit set is pretty solid), but neither do cruisers, tac bombers etc,

Marines Cost 5 (US Japan? only)

1/2 Attack during amphibious invasions at 2, with artillery 3

Self Propelled Anti Tank Gun (SPATG) Cost 5

2/3 move 2, fires first strike on defense (one unit only), hitting armor first if it exists

Self Propelled Artillery Gun (SPAG) Cost 5

2/2 move 2, combos with mechs/inf as artillery

Escort Carrier Cost 11

0/2 move 2 takes only 1 hit carries only 1 plane

Attack Transports  (naval unit) Costs 10

1/1 move 2 carries 3 infantry blocks movement

Strategic Bomber Cost 13 (undercosted)

Cruiser Cost 11 (overcosted)

3/3 move 2 bombards at 3

Banzai Trooper Japan only Cost 4

1/2 move 1 sacrifice during the defense to make them first striking

Cossack Trooper USSR Japan Mongolia only Cost 3

1/1 move 2 can only be produced 1 per controlled “horseman” territory (eg Mongolia, Caucasus, Soviet Far East), place without factories directly on “horseman” territories

Armed Merchant (naval unit) Cost 6

1/1 move 2 carries 1 unit can amphib

Destroyer Cost 8  (Japan UK only?)

2/2 move 2 can carry 1 infantry cannot amphib

[HeinzGuderian]

Thanks for the input!  I like the suggestions that you and CWO Marc are putting forward, however, I think that they would make the game just a bit too complicated.  It would probably be feasible to give each world power a single special unit but not multiples.  Any suggestions as to the placement/number of units in my setup?

[Kreuzfeld]

@ShadowHAwk:

Invasion Tactics ( all inf attacks on 2 when attacking amfibious )
Rationale: once you do a lot of invasions you get better at it.

It really is easier to attack from a staging area on land, than off a boat. Invasions should never be eaiser than a regular attack. I would rather have the defender having first strike in regular invasions, but invasion tactics wil make the combat simulatious.

[Kreuzfeld]

@ShadowHAwk:

@Kreuzfeld:

@ShadowHAwk:

Invasion Tactics ( all inf attacks on 2 when attacking amfibious )
Rationale: once you do a lot of invasions you get better at it.

It really is easier to attack from a staging area on land, than off a boat. Invasions should never be eaiser than a regular attack. I would rather have the defender having first strike in regular invasions, but invasion tactics wil make the combat simulatious.

True it is harder, but you get better at it with proper coordination, ships will provide art support that is well better then what you can normaly get. If you coordinate it properly.

But otherwise most techs and special units are kinda weird.

I was just commenting on the fact that with this rule, inf attacking off ships attack with 2, while regular inf attack with 1……