Blog: The grand Strategy Game.

Narvik

In this blog I compere the real WWII to a game of A&A.
In this blog one Round is 3 months. Rounds follow the seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall.
This blog start with the Fall-Round, that would be september 1. 1939 in the real war, and end after 24 rounds with a summer Round, that would be september 2. 1945 in the real war. This 24 Rounds represent 6 years and one day of war.

A&A is known to be a game of Grand Strategy, that involves both military, diplomatic and economic stuff. Each Turn is split in two, a diplomatic action between the players (National Leaders) in the Game Room and the military campaigns on the A&A 1940-map. To make it simple I just list the purchase, combat moves and non-combat moves. I skip Collect Income but might edit it in later, since it is complicated with GDP, military outlay, revenue from occupied territory that just was schorched, burned, bombed but also different and nation specific cost of units. USSR had cheap infantry but real expensive ships. USA had cheap ships but real expensive infantry. It’s complicated.

Since 9 players will make 24 Rounds, (=216 Turns) and each Turn is split in a Game Room post and a Map post, this Blog will be 432 posts long. Some posts will have a image, but don’t worry I scaled them down to 700 kB and also I will be a Gold member every year as long this Blog run.

What do an A&A unit represent? This question has intrigued the community since back in 1984 when the MB Classic game was made. There are no logical answer to that. In this Blog I keep it simple and abstract.
One Battleship unit is 100 000 tons of battleships, between 1 or 4 real life ships.
One Carrier unit is 60 000 tons of carriers with 200 aircrafts. It is impossible to combine CV-air with land based air so I keep them separate.
A Cruiser is 30 000 tons, a destroyer 20 000 tons, a sub is 20 000 tons, a Tranny 250 000 tons (that is what it takes to transport to land units of 100 000 men each across the Atlantic) and a Convoy is 100 000 tons of merchant shipping with a value of 1 IPC, just to have a number. This may change when I start working on the economy and Collect Income phase.

When purchased a FTR and TAC is 1000 aircrafts and a S.BMB is 500, but on the map this is reduced to 500, 400 and 250 because in the real war old planes were replaced by new ones continiously.

Land units are tricky, they are both men and stuff. An Infantry unit is 100 000 men and weapons, based on the average Division Slice of an average Triangular Division.

The Combat Arms (frontline soldiers) would be like 14 000 men (40 %), the Combat Support ( Artillery, Engineering, Signal, Securitsy etc) is 6000 men (20%), Service Supply (Logistic and Supply chain) is 7000 men (20%) and Service Support (Maintenance, Quartermaster, Paymaster, Transportation etc) is 8000 men (20%) for a total of 34 000 men with equipment.

Tank unit is 1000 Tanks of all sizes and 50 000 men. Artillery is funny because it belongs in the Infantry Division but in this game it is separated into its own unit, so I figure 3000 or 4000 art would make a decent unit. Same with Mech, usually in an Armoured Division, but for this Blog 100 000 men with veichles is a Mech unit. AA unit is 1000 AA guns. Fort unit is 50 000 crew +100 heavy guns in casemates. Blockhouse unit is 50 000 crew +1000 heavy machine guns in bunkers.

In the Pacific I used Convoy Disruption Rule OOB because Japan didn’t use convoys, but the Battle of Atlantic was very different, so I use the convoy rules from A&A Europe 1999 ed and also from the A&A North Africa convoy rule. As long as I use rules from the A&A univers I guess I can mix. After all, A&A is the game of House Rules. Larry Harris Tournament Rules is prof of that.

Please don’t clutter down this Blog. This Blog will raise a lot of intriguing historical cases to be discussed, but lets take that in the History part of this Forum. Next post will be the 1939 set up

Blog: The grand Strategy Game.

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