@Rednalyn:
USA moves up before UK, so you get:
1. Germany
2. Soviet Union
3. United States
4. United Kingdom
5. Italy
6. France
This is a even worst turn order than in Global Alpha. It was enough bad in that game, but at least it has the virtue of preventing can openers against Japan. In E40, simply is unnecesary and pretty annoying: it doesn’t mean the all Axis-all Allies that someone want (I not) and yet it makes long delays for PBEM game. This single reason, the turn order, is enough to me to say that I’m not going to play the alpha series in all my life (the useless french turn is the bigger pain for PBEM games) why don’t let play USA+France togheter as it was good in OOB? On the other side, 3 consecutive big powers are more that I can play in a lone row, even 1 to 1 face to face
OOB was way superior in this particular issue: one big power + 1 or 2 minor powers consecutive … it cannot be another way, and to prevent can openers (not really needed because ANZAC before USA meant coordination issues that balanced the can opener), just the turn order for G40 should be:
1 Germany
2 USSR
3 Japan
4 UK
5 China
6 Italy
7 USA
8 ANZAC
9 France
Can opener solved (I’d put China before Japan but I can live this way), and PBEM game is not damaged