This house rule was designed by myself independent of any other source and was made in the 1980s when I played A & A Classic and designed my own variant I term ‘Allies and Enemies’. The rule is as follows; During a develop weapons phase a player mat attempt to develop an atomic bomb. A player must pay 30 PFs for every die roll that is attempted. A roll of a 6 on a D6 roll gives the player nuclear capability (needless to say the die roll must be clearly random). Additionally, the second time (a subsequent turn) a player pays 30 PFs to attempt to develop an atomic bomb the die roll to be successful becomes a 5 or 6 on a D6 roll. For each subsequent attempt of 30 PFs the die roll to be successful decreases by one number so that on the sixth attempt research for an atomic bomb is automatically successful. On the turn that an Atomic bomb is successfully developed that player may buy them at the purchase units phase for 5 PFs for each Atomic Bomb. Atomic Bombs may only be delivered to the target space by Bomber aircraft ( 1 atomic bomb per bomber) or by a Rocket (if house rules allow). The effects of an Atomic Bomb are 1) destroys all units in the target space (either land or sea) and 2) permanently (for the rest of the game) reduces the PF value of the land space targeted by 1 PF (0 being the minimum value) for each Atomic bomb dropped.
Atomic bomb rule
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Get commando’s or spy’s to destroy your enemys A-bomb. Or you use them to destroy any Tech that a country has. You have the opportunity to kill the Spy and if he lives then the Spy rolls a dice to see if he destroys the Tech. Either way.
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Hey, there’s another idea…unstable A-Bombs.
There could also be the reverse concept: dud A-bombs. When an A-bomb is dropped on its intended target, there could be (for example, based on rolling single dice) one chance out of six that it will fail to explode properly.
You could even combine the dud idea with the spy idea which was just proposed: a spy might get a chance to detonate an enemy A-bomb prematurely, but the player whose bomb is targeted could then do a “saving throw” dice roll representing a 20% (or whatever) chance that the spy-detonated bomb will be a dud.
The U.S. didn’t bother testing their single uranium-based Little Boy bomb because they knew that it would work, but they did test a prototype plutonium bomb about a month before the Fat Man bomb was dropped on Nagasaki because its implosion-based mechanism was much more tricky than the Little Boy gun-type mechanism – so they weren’t absolutely sure it would work. (The little-known Thin Man bomb design – which was an attempt to use a gun-type mechanism for a plutonium bomb – was abandoned when it was determined that, unless certain problems could be overcome, it would fizzle rather than produce a nuclear explosion…and that even if it did work, it would yield a less efficient nuclear blast than an implosion-based plutonium bomb.)
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I like all these ideas. What about the effects of a successful Atom Bomb attack on an enemy territory? What damage will it do? I can think of no other result than ‘destroy all enemy units and facilities in that territory’ and that means everything! Probably too much though… what do you reckon?
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I agree that it’s too much because a territory represents a space the size of a state or province or country. Military units in such a space are spread out, not bunched together in a city-sized area, which is the most that a fission bomb could destroy.
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@SS:
Get commando’s or spy’s to destroy your enemys A-bomb. Or you use them to destroy any Tech that a country has. You have the opportunity to kill the Spy and if he lives then the Spy rolls a dice to see if he destroys the Tech. Either way.
Or, use your spy to steal the tech. Say the US develops Jet Fighters, perhaps Germany could send in a spy to steal that technology for themselves. Not sure how you would employ spies in this game. Should they cost less or more than research dice? It seems to me like it would probably be less. A country would spend millions in researching a certain technology. I don’t think it would cost as much in training a spy and maintaining the network you would need to be able to contact the spy and pull him out once his mission is accomplished or his cover is blown. You would also have to allow for counter-intelligence operations of the nation that developed the technology. They should be able to possibly catch the spy and imprison/execute him. Better yet, they could feed him mis-information which would further stymie the enemy nation’s attempt at getting that technology.
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Or, use your spy to steal the tech. Say the US develops Jet Fighters, perhaps Germany could send in a spy to steal that technology for themselves.
The Soviet atomic espionnage activities connected with the Manhattan Project (see the Wikipedia article on Arthur Aleksandrovich Adams, for instance) are an example of this sort of thing.
You would also have to allow for counter-intelligence operations of the nation that developed the technology. They should be able to possibly catch the spy and imprison/execute him. Better yet, they could feed him mis-information which would further stymie the enemy nation’s attempt at getting that technology.
They might even feed him designs for unstable (or dud) A-bombs of the type that have just been discussed.
All of these ideas are opening up all kinds of possibilities for complication and unpredictability – which is a good thing because it provides a solution to the problem which some people have raised: the argument that as soon as you develop the A-bomb tech, the game is as good as over. With the introduction of these additional factors and counter-factors, the A-bomb tech would no longer be a surefire way to victory.
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Commandos ( spy’s ) cost 8 icp’s, attack at 2, defend at 2 against any kind of ground troop and planes while moving 6 spaces. They have to attack a factory to get rid of a tech. Factory gets to roll 1 die and if it rolls a 1, the spy is killed. If the spy lives, it gets to roll 1 die and a roll of 1 gets to destroy the tech.(or maybe they could just steal the tech and use for there country). This happens once a turn. It be something to think about using when you play with alot of techs in your games.
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So its changed into spy rules……cool :-D
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@CWO:
All of these ideas are opening up all kinds of possibilities for complication and unpredictability – which is a good thing because it provides a solution to the problem which some people have raised: the argument that as soon as you develop the A-bomb tech, the game is as good as over. With the introduction of these additional factors and counter-factors, the A-bomb tech would no longer be a surefire way to victory.
That’s a good thing. I don’t think there should be any type of weapon or tech that would almost guarantee victory. That would make the game boring pretty fast.
@SS:If the spy lives, it gets to roll 1 die and a roll of 1 gets to destroy the tech.(or maybe they could just steal the tech and use for there country). This happens once a turn. It be something to think about using when you play with alot of techs in your games.
Perhaps on a roll of 1, the spy destroys the tech and on a roll of 2, they manage to steal the tech for their country. Question: If the spy steals the tech, would the original country be without the tech or would both countries now have it? Perhaps you could expand it to on a roll of 3, the spy steals the tech for his own country AND manages to destroy it for the enemy country. So it might go like this:
Country A develops Jet Fighters. Country B sends a spy to try and obtain or destroy it. Assuming the spy evades counter-intelligence, the dice would roll as follows:
Roll of 1 = Spy destroys the tech so nobody has it.
Roll of 2 = Spy steals the tech so now Country A and Country B have Jet FIghters.
Roll of 3 = Spy steals the tech and destroys it at the same time. So now Country A has NO tech and Country B has Jet FIghters.
I guess rolls of 4, 5 and 6 would simply have no affect, unless you wanted to give the spy 2 chances like so:
Roll of 1 or 4 = destroy tech
Roll of 2 or 5 = Steal tech
Roll of 3 or 6 = Steals and destroys tech.
Perhaps that would be too much? Maybe it would be better to have the possibility of the spy’s mission simply failing even though he does survive to try again next round if not caught. -
Perhaps that would be too much? Maybe it would be better to have the possibility of the spy’s mission simply failing even though he does survive to try again next round if not caught.
Or he could fail and not survive. A spy trying, for example, to steal a plutonium core (the hardest part of making an A-bomb is getting enough fissile material) could fail and die by: a) being shot (or captured and executed) in the attempt (since security would be ultra-tight for something that valuable) or b) dying of radiation poisoning if he mishandles the task.
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I think that would be to strong for a spy. Maybe have a roll where he needs to roll a 1 than can roll another die and gets 1 or 2 then gets tech or steals but other country keeps. It’ll have to be tested.
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1= Destroys Tech
2= Gains Tech
3= Destroys and gains tech
4,5= Dies, remove Spy unit
6= Nothing -
I think number 3 is to strong.
1= destroys tech
2= gains tech
3= nothing
4= dies
5= nothing
6= dies -
@SS:
I think number 3 is to strong.
1= destroys tech
2= gains tech
3= nothing
4= dies
5= nothing
6= diesOk, this is good.
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I think this makes the most sense if you want to add a house rule for A-bombs (because historically, they were used in the war). They can only be dropped on enemy cities and by bomber, rolling a 5 or lower to effectively destroy the city - not because you could miss but because this new tech might fail. Each city destroyed reduces the number of Victory Cities needed to win the game by one. Mark the destroyed city with the black side of a round marker. Such a rare weapon would only be used to demoralize the enemy, with the goal of surrender.
It would only become possible to discover A-bomb tech starting on turn 5. If you score a research breakthrough and then roll one of the same breakthroughs you rolled in a previous turn, roll again as normal. If on the re-roll you again get one of the same ones you already have, you could choose not to re-roll again but instead discover the A-bomb. That player could then drop one A-bomb per turn (assuming you have a bomber in range of a target city).
This keeps it simple. If this particular house rule has already been devised, sorry, I just got AA50 for the first time, never played any version before.
@CWO:
An Atomic Bomb destroys a city, not a whole country.
This is a good point. One kind of house rule for A-bombs which would substantially affect the game would be to modify the victory conditions, which at the moment only deal with capturing and holding victory cities, to allow for the nuclear destruction of a victory city. I don’t know how this could be translated into victory conditions or player objectives – players who are interested in using A-bombs would have to decide that for themselves – but it’s an idea that might be worth exploring.
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I like it, but I think 10 turns is too late, as one side or the other will have achieved a clear victory by that point (even if the game isn’t over). I think mid-to-late game, maybe around turn 7 would be a better time to introduce the bomb. I also think that the bomb should cost 40 IPCs, must be carried in a strategic bomber, and can be shot down. Finally, I think the bomb should do max damage to all facilities, and if used to attack units, it should automatically wipe all of them out. The bombs should only be producible in a major IC.
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