Larry Harris: Strategic Movements Mechanic


  • Well, once you have a chain from SA to Archangelsk, moving units between them is the least of the CP problems!

  • Official Q&A

    @Tavenier:

    Only if it is allowed to use the infrastructure of other countries, right? I think that is not in the spirit of this rule. Only your own provinces can be used, I think.

    That’s correct.  Your units may only pass through territories that either you control or are contested and you have units in.  Your allies’ territories can’t be used.


  • Thanks KH! Am glad that this is the case. Would be very weird otherwise. British Indian soldiers moving through Russian lands to fight Habsburgers in Galicia.


  • The requirement that your power controls it or contests it is going to lead to that same ridiculous situation we had before the change to movement out of contested territories, where the enemy is going to move out of a contested territory or avoid contesting a territory to avoid making that a possible route.

    It will be once again easier to move into a contested territory than into a TT your ally controls.

  • Customizer

    It should be SRM. But Larry still insists that it isn’t rail movement, and doesn’t want to give credit to those of us who’ve advocated this for years.

    But if it isn’t rail movement, what is it; bicycle movement on steroids?

    @loki17:

    I see there is some debate as to calling it strategic movement or railroad movement but why don’t we just call it teleportation or ‘beaming’ like they do in Star Trek?

  • Customizer

    I agree, its ridiculous that Germany cannot move units by rail through Austrian and Ottoman territory.

    The players should not have to think “do I want to take that tt if it stops my ally moving armies through by rail?”

    So yes, make it unlimited through friendly tts, but it must stop in contested. Make sea movement unlimited as well, but not into combat, including mined areas.

    @vonLettowVorbeck1914:

    The requirement that your power controls it or contests it is going to lead to that same ridiculous situation we had before the change to movement out of contested territories, where the enemy is going to move out of a contested territory or avoid contesting a territory to avoid making that a possible route.

    It will be once again easier to move into a contested territory than into a TT your ally controls.


  • @Flashman:

    I agree, its ridiculous that Germany cannot move units by rail through Austrian and Ottoman territory.

    Just to clarify, I wouldn’t exactly like it if you could only move through your own territories or territories you control, but it wouldn’t be ridiculous.

    What really irks me as being nonsensical is the fact that you can move through contested territories but not allied ones.

  • TripleA '12

    For what it’s worth, I also think that S-Movement should be allowed into but not through Contested Territories. That seems to make more sense to me.


  • @Flashman:

    I agree, its ridiculous that Germany cannot move units by rail through Austrian and Ottoman territory.

    The players should not have to think “do I want to take that tt if it stops my ally moving armies through by rail?”

    So yes, make it unlimited through friendly tts, but it must stop in contested. Make sea movement unlimited as well, but not into combat, including mined areas.

    @vonLettowVorbeck1914:

    The requirement that your power controls it or contests it is going to lead to that same ridiculous situation we had before the change to movement out of contested territories, where the enemy is going to move out of a contested territory or avoid contesting a territory to avoid making that a possible route.

    It will be once again easier to move into a contested territory than into a TT your ally controls.

    Allowing movement through allied territories will make it tougher on the CPs.  You could have Italians landing in Paris from Rome each turn.


  • Allowing movement through allied territories will make it tougher on the CPs.  You could have Italians landing in Paris from Rome each turn.

    Until Rome is taken by Austria, then you’d just have stranded Romans in Paris.


  • Or the flip side, Britain once it lands can reinforce Italy without ever entering the med. France can do it on any Italian front immediately. Broken and I’m glad they saw that before posting this optional rule.


  • I’m not sure I see a problem with Italian units moving by rail to reinforce Paris, or British units reinforcing Rome after landing in Brest.  How would this break anything?  I know it didn’t happen historically (at least not in any major way).  But I think that was more a matter of Italy not being able to spare any troops, and Britain and France being similarly unable to divert anything from the Western Front meat grinder.  I don’t think it had anything to do with a lack of roads, rail lines, and ferries being available between France and Italy.


  • Moving through is not the same as moving to.  :wink:

    Let’s not forget that you currently CAN under the rule move through originally allied territories-if they are contested.


  • Guys if we let strategic move through allies territories withou restrictions, we will see odd things like a full german attack on India round3.


  • I don’t understand why Larry would want to mess with this game right away like this. He prepares player for the slow moving type of game in the forward of the rule book, …
    “While playing this game you will quickly realize that this is not World War II. There are no massive sweeps across continents
    with blitzing armored divisions and aircraft. Instead, there is a series of determined offensives resisted by equally determined
    armies dedicated to holding the line. You will find that your depleting resources of men and artillery must be deployed with
    great thought and efficiency.”

    Seems like this proposed additional rule is abandoning the essence he was trying to capture? Anyone else think so?


  • “Seems like this proposed additional rule is abandoning the essence he was trying to capture? Anyone else think so?”

    Sort of.  I haven’t had a chance to play it out yet with strategic movement, but wouldn’t it also help defenders reinforce critical areas, evening things out?


  • So, it’s unclear to me whether, under this proposed rule, you can only do one strategic move per turn, or you can do as many as you’d like, provided they all qualify.  This rule, along with allowing all ships to move 5 spaces, seems like a radical change to basic game mechanics.  (It also makes cruisers even more worthless.)

    My impression is that a change is needed, but this seems like a severe overreaction to me.  It seems like the much simpler option would be to just allow all ground units to move two spaces, provided that none of their movement was combat-related.  So no blitzing, no moving two spaces into combat, if you withdraw from a contested territory you can only move one space.  To me that seems to address the basic imbalance in the game without fundamentally changing the nature of the game.  Don’t destroy the village in order to save it.


  • @Noll:

    Guys if we let strategic move through allies territories withou restrictions, we will see odd things like a full german attack on India round3.

    Who mentioned 0 restrictions?


  • Well Cruisers additional movement is useless if you use these optional rules. Guess they made cruisers even more useless


  • Today I played a game with my friend with the SMR. We altered the movement of ships by +1 if you leave from a friendly port.

    It was a way more fun game. Chances shifted from him to me, but after six rounds, when time was up, we had to write everything down to play again another time. I never, ever did this btw. Never in all my 200+ games of an Axis and Allies game.

    Rome s about to fall, France and Russia are holding their own, the British have no fleet and Turkey is setting foor in Africa while their main army is at a standoff with the British in Persia.

    It helps the defender as well. Especially in cases where Moscow s surrounded and the Russian army can make a move on one of the German held provinces and then move everything back to defend Moscow. Same with Paris and Rome.

    I love the rule and i think the port rule is enough to help the fleet gain movement while leaving the cruiser faster to keep its admavtage.

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