a 1941 setup would have been 10x better.
Players could still do their own versions of Barbarossa and attacks on pearl harbor. The axis player gets a nice haymaker turn to start.
If you are going to play 1942, after all the territories have changed hands, why not just play the Spring 1942 2nd ed game?
I mean, you are playing on a bigger board with more unit types, but for what. The territories that have been added, have already been conquered by the axis, so they are behind the front lines, and you are going to end up fighting over the exact same areas you would in a game of Spring 1942 2nd ed.
Also the Larry 1942 setup unit count just feels like it was transposed from the 1942 2nd edition setup anyway, with some very minute tweaks.
So you start out with less stuff than you would normally have, and are earning a lot more money than you have in units already on the board
Im just spitballing numbers here, but lets say in OOB 1940, by the 5th turn, which is around 1942, lets say Germany has 200 IPCs worth of units on the board and is collecting around 60 IPCs. But in this setup, it feels like they only have like, 125 IPCs worth of units on the board, and are still collecting like 60 each turn. So the value of the units already on the board changes dramatically. With less already on the board, you can lose half of your units (in value) in attacks around the world and that portion will be replenished by your 60 IPC purchase. While in a normal 1940 game, your units are more expensive to replace, because if you lose too many, you can only replenish 1/4th of your units on the board with your purchase, rather than 1/2.
I know that sounds meaningless, but that’s why I like higher unit counts, because players have to treat their armies as large, but fragile, because losing too large a portion of it in one turn means you will outpace your ability to replace&replenish those stacks. If you blow your wad of fighters in one climactic battle, now you are never going to be able to afford to replace them all. This encourages standoffs, and slow plodding stacks in a defensive posture. Rather than suicide attacks, that you can afford to replace the dead units wholesale.
If you had 10 fighters and lost them all in a battle, you cant replace them as easily. But if the world starts with a smaller ratio of fighters, like if Germany only started with 5 lets say, they could easily just replace their whole airforce after an attack that kills an entire enemy armada, and return to relative parity. But if the unit count is inflated, using your forces in suicide strikes guarantees you will fall behind because of your lack of ability to replenish your forces to the scale they were once at.
