Hi Munck,
We plan to keep everyone informed of its development - for those who want it. I am aware about the new version coming out in November. The map looks really interesting, although I’d personally want some modifications to it (I think Africa is too small and the Pacific is too small). We actually like the revised map HBG put out a couple of years ago… We just had to make modifications, including adding extra Sea Zones, placing a blue dot on certain Sea Zones to count for 2 movement points, adding terrain, adding territories (mainly in Africa), and changing IPC values for some territories. We also changed set up to reflect a historical approach - so we made set-up charts for all the nations. We didn’t change everything though. If it was historically accurate, we kept it. We based units on the board according to combat power and not number of troops/tanks (the Russians had about 19,000 tanks in 1939, but they don’t have a massive stack of tanks on the board).
Anyways, we’ve abandoned the idea of each turn lasts 6 months approach. That approach makes it more playable and faster (and maybe more fun?), but we just couldn’t reconcile it with actual historical events and ship and plane technology. Their movement points don’t coincide with history at all. Our one-month-per-turn will be a slow, grinding game - but we’re going for more realism. As a player, you get to make the strategic and tactical decisions that are difficult: we’re trying to lessen “game” aspects and heighten realism. Obviously it is still a game. But we’ve introduced things that will make the game more fluid: weather, terrain, leadership, logistics, somewhat complex rules for actual battles (with initiative, number of phases in a battle, offensive and defensive posture, retreating, amphibious evacuation, surprise and surrender), politics, an events chart and partisans, different training among nations and their armed forces, some new Weapons Developments. But most of all: changes in strategic and tactical turn order every month. Who went first in last round may not go first in this round. It’s random but there are modifiers that give you a better chance of acting before your enemy does. You’ll never play the same game twice. You don’t know what the weather will be like. And, of course, you might radically alter what the Axis or Allies actually did in the war. It’ll be like a game that you “save” and come back to later. Some people might not be able to do this, and that’s okay. But for those who want a more historical approach to World War II, we’re going to offer it as an alternate version.