That’s a really good question, and one for which I don’t have a ready answer. I would say that Halifax provides a definite Allied advantage over OOB, but the changes (particularly with respect to the production rules) go further than anything you could achieve with a pre-placement bid on game balance. The core conditions out of the first round are altered here, such that its hard to compare Halifax with OOB at bid X, or to equivocate.
Some of the changes here favor Axis as well as Allies on the production spread, but my gut tells me that what we have done here, definitely provides the allies with a leg up. I think this comes primarily from the way the British economy is handled, by collapsing UK pacific into UK, but its hard to put a specific amount on it in IPCs.
In my play group, we never did find a balanced bid for G40. Even with a pre-placement Allied bid between +12 and +18 ipcs, nobody I gamed with ever felt that the game was particularly well balanced even with such a bid. There might have been openings for the Allies to win, but this was do more to the chaos of dice rolls than to the pre-positioning of extra units. It is also still unclear to me at what point you start swinging irreparably in the other direction (e.g. at X ipcs on the bid, then Allies almost always win.) Consider for example, how even a bid of 6 ipcs spent in the right place, can swing a TUV trade dramatically in the opening round. This even more so, if people use LL, which I don’t, but can still appreciate the effectiveness of pre-placement just giving a single extra pip in a key battle.
We started at 3, like always, then 6, then 9. Axis still fairly dominant.
So basically we had a G40 range somewhere between 10-18 to be balsy or to be more comfortable. But again, those games still did not feel balanced to me. Nobody I’ve played with has accepted a pre-placement bid over 20, on the logic that “the game couldn’t possibly be that unbalanced!” or even if it was, that the corrective of 20 ipcs pre-placement would be more distorting than its worth on account of the power of aircraft in A&A games. So basically 18 at the high end for us, and of course Axis can still win quite handily.
Which is why I have gone over more and more to HRs at income as a solution to game balance, rather than pre-placement bidding. G40 never felt balanced to me by side on production, even with a bid, at least not balanced in the way that Halifax feels roughly balanced right now. So I have not yet used a bid for this set up.
I would say we have probably not removed the overall Axis advantage on the board, but have put the Allies at least back into contention. I think it is wise to enable a UK defense of London. The cost in the Pacific is still significant, but a set up where UK cannot possibly win the battle of Britain or defend their home island at 50/50 seems somehow unacceptable for the gameplay. Likewise for a Moscow crush. If it seems like Axis just wipe the floor every time, either on London or Moscow, that’s when I begin to think of core changes. The original games play reasonably well as single theater games, but the balance as a joined up thing was shaky. Now it will be much easier to tease out just how well the British Empire stacks up against the Axis, or how Russia fares, absent a bid under this set up. More games will reveal where we are.
I will say though, that I already find myself exploring builds that I would not have considered in OOB with a pre-placement bid.
