@CWO:
@Baron:
Seems pretty hard to find the original intro texts written under the OOB boxes. If anyone have a link to provide.
http://www.axisandallies.org/p/axis_allies_europe_1940_preview_1_out_of_the_box/
http://www.axisandallies.org/p/image_axisallies_pacific_box_back/
Thanks CWO Marc,
Here is the transcript of both:
Pacific 1940 Box Back texts:
The year is 1940. Japan continues to flex its military might in China as political tension grips the world. In Europe, France is about to fall, and Asia braces for the impact. Holland, now occupied by Germany, is forced to leave its resource rich colonies in the Dutch East Indies vulnerable to the oil-starved Imperial Japanese Empire. French Indo-China will soon be occupied by Japanese land sea and air forces. Britain has received an ultimatum to close the Burma Road or risk war with Japan. The United States reacts with an embargo of strategic materials. The stage is set.
This point about Burma road is interesting. But it says nothing about ANZAC politics or armies / navy…
Nor UK’s Royal Navy…
Europe 1940 Box Back texts:
The year is 1940. France is about to succumb to the unstoppable German armies blitzing through Western Europe. Italy’s armies are poised to attack in North Africa, Greece, and Southern France. What remains of the British army has recently evacuated Dunkirk. This island nation is about to find itself standing alone and bracing for an invasion that could come at any moment. The United States, separated from world conflicts by two great oceans, remains neutral for the moment. The Soviet Union has concluded a secret agreement with Germany, assuring that it will remain neutral should Germany go to war in Europe. These are trying times, but all of this is merely a prelude to the greatest conflict in human history.
All Powers are covered here, at least.
Seems a better text than the first one.
I see that ANZAC politics is not either in your text, but at least you mentioned their army.
Is there something interesting to mention about India (UKPac) and ANZAC political goal or strategic actions in Pacific?
Maybe a sentence on USA political view about Europe, England, Atlantic infested u-boats and lend-lease?
@CWO:
@CWO:
Okay, that gives me a good start to work on a first draft. I’ll aim for a text that combines a general overview of the war situation in December 1940 with some specific details about the situation on various active fronts and maybe also in areas that will see some notable action very soon (meaning in the first few months of 1941). And for game powers that might otherwise not get mentioned because the time frame for their involvement is still too far way, I might throw in a couple of “Meanwhile, country X is watching with growing apprehension as…” types of lines. I like your idea of mentioning each of the game powers, and it should be easy enough to do given how much was going on internationally at that time. I’ll try to keep the text broad enough so that it won’t hinge on any specific map or set-up adjustments; if there should end up being a few such cases of local situations, however, then the two options would be to either make map/setup adjustments to fit the text or to simply edit those references out of the text.
Here’s the first draft:
It is December 1940. After the swift conquests of the conflict’s first year, which saw much of Europe overrun and occupied, the Second World War is turning into a grim war of attrition. Defeated in the air during the first phases of the Battle of Britain, Germany has called off its contemplated invasion of the U.K. and, since October, has been carrying out a night bombing campaign against London and other large cities across the English Channel. In the Atlantic, German U-Boats have enjoyed several months of exceptionally good luck in their operations against Allied convoys. **Britain, besieged though it may be at home, is preparing to strike back against the Axis in North Africa: with Australian support, it is about to launch Operation Compass, the first major Allied offensive of the Western Desert Campaign. The attack will be a heavy blow to Italy, whose invasion forces in Greece are at this moment being driven back into Albania by the Greek army. **
On the other side of the world, Japan’s invasion and occupation of China has bogged down into a bloody stalemate. Further south, Thailand has gone to war with the Vichy regime to gain control of parts of French Indochina, an area where Japan has had its own presence since September. These developments are raising tensions between Japan and the United States, which is concerned by growing Japanese naval power in the Pacific and Japanese aggression in mainland Asia. The Soviet Union is likewise keeping a wary eye on Japan, its opponent in several recent conflicts along the Mongolian and Manchurian borders. In the wake of Japan’s defeat by the Soviets in the latest of these border wars, the two nations will soon establish a neutrality pact. The accord will put Japan at greater liberty to turn its attention towards the Pacific and South-East Asia, while the leaders of the Soviet Union – having already signed a non-aggression pact with Germany the previous year – will be able to reassure themselves that their potential adversaries to the east and to the west have now been neutralized by the tools of diplomacy…
I’m still looking for other texts from AA50 or 1941 last edition.
I wonder if there was a change between 1940 first and second edition back box texts…
What’s curious is that, despite all the special political rules and movement restrictions between the US and Japan, there is still no real incentive for an attack on pearl. Both players have no incentive to allow for the pearl attack, and a lot of options to prevent it, using blockers or by simply repositioning their fleets to make such an attack a total non-starter. In any case, even if the attack is made, there’s no real element of “surprise” to it.
Seems a bit unfortunate that basic design and OOB rules have us bending over backward to prevent so many things from happening (ships can’t move there, this player can’t declare war until such and such), but there’s nothing in there to truly incentivize a play that might actually be desirable for historical flavor.
It’s just kind of amusing that all the games set in 1942 have a scripted pearl opener for Japan (when it doesn’t make much sense for those timelines) but the one game that probably should have a scripted pearl attack doesn’t really do anything to create the necessary conditions to encourage it.
Not exactly. 1941 and AA50 1941 provide a setup which clearly script a light air attack on Hawaiian SZ but clearly deadzoned the SZ. So any amphibious landing or occupation of SZ usually meant a complete destruction of the IJN fleet involved.
However, it is a real challenge to recreate such thing when starting early and leaving more than set-up units to move and reinforce many locations.
To recreate such Japanese opening, on J2 or J3, US and Japan needs special incentive.
One limitation can be about keeping US BB and Sub units in Hawaiian SZ considered as frozen units because it is somehow seen as their Pacific homebase.
After that, it can be either US option to let it be sacrificed, or try to reinforce these two with additional warships and Fgs built on West Coast to land in Hawaii or moved into this SZ.
A kind of all or nothing gamble either to deter Japan from directly attacking or a huge sacrifice assuming US can rebuilt faster than Japan. Usually attacker always have the advantage because it decides which units will be part of the mission.
Maybe US naval movement may be restricted to end either in Hawaii, an Alaskan SZ, USWest coast or Panama’s SZ.
A real challenge to built however.
Thinking to myself, and trying to come up with something that might work earlier, I was wondering if giving the US a peacetime bonus might do the trick? Something that directly relates to sz 26, and gives them a reason to “play chicken” with Japan?
Maybe, for every capital warship in sz 26, the US gets +X ipcs, or something along those lines, while at Peace.
So they’d at least have more of a reason to ride it out and stack up some ships in sz 26, instead of just pulling back to sz 10, or launching forward to sz 54 or wherever.
Or I suppose like you say, you might create a rule where neutrality somehow effects a nation’s ability to ‘mobilize’ units at the front. Its kind of weird that in A&A the incentive is usually to pull way back and consolidate, rather than moving forward to reinforce. It’s sort of the opposite of what you’d probably expect in a build up to war. I guess for Russia it makes a certain sense. At least there you had Stalin all wary of the Russian experience in WW1, and trying not to provoke a German attack through a mass mobilization. But then again, look how that worked out, they nearly got rolled over haha.
With the US on the water, you’d think they’d want to reinforce the front line naval base in Hawaii, but often times it’s more effective to stay in San Diego, or high tail it down to Queensland, or someplace like that. So it’s pretty hard to set up the conditions necessary for a Pearl Attack.
Also, just in keeping with the earlier idea about the US and Round 4… What if a peacetime objective for the US, might in same cases make it actually desirable somehow to push out the DoW even farther, like to round 5 or even round 6, if they aren’t attacked directly by an Axis power?
There is no reason at all do that OOB, it’s just a given that the US should declare as soon as they are allowed to so, because they gain no advantage from prolonging things. There’s also no way for the game to model a situation that might very well have happened in the real War, where the US declared on one Axis power, but not the others. Or at least not on all of them at the same time.
You could maybe imagine a game where Japan declares war on Russia, but not on the West, and the US ends up in a fight just against Germany/Italy. Or similarly a situation where a Japanese attack on the US steals the whole show, and it takes Churchill and Stalin another couple years to persuade the US to join the team vs Germany.
Things like that, which would make the political situation more fluid (and potentially more interesting for gameplay variety) aren’t really represented in the OOB game. So again, it’s sort of like, why bother with June 1940, if you just end up with a game that always has to play out according to the Dec 1941 situation regardless? If the same Nations go to war against each other in the same way, and the only question is whether it happens in round 1, 2, 3 or 4, it sort of diminishes the promise of a the earlier 1940 start date anyway.
Personally I like a game that just gives a nod to the political situation in the first round only, but which catches you up to 1941 by the time the second round kicks off. That way instead of a bunch of complex rules, you just have a kind of restricted opening for the neutrals (familiar from Classic with Russia) and then launch straight into a total war scenario. Perhaps just use the turn order to put the late comers towards the end of the sequence?
For something vaguely familiar, you could try…
1. USA/Russia
2. Germany/Italy
3. UK (+Anzac, UKP, Canada or whatever)/China
4. Japan
That turn order feels almost like Classic once you get going, except here you have Japan closing out the round instead of the Americans, which might be a novel change of pace. In this case you just give the first block (USA/Russia) some kind of restricted opening to reflect the political situation at the end of 1940.
Or I suppose alternatively, if you wanted to really depart from previously explored turn sequences, to give this one an entirely new feel, maybe you try something that definitely hasn’t been done before in A&A like…
1. UK (+Anzac, UKP, Canada or whatever)/China
2. Japan
3. USA/Russia
4. Germany/Italy
Here the British start the game, desperately trying to regroup, and the European Axis close out the game round. You could still restrict USA/Russia or Japan if desired during the opening round. That might be kind of cool to see in action. In either case, you’d have a G40 style game that was pretty distinct from OOB, since Axis would be closing the game round instead of Allies, something that hasn’t really been tried before.
I intentionally left France off the list, but I suppose you could load them back in somewhere, if that makes sense as well. Or perhaps just attach them to the Axis (Vichy), if you want to give the Axis more to mess about with. But for now just seemed simpler to work out a sequence with the big 5 (where Italy is attached to the German turn.)
Yet another sequence that might be fun…
1. Japan
2. USA/Russia
3. Germany/Italy
4. UK (+Anzac, UKP, Canada or whatever)/China
Again you could restrict the first 2 blocks with a nod towards neutrality, and then just open it up for round 2. Kind of has a nice pairing with Japan opening and China ending, as a nod back to 37. Seems like any of these would be doable, if one was willing to tweak with the starting unit distribution or starting income, to accommodate the change.
Finally there is the option discussed many times before of a fully collapsed turn order. To me such a game would recommend a full redrafting, to simplify it down and make the opening turn (in particular) much, much faster than OOB.
Two options there that seem interesting to me…
Block 1: Germany/Japan
Block 2: Russia/UK/USA
all Axis vs all Allies, or the reverse
Block 1: Russia/UK/USA
Block 2: Germany/Japan
Then make the Anzac and French sculpts purely aesthetic (attached to UK), and the same deal with Italian sculpts purely aesthetic (attached to Germany), and same deal with China (attached to US). These sculpts should just be interchangeable with the power they are attached to.
That way you only need 3 actual turns for the Allies, and 2 for the Axis, with less movement/income/placement phases, and less overall information to track. Otherwise the game round would just take a painfully long time to get through, waiting forever for your opponent to count beans and execute all their turns in the block.
Seems to me if one is willing to do something like that, with a more streamlined starting unit spread and less phases to track, that you could do a fully collapsed turn order on the map, and it would probably be pretty fun.
I think you could make the OOB map work for that. Giving China to the Americans (just with whatever units they need to not fold instantly), and do the same with Italy and Vichy given over to G, and with Anzac/UKP/Free France just made part of the British turn again.
Sure you’d need to re balance the whole board for the 5 man, but an All Axis vs All Allies game with 2 turn exchange would probably be worth it.
Ps. I guess you could try for a 6 person game just as easily if you wanted to preserve that option. I still think the game bogs down if you try to go with more players than 6. Even if there are potentially 10 nations in the game, there aren’t ever really more than 6 viable player positions. I guess in the case of a 6 man you break off Italy, and go with an AA50 style distribution of players
3 Allies (Russia/UK/Japan) vs
3 Axis (Germany/Italy/Japan)
Again with the Anzac and French sculpted just purely cosmetic and attached to UK.
In tripleA you’d just assign direct control, so it would be a 6 color mapboard for the player nations/units (plus neutrals.)
Here is a two block XML file for G40 to mess around with (same one I threw together for blueiguana in the other thread). It can be used with the Global 40 HouseRules files linked above earlier.
I also have a gamesave attached below, where I just edited out every combat unit on the entire board. It has the OOB bases and factories but nothing else.
You could use this save adjust territory possession or the starting unit distribution on the fly to be whatever. And then use the save as a draft guide for coding the xml for an actual modification, designed to use a collapsed all vs all turn sequence.
Global_40_HouseRules.xml
G40 2 Blocks no starting combat units draft.tsvg
Here’s another gamesave concept just building off the above. Rough snap shows how the zoomed out map might look with Anzac given over to UKP, and China to the US.
Frankly I don’t miss the purple people eater, or the grey-blue all that much. The tripleA map still feels like it has a nice distribution of color across the board for Classic sensibilities haha.
1. UK (+Anzac, UKP, Canada or whatever)/China
2. Japan
3. USA/Russia
4. Germany/Italy
I prefer this one because you can start with a blazing Taranto raid and also simulate the Greek repelling Italian forces.
Also, I learned it was an inspiration for Pearl Harbor raid.
So, both big warships battle might be interesting to mark the beginning of EuropeTO first turn and the US starting war event for PacificTO.
And as you said, it would be original:
In either case, you’d have a G40 style game that was pretty distinct from OOB, since Axis would be closing the game round instead of Allies, something that hasn’t really been tried before.
On Vichy, this time each country and armies can be distributed according to history.
Makes Vichy pro-axis neutral kind of (IDK) and other France units be part of Allies (kind of pro-Allies neutral) once a British or US enter their TT.
Instead of a separate power, merging it with the other?
Without changing anything to setup you mentioned about start date. You’d have to go with this some what.
Turn 1 - 1940 = Summer - Winter
1941 = Spring - Summer - Winter
Turn 2 - 1942 = Spring
Turn 3 - 1942 = Summer
Turn 4 - 1942 = Winter
Something to this affect. May have to adjust to see US goes to War on a certain turn.
Just give all the countries there normal moves on first turn to keep in time ?
Here is a two block XML file for G40 to mess around with (same one I threw together for blueiguana in the other thread). It can be used with the Global 40 HouseRules files linked above earlier.
I also have a gamesave attached below, where I just edited out every combat unit on the entire board. It has the OOB bases and factories but nothing else.
You could use this save adjust territory possession or the starting unit distribution on the fly to be whatever. And then use the save as a draft guide for coding the xml for an actual modification, designed to use a collapsed all vs all turn sequence.
Not sure by your comment if you’re aware of this or not Elk, but once you edit all the units how you want and make a save, you can use that save to create a new xml that will do all the placing for you. Saves a lot of time.
I’ve never done it and don’t remember the specifics of how you do. I ran across it while searching the triplea forum for something else. It seemed relatively straight forward from what I remember
On the subject of Vichy France, would it be worth considering making Corsica it’s own territory? On the board it would be a simple fix of starting with a French control marker.
The implication of having Corsica would encourage the German player to push for an armistice with the new puppet state so that the UK could not use the island as a landing spot for an alternate raid on SZ 85. It’s not game breaking but it would give the UK player another option.
I think consolidating all the various British players makes sense – if you’re profoundly concerned about making sure that India’s resources don’t get siphoned off to build 6 fighters in London (or vice versa) then just have a player enforced rule to cap production at any given British factory at 40 IPCs per turn, or something like that.
For the Winter 1940 setup, I would not even bother having a separate French nation – just code the Vichy French territories as pro-Axis neutrals!
Thanks for the tip about generating .xml via a setup … looks like you can access that option from the “Game” menu on the menu bar at the top of the tripleA screen. It’s marked as “Beta”, but it would be really cool if it works! I’ll try it out this week.
Yeah, I changed Anzac to UKP in the gamesave I posted, because it was quicker then changing all the UKP territories to UKE (there are a ton of zero island islands). I think it probably works if you want to preserve the split economy to prevent too much cash going to either side of the map board for UK. At least this way it’s only two turns (and the movement/combat phases are already joined.) So in terms of pace it would still be pretty fast. At least the division is cleaner, one economy for each side of the map. Or you could make them all a single economy, just takes a bit longer to reassign all the TTs via edit haha.
I also agree about France.
For Corsica and Newfoundland, it would be simple enough to make them separate tiles. Since the Global40 House Rules file uses its own map folder, those kind of tweaks are relatively easy.
If the game leads rapidly into a total war start, I think it would be a lot simpler to assign Chinese TTs to the Americans (using US units or Russian units for Mao.) You could still restrict movement across the western border with the Soviet Union (for Western Units) to keep the Chinese more or less in place. I think that would make the US a more entertaining power to play, and speeds up the Allied turn. Easy enough to just give the US Chinese enough units to maintain at the outset, then just let them be reinforced normally by the US or the Brits. Or I guess you could allow for China AA50 rules for placement of US infantry. But I still think it’s easier/faster to have then US controlled than a separate power.
I think the goal should be a turn that doesn’t take much longer than 30 minutes per side on the forst turn. And hopefully faster once things get going.
IDK if it can be workable.
All this discussion makes me thing about a kind of more or less powers according to the number of players.
There is still a minimum number of 5 power (as 1942.2): US+China / Russia/ UK (Euro+Pac+ANZAC+Canada)(+France outside Europe and North Africa) / Germany+Italy+Vichy (Europe+North Africa) / Japan
2 Axis player: (Germany & Italy merged) and Japan
3 Axis player : G, Italy, Japan
3 Allies player or less: UK, USA+China, Russia
If we start with UK, it allows to merge Italy and Germany more easily than if Germany play first, then Allies, then Italy.
The idea is to create a 1942.2 kind of setup at the Global scale.
It is a way to limit time consuming purchase decision, collecting IPCs and special turn for minor power if not needed.
When more players available, above 5, you can continue to allocate all specific unit and make a minor power until all players have 1 power to deal with:
6- you may split Italy from Germany (3 Axis vs 3 Allies) or UK PAC from UK Europe (2 Axis vs 4 Allies),
7- you split both (3 Axis vs 4 Allies)
8- you may either separate ANZAC from UKPac or Canada from UKEurope. (3 Axis vs 5 Allies)
9- both ANZAC and Canada (3 Axis vs 6 Allies)
3 Axis power
Allies: Russia, USA+China, Canada, ANZAC, UK Pac, UK Euro (French african TTs except North Africa),
It makes room for up to 9 players, or 10 if you split China.
And China can be given to a player playing either ANZAC only or Canada only. That way, it makes more action.
For minor powers zone of influence can be restricted, you can decide that at most 20 or 25 IPCs can be built from Italian (as German), UKPac (as UK), ANZAC (as UK), Canada (as UK) IC. And main IC from UK has a caps of 40 or 50 IPCs.
I’m wondering too about the basic rationale of this merger idea. If I understand correctly, the idea is to take all the minor powers in Global 1940 and merge them into the major powers (so that we basically end up with five powers rather than nine), in order to make the game faster to play. It seems to me that this is attacking the problem from the wrong direction, and that it involves using the counterintuitive solution of treating the units from Country X as if they were really part of Country Y.
Rather than artificially changing the nine-power Global 1940 game into a rather convoluted five-power game, wouldn’t it be simpler to just play 1942, which is already a five-power game? If the basic complaint is that Global 1940 is too big, has too many powers and takes too long to play – in other words, that it’s not sufficiently like A&A 1942 – it seems to me that the obvious solution is to play the 1942 game, not to eviscerate the 1940 game of some of its fundamental characteristics.
To clarify, I was talking about an attempt make an All Axis vs All Allies turn order functional on the G40 map. The concept is already proven on the smaller 5 man boards, but my point was that to do the same on a map the scale of G40, having 7 separate Allied turns (each with a what 7 phases?) would take like an hour just to get through the Allies each round, where the Axis player is doing nothing but rolling defense.
For a PBEM game it doesn’t really matter, since you could take all day if you wanted, but in a live game I dont think you can do it, without boring the Axis player to tears. You’d already be looking at an Axis turn that takes 20 minutes to a half hour, so I was just thinking of a way to make the Allied turn about the same. Giving a play pace for the All vs All sequence that is more realistic for an FtF game.
Also I don’t know that the appeal of G40 is necessarily the 10 OOB player nations. The larger scale map itself and larger economy has an appeal all its own. So if it’s possible to play the gamemap with a 5/6 man set up, that might be pretty cool.
The Anzac and French sculpts (or Italians in the case of a 5 man) could just be cosmetic. Allowing the player to switch them out at any point, without altering the gameplay consequences.
To clarify, I was talking about an attempt make an All Axis vs All Allies turn order functional on the G40 map. The concept is already proven on the smaller 5 man boards, but my point was that to do the same on a map the scale of G40, having 7 separate Allied turns (each with a what 7 phases?) would take like an hour to get through the Allies each round, where the Axis player is doing nothing but rolling defense.
Ah, I see. Sorry for misunderstanding what you were referring to.
Yeah, I don’t know what the popularity of such an idea would be. But it was mentioned a few times by IL and others. So just trying to think of a way that the big map might work for such an idea.
Personally I think it’s a bit much to have the whole team moving in sequence, but perhaps some would dig it. I just think you’d need to do something more than simply rearranging the 10 OOB nations in sequence to pull it off, (like merging the minor powers, or reducing the number of starting units) otherwise the pace would really grind, especially in the first round.
The concept is already proven on the smaller 5 man boards, but my point was that to do the same on a map the scale of G40
How was this done?
@CWO:
I’m wondering too about the basic rationale of this merger idea. If I understand correctly, the idea is to take all the minor powers in Global 1940 and merge them into the major powers (so that we basically end up with five powers rather than nine), in order to make the game faster to play. It seems to me that this is attacking the problem from the wrong direction, and that it involves using the counterintuitive solution of treating the units from Country X as if they were really part of Country Y.
Rather than artificially changing the nine-power Global 1940 game into a rather convoluted five-power game, wouldn’t it be simpler to just play 1942, which is already a five-power game? If the basic complaint is that Global 1940 is too big, has too many powers and takes too long to play – in other words, that it’s not sufficiently like A&A 1942 – it seems to me that the obvious solution is to play the 1942 game, not to eviscerate the 1940 game of some of its fundamental characteristics.
IDK how far is it necessary to let some ANZAC units attack Italy and German armies by itself while UK’s units wait their turn.
Black_Elk addressed the attractiveness of Global map scale, number of units and variety.
Maybe you saw something of meaning in making each minor power playing its own turn even by the same player which have done the same for a major ones?
What I’m thinking about is units sculpts may be kept specific (cosmetic) but all specific NOs pertaining to a minor power would work for the merged major power.
For example, if Canada needs to control all his original TTs to get 5 IPCs, then UKEurope (Canada merged into) get it too.
If ANZAC gets 3 IPCs for Control of Malaya and UKPac too, then UKPac+ANZAC gets 6 IPCs if Malaya is under control.
So, in my view, the historical aspect is saved.
What is deleted is the special purchase phase, Combat move, separate combat resolve, NCM, incomes, rolling for Convoy Disruption, collect incomes.
All these specific phases would be done within the major power turn’s specific phase.
You loose the can-opener effect and tactics however…
Even on that point, it might be possible to think about special rules to allow Fgs or TcBs sculpts from minor to land in a just massively conquered TTy by major power ground units. Making only main power air units to land in already controlled TTs.
I lean toward five or six powers for a game that uses the Global map because UK Pacific, Canada, Anzac, China, and Vichy France are all very awkwardly sized. They typically do not have enough income to buy a navy or airforce. China is not even allowed to purchase heavy equipment, and Vichy France isn’t allowed to buy anything at all. A single 5 IPC “national objective” can be worth half of a minor power’s economy, which more or less forces that power to dedicate its entire strategy to holding its objective. These powers are mostly just on the defensive for the entire game…by design, they are speedbumps to slow down the expansion of major powers. I think they take up too much time and brainpower for the limited strategic interest that they offer.
I think in large part what is missing from the boxed game is a more stripped down and focused way to play on the larger gameboard. There is nothing inherently more complicated about just having more territories on a game map, or a larger per round income for each nation. Even the expanded roster is fairly simple to grasp. All the complexity enters into it with the special political rules, and special restrictions, and tracking. From a time management and game enjoyment standpoint having 9/10 nations in the sequence doesn’t really allow 9/10 players to have a fun playing experience. Being new to the map, jumping in as the 7th or 8th player, and getting stuck with Anzac or China, would be kind of frustrating I gotta imagine.
I know it’s meant to be an expert game, but when you’re already dropping like 200 dollars, it would be nice if the game was a bit more adaptable at different play scales. So you don’t necessarily need to drop another 60 bones for 1942.2 to have the simpler version, but could just use what you already have in the G40 box. I suppose G42 is meant to satisfy that need, but it’s not even mentioned in the manual. You’d have to stop by a place like this already anyway, and print out new set up charts and such. So at that point, I think it’s worth considering more options for a streamlined game with a late 1940 or 1941 game. I like Oztea’s mod a lot, and G42 has a certain charm, but even there you’re still dealing with 9 player nations, and a pretty elaborate sequence and unit set up. I think a more basic 6 man might be fun. Whether that’s best as a 2 block sequence or a 4 block sequence, who can say. I lean towards 4 blocks myself. But you could probably do both, and still have room to make each feel unique.
