Revised Global 1940: Rules of Neutrality

@hengst This house rules forum is full of ideas. To avoid scripted games you need a varaiety ways to win or lose a game in a reasonable amount of time ,eg 8 to 12 rounds.BBR and 3G40 are rulesets that encourage you to win by achieving various victory objectives.(not just victory cities)
3G40 changes turn order,merges Anzac into UKPacific,and sticks pretty close to oob rules.BBR is more complex than oob and is real popular.Both are designed to play in 1 day and to be able to declare a winner.

@taamvan Nope. Its Deathheads map he came out with right around 1st AA50 edition came out. 2008 or 9 I believe.

He did get ideas from AAE AAP. Had his own Mods with using AA50 rules if they applied. D6.

I changed a ton of stuff to it and made it a D12 system. Game reports are in House Rules thread under 1940 Global War 2nd Edition if your interested in looking at.

Honestly The 2 young good players I have went at it in Europe the whole game. Said it was the best game for them as far as historic effects. Convoy raiding SBRing back and forth and UKUS did there NA combine attack one time in game and got Paris back. Germany had UK down to 26 icps with raiding and some Africa stuff but US got on board and finally got UK back to 50 icps in income. Also what hurt UK early was there Tacs and destroyers could not get dice hits on the Wolf Packs. Epic.
UK even had there NA Sub Hunters for whole game and Got a +1 for Tac bombers against lone subs and still missed a bunch.
Also only 1-1 for figs hitting surfaced subs with a destroyer. 5 subs Vs 2 Destroyers can only scramble 2 figs.
You also got to have the Sub being able to submerge after Tac bomber attack and even with a destroyer present. Then you give Destroyer a depth Charge drop attack.

Map pics in the thread i posted.

@Topmat

AxA has often been called a “beer and pretzels” wargame, I suppose because it is fairly simplistic and available—FOR a wargame. That’s not because AxA is elementary or easily mastered, its because other wargames tend to be even more rules-heavy and detailed, which makes some of them famously and notoriously unplayable. They may have an attractive theme or rules, but the “chit” game era (60s-80s) built up to a crescendo before it burst. PC Computer gaming was a major catalyst for this; the ASL/Avalon Hill/SSI style games BEGGED for a computer to handle some of the more complex calculations, setup, rules etc.

I think AxA has the general appeal and longevity it does precisely because it appeared after this “First Golden Age”, and is not married to overcomplex or overly realistic considerations, its a truly “abstract” wargame, where each step (building, conquering, purchasing, combat, movement) is fairly simple, but all together, they are complex enough to satisfy long-time players while only barely overwhelming the new ones.

And, the fact that AxA doesn’t try to simulate or do everything a wargame possibly COULD do is the very reason why there is enough room left in the game to add more, but that’s not necessarily desirable. If the game was already highly complex, rich and random, it would already have many of the things that people are trying to add to it—but its likely no-one would play it. I think most of the more complex house rules systems for AxA fall into this trap, by pushing the complexity/time investment level out of the Goldilocks zone.

I bought a “political” Avalon Hill chit game in 1992, Republic of Rome (4/4 difficulty rating). When I read the instruction manual, I was blown away-- I understood nothing of what i’d read… until I read it for nearly 2 years. We only played it in college 4 times, and the Republic consistently lost as a group. Its a great game, but its also an example of a highly complex simulation game with a narrow audience from the first era–very few people still play these games because they lack any general following or appeal in the internet age, and have been replaced by computer-style games, like the Total War and Europa Universalis series.

@master4709:

SS, that is an interesting idea with naval and air bases. What made you decide to not be able to purchase any during the game and limit 3 movement to non-combat only? Can they still be damaged by SBR?

The idea was for strategy and forcing the 1 extra turn for combat. Im not a big fan of bases but everybody else likes them. Yes the Air and Naval bases can be SBRed. Airbases still can scramble 3 planes for naval battles. Plus get the +1 move.

Are railways needed for a map this big for the USA and USSR?

For me we use the railway for Russia, US and Burma road. 2 Inf or 1 inf 1 Art can move 2 spaces ( Russia move 3 if they get there NA ) only per turn. The railroad is marked on my map.

I think I will add the convoy zone boxes to the map.

Yes I would too. Germany needs these boxes for game more.

I’d have to imagine considering making those territories have the ability to build major complexes would be a bit too steep and game altering. It’s an interesting rule though! I like the idea of just producing one more IPC, but not counting towards industrial complex strengths. You can make it so they can be bombed as well and have to be repaired, like any other facility as well. If it’s bombed, you don’t get the bonus income until repaired.

@CWO:

@taamvan:

I am not sure what the British government’s back up plan was anyways if Sea Lion was successful.

The British government may not have had an actual “backup plan”, in terms of something serious and concrete and specific.  My impression is that Britain’s civilian and military leaders were focussed on preventing an invasion in the first place, and on defeating it if it did actually occur, and that they were sufficiently confident that they could accomplish one or the other of those goals that they didn’t need to give any detailed consideration to what to do if Britain ended up facing defeat.  Hitler, similarly, didn’t give serious consideration to invading Britain until he was forced to admit that Britain wasn’t going to come to terms with him after the defeat of France.

It’s quite possible that British government considered the possibility of setting up a government-in-exile in Canada (or elsewhere), but “considering the possibility” isn’t the same thing as preparing a functional contingency plan.  And in fact, there would have been two good reasons NOT to work on such a functional plan.  First, it would have taken up time and resources that could have been better used elsewhere, even if it only amounted to a small number of staff.  More importantly, preparing such a plan – even in secret – would have been politically very dangerous.  Churchill had famously been proclaiming in the House of Commons that “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”  If word had somewhow reached the public that the same Churchill was secretly preparing plans to decamp to Canada, it would have had two very serious negative effects: it would have told the public that Churchill believed that Britain genuinely risked being conquered by Nazi Germany (which would have been very bad for morale) and it would have convinced people that Churchill was hypocritical on a monumental scale (which would have ended his political career).  It would also have destabilized the British government, which was the last thing Britain needed at that time.

No, I completely understand why Churchhill did that, he was a very ballsy man and someone who was needed for UK but you’d still think you want some kind of back up just in case. I am sure his staff and the Royal Family would AT LEAST retreat to Ireland if need be.

I use WWII Russians and control markers for Bolsheviks. These are controlled by the CPs, but cannot attack outside original Russian areas. Some sort of Siberian railway track to represent the arrival of Allied (i.e. anti-Bolshevik) forces from the east.

Something else I’ve experimented with is the release of POWs; if the war with Russia ends, G & A get a number of infantry to represent the release of prisoners held in Russia. This can be extended to any power being knocked out of the war.

My main change is that collapse is based on national morale, based on casualties suffered & bombing raids on the capitals as well as losing battles and tt. Its fairly obvious that collapse based on income levels favours the CPs too much.

Well a couple of things:

Spain should be at 4IPC: 4 inf, 1 ARM ,1 art, 1 fighter, 1 DD, 1 AP
Turkey at 3: 4 Inf, 1 Arm, 1 Art, 1 AP
Arabia at 2: 1 INf
Sweden at 3: 3 Inf, 1 Art, 1 Arm, 1 AP
each South American nation gets 2 Inf, and each African neutral gets 1 Inf

Sweden provides 1 IPC to Germany each turn as aid as long as they are neutral
Spain can loan out its armor division representing the blue division to Germany while neutral.

Diplomatic is done like Technology except you cant buy it: each side targets one ally per turn and its converted on a roll of 6. If its converted you pay IPC equal in cost to value and then you can use the forces, but you dont collect any money. The only way to collect income is by direct occupation and violate its neutrality.

Either side allies or axis can do this at any time, but you must defeat all its land forces. If it has any leftover naval or air they can be ‘interned’ by the other side and converted (replaced) with its own pieces.

problem solved easily.