My new house rules…for AA Pacific

Here is an interesting bit of historical trivia. The US 8th Air Force actually had bases in the Ukraine for a short time. From June to September 1944, the 8th Air Force started a shuttle run of bombers that would take off from England and Italy, bomb targets in Germany then fly on to 3 bases in the Ukraine, Piryatin, Mirgorod and Poltava. The reasoning was mainly to show solidarity with the Russians and to hit Germany from an unexpected quarter.
The mission was called “Operation Frantic”. I don’t think it was much of a success. One reason is that the Luftwaffe bomber arm was still fairly strong in the East. Some Luftwaffe planes saw the American bombers heading into Russia. Then when a shot up P-51 crashed in Poland, it had documents on the Russian bases. Luftwaffe command was notified and they send Fliegerkorps IV, nearly 350 He 111s, to pound those bases while the B-17s were lined up in neat rows due to lack of space. It was the 8th Air Force’s costliest single operation of the war.
I didn’t even know about this until I read it in World War II magazine.

Here is the latest revision (yet to be tested) of my house rule set for E&W.
If anyone is familiar with the game and would like to test it, any feedback would be appreciated.
New to east & west? Check the Imp Games website, or ask me here on in a PM! 🙂

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Round Zero

Breakthroughs:
Diplomacy -> shift China 1 step toward the USSR, or shift the other Neutral Alliances any combination of 2 steps towards the USSR
Technology -> USSR gains 2 full-steps at Submarines, or a total of 2 half-steps at any other technology trees
Counter-Intelligence -> the USSR may make 1 free attempt, which carries over to Round 1 if successful

Purchase Units: (choose one of the following options)
a) Spend up to 48 IPCs on naval units only. Any remaining IPCs cannot be saved for use in later rounds.
b) Save 24 IPCs

Combat Movement: (choose one of the following options)
a) Conduct combat movement using infantry, armor, and heavy armor only
b) Conduct combat movement using aircraft and naval units only

Resolve Combat:
The attack value of all aircraft and naval units is increased by 2, for Round Zero combat only.

Non-Combat Movement:
You may not move infantry, armor, or heavy armor in this phase.

Place Units:
Your Industrial Complexes can each produce 2 additional units, on Round Zero only.

Collect Income:
The USSR collects 48 IPCs at the end of Round Zero.

Breakthroughs

This phase replaces the Spying and Technology phases of the turn.
Each country can make a number of free Breakthrough rolls per turn, as follows:
• USSR: 3
• WE: 1
• UK: 1
• USA: 2

Each country may also purchase a number of additional Breakthrough rolls up to double their number of free attempts, each round on the Breakthrough phase of their turn. Free Breakthroughs may be rolled before deciding to purchase additional Breakthroughs; you may also purchase and then roll extra Breakthroughs one at a time, up to your country’s maximum. Each additional breakthrough roll costs the same number of IPCs as an infantry; 2 for the USSR or 3 for NATO countries.

On a Breakthrough roll of 1, you may choose to gain either a Diplomatic Breakthrough with a Neutral Alliance, or a full-step in any technology tree. On a Breakthrough roll of 2, you may choose to gain either a Diplomatic Breakthrough with a Minor Neutral, or a half-step in any technology tree. You cannot gain more than one full-step in each technology tree on a single Breakthrough phase; Neutral Alliances can be influenced a maximum 1 step on each Breakthrough phase.

Faction-specific Breakthrough Rules:
The USSR may make 1 free Counter-Intelligence roll during their Breakthrough phase; a roll of 1 or 2 foils a NATO Breakthrough roll of 1 or 2 (respectively) on that round only. The USSR may choose which Breakthrough roll to affect with their Counter-Intelligence roll, however successful rolls do not carry over to later rounds if saved and not used. The USSR may purchase up to 2 additional Counter-Intelligence rolls on their Breakthrough phase, for 2 IPCs each.

When a NATO country uses a Breakthrough roll of 1 to gain a technology, they may choose to grant any other NATO countries (who are at the same point or lower down on that technology tree) a free half-step in that tree.

Optional Rules:
• NATO countries cannot gain the benefit of shared advancement in the Nuclear Weapons technology tree.
• The USSR may influence China using a Breakthrough roll of 2.

http://www.wargamer.com/axisandallies/EUROPE/AAE-AAP-combined/aae-aap_combined_MAIN.html

try this…

GG

I think you could just announce that it’s a recon force and which ships would be passing through if it succeeds… maybe put the recon force into the territory for combat and the rest of the fleet could be put on the line between the territories until combat is resolved.  If the recon force takes out the blockers in the first round of combat, the ships on the line could then pass through the territory or use their shore bombardment in the territory: but the recon force could not pass through with them and could not bombard with them (they would be out of position, expended munitions, etc.).  If the recon force fails to take out the blockers, then the remaining ships may join the combat or they could stay in the previous zone and either way can’t pass through or bombard the shore.  The recon force would then have to continue to engage in regular combat or retreat.

Yeah, on that note, I may have voted for Game Balance, because what’s the point of playing if the scales are already tilted one way? But that’s mostly in reference to playing Traditional. Our standing house rule is basically, “Never play the way WWII actually went down. Switch up allies whenever a nation gets eliminated.” If you do it that way, versatility usually comes about of its own accord. 😉

Hi, just joined the website, but I have been playing A+A for a long time.  My friends and I played with our own rules, but they  were all even balanced for the most part.  And ohhh boy did we play!  Did all of you get the dreams?  I swear some nights I would have these dreams like “I had three tanks, 5 guys, and 2 fighters….”, replaying these battle sequences in my dream!

We used 8 sided dice, 18 different units not counting artillery, AA gun or IC, 3 different Tech charts with 8 techs each. We had Auto buy which were free units at the star of your turn and Capital Surplus which was a roll at the end of your turn, if you get a good roll then you get a free piece.  We used the Cards of War, which is a deck of cards that I made which help on offense, defense and misc situations.  And of course we played on a home made map.

Before Artillery was introduced in the AA Europe Expansion I think, my friends and I had a custom piece called an Artillery that  was different than the official rules when they came out.  It all started with Germany…how times has an Axis player faced endless UK and American transports just carting dudes in.  And how many times has there been a wall of Russian troops in Karilea?  So I came up with an Artillery…which was an AA gun with a country marker under it.  And it was ruled like a typical AA gun…only one per territory, one on a transport…etc.  but the special thing about the Artillery was that it rolled one die for every defending unit, and hits on a roll of a one.  That’s right…it cost 10 bucks and moved one space and had a range of 2 spaces.  If that isn’t strong enough it could also be used to attack naval units!  As long as a fighter or bomber attack the boats also, an Artillery or two (if in range) could be used as well.  So if UK had 5 transports and a battleship, Germany could attack that fleet with 1 fighter and 2 artillerys.  The artillerys would roll 12 dice total!  Oh yeah, they only fire once per battle.

But in time the aritllerys got used and abused, we even made a new tech called Long Range Artillery to make it really crazy.  Another tech we had was Gunboat Technology, which let transports holding an AA gun or an Artillery and fire then at land or air pieces.  Then another tech we had was Defensive Artillery which meant if you attacked one of my properties and I had an artillery in it, then before you rolled your attack my artillery would first attack you and roll one die for each attacking unit you had.  Any ones that I roll will eliminate one attacking unit.  That was a pretty cool, but not very reliable tech.

I played it for years and loved it.  I made many many maps, ordered countless extra units.  One of the custom units we had was a Chinook.  It carried one Infantry 5 spaces, it attacked at a 2 and defended at a 5, but that is using an 8 sided die.  I made it by cutting the props off of the choppers (special ordered with other pieces)… then I would cut a carrier in half and trim the edges down, then I would glue the chopper blades to the top sides of the destoyer piece and make a nice Chinook with it.

So many good memories with it, I have never played the revised, updated or any other expansion, but I am putting the 50th edition one on the Xmas list for sure!  Thanks for reading!

But I haven’t played it in years, and my stuff is in a storage place in New Jersey, so I don’t have access to all of my custom rules and new pieces.

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome to this forum  🙂 !  I’ve been following the posts
as a guest for a while and finally got around to registering last night.  I live near Syracuse
NY and we have quite a few gamers within our radius with a strong center at a hometown comic/boardgame store.  Of course “real” life limits time I can spend on my hobby which is
one reason why it took me so long to register; but you have to keep a healthy balance.
I have probably over 50 games of various kinds in my collection but A&A 1940, War of the
Ring and the various Catan scenarios are my favorites.

the cost of building bombers to deliver 1 infantry to a battle is too much to suatain during the early rounds, unless a game would go for around 20 rounds or more i could not entertain the logistics, the longest game that i played went on for 9 rounds top’s