@Gargantua:
KNP how many players do you play with usually?
And how long do those games of total annihilation go?
We usually have 5-6 players for a game of Global. Some weekends if less than that can come to play, like 3 or 4, we usually won’t play Global but rather one of the theater level games.
As for the games where we get an Axis win through VCs but the Allies are still strong so we play it out and the Allies end up wiping out the Axis – Those games are the really long ones, usually 19+ rounds. I seem to remember one a while back that went for 26 rounds.
In games where the Axis simply had a bad game and never got the required VCs and the Allies just beat them outright, which also goes until all Axis are gone, those games usually last between 13 and 15 rounds.
Axis victory games (through VCs) are usually the shortest, about 7-9 rounds usually. On a couple of occasions, just for kicks, we went ahead and played out the game until all Allied forces were wiped out. Those games took just a little longer than an Allied victory, roughly 16 or 17 rounds.
Once, after wiping out all Allies, the three Axis players decided to push it even further and turn on each other for TOTAL World Domination. This was really unfair to poor Italy. Although they had all of Africa and the Middle East, Brazil, Central America and even Central USA, they were clearly at a disadvantage. Germany had Eastern USA, All of Canada on the Europe board, most of Europe plus England and the entire western half of Russia. Japan had basically everything on the Pacific map plus a really huge navy. Germany’s navy was bigger than Italy’s and pretty much finished it off in the Carribean. Also, Germany was able to launch a huge force on Northern Italy, thus taking out Italy’s only Major IC. With just a Minor IC and their forces too spread out, Rome was easily taken out. So it ended up being some “mopping up” of leftover Italian forces here and there and big clashes between Germany and Japan in Africa, Central USA, the Middle East and Central Russia just east of Moscow and Stalingrad. It seemed to turn into a big stalemate and after about 4 rounds or so, we just got tired of it and called it quits. Would have been interesting to see which one came out on top though.