I’ll be posting a few ideas for an “enriched” Europe game I’m building which begins on that fateful day of June 6, 1944. World powers are U.K. and States against Germany. Map is basically lower half of U.K., northern France and out to Berlin (Detailed with rivers, ports, bridges, cities). Just here to throw out a few thoughts for feedback. New units:
RADAR STATIONS
Movement: 0
Attack factor: 0
Defence factor: 0
Cost: 10 IPCs
Radar stations are placed in any land territory. These act as highly developed warning zones for incoming aircraft and so any fighters located here defend at 5 instead of 4. Fighters defending from enemy strategic bombings on an industrial complex in these territories defend at 3 instead of 2. This type of defence still lasts only one round.
Also:
TRAINS
Movement: 3 land territories per turn
Attack factor: 0
Defence factor: 1
Cost: 8 IPCs
Cargo capacity: 3 land units (any combination)
Trains act as land transports and move/load/unload during the non-combat movement sequence. If attacked while transporting, units onboard are considered unloaded and defend themselves as usual. Trains may not choose their targets.
Thoughts?
maybe Radar has to be developed?
Trains … how about (a) 3 infantry, (b) 1 infantry and 1 tank, or © 2 tanks, but not just any 3 land units?
Looks good, though I think that main problem is that Europe consist of too few territories relative to the fighting that went on there.
When we played A&A, it was always brought up just how useless the AA guns were. One shot only against a huge air force? Just never made sense to us. Come to think of it, we never bought AA guns. Now we have a reason:
ANTIAIRCRAFT GUN
Movement: 1 land territory per turn
Attack factor: 0
Defence factor: 1 (only against enemy aircraft)
Cost: 5 IPCs
AA guns fire before any combat rounds take place. This lasts for one round only (aircraft are considered out of range and engaged in combat). AA guns may not choose their targets (flak is considered bursts in a general flight path so there are no “aimed shots”; hits are lucky at best). Defender rolls one die for each attacking aircraft. Multiple AA guns in the embattled territory also fire (2 AA guns roll 6 dice for 3 aircraft; 6 AA guns roll 6 dice for 1 aircraft). Hits are immediate losses (meaning shot down with no chance to return fire). Air transports hit may now roll for infantry onboard. AA guns can be destroyed as other land units. This encourages players to build an arsenal of AA guns in vulnerable strategic bombing territories. A player may, for example, choose to lose an AA gun over a valuable fighter. Note: If the last defending units are AA guns, the attacker assumes control/captures them since they may not attack.
–Anyone use a similar rule?
I like the rule about moving aa’s on transports – if attacked they get to shoot at planes (same as normal), but if the transport sinks … the aa is lost as well. Just to give aa’s a little something extra.
Woah, an A&A on D-Day? That would be so awesome! When your done makin the map be sure to post it!
It’s kind of funny that you are talking about doing an A&A D-Day. I went to Gen-Con in Milwaukee, WI in 1999 and Avalon Hill had a booth there where they were displaying their newest product, A&AE. I talked to an older guy at the booth that said that he had designed the A&AE game (I can’t remember his name for the life of me). Anyway, he said that he was planning on putting together an A&A game based on one battle and he specifically mentioned the D-Day invasion. I thought it was a great idea but obviously it never happened (probably because of what happened with Hasbro).
You may also want to include concrete fortifications where infantry get a better defense roll. You could also have machine gun infantry that have an attack value of 2 but require a second infantry to hold the ammo belt and reload (if the 2nd infantry is killed, the machine gun becomes inoperable and the remaining infantry attacks at a 1). An initial bombing run & offshore battery would be good (before the landings), but I would only give each unit an attack value of 1 for this. Due to cloud cover and other factors the Allies barely did any damage. An excellent resource for this would be “D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climatic Battle of World War II” by Stephen E. Ambrose. It contains information on troop postions prior to and during the battle, where the airborne gliders and parachutes landed, and the units that were in every wave in the landings as well as a lot of other great info. Sea mines, land mines & barbed wire could also be added and would have to be cleared by engineer units. Perhaps morale can be used as well. When the US troops hit Omaha, they didn’t all rush forward headlong. Some huddled behind a nearby cliff and were only pressed into action by Sergeants that gathered them together and went forward. Ost Battalions (made up of foreign prisoners) also made up a good portion of Germany’s defensive force in Normandy and would surrender a bit easier than the German soldiers would. The Germans should also have heavy artillery (attack at 3) and you may allow them to attack at 4 because they had every inch of those beaches mapped out to the exact for their artillery (this would balance out the constant offshore bombardment).
check out my transport airlift rules in house rules….
All good ideas…I’m thinking of having a bunker unit which could have a strong defence of 4. Obviously they could not be moved to another territory but you could build onto it (chips). Not sure of the cost…5 IPC’s? I want mine units (not stackable) but am unsure of a practical use. These units can be purchased by both sides (Defence of England if Germany gets lucky). I’ll soon give a link to simple sketches of the board, though I’m really stumped on territory placement. I’m a stickler for accuracy. Thoughts?
The bunker units should already be in place at the begining of the game and Germany shouldn’t be allowed to build new ones or modify the existing ones (they were all concrete). This would probably go for mines too. I thought about mines a bit further. You could have an engineer unit that has to roll a 4 or less to deactivate a mine. If he rolls a 5 or 6, the mine has a defensive roll of 1 (possibly blowing up in his facing and killing him). If the mine doesn’t go off, the engineer can have another shot at it next round. You can allow units to pass through territories with land mines, but for each unit you would roll an “attack” roll for the mines (2 or 3?). Those units are immediately removed and the remaining units are slowed down. My thought for new units would be something similar to A&AP with China. As long as China keeps their certain territories that contain the road to Burma, they get 3 infantry. With this game, since it’s a single battle IPCs wouldn’t make sense (how could you build units during the battle at a factory and add them to a battle that lasted a little over 24 hours?). I would say that as long as the Germans keep roads behind them open and that the US keeps the beach or some waterway (the Germans had a submarine pen off the coast that could send out subs to clog the way) open that each side gets a certain # of units each turn (probably infantry for the US and armor or infantry for Germany). Some airborne troops would also be the German’s rear, so the Germans would not only have to contend with the landings but also the scattered but potent 101st airborne. The units that would come through these roads would be finite - maybe give both sides a pool of different units to choose from and they could only place one or two per round. And once the pool runs out that’s it.
As far as the map is concerned, get the “D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climatic Battle of World War II” that I mentioned earlier. Their are a lot of useful maps and pictures and it goes into great detail about everything you would want to know about the battle. For the map, each beachhead (Omaha, Utah, Sword, Crown, Juno) would be an area, then split the towns further inland into sections (I am assuming that you are going to use squad-sized infantry units). You really have to figure out what scale you want to use as far as the size of a territory as well as how long would a round be in real time (US lands new infantry and attacks and takes out a bunker and this all takes place in 5 or 10 minutes?). How far could a squad wearing 50 lb backpacks in a heavy battle move? 100 yards? 200 yards? More? This will answer the scale question. Once you figure out the scale, it would be easy enough to look at maps of the D-Day invasion and chop them up to that scale.
I really like your engineer/mine idea. Very good. I should have made it clear though, that the game only STARTS on D-Day. Basically the board is a more magnified (more territories) A&A Europe. No Africa, Italy, Russia. It will be a fight from Normandy to Berlin. Germany will start with mines/bunkers already placed all along the coast and maybe the maginot line. Any thoughts on towns/villages (St. Lo, Caen, etc.) along the way to be cleared out? I’ll use pieces very similar to monopoly houses to represent this. Perhaps these can be bombed like factories (morale). It would just be more satisfying to capture province territory AND cities. If there were a way to garrison them for ambushes….hmmm…then again, maybe I’m getting too ahead of myself…
Here’s a link to a few rough ideas of the gameboard. Your comments, ideas or suggestions are welcome.
how about having spies and espionage :lol:
maybe a mix between Cities and Territories…
…. will release a Normany Game: OMAHA BEACH.
More info: http://www.andale.com/stores/sf_catHome.jsp?foo=bar&sid=99360&cid=7489209&mode=1&catId=1177480&pnum=1&psize=10&pageIndex=-1
thrasher,
Your releasing it Thrasher?
Any ideas on how mines (sea based) would work or be deployed? I can’t see any more than 1 mine per Country (per sea zone at a time) as it might get confusing. Could any ships lay them? Which ships if any would be invulnerable?
I would make it like this: mines cost 5 IPC. They work like AA, roll 1 and sink a ship. It would require a modified trn, (pay extra 2 for mod and mark with chip) to lay them, and perhaps you could pay extra 5 a turn to upgrade capacity, and allow hit on 2 or less. Nothing is safe! :)
and the enemy can clear them with a destroyer by paying 7 IPC’s…
