G40 Halifax Rules

@Young:

I’ve been thinking all day about the Soviet Union DOW on Japan just to collect $15, and how this effects Germany. There has to be consequences for the Allies if Russia wants to collect $15 in free income at turn 1, and this is what I think is fair…

War conditions for collecting VC bonuses

A nation must be at war with at least 1 other nation in order to collect their VC bonuses for each city they control.

If the Soviet Union declares war on Japan by making an unprovoked attack, declares war without attacking, or declares war by moving units into Chinese territories, all Mongolian territories and standing armies will immediately become Japanese controlled.

China may still produce artillery if the Burma road is open.

I rather like it. Gives Russia the option, and still resolves the situation with Mongolia. I always thought the Mongolia rules were rather weird anyway. This simplifies the situation considerably, if Russia declares then Mongolia goes Axis, if Japan declares it goes Allies. Fairly easy to remember.

I’m still a little curious about the whole NAP thing in 1940 anyway. As far as I understand it, the Anti-Comintern Pact had been in effect since 1936, and though undeclared, the two countries were effectively at war on the boarder since 39. The formal neutrality pact wasn’t signed until April 13th 1941. Perhaps there was a ceasefire at some point in between, but as the war was never formally declared anyway, that would seem a bit curious. I had always thought that the Japanese defeat at Nomonhan merely deterred Japan from further escalation with the Russians, but without any sort of binding treaty or formal agreement until 41.

Whatever the case, the NAP is built into the game for better or worse, and at least the situation above provides an incentive for both sides to maybe try to work within it. If Russia declares, they get the 15 ipcs to use immediately in the build up against G, but only at the risk of pushing Mongolia into the Axis camp. Under the OOB rules Russia has no incentive, so they virtually always break the pact. Japans situation remains more or less the same, except that now, there is at least a chance that they might benefit in some way if Russia breaks the pact before they do, so they might hold off on a DoW of their own.

Simple, easy to understand, I like it :)
At least this way there is a cost to Russian DoW +15, since it gives Japan a little something more to work with along the Mongolian border…

Its a great image  :-D

Oh good point, Russia would be collecting nicely with Moscow. Finally a red bear that can do more than just hibernate haha. But you figure, the Mongolian infantry are worth nearly 20 themselves, and if activated could run amok up in Siberia, so it is basically even.

The main thing that has me excited is still the potential of the 5 factories, with the added scratch we’ll be seeing in play. I think this is going to make the factory game much more exciting.

If it seems appropriate, you might want to resurrect the old idea of National Advantages. Where each player nation gets just a single advantage they can exploit. I’m pretty leery of specialized rules, but because the entire complex NO scheme has been simplified using the City objective scheme, this does provide some flexibility. I would think that as long as you kept it just 1 special thing per Side, or 1 special thing for Nation, it would be cool. Its only when these rules start stacking up into several special rules that things start to balloon out of control. USA with warbonds is fairly simple. It implements a tech already in the game, so at least there’s that.

USA has been pretty weak, without the W.USA +30 NO. I like something to get them going but the DoW messes with the situation a bit. One of the reasons I liked to put China under direct US control in some games (aside from making the china rules simpler) is just so they have an early front to play around on. But standard OOB has China separate and for ease, I wouldn’t change things there. At least here you are working with stuff that is more or less already in place. I like it the mongolian thing and Warbonds

I think the new situation surrounding production is going to be a lot more fun!

Ps. I think people will be surprised at how a slightly larger economy with just a bit more money in play works towards game resolution. You might expect that the opposite would occur, with more money equating to more units and more rolling, but I find that players are more likely to engage their units in battle when the money is at higher value per round. What prompts people to wait normally is that units are more expensive (proportional to the overall economy) so people are reluctant to take risks with them. Here you have the inverse thing going on.

It would probably be wise to take a wait and see approach before making further adjustments to the unit set up (beyond the Ontario fighter and the factories.) I see the factories as critical. The Ontario fighter is a nice novelty because of what we are doing with the Commonwealth. But taking units off the board should be a last resort. First see how it balances under the VCS with the Russians. It could be that Japan ends up needing those fighters.

I am also still looking to see if this scenario can run absent the DoW too, in which case it would be all VCs active from the ouset. No DoW might take it from Axis favored squarely into Allies favored territory. I think “entry” into war could have been better simulated just with turn order or unit set up rather than a seperate DoW or politics phase. But since it is a current part of the game it’s important for the Halifax rules to get them functioning properly.

With the City Objectives outlined by YG, and the Mongolia rules you have a real mechanic with hard economic values relating to DoW. Here the Japan/Russia nap would be basically back as part of the game. Likewise the Japanese DoW on USA is now a relevant decision again.

Sorry if I’m a bit late coming in on this, but I have a couple of thoughts on the Russian DOW/Japan/Mongolia situation.
First, I don’t think Russia should get their VC/Capital bonus until they are at war with Germany and/or Italy. Japan should not count in this regard. Remember that even with the OOB Russian NOs, they did not come into effect until Russia was at war in Europe. Also, because of Russia’s size, they were treated differently from all the other countries in terms of being at war. If they are at war on the Pacific map, they were still neutral on the Europe map and visa versa.

As for Mongolia, I do like your idea of if Russia makes an unprovoked DOW against Japan (either by attack or moving units into China) then Mongolia turns Japanese. If Japan attacks Russia, Mongolia turns Russian.
I like this better than the current version where if Japan attacks, Mongolia becomes Russian but if Russia attacks, Mongolia simply stays strict neutral. So Japan gets punished for aggression but Russia doesn’t?

Yeah I think we should be at a pretty even split now Axis vs Allies. Or at least, it seems that whatever starting balance we end up with, it’s probably going to be more exciting. The UK bonus and more effective Commonwealth should also go a long way towards this end. I think play testing should reveal a balance even better suited to dynamic gameplay than OOB. If it does end up tilting one way or the other, I think we’ll be in a good position to fine tune things once we see the actual situation play out a few times. I would save further modifications to the set up until then.

Basically under the new rules we should see entirely new purchasing strategies develop, on account of the extra loot in play and the extra production from the Majors. Whatever the balance both sides will have more to work with at purchase, which should provide new challenges and a fresh feel when compared to OOB.

As for theater restrictions or theater specific rules, I’d try to get rid of these whenever possible. The whole point of global is to unify the two mapboards into a single game, just like the UK and India, Russia should receive the same treatment rules-wise on the Europe and Pacific side of the board, if we can. The less “exceptions” to the general rules we have the better, or at least, that’s what I’ve always felt.

I agree too, the eastern front has a lot of potential. What seems to work against it OOB,  seems to work for it here in Halifax. I’m pretty stoked for my next game! And after action reports from the people who give this new scheme a try

Just to reiterate why this adjustment has me so intrigued…

1. It takes the two seperate Europe and Pacific games and brings them together more seamlessly than the OOB second edition rules do. Not only have we simplified the factions in play (by getting rid of one, and expanding another), but we have also simplified the rules pertaining to them.

2. We have dramatically streamlined the overall economy. Taking 30 complex Objectives down to just one basic system that is universal and super easy to understand.

3. Virtually everything we’ve done has a visual/aesthetic coherence. From the roundels, to the factories, to the Cities. All the critical information is displayed more or less directly on the gameboard itself, making it much easier to read at a glance.

4. We give each player, regardless of Side/Nation new strategic options with the promise of more  engaging gameplay for all.

5. We have finally given VCs a real influence on the gameplay mechanics,  bolstering the NAP and DoW concepts in the process.

Glorious  :-D

Ps. I feel reasonably confident that I could take a player who knows how to play Classic Revised or 1942.2 and teach them how to play Global using these Rules. Most of the main obstacles in the learning curve are overcome with this Halifax set up. Basically all a new player has to do now is familiarize themselves with the new unit roster and a couple simple rules about cities and mongolia. Everything else is intuitive and should come very naturally to players who have experience with say 1942.2. This makes me happy

Nice! I actually prefer NZ with the 2 fighters anyway. It’s one less line in the set up changes, one less thing players have to do to get Halifax up and running. If you want to add the Ontario fighter, that’s fine since these rules are about making Canada part of the Commonwealth.  But I really dislike adding/removing units from the starting set up as a way to achieve game balance.

I have made the case to Larry and others elsewhere and so I guess I will make it again here… it’s better to change the starting money or potential income, than it is to change the starting units. If preplacement bids should have taught us anything over the years, it’s that changes to the starting units can torpedo the first round battle balance all over the place. Especially when the change is “official” like the case with the 1941 starter board, when the official set up doesn’t match the boxed materials, it just smacks of poor planning in the original design or rushing to the finish before the design is completed. Its important to preserve historical analogy or constancy along at least one dimension, and to me this should be the starting unit set up (the stuff actually printed on the set up cards). Adjusting the money is one thing, adding or removing units in the field is another. I am far more amenable to rules that alter starting cash or income, rather than rules which ask players to redesign the starting unit set up.

The former (the money) seems inherently amorphous anyway, but that latter (the starting units) should be concrete. Otherwise you might as well concede that these games don’t relate to the situation of forces at the start date in any meaningful way at all. Or that the balance on round 1 battles (which is supposedly designed a particular way for a reason) is in fact irrelevant. So that’s my argument, and the reason I’ve never liked unit adjustment (preplacement bids etc) for game balance. It’s like opening Pandora’s box.

If there is an imbalance in any A&A game it is almost always an economic imbalance (an IPC spread), which people then try to influence indirectly by messing around with units. Instead of just dealing with the issue directly by adjusting starting IPCs or potential income (bonuses) in the first round. Recall in past games the Germans blasting their way through Egypt on G1 to get Axis +X ipcs in Africa, or how just a single sub can sink entire Armadas, and things of that sort. You can try as hard as you want, but you will never convince me that consistency with OOB income trumps consistency with OOB starting Units hehe. Boots on the ground, or ships in the sea, seem fixed and hard, in a way that a 5 dollar bill is not.  :-D

When balance can be achieved without altering the unit distribution in substantial ways (e.g. to break some round 1 battle), but achieved instead just by adjusting the starting/overall economy,  this is vastly preferable.

Along these lines, we should admit how hard it is to balance an A&A game, and include within the rules  our own official “Options” which allow players to tweak the income potential. This is something that was lacking in both 1941 and 1942.2. Those games had no strong options to introduce money (or even tech.) My first resource is always the official rulebook, before I try to alter the unit set up, I always look first to the official “options.” To see if one of those might work. (Which would be like what you did there with the US Warbonds.) I like that. But we should consider a few options. The problem with g40 is there really aren’t any to choose from (except maybe autotech), since the OOB NOs were all designed into the balance as critical and interrelated for the game to function. What we did was to fix all that and give a solid baseline with the City Objectives that remain constant. But this wouldn’t rule out some form of NO or National Advantage on top of this as Optional, if such a thing can correct balance issues before unit adjustment I’d go there first. Basically this is a roundabout way of saying, it would be nice, if a bid is required, to establish that it not be a preplacment bid, but rather some form of direct income adjustment.  In other words the old style of bid, to starting income rather than starting units (which provides us with more useful information anyway, ie how much money is really needed to cover the spread, not which battle needs to be broken which is what preplacment shows you! Haha). But before we even get there, let’s assume no Bid until balance is determined.

So far all we’ve done here is take factories already in existing locations and substituted new abilities/restrictions for them. Likewise for the combat units, with the exception of the Ontario fighter, all we have done is substitute Canadian units for existing British ones. Everything thus far has been substitution rather than addition, which is why I like it. Players can set the board as normal, and then just make a few simple substitutions, instead of throwing their set up cards in the trash haha. At least we are keeping one fairly important thing constant, the basic set up and values of combat units.

Can’t wait to hear the results and to see the new video! Also my first draft delta deck arrived today. Those cards look way slick! Look forward to the next run, with the Dominions :)

Great work

Guys please don’t take this the wrong way, I think your Idea’s are pretty awesome.

When I first found this thread I was really excited to try G40 with a unified UK, and the Commonwealth expanded (new CAnzac). WE got a much needed new mid level IC, and things started to roll.

I know that some tweaks to the NO’s were to be expected as it went into the testing phase. After just a couple games YG thought that the UK/CAnzac were to weak economically (toyed with adding S Africa to Commonwealth) and probably needed more obtainable NO’s. I figured that we might see a no German subs in the Atlantic NO for the UK again, maybe even allow CAnzac the same NO (Canada took over much of the convoy duties). Maybe keep both Anzac NO’s intact etc….

Now you’re scrapping out the original NO’s in favor of a VC based bonus, and changing the Mongolian rules etc… This went from a simple variant to the G40 game to a game that no longer resembles the original G40 game IMO. I guess that I’m more of a purest then I thought, because I wanted to play Halifax with the G40 rule set. I will still do that, but the way you’re trending it probably won’t be your finished product. Plus I also figured that once you got this thing up and running you might start a thread over at Larry’s site and get some feedback from him. It would fair better w/o major changes to the existing rule-set IMO.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that the VC bonus is worth looking into, and I have passed on my thoughts about a Capture bonus (multi round), and Liberation bonus (one timer) to Black_Elk. I’m assuming he started a separate thread for that so it wouldn’t side track Halifax (but looks like it may have anyway).  I just think you’ve went beyond the scope of Halifax. You’re pretty much looking at another Delta project here IMO.

Anyway, I would love to play just Halifax, then maybe look into playing a new version of Global with the other stuff that would include Halifax later.

@Young:

I understand completely Wild Bill, I’ve got no problem creating 2 options.

Cool, just need some more test runs, get cracking (we need this yesterday mister lol)