We are a group of 6 usually, with sometimes more or less of us. We regularly meet every 2 weeks ish. We have a table to leave the game setup between days. Or setup by the host before the game. Due to this if someone cant make it the others cover so life and the game both continue without excessive conflict. We use the HBG 1936-45 map currently, but we started with A&A global 1940. First run was rediculously slow so we did a few things to adjust it to our preferred level of fun/flow
1)Similarly to munck we also use screw bins all stored the same. No messing around in the bin looking for a sub etc. Speeds up the flow. Decide purchases while others are playing, though sometimes plans are changed by others, so this isn’t a hard rule.
2)We kept the turn order the same. US controls french and china. But once US are done China and Germany play with an overlap they dont really interact. We also allow the next player to start his turn while the current player is collecting income etc.so long as they have placed units and will not interact with the map anymore. This realy speeds up the flow. The next player is declaring purchases and rolling tech, while the previous player rolls income increases and collects income.
3)So some printed rules are not incorporated by us. If someone wants to try one we give it a shot, it gets voted in or voted out.
Initially we decided to ignore major rules changes from A&A versions. And just used the varrient map and setup. We skipped Combat air patrol and kept the destroyer for sub detection as an example. Too much explaining and retraining, though we may add it later. The same is done to anything that takes time to absorb internally. Especially if it was played different in a previous version.
Most importantly we play for FUN. Anything that slows it down needlessly or causes confusion is removed, and tried in small batches. This way we can test if anything destroys ballance or is unnecessarily complex. We vote it out and try something else, or we like it and keep it.
