I’ve been reading over lend-lease rules and various posts here and other sites for the past few days. To me lend-lease is a historic name for a way to give your allies some of your production. After this reading and some thought, I believe good lend-lease rules for Axis and Allies should have the following characteristics:
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UNIVERSAL - meaning all nations with an income should be able to lend-lease. Some lend-lease rule sets forbid most nations to give to others. Why? Couldn’t they have done it if they had wanted to? To me Axis and Allies is a game to explore “what ifs” and as much freedom as is possible should be allowed. Rules that only allow the USA to lend-lease limit the possibilities in the game. The Germans didn’t use aircraft carriers either, but we all have them in our trays.
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COSTLY - There should be some built-in cost involved to lend-lease. Transports, crews and escorts had to be put together, organized and maintained - this was all a costly endeavor.
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LIMITED - I discovered that the USA dedicated 17% of her total war production to lend-lease. Allowing some freedom for a little more, I’m would say 20% of a nation’s IPCs is all that should be sent per turn. This is more a game balance issue than a restriction issue.
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SIMPLE - to keep lend-lease really simple, the system needs to be a bit abstracted, with no extra on-map units. Many house rules for lend-lease have extra convoy boxes, supply tokens, dedicated transports and specific capacities, enemy intervention, changing unit colors on delivery, etc. Realistic perhaps - but too complicated IMO.
Some house rule sets have a die roll for enemy intervention. For example, in Global War it goes like this:
“Roll of a 1: All IPCs are captured by the Axis
Roll of a 2-4: All IPCs are lost and returned to the bank
Roll of a 5-7 Half of the IPCs are lost
Roll of a 8-12: All IPCs are transferred safely”
This is a complete Vegas luck roll - no strategy involved at all - I don’t see how any Global War players can be satisfied with it. There should be a built-in cost of doing it upfront, plus the added enemy ability to convoy raid as usual.
Some house rules say you can only supply vehicles, ships, and planes - no infantry - but I see no reason to make another rule for that. The British sent Russia 15 million pairs of boots and the USA sent them 1.75 million tons of food - would that not help Russa raise up infantry divisions?
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FAST - This is a game where entire factory complexes, battleships and carriers can be built instantly by laying down some IPCs, yet many lend-lease rules have the USA slowly trucking units across the wide Atlantic two zones at a time. Ineffective, tedious and boring! I say just get the goods over there and let’s get to fighting. The game is long enough!
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ANCILLARY - Lend-lease should only support the main event of this game, which is fighting battles. Too many rules, along with more on-map units, can divert the game into a shipping game. Its a fighting game. Good Lend-lease rules should support the fighting without getting in the way of it.
All this being said, here are my distilled lend-lease rules. These are a variation of Black Elk’s good ideas from his post in 8-2014. Notice they are only four sentences long:
“During the purchase units phase of his turn, a player may send up to 20% of his IPCs to his allies. Each transfer involves the loss of 3 IPCs due to the logistical issues of transferring goods from one country to another. EXAMPLE: During its purchase units phase the USA, with 55 IPCs on hand, can transfer up to 11 IPC’s to its Allies. USA sends 5 IPCs to the UK, 6 IPCs to the USSR, and pays the bank 6 IPCs in transfer fees.”
Here is an index card I made to easily find what the 20% lend-lease amount would be during a game:
No long rules. No extra dice rolling. No extra game pieces. No math or compound interest to do - just one table to consult. A country may choose to do lend-lease, but every time it is done, it will basically cost them an infantry somewhere else in the world.
I also favor using this rule with Imperious Leader’s “Stalinist Xenophobia” rules, which forbid the other Allies from being on Russian soil. Now instead of piling up British and American units unhistorically on Russian soil to help defend, you can just send Russia some IPCs and let them build their own units.
Thoughts?