Leader House Rules

@Narvik:

The only Leader rule that is absolute unique is the rerolling of dice.

I don’t necessarily see this as a positive. In a game where simplicity is a trademark, having to remember a totally unique thing to do needlessly adds complication. The “hit chip” idea is pretty much like you said, soaking hits like a blockhouse, which is familiar to people. Adding “1” to units’ abilities is also familiar, as it is used in arms research.

@Narvik:

So I guess rerolling of misses is the most elegant Leader rule. IMHO.

Rerolling misses does three distasteful things IMO. First, it lengthens an already long game. Second, it reduces the suspense of seeing dice results if the results are not necessarily final. On our game table, the dice trays are sacred - if the dice fall outside the tray, they must be re-rolled, but once they land on the felt in the tray, the result is always final. Third - there is a big chance this rule would cause animosity towards the player using the leader. You see his units miss at a key moment, then your glee turns to bitterness as he picks up the dice again and says “I can reroll these misses.”

Other issues to think of are not related to dice rolling. The danger is if you have multiple leaders, you could use those leaders every time in each battle in different parts of the map, to the point where it is not “special” any more. And how does Patton, for example, get around? He is just one man, so travel shouldn’t be a problem. Does he have a personal plane where he can fly to whatever battle is important that round? Should he be “stuck” to a certain formation like the third army and only be allowed to transfer a limited number of times? Lots of issues to sort out.

You start with so many Leaders. You either place them where you want or they have to leave from a capital and ground leaders can only move 1 space and naval leaders start move with the ships from a capital.

Each leader has a value and boost attack or defense +1.

So if Patton is worth a 4, and you have 6 inf in a battle, only 4 inf get the boost. You have to start giving boost to the lowest piece first. If the values of leaders are that low, then you can have the boosted pieces fight every round.
If the leaders have higher values, then they get the boost only first round of combat.
Leaders also A 3  D 5 on there own. (D12)
Leaders also A 2  D 3 on  (D6).

My leaders have values of 9 to 5. Every country gets leaders except China.

Iv’e only seen where the smaller battles help troops with leaders.

@Macaoidh:

CWO Marc, what rules do you prefer to use for leaders?

I’ve never used any kind of Leader house rules, so I don’t have any favourite ones which I can recommend.  Just from a theoretical gaming perspective, however, and from the perspective of reasonable historical accuracy, here are some general thoughts on what I think would need to be considered when designing a leader unit for A&A games.

• The leader unit should have a clear function.  It seems to me that there’s actually an unstated assumption that the term “leader unit” specifically means a “good leader unit” who confers a bonus of some sort.  After all, in real war there are often plenty of bad leaders who end up harming their own side rather than helping it… and who’d want to purchase a “bad leader unit” for a wargame?  Theoretically, it might be an interesting exercise for a wargame to allocate each team a combination of good leader units and bad leader units, to present each player with the challenge of managing the kinds of headaches that supreme commanders face in real life when they realize that some of their senior officers are poorly suited for command – but I doubt that many recreational wargamers would like to play a game that saddles them with these kinds of liabilities.  (Some wargame systems apparently include “idiocy rules” which force players to do the dumb things that actually happened in the historical war the games replicate.)

• Another thing to consider is the issue of scale which I mentioned in my previous post.  The A&A global-level or theatre-level games (basically, all of them except D-Day, Bulge and Guadalcanal) operate at such a large scale that the effects of good leadership by anyone lower than a flag officer would probably be invisible… so in my opinion, the leader units should not represent anyone below the level of a general or an admiral.  At the same time, I’d argue that the supreme leadership of each combatant nation is represented by the players themselves, and therefore that it doesn’t make sense for a leader unit to represent this supreme leadership.  (This was the point I was driving at earlier when I said that if it were otherwise, a bad A&A player could win games simply by purchasing a “brilliant supreme commander” piece, but which I think I may not have explained clearly enough.  My point was that unit purchases can’t make someone play better.  A special unit could, in principle, be used to rationalize a system that allows a bad player to take back a stupid move and try something else, but personally I’d have no interest in a game system in which players are free to keep their good moves and discard their bad moves, or – as a variant of the same idea – are free to re-roll bad dice results.  In such a system, nobody would have any incentive to learn to play better.)

• If we go with the principle that a leader unit represents flag officers (since the officers below them don’t show up on the A&A game scale, and since the national leaders above them are represented by the players themselves), then the bonus conferred by the leader unit (assumed to mean a “good leader unit”) should reflect accurately the effect that a good leader of flag rank can have on the conduct of military operations.  This is tricky because a lot of the strategic and operational decisions made by flag officers which affect the course of a war – things like where to launch major offensives, when to attack, what balance of forces to use, how many units to allocate to the offensive and so forth – are decisions that the players themselves make in the A&A gaming system.  So to expand on my previous point, the players don’t just represent the civilian leadership of the countries they play, they represent in a more general sense the “national command authorities” of those countries and of their armed forces.  Frankly, the only “good leadership bonus” that I can think of which is realistic, which fits the required command level, which is universally applicable in all service branches, and which is sufficiently abstract that it doesn’t involve any of the player’s actual playing decisions would be the morale factor.  Great leaders can boost significantly the motivation of their men, even if most of these men never meet them directly.

@Macaoidh:

However, I would argue that A&A itself is mostly notional. What I mean by that is it is not meant to be a hyper-detailed historical simulation or recreation of the war.

Fair enough.  And I’ve just remembered a reference I once made to an American WWII general who significantly increased the operational effectiveness of the troops under his command: John S. Wood, about whom you can read more in my post of September 22, 2012 in this thread:

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=28501.msg1013994#msg1013994

OK, Marc make some valid points. It is kind of redundant to boost your units +1 or reroll misses.

What if we were clever and exploited the Turn order system ? Lets say this Leader unit represent a Joint Operations Staff that let allied units from two or more players combat move and do combat together. There have been a House Rule from the day of MB 1984 edition that let UK and US attack together one time only during a game, modelling the Normandy landings. Lets say this Leader unit let allied units under his command attack together all the time.

When a Leader unit is mobilized in a seazone or territory, he control all naval, air and land units from his own and his allies that are currently in his space and the adjacent space too.
Both the Leaders owner and his allies commit forces to this Joint Operation Leader during non combat move. At the Leaders players turn he combat move all units, from both own and allies, into where ever he likes, in a big Joint Operation.

In a Global game I figure USA start with 2 Leaders, UK with 1, Germany with 3 or 4, and the rest with none.

I think that one of the difficulties with the “leader = re-roll bad dice” mechanism is that, conceptually, it would mean that a good leader is only useful to have when things go wrong, and that he brings an army no advantages when things go right.  To my mind, this is closer to a Monopoly “Get out of jail free” card than a leader unit.  Realistically, a “good leader unit” should be beneficial in all circumstances, not just when things go wrong.  Or perhaps I should say “potentially beneficial” in the sense that it could allow a player to try things (albeit with no guarantee of success) that would not be possible to try (or that would have a much greater chance of failure) if the country he plays does not have good leadership.  The Normandy invasion was a case in point: it took all of Eisenhower’s powers of persuasion and all his organizational abilities to get the Americans and the British (who had a fractious relationship, different strategic priorities, and high-profile competing prima donnas like Patton and Montgomery) to cooperate sufficiently for the D-Day landings to function.  So the kind of joint-operations model that Narvik proposes would be one example of how this sort of thing could be replicated in A&A.  Perhaps the “leader unit” (representing a single individual) should actually be thought of as a “leadership unit” (representing the command structure of a country in a more broader sense, or more narrowly a body like the Joint Chiefs of Staff).

Already have the 1 time only  US, UK joint attack in game. I still think generals should be in the game. I’m still going to play with the values and also maybe put in where a general rolls 1 D6 and on a roll of 2 or less he can only use half his value on attack or defend because he made a bad tactical move.

I’ll  play around with it more.

Maybe the Leader unit belong in the Facility class, among with IC, Ports and Airbases ? Maybe even add a Fortress unit that soaks hits to make the list complete ?

Of course the Leader unit will be mobile, even if representing the command structure of a country.

His abilities would probably be better control and command of the other units. Maybe better Combined Arms modifiers between land, air and naval units ? Or a possible Joint Strike ability to add allied units in attack when they start from his space.

An Airbase can scramble fighters into adjacent seazones being attacked. Maybe a Leader can scramble fighters into adjacent territory when attacked ? Or let fighters land in a newly captured territory if the Leader is there too ?

If the Leader act as an Admiral, maybe let Shore bombardment boost up any matching infantry, like the Arty does ?

Or let the Leader implement some of the new rules from A&A 1914, like Artillery get a preemptive shot at landing units, and Tanks absorb one hit when attacking etc. I would even let a Leader combat move Tanks and Mechs through a newly captured territory to do combat in the second territory, to represent Breakthrough. Or let Tanks non combat move out of a newly captured territory, so they are not stuck there, this would be a supreme Strafing tactic.

Maybe even let a defending Leader retreat after first round of combat when being attacked ?

Come to think about it, there is already an A&A Expansion named Honor and Infamy Commanders that you can buy. Just google the name, and see attached pic

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