Thanks! I hadn’t even seen that link! The Word document is very clean and well-organized; very easy to read.
THE GOOD: I like your land units; I think the mech. inf. + mech. art are very elegant and well-balanced. I also like the air bases, air fields, and the spread of movement ranges on the various types of planes. It’s neat to have tac bombers + med. strategic bombers + heavy strategic bombers.
THE BAD: You and I have talked about this a little bit before, but I am still not convinced that bombers should be killing fighters with first strike @ 1 during dogfights. I think A1 is already pretty generous for a bomber during a dogfight against a fighter’s D2. I defer to your superior number-crunching skills; I’m sure you’ve worked the math out properly. I just think it “feels” wrong to have a bomber be almost as powerful in air combat as a dedicated air-superiority fighter plane. Also, it looks like you’ve made submarines 1 IPC cheaper and given them a convoy raiding ability, without any real compensating disadvantages. You’ve changed the submerge ability, but on balance I think the submerge ability is still equally powerful. I think submarines are already a pretty good buy OOB at 6 IPCs, in part because they are the cheapest ship and therefore often the best available fodder. Making them even cheaper and more powerful seems like it will force players to buy hordes of submarines to protect their navies even if they’re not much interested in stealth and/or offense. I would rather see cheap destroyers, or maybe a DE class boat. Something like…
Destroyer Escort (DE): C5 A0 D1 M2, cancels one sub’s special abilities
Submarine (SS): C6 A2 D1 M2, submerge, first strike, and convoy raid
Transport (TT): C7 A0 D0 M3, can carry two land units, may take as casualty
Destroyer (DD): C8 A1 D2 M2, cancels one sub’s special abilities, 1 AA shot @ 1
Cruiser (CA): C9 A3 D3 M3, supports unloading land unit with one bombard @ 3.
THE INTERESTING: I like your air transport unit, and I think 5 move is exactly correct, but it might be slightly overpriced at 8 IPCs. I think I would prefer a 7 IPC price. Similarly, I like your carrier escort, but I’m not sure if it gives good value for money, especially if the enemy has few or no subs. When would I need to support one plane in the ocean? In real life, America and Japan needed escort carriers for protecting relatively minor troop transports and supply convoys in secondary theaters, e.g., for mopping up the Philippines, or for taking the rest of the Caroline Islands after Truk fell. But on the Axis & Allies maps, especially the smaller maps like 1942.2, there really aren’t any territories I can see that are both large enough to be worth sending a transport, and small enough that you could effectively guard that transport with only an escort carrier. Where do you think players will wind up using your escort carriers? I bet there’s a use for them somewhere, I just don’t see it myself. Finally, I don’t think letting tactical bombers hit an air target of their choice on a roll of 1 is interesting or important enough to justify the extra complication in the rules – all the bombers should get the same special ability, i.e., if they roll a 1, they can choose their target. If you want to limit that target to land (and sea?) then that’s fine, but limit it for all the bombers, not just some of them.
THE NITPICKY: Cruisers give +1 move when paired 1:1 with a surface vessel, but cruisers themselves still only have a move of 2. Typo? Also, I think historically the main British air base in the Middle East was in Trans-Jordan, not in Egypt.
In general, these are a fun set of alternate units, and if one of my friends ever assembles a set of all of the necessary miniatures, I would be happy to playtest them! Thanks for sharing. :-)