we’ve played this one 2-3 times at the club?
takeaways;
Tons of fun pieces. Pieces where they should be (Russian East, Black sea I think, American reserves…etc.)
Everything is on the board. Leads to some traffic jams/crowding. This gets resolved pretty quickly as attrition takes its toll.
Axis bias? No way. When the setup gives the pieces to the allies that they need, the entire game changes. The Axis are on the defensive at first, they can still take Moscow and the other Russian cities, but they are in deep trouble as the USA has plenty of stuff ready at war start and so doesn’t need to waste time and money building up. Its an immediate invade, with backup, starting turn 1.
This version is plenty fun but it isn’t super balanced. Oztea did a great job here, not trying to diminish that.
It doesn’t lend itself to the cheese (fun but unrealistic gambits) of G40…G41 requires solid, ungimmicky play. It seems more realistic to have some true mobility armies and American beef; one thing that AxA OOB doesn’t mimic well is that while the Allies were stripped bare to start the war (in G40 and real life 1940), by 1942, they had a huge material and combined arms advantage, which never really plays out in G40 or G42. In G40, While the Allies do get tougher, the Axis get DRAMATICALLY tougher also on turns 1-4 and so there is a kind of maintenance of the standoff.
In G41, everyone starts equally beefy, the Allies surge, the Axis stretch thinner and thinner…