@taamvan
“Fun” and “Balanced” are two different things altogether. My playgroup has a blast playing this game OOB, balance issues be-damned.
In this game series, the Axis are tasked with utilizing their superior starting forces and initiative to conquer territory from the economically superior Allies. My argument is that the Zombie Mechanic makes conquering and holding territory more difficult than in previous iterations of A&A, and thus, negatively impacts the Axis more than the Allies.
Basic Example, let’s say USSR has 24 IPC income and Nazis have 40 IPC icnome.
Germans attacks a made-up Soviet territory, we’ll just call it “Karelia”, and say it’s worth 2 IPC. Let’s assume it’s a typical trade and Germany takes the territory with ~1 INF remaining (we’ll say it was 2 INF Vs. 1 INF or INF/FTR Vs. 1 INF).
In a normal A&A edition, Germany goes up 2 IPC, USSR goes down 2 IPC for a total swing of 4 IPC.
This plays out mostly the same in AAZ, with the caveat that the battle can potentially result in both sides getting wiped out due to Zombies.
In the base case, this is highly unlikely, but as the game drags on and the Zombie Stacks get bigger/more impenetrable, you will see situations where you get territory arrangements that look like this:
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Territory 1: Safe German Clay (we’ll call it “Eastern Europe”). The main German stack is here.
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Territory 2: “Karelia” from above. Was originally Soviet, but now has a massive Zombie stack on it, and is controlled by the Zombies (i.e. not providing income to either player).
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Territory 3: Safe Russian Clay (we’ll call it “Archangel”). The main Soviet stack is here.
This is you usual Dead-Zone situation, but the problem here is that Germany is not able to maintain its income level by continuously attacking “Karelia”. Yes, the Soviets are similarly denied the income from the territory, but the result is beneficial to the Allies overall:
Normal Game: Germany takes “Karelia”: +2 to German Income/-2 to Soviet Income = +4 swing to Axis.
AAZ: Zombies take “Karelia”: +0 to German Income/-2 to Soviet Income = +2 swing to Axis.
These sorts of situations play out all over the map (Chinese mainland, Eastern Front, Africa) and the overall effect is that the Axis’ progress in meeting the Allies’ income is slowed, which gives the Allies more time to leverage their superior starting income to overcome the initial disparity in starting forces.
This can be managed, yes, but it’s difficult when you also factor in the following points:
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most of the territories that are passed back-and-forth in the ETO are considered German-owned (W. Russia, Ukraine, Norway, W. Europe, North Africa Vs. Karelia, Egypt and maybe Caucasus if the Soviet Player is doing poorly).
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The Soviets go first (out of necessity, as this is a 1942 setup and the Germans start at the gates of Moscow), and thus may immediately begin doing damage to the German income that they may or may not be able to recover effectively due to the accumulation of Zombies.
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In a strictly numerical sense, the gap between the Soviet and German incomes (14 Vs. 23 in AAZ, a 9 IPC gap) is not as large as it is in your typical A&A game (which is usually 24 Vs. 35/40/41, anywhere between an 11 and 17 IPC gap). This makes the Soviet’s Task of “hanging in there” against the German onslaught less difficult, despite how massively superior the starting German Army is.
I know a lot of this is just me throwing numbers at you, but the point is that, with the current setup, the Allies have the luxury of dictating where the main concentrations of Zombies will appear during the earliest stage of the game, which in-turn sets the tone for the entire match by giving the Axis a hole to punch themselves out of before they can even start challenging the Allies’ economies.
The Axis need a handicap to compete under these conditions, and diverting the attention of the UK/US to the more far-flung regions of the map for a few turns via biased Zombie Cards is, in my opinion, the simplest way to do it. A bid won’t cut it here because if Germany is given too much extra power at the start they’ll just steamroll the Russians and ruin things in a different way.