Why is Global better than Revised?

Well off the top Global offers money- e.g “oil” for holding certain areas ( national objectives) and/or doing certain things ( For Italy keep UK out of Medd) that Historically make AA fall in line with the combatants fought for during the war. The options for players is greater ( new units, more flavor) Russo-Japanese non aggression treaty, etc. The game has invadable neutrals rather than some blanket “you cant enter Switzerland you idiot kind of rules” This gives this version the flavor of a Wargame, while Revised is more Advanced Risk. I did create Axis and Allies Revised Historical Edition that won an award, as it stands to offer many of the kinds of things people would want in a version that caters to Historical sensibilities. Anyway if you just want to mostly buy tanks and shuck them to Moscow have at it.

@Imperious-Leader said in Why is Global better than Revised?:

Well off the top Global offers money- e.g “oil” for holding certain areas ( national objectives) and/or doing certain things ( For Italy keep UK out of Medd) that Historically make AA fall in line with the combatants fought for during the war. The options for players is greater ( new units, more flavor) Russo-Japanese non aggression treaty, etc. The game has invadable neutrals rather than some blanket “you cant enter Switzerland you idiot kind of rules” This gives this version the flavor of a Wargame, while Revised is more Advanced Risk. I did create Axis and Allies Revised Historical Edition that won an award, as it stands to offer many of the kinds of things people would want in a version that caters to Historical sensibilities. Anyway if you just want to mostly buy tanks and shuck them to Moscow have at it.

Totally agree.

@Argothair said in Why is Global better than Revised?:

Very interesting, thank you. So, digging a little deeper, can anyone articulate what it means for something to be a “wargame” or why G40 would scratch the “wargame hunger” better than Revised? In concrete terms, why does G40 feel like a wargame?

The gist of it is that G40 has a higher level of complexity and scale than Revised, in terms of number of territories on the board, distinct unit types, special rules/scenarios, how scripted the opening moves are (in the big picture, I mean), etc.

Take your average wargame. Hex-based Grid, super-historically accurate setup (with minor concessions for balance reasons), Chits corresponding to individual unit/battalions/whatever (this differs based on the game). Wargames also typically cover the full timeline of the war, with certain historical events more-or-less pre-determined (i.e. France will lose to the Nazi assault in 1940 every time. Germany will need to declare war on the Soviet Union ever time, USA will enter the war on the Allies’ side after either Japan attacks them or certain conditions are met, etc.).

Does this sort of thing sound more like Revised, or G40? Clearly the answer here is G40. Revised has a comparatively static initial board state set late in the war (~1942), that isn’t historically accurate (i.e. “Pearl Harbor” happens J1 despite the Germans already being more-or-less set up to make their doomed attack into Stalingrad, but somehow the Russians get to make the first move? Also Germany/Italy just gets to take Egypt at the start of the game?). Meanwhile, G40 starts you off in a relatively accurate representation of 1940 Europe, with things like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact, America’s Neutrality, and Japan not yet being at war with most of the Allies all being present and accounted for.

Revised, when played at a high level, looks nothing like World War 2 in terms of strategies used by the Players. G40 doesn’t either, but it comes a lot closer than Revised does. That’s why I call G40 “close to a wargame” rather than giving it the full distinction.

But what else are you going to do? Either the action has a central focus (in which case people will complain that the only thing to do is go right for the center) or the action doesn’t have a central focus (in which case people will complain that it feels casual and screwy and ahistorical and winds up in stalemates where you trade the same peripheral territories forever). Maybe I’m feeling too philosophical today to talk sense. I’m just trying to figure out what makes A&A games fun and what makes them frustrating, at a really abstract and general level.

What makes a A&A game fun/frustrating is a subjective question, I guess I’ll give you my take:

• Fun - Relatively quick compared to other wargames.

• Fun - Straightforward-enough rules, but not for babies like Risk or your typical Milton Bradley/Hasbro game.

• Fun - Exciting World War 2 Action.

• Fun - Decent-to-huge variety in strategic options available to the player. You’re not forced to follow history 1:1.

• Fun - While luck is a factory, the better player will usually win due to skill.

• Fun - Asynchronous Gameplay. The Axis start with more Power, but less Economy. The Allies start with more Economy, but less Power. The Axis have to try their best to gain the economic advantage over the Allies before the Allies’ superior economy allows them to overpower the Axis’ starting advantage. It’s like picking White or Black in Chess, but on a much higher level than just “who goes first”.

• Fun - Ability to make custom scenarios easily, as the simple rules lend themselves easily to modifications, as shown by the hard work a lot of people do on this forum.

• Frustrating - Once optimal play is found for a map, most games usually come down to arguments about bids and dice rolls.

• Frustrating - Because of the OOB system, games can be decided by single rounds of combat if one side rolls well.

• Frustrating - Grind Games. While some long, drawn out games can be breathtakingly exciting, more often than not you’re staring at 20 turns of swapping some clay in Ukraine/some territory adjacent to Moscow and waiting for something exciting to happen while looking at the clock. Face-to-Face rules that impose a strict turn limit do a lot to alleviate this, though.

@Argothair said in Why is Global better than Revised?:

Can you elaborate a little bit on how or why these rules opened up new strategies? It looks like almost every territory worth 2 IPCs or more is a Victory Territory. How does playing with this list of Victory Territories change the strategy compared to just saying “whoever has more money after 6 rounds wins?”

Basically, the idea behind the alternative WBC rules is that you’re adding more variety in win conditions beyond “Germany stacks INF in Germany/France/Italy”, “Japan builds Tanks and walks into Moscow”, and “US/UK build a death-fleet and try to land in Germany/France/Italy”.

tl;dr Strategic Variety is key. Every country (not Faction) has at least 2-3 different viable ways that they can play the game. Even Russia, to an extent.

Specifically:

• Germany goes after USSR, so if Russia simply spends the whole game swapping Ukraine back and forth, Germany is going to end up winning the VT there. This encourages the Soviets to play more aggressively in the later rounds.

• Norway and Egypt are designed as “freebies” for Germany and UK to steal from one another in the initial rounds. The difference is that later in the game (assuming a 5-6 round time limit), USA is probably going to land in Africa and take Egypt back. This encourages Germany to be aggressive in either attacking Russia to make up the difference, or building a Baltic Navy to reinforce Norway/keep UK out of it.

• The Money Islands (Borneo/East Indies/Philippines) + Australia/Hawaii are made into VTs to force Japan to actually build some sort of navy to pursue them, and to encoarge USA to play in the Pacific. In OOB rules Philippines is the only VC in the Pacific, and as it’s right next to Japan it’s laughably easy to defend. This totally discourages USA/UK from even trying to contest the Pacific, since there are more VCs to be gained by attacking Europe.

• On a similar note, Kwangtung is demoted from it’s OOB VC status, while Manchuria and FIC are promoted to VC status. These territories are situated right next to Japan’s borders with Russia and India, meaning that they become tempting options for early game aggression, or even a US Factory in China.

• The Russian VC in Archangel is completely and totally off the standardly accepted “beaten path” for Germany to take to get to Russia (that being Germany -> East Europe -> Ukraine -> West Russia/Caucasus -> Russia). This can expand the Russian front to include all of the territories between Germany and Russia, rather than just the usual 3-4.

• None of UK’s African territories are VCs. This gives the Axis the choice of either attacking Africa for IPCs to win a potential tiebreaker/fund later turns or just gunning straight for VCs.

• Sinkiang is a VC for the same reason Ukraine is. If Russia just swaps them back and forth with Germany/Japan the Axis will win the VCs in the end. Russia is forced to decide whether to aggressively pursue one or both of these VCs, or forfeit them to the Axis.

Hope this ranting and raving helps. It’s similar enough to Siredblood’s G40 rules, when you think about it. The difference here is that you’re playing to simply determine who has more VCs by end-of-game, rather than trying to prevent the Axis from meeting some arbitrary goal.

I would think 1942.2 is a much better and corrected version of Revised and the comparison is much better. The sea zones and areas are brilliantly laid out and the LH-Gencon set up is quite balanced. I think the bid if any would be an extra sub for Germany. The game itself has some of the extra units ( cruisers), new rules ( AA guns and sub changes) Tanks are fixed as well. Everyone should own a copy.

Never having played revised, although I have played classic and 42.2 so I can infer a lot about revised. I would say that G40 has a longer, more complex game with more depth. It’s the depth which makes Global better in my view. I can certainly see how World in Flames and Global War players see going to A&A as a backward step. The downside is that it takes longer to play.

Specifically:

• Scrambles
• Politics
• non automatic capital ship repair
• not having the AA Gun capturable
• arguably airbase & naval base movement bonuses
• arguably the inclusion of mechanised infantry
• note I didn’t say tac bombers
• note I didn’t say built in AA at facilities

Hope this is helpful.

Well in G40 there are many paths to Axis victory, and many conceivable ways that the allies may attempt to block said paths. In the earlier games, well Classic victory in Europe was almost inconceivable, it really devolved so quickly into a monolithic thrust to Moscow to win. It’s still true that neutering Moscow as quickly as possible is a major thrust of G40, it is often better to weaken it first, particularly in BM.

Anyway, not sure I can add that much more to this without going into “how to play G40”.

I always loved revised. In my opinion, it is the best axis game at that scale. I do like the fact that TTs has a die in defence. I have played houndreds of games of revised.

Global scratches a different itch. It is at a completely different scale. I always used to call it “Axis in flames”, since its scale is right between the classical axis and allies and a popular game called “World in flames” (by australian design group).

@Argothair, if you want to check out the most common global scale “war-game”, you should check out World in flames. It is on the smaller side of global war games, but it is extremely well made, and streamlined. It has the best system for fleet-combat i have seen in any system. In this game, you have a named counter for every ship of cruiser-size or larger. US has 196 named ships of the type surface combat ships (Light cruiser, Cruiser, Battle ship, CV and CVL).

Looked at this game you mentioned and a ton of good stuff but 88 pages of rules and so many little tactical results with a ton of modifiers and changes way to much for my group. I’ll finish reading the rules and see if there’s any one thing or two I can use in my game.
Thanks for posting

@SS-GEN It is a very good game. At least 40% of the rules are relating to optional units. Most people play with most optional units, but a lot of people play the vanilla version.

@Kreuzfeld said in Why is Global better than Revised?:

@SS-GEN It is a very good game. At least 40% of the rules are relating to optional units. Most people play with most optional units, but a lot of people play the vanilla version.

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