Topics created by amanntai

@AndreasI: Just some thoughts from someone who hasn’t really done the math nor played enough rounds to actually see this tactic through. Can US really be at war, at their own initiative, with Germany on turn 3 (Combat/Movement phase?) so they can actually move to Gibraltar at all? Or are there any second edition additional rules that I have missed? And then on down to the tactics on getting a strong fleet supporting units into Normandy or other mainland european regions: Am I correct in assuming that Germany loosing it’s entire bomber force against, let’s say, a strong naval presence from US/UK equals a lost game for Germany? I am aware that Japan can still grow to be a monster and win the game for the axis anyhow but let’s keep focus on europe for now. Creating a fleet according to Nippon-kokus suggestion (or similar) would create a situation that requires Germany to respond with their bombers. Once there is a strong static fleet that Germany can’t attack without risking it’s entire air force it’s quite easy for the allies to maintain that ratio of units so that it stays safe. And what happens then? The US can land units basically every turn once the shuttle is running. 8 or 10 units are not frightening, I admit. Easily countered by Germany but the way I see it is that Germany from then on are forced to use their bombers plus land units each turn against a landing force. Using german bombers on that front every turn makes them unusable against the russians. I can certainly see where there could be a bit of trouble breaking through russian lines. The way I see it, if the US can do this, why would Dark Skies really matter? Would buying 20 Infantry and 10 Tanks be any different? Germany still couldn’t kill the Allied fleet, would still have to divert forces from Russia, would still face the Allies landing every turn… …and on top of it, It’d be harder for Germany to counter attack. Seems like Dark Skies is still an optimal strategy against a US invasion.

Alright, I finally got around to completing a full game with these rules. The results: Soviet Union Victory! The game was close, with the last few turns being a race to see whether Russia could hold Berlin for a full turn before the US could capture and hold a capital. In the end, Russia was able to hold Berlin the turn before the US would have won for holding Rome. The game was 11 turns long, I think. I kind of lost count. France was definitely the big loser of this game, never capturing a single victory city, and being almost completely wiped from the board by the end. Though France started fairly strong, its navy (the most expensive at the start) was too spread out to accomplish anything, and it slowly lost its African territories due to an inability to reinforce them. The final blow was when France, seeing a weak Northern Italy, send out too many forces on the offensive and lost its Capital to Germany. Italy also did poorly. Though it easily dominated the Mediterranean, it lacked the economy to support its efforts against a UK that was going almost full Egypt. When France invaded Northern Italy, Italy withdrew as many of its forces from North Africa as possible to defend its Capital. After that, Italy managed to stave off a German assault and even counter attack back into a then dying Germany, but the US came in and crushed Rome just before the end. Germany did quite well, before it fell apart. Early on, Germany held the line with France and Italy, while still throwing most of its forces at Russia. It managed to gain some good ground, and was greatly helped initially by the Finnish and Bulgarian troops. However, after France made it’s move on Italy, Germany was forced to march into Paris to prevent France from gaining control of Southern Europe and fighting Germany with all its might. This unfortunately destabilized the Western front, and Germany began losing ground in Russia while fighting with France and Italy. A rush to try and take Paris and Rome before the Russians took Poland failed, and Germany was eventually completely wiped from the board. The United Kingdom struggled initially, as Italian forces opposed it in Africa. However, the UK put a Minor IC in Egypt and was able outproduce Italy over time. Eventually it took complete control of Africa as Italy pulled out to defend its European territory. The UK managed to defend against a US invasion, and at the end game launched an invasion of Belgium and took Normandy and West Germany. It was maybe one turn away from a victory at the end, but Russia and the US had just barely beaten it to meeting their objectives. The United States was the “clock” of the game: with no opponents at the start, the US had a few turns to build up an invasion force to conquer Europe. It was a race for the other nations to win before the American behemoth arrived to crush them. Unfortunately, this made America really boring to play, as they had no action until the end of the game. The Soviet Union had a great game. They struggled against the mighty German war machine at first, but in the end, their single-minded assault on Berlin won out. They were able to reached a staggering 50 IPCs a turn as they captured Berlin, and managed to hold it a full turn just ahead of the capitalist Americans. So, what needs changing? Not much. The Major powers all seem pretty balanced, as any of them could have won if they had used an ideal strategy. Additionally, most of the game they were all at about 30 IPCs, with the US having slightly more and the UK having slightly less. The Minor Powers need help though. Their starting advantage of having the most units quickly wears off, and then Italy is left neutered with IPCs hovering at about 14, and France loses IPCs over the course of the game as its colonies are taken. Unfortunately, I can’t find a good way to balance it well. I believe a National Objective system might help, giving France and Italy NOs that are relatively easy to accomplish while giving the Major Powers NOs that require a lot of work.

I think the issue with this is there aren’t really a lot of “pitched battles” in the Revolution. I think this would need to be more on the lines of the AH “Battlecry” or DOW’s “Memoir '44” based on the commands and colors “engine.”

I wonder what the difference is in : Battles fought in Winter / Casualties    - VS -    Battles fought in Summer / Casualties Cheers, Starlight Sniper

I love the idea for a Europe 1939 game, 3 individual blocks with own specific victory conditions. Player 1, the Axis with Germany and Italy, separate economies but move and attack together. Player 2, the Commies, USSR aka Russia, joined with China in the global game. Player 3, the democratic western allies USA, UK, France, separate economies but move and attack together.

This is an issue that has cropped up in numerous A&A games.  The box board photos are often taken by marketing department people who simply want to make the picture look pretty and who aren’t overly concerned about depicting things accurately.

@amanntai: @Young: @amanntai: This post is not meant to be political in any way. ISIS & ALLIES A Modern Take On A Classic Board Game! Extremists threaten the globe! Lead the coalition forces of Iraq, Syria, the Peshmerga, and Hezbollah into battle! Or rally foreign fighters to join the cause of Islamic State! As the coalition, order US airstrikes. As ISIS, win the war on the internet to radicalize the West. Change the course of history… as it’s being made! What do think? It could happen, right? Anything can translate into a board game, but sometimes you just gotta wait a few years while things blow over, and this idea might be one of those times. Obviously, in real life this would have to be done way after the events, to avoid it being called pro-ISIS or offending ISIS or anything. It’s one thing to make board games featuring Nazis or Soviets, another to make one featuring terrorist groups. You’d have to do it carefully. Will it be made? Probably not. Could it? Yes. I’m not censoring anything for those douche bags…both Daesh or the PC crowd. F*ck em! Don’t worry though, it won’t be long before US combat soldiers find their way back over there going “weapons free”. If that happens, the game wouldn’t be terribly interesting since it would be unbalanced and a seperate game dedicated to counter insurgency and wide area security probably wouldn’t sell too well either.

What are the roles and responsibilities of moderators?

@CWO: One low-cost way for you to experiment with this concept to see if it works, and to then help you decide if you should invest more money in the way you described to give each nation  its own special HBG unit, would  be to: Pick up a copy of A&A 1941 Extract from it the unique sculpts that represent weapons which were actually used by the nations which produced them, and ignore the ones which are “national mismatches” (American IS-2 tanks, and so forth) Designate them as special units and create (or find) house rules to govern them To give some examples: The tank sculpts in 1941 represent German Tiger and Russian IS-2 tanks, both of which were heavy tanks.  Those two nations would therefore have the ability to build heavy tank units. The battleship sculpts in 1941 represent the British Hood class and the Japanese Kongo class, bot of which were battlecruisers.  Those two nations would therefore have the ability to build battlecruisers. The other units aren’t as clear-cut as examples, but you could use a similar technique.  The American Sumner-class destroyer could be used to represent destroyer escorts (which, I admit, they weren’t).  The British  Lancaster could be used to represent a bomber with a super-heavy lift capacity, the Lanc being the only Allied bomber which was long enough and powerful enough to carry the Grand Slam super-heavy bomb.  And so forth.  The point is that one single copy of this game, which is fairly inexpensive, would give you lots of unit types with which to test your concept. Interestingly enough, I actually had a new 1941 at one time (I got it as a Christmas Present), but returned it for the very reason that each nation didn’t have unique sculpts. I grabbed the Seafarers expansion for Catan instead. But thanks for the idea.

@CWO: Interesting hypothetical scenario.  It raises all sorts of questions, both from a point of view of weapons technology and politics. Assuming that WWI had lasted for another 20 years (meaning, I assume, 20 more years after 1918, which brings us to 1938, one year short of the starting date of WWII), weapons technology would certainly have progressed further and faster (though not necessarily in the same directions) than it did historically.  To quote one example as an illustration, just look at the classes of battleships and battlecruisers that many WWI combatants had planned or were actually building at the time the war ended in 1918, but which were then abandoned.  The British, for instance, were planning a class of battleships armed with 18-inch guns that would probably have entered service in the early 1920s; in the real world, it was only in the early 1940s that an 18-inch gun battleship class (the Yamatos) entered service.  Many of the weapons that achieved maturity in WWII existed in WWI, albeit at the infancy stage – notably tanks and aircraft carriers.  The same was true of certain tactics: had the war lasted until 1919, there were plans on the Allied side to mount attacks by massed tanks working in close coordination with motorized infantry and aircraft support…essentially an early version of Blitzkrieg. However, even though I can see some WWII-type weapons being used on the WWI game board under such a scenario, the part I think is problematic is the political element: the idea that the same 8 powers who are the contestants in the A&A 1914 game could still all be in existence, and still fighting each other, in 1938.  Remember, after all, that three of those states – Tsarist Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire – were already politically and/or economically unstable in 1914.  Russia had already seen one revolution against the Romavov dynasty in 1906, and this had done nothing to persuade Nicolas II to liberalize his regime.  The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a mish-mash of restless ethnic groups led by an elderly ruler who, like Nicolas II, believed in absolute monarchy.  The Ottoman Empire had been in decline for a long time, and its leaders were both divided and paralyzed by indecision.  Frankly, I’m surprised that Russia managed to last till 1917 and the other two until 1918, so I don’t see any of those regimes surviving a further two decades of war. I said another 20 years was highly improbable for the very reason of political (as well as economic) instability. I highly doubt the war could have gone on for twenty more years without several nations collapsing from the strain. But as you correctly pointed out, technology would have advanced much faster had the war continued. I know for example that Thompson sub-machine guns were developed during WW1, but never saw action, and that they would later be used in WW2. So let’s say the war only goes on for another 2 or 3 years. This would bring many weapons used in WW2 into the conflict. Now that we have a somewhat alternate-historical basis, can we design rules for allowing WW2 era A&A units such as TcB, StrB, MechInf, and CVs? As I’ve said, I haven’t actually played 1914, but I know there’s a rule for when tanks can actually be built, could a similar rule be implemented for other units? I plan to buy 1914 and try it out.