Posts made by Make_It_Round

I think I’ve got it now.

Use the fighter range 2 and bomber range 3 from Guad, but otherwise unit movement is the same as standard A&A.

Combat is one round only, and broken down into 3 distinct phases like Guad (to avoid odd situations, e.g. wherein 1 fighter could grind down a huge infantry stack).

To compensate for the different economies of the two games, give aircraft and tanks the ‘resilience’ ability.

Units with resilience that are damaged get a ‘damage’ counter (from A&A: 50) and are removed from combat. Damaged units get -1 movement and have the same status as transports in this version; they have no fighting ability and cannot be chosen as casualties in combat unless every other friendly combat-worthy unit in the territory or sea zone that is being attacked is destroyed. To have a damage counter removed, the damaged unit must start the turn at a friendly industrial complex, and its controller must pay 1 IPC to the bank.

Tanks are 5IPCs, 0 air / 0 sea / 2 land / 2 move, resilience.

Artillery can use their ability to shoot at sea units only when an amphibious assault is being conducted, and the only casualties that can be inflicted by artillery fire are those units that are directly involved in the assault, or supporting the assault with bombardment.

Battleships and Cruisers can use their ability to shoot at land units only when an amphibious assault is being conducted, and only 1 ship may fire in this way for each 1 attacking land unit involved in the assault.

That’s my proposal in a rough form. Anybody have any thoughts on the matter?

Oh, and to recreate Japan’s ‘suprise attack’ advantage: have Japanese units hit on three or less, or Allied units hit on just a one, or both. You’ll need to playtest to see which of the three options is best.

The more pressing question is whether you’re going to limit yourself to one round of combat or keep rolling indefinitely, like in old-fashioned A&A. You could keep the ‘attack air units’ phase going until one side’s air had been wiped out, and so forth to the ‘attack sea units’ and ‘attack land units’ phases… Problem then being that one fighter could wipe out an entire stack of infantry without any way of shooting back (though I suppose that then we’d see players actually buying AA guns en masse!). The other alternative would be to keep combat going for only one round, like Guad, and end up with a lot of contested territories (which could also be fun).

I think it’s a great idea, and that we ought to revisit this topic. I’m surprised that no one’s accomplished it so far. Maybe if we put our heads together ;)

Okay, so keep all movement ‘integrated’ (turn-based) like standard A&A… You could still make all combat and movement rules / values of units equal those of Guadalcanal, and that would make the game more textured. Forget the battlebox even, my favourite bit was the breakdown of the combat into Air/Sea/Land phases (which could be accomplished without randomizing casualties, which takes up too much time).

The difficulty I came across when trying to combine these two was finding a way to reconcile the economies of A&A: Pac and A&A: Guad… The units are just radically different in terms of their cost in either version, and the number of ‘IPC’ points on the each board available for purchasing new units seem incompatible as well. The question of bringing in ‘supply’ rules to allow for extra ship / tank movements has to be raised, as well (inviting comparisons between Guad and BotB supply rules as to which was better).

Hmmm.

Does that mean that we’ll be seeing nation-specific AA guns that can be killed again (like in Guadalcanal)?

Hold on a minute here:

We were promised the return of Air Bases, Ports, and Convoy Boxes with A&A:P40… Yet there’s no evidence of them anywhere on the map pics!

What the deuce?

Seriously?  :?

So the USSR will have about 7 territories, but no troops? Not even a garrison??

Is the only purpose of those territories to contribute to the world-wide version of the game, then?

Krieg, would be greatly pleased if you could help me out with a burning question I have:

Will the USSR be represented in the AAP40 game? I saw some USSR territories on one fuzzy pic of the game board [BTW, can someone post the link to the board pix? The box cover shows up here, but I can’t see the map in the other thread for some reason… thanks], but with the game being billed as a “2-4 player” game, I can’t help but wonder if the Russians are going to be there, and if so what they’re going to be getting up to…

Cheers, M_I_R

Hi Tvaryen,

My thoughts (almost) exactly.

One problem is that I don’t like that damaged units ‘magically’ transport themselves to the closest friendly naval base for repairs.

Maybe instead of losing all movement, we ought to allow damaged units to move as normal back to a friendly naval base, but lose all combat and transport abilities until their repairs are completed. Until they are repaired, they can soak up a hit, but not return enemy fire! This could be the ‘vulnerability to attack’ you spoke of. That way, the owners of the ships have strong motivation to protect the damaged ships and get them back to port as soon as possible, which might make for interesting plays (one could recreate the Battle of the River Plate, for example).

The other thing is that (I think that) all repairs of damaged ships should only cost 1 supply token. This is because so many IPCs are already invested in capital ships, and it’s so inconvenient getting supply tokens to them, that we ought to reward players for taking the time and care to repair them in the first place.

I do think we’re on the same page on this matter, but perhaps not the same paragraph!

Best,

Round

D-saur,

I’m not out to convert anyone… okay, I’m actually out to convert everyone… as to the enjoyable results of applying AAG rules to AAR (and, no doubt, AA50 as well). All I can say is: Give it a try for yourself! It gave our playgroup experience a new range of strategic alternatives and a level of responsivity impossible to capture in the usual turn-based AAR system. Frontlines were established, maintained for a turn or two, then decisively broken; strategic bombing worked exactly the way that many intuitively think it ought to; well-timed spoiling attacks function to tie up enemy infantry and artillery before they can be moved. In all, it captures the feel of an engrossing ‘total war’ much more convincingly than the (relatively) undifferentiated Risk-style battles that take place in AAR.

-M_I_R

Hey Legion,

The AAP combat rules obviously give different unit attack/defence values than the AAG combat rules. This means, for example, that an AAG infantry does less, and therefore should cost less than an AAP infantry (the same goes for fighters and many other units).

So, my question for you is: how do you match up the AAP and AAG economies in your games? In other words, if you use the AAG combat system, it seems that you are commited to the AAG cost system for units, which is inconsistent with the AAP IPC-based income system. This could mean big play balance issues, I would think. At the very least, I imagine that it leads to certain units never being purchased at all.

In my AAR adaption of AAG combat rules, I use AAG unit costs and reduce the board-generated IPC income by 50%. This seems to work well for AAR. Have you tried to do something like this for AAP, or have you not felt the need to do so?

Best,

MIR

Guadalcanal is easily the most elegant, nuanced, and interactive method for resolving combat introduced so far in the A&A series of games. The logic of the system is very compelling; everything makes sense when you think about it… Of course Air combat precedes Sea combat which precedes Land combat! Of course battle casualties should be randomized, with expensive units dying only in heavy, chaotic battles where lots of shots are being fired (die are being rolled)! Pure genius!!

I do think that the order that the units are moved in could be profitably experimented with however:

1. Destroyers (screen goes out first)
2. Cruisers (to back up the destroyers)
3. Battleships (to add maximum gunpower to trouble spots)
4. Aircraft Carriers (move once the location of major naval battles looks obvious)
5. Transports (can get by unmolested if other player hasn’t spread sea units widely enough)
6. Subs (take out targets of opportunity)
7. Fighters (escorts go out first to clear the way)
8. Bombers (arrive last, and go do real damage unless fighters have been split defensively)

Utilizing this order of movement, I predict that a lot less unit stacking will occur in the game (as players will want to cover areas where transports and bombers might otherwise sneak in unopposed)!

Krieghund,

Let me see if I’m getting this right: you’re saying that giving planes resilience [making them 1.5 times tougher] reduces the value of defensive air cover?

I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make any sense at all. My idea makes air cover 1.5 times more powerful!

Since the topic of this thread is ‘No fear of airplanes’, I thought that we were trying to find ways to make air units more effective…

Best,

M_I_R

Hey folks,

My friends and I have playtested a few games of A&A:R with Guadalcanal combat and movement rules, and we had a very satisfying experience in doing so. There are a few obvious obstacles to converting the system over, most of which I hope you will find the answers to in the rules below…

The biggest change is to the number of IPCs collected; unit costs are the same as in A&A:G, but you only collect 50% of your regular IPC income, rounded down [SBRs are also reduced to 50% effectiveness, but losses are rounded up instead].

Movement is conducted in player order: 1.USSR, 2.Germany, 3.UK, 4.Japan, 5.US.
The first player token moves one place each round, so Round 2 player order would be 1.Germany, 2.UK, 3.Japan, 4.US, 5.USSR. In Round 3, the UK would be have the first player token, and so forth.

Movement is conducted in the following order (First Player moves all units of the stated type first):
**(1) Transports [Load and Move]
(2) Battleships
(3) Aircraft Carriers
(4) Cruisers
(5) Destroyers [Load and Move]
(6) Submarines
(7) Infantry
(8) Artillery
(9) Armor
(10) Anti-Aircraft Guns and Supply Tokens
(11) Bombers
(12) Fighters

All units have Move: 1 except for Fighters which have Range: 2, and Bombers which have Range: 3.

If a mechanized unit [all Air Units, all Sea Units, and Armor] begins its movement in a territory or a sea zone with a Supply Token in it, that unit can use that Supply Token to get Move: +1 or Range: +1 [maximum use = 1 Supply Token per 1 mechanized unit per turn]. Game starts with 1 Supply on Eastern US, Western US, UK, Russia, and 2 Supply on Germany and Japan.

Control of territories is determined by who has the majority of land units there—in the case of a tie, the previous owner retains control. As long as a player has any land units in a territory, their industrial complex there can continue to produce units for them.

[Some of the units from A&A:R don’t exist in the Guadalcanal version. Here are their converted forms…]

Industrial Complex
Air: 0
Sea: 0
Air: 0
Cost: 5
Special Ability: Can be built on any territority; next turn, it can produce a # of new units = that territory’s value.

Armor [takes die spot #5 in the Attack Land Units row of the battle box]
Air: 0
Sea: 0
Land: 2
Cost: 2
Special Abilities: Breakthrough

Breakthrough: land units that share a territory with enemy land units cannot move [they are considered ‘locked in combat’]; land units with Breakthrough can move normally, even when they start their turn in a territory that contains enemy land units.

[Resilience had to change somewhat to fit the new setting…]

Resilience: units with Resilience are considered damaged on a roll of 2, instead of destroyed. Damaged units cannot move, and lose 1 die to each of their Land/Sea/Air rolls. Damaged units can be repaired by spending 1 Supply Token [that Supply Token must share a territory or sea zone with the damaged unit; however, sea units can be repaired by Supply Tokens on a territory adjacent the sea zone they occupy].

[The following ability is an optional buff for subs, which makes them much more effective. Consider it the ‘Schnorkel’ weapons development… you can also apply it to Japanese fighters as a ‘Superior Fighters’ development…]

Evasion: units with evasion can only be hit on a roll of ‘1’.

I think that about covers all the big changes that had to be made. If you get the chance, try it out and let me know how it goes! I hope that you have as much fun as we did with the rules; it seriously reduced player ‘downtime’ and made the game feel much more like an integrated global conflict…

Enjoy!

• Round, Make It**

Hi Krieghund,

I like where you’re going. By way of response, I have what I think is a refinement on your idea for making aircraft tougher, which doesn’t require adding an extra step to an already complicated combat sequence. It is as follows…

Aircraft that are hit with '1’s [or 2 x '2’s] during the Attack Air Units phase are removed as per usual.

Aircraft that are hit with single '2’s during the Attack Air Units phase are flipped over and get to stick around and fire during the Attack Sea Units and Attack Land Units phases before they are removed at the end of combat [this gives aircraft an ersatz ‘Resilience’ ability, but without the possibility of repair/retrieval].

What do you think?

Best,

Make_R