@djensen

I sent in for Gold as usual.

Thanks for running this site

@The_Good_Captain

Right, 5 years in the military make me read everything literally, letter for letter, to the letter, if you will. Unfortunately I don’t have power to make you edit your Headline to “I know 5 versions of A&A that surely are imbalanced” so I just move on. I let it go. Not my business.

I am aware of your YT Channel and have watched some, not all, and you have done a good job. I’m not a competitive player so I’m not qualified to comment on most of them. But as a history buff and vet I don’t appreciate silly game mechanics or rules that produce results which don’t make sense in the context of the historical setting, like Submarines shooting down Aircrafts, Trannies sinking Battleships, which was an issue with MB Classic but that have been fixed in later versions. I do like the rules and mechanic to be streamlined for ease of play, and IMHO Infantry shold always cost 3 IPC and not 2 like in N.A, and why do we need so many different Supply rules? Battle of the Bulge had one type of Supply, then North Africa had another type of Supply rule, and now Stalingrad have another Supply rule. And what about Road movement? In Battle of the Bulge everything on wheels move unlimited, in North Africa vehicles move 5 spaces, and in Stalingrad some vehicles move 2+2 spaces on the road. But StugIII and the truck with Katusjas only move 1 even they got the same engine as other vehicles. Don’t make sense to me. And then there is the scripted games. Like in Stalingrad Russian Infantry is restricted form moving in the first 2 rounds because Stalin had OCD and said not one step back. When I play Russia I am not Stalin, and I want my Infantry to move back, but silly rules prevent me. Enouch, maybe I’ll comment on some of your other threads some time. Take care and keep up the good work.

Renegade announce reprint of D-day for april 2026.

@CentralCommando

I surely don’t want to derail Jensens thread, so you should make a new topic. This issue need a dedicated thread, for sure.

That said, the quintessence of A&A is a simplistic game with simplistic rules. Easy to learn, and a lifetime to master. Either AA42 second ed or Anniversary, but not with dark colors. (The colors from MB Classic or Europe (1999) or Pacific (2001) had maps with bright colors. Too dark colors make me sad). Focus on that. All this Theather games with different and complex rules, some with D12, D10 or D6, or a dice Box, different stacking limits (in the range of 8 to 12 units) different supply rules, different road movement rules was a bad idea. Streamlining of rules and ease of play should be the cornerstone of A&A. Now make this new thread and I for sure will weight in, man

@The_Good_Captain

As of 2026 there are 19 spin-off games in the A&A franchise. You only investigated 5 of them. Also we are aware of the imbalance and bugs, and that is why we have bidding. No games are strictly balanced, not even Chess. If you start with white pieces in Chess you got the advantage. If you go first in Monopoly you got an advantage. Your study is not wrong, I appreciated it, and would like to see you do all the 19 spin-offs. You shold also look into the Tournament Rules, like LHTR, etc, and joined with bidding the games get fairly balanced, That said, the casual A&A player, like the casual Chess player, don’t play competitive. 99% of the A&A Community love to fool around with the plastic pieces and don’t mind any imbalances. We play for fun. Now keep that in mind.

@The_Good_Captain

OK we are cool. My next post will be on the balance and bugs issue. Your statement is that adding one UK Infantry here (Anniversary) and removing a Ge Tank and Sub there (Europe) will fix the balance issue. You are not wrong, but as far as I’m conserned bidding have been taking care of that since 1988.

Looking forward to your next investigation. You now have finished 5 and only 14 more versions to cover.

@CWO:

…. and two American fighter units represented by two different sculpts (though their cost and characteristics in the rules were identical).Â

Correct, One of the designers said he could not live with an Army P 38 Lighting as a carrier based plane, so they gave us 6 carrier based fighters too. Those were the days…

Got Gold

History buff from Norway here. Now, the Fake Land War startet with the outset in september 1939 and ended in may 1940. But a naval war, aka the Battle of Atlantic, was going on from the outset. So basically it was a hot war, just not on land.

IMHO German control of Norway was not that vital. The UK blockade of the GUIP-gap would stop most of the break out attempts with surface warships, and in 1939 German U-boats lacked the range. It was in fact the capture of French ports that made a difference and boosted the German effort. U-boats from Brest covered most of the Atlantic. So control or no control of Norway really don’t matter, and the Swedish iron ore would come anyway.

UK would obvios win a naval war, like it did in the real war. Germany is not a naval power and can not afford focus on ships. At some point it would need to be a land war. Germany could of course sue for a truce. Then IMHO WWII could turn out to look like the Napoleonic Wars, a series of local conflicts fought by a fluctuating array of coalitions. Boney had 7 of this wars, who knows how many A. would get?

Uncle Joe pumped a lot of oil and iron into Germany in a divide and conquer game. With a truce between Germany and the Western Allies the Russian flow of resources would surely stop.

Basically IMHO Germany had no choice. WWII would alway play out as it did

@Narvik

ANZAC AND UK PAC TURN 22 - WINTER 1945

COMBAT
OPERATION CAPITAL - INVASION OF BURMA
India: 4 Inf, Art, Tank, BMB (UK) + 4 Inf (Punjab) + 2 Inf (Gurkha) attack> Burma: 3 Inf (JAP) + Inf (BU)
Loss Allies: 1 Inf + Loss JAP: all units

BATTLE OF RAMREE ISLAND
1000 japanese soldiers retreat into crocodile-infestet mangrove swamps.
Only 20 survive.
This is known as the worst animal attack ever recordet. If it’s true. Historians differ

Burma switch side and join the Allies.
1 Inf (BU) join the Allies.

@RogerCooper I belive it already is a strategy for attacking Turkey, but you have to attack all neutrals simultanesly in Round 2 or 3. In that case France is out of the game. France is not a threat. IMHO you always attack France first.

In the real war a successful Axis capture of the Middle East oil nedd to be done after France fell, and the Balkans are captured. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of september 1939 did split the Middle East too, so I belive Stalin would stay out of it. Syria was ruled by Vichy, Iraq ruled by Rasihid Ali was pro-Axis and that’s the reason for the Anglo-Iraq war. Persia ruled by Reza Shah Phalavi was pro-Axis too, and that was the reason for the Anglo-Sovjet invasion. Trans-Jordan too was pro-Axis. Also Egypt with king Farouk was pro-Italy, and an egyptian princess married a persian prince in 1939 as an anti-british alliance. IMHO if the Axis had a strategy to capture the Middle East oil I figure it was doable. But then of course Operation Barbarossa had to be postponed some years, maybe a 1945 startline, and as we all know that was not acceptable to the German regime at that time. Lucky for us.

I love your HouseRules. A lot of good thinking. Germany would not need a 15 IPC bonus but should keep the 5 IPC Sovjet Trade bonus no matter what they do until they actually attack Russia or to the beginning of Round 5

@RogerCooper

You are correct, but the quantities of 1940 was not as large as today, The Iraqi oil was shipped from Haifa, a port in todays Israel. If the Axis had captured all of the Middle East they could have shipped the oil from Hayfa to any port in Italy.

You are quite right about Russia. Germany got 900 000 tons of oil, 500 00o tons of iron, and tons of other metals and food, every year from the German-Sovjet Economic Trade Agreements. Just look it up. I figure that Trade Agreement would come to an end very quick if Germany walked into Turkey. But that Trade Agreement would end anyway when Germany invadet Russia in june 1941. Basically Germany would need to replace that 900 000 tons of Russian oil some how, This oil was shipped from a port in Caucasus to a Romanian port and from there on train to Germany. So the Germans already had the Trains to carry the oil. Now the Trains had to go to Iraq to pick up the oil.

But, as we both know, in the real war this Russian oil were never replaced. And then Germany lost.

Now, in a game of A&A this strategy is no good because Turkey is strict neutral and if you attack a strict neutral all the other neutrals turn on you. This is because of game balance. A&A is a scripted game, you should stay to the historically correct actions. You have freedom to do crazy stuff but the rules will punish you. Just look at the German NO’s. You got 5 extra IPCs for each of Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad and Caucasus, because the game designer want to give you a reason to attack Sovjet and not Turkey. But in the real world it’s the opposite. Bombed out ruins and scorched earth don’t give renevue or income. Occupied Western Europe gave 10 times more income that all of occupied Eastern Europe. But in the real world Germany could capture Turkey and all of the Middle East and all the neutral nations of the world, like Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Chile, Sweden, Schwitzerland, Mongolia and Afghanistan would just not care. Now that is the difference between real WWII and A&A

@vodot All good points, indeed.

I belive it was the Treaty of Versailles, the reparations payments and the following French occupation of the Ruhr that gave the German people a thirst for revenge. My country, Norway, was occupied for 5 years so I know what that do to you. We still hate Germans more than 80 years after the war. It’s the humiliation. 140 civillians killed and 600 injuried, not a high number. But the Germans were starving and the daughters, mothers and wifes had to work the street to get food. And some of the troops were colonials from Africa. Now that is humiliation. From that point there would be a revenge war. Nothing could stop the war. Even if Hitler had gone to Art School, there would be another German leader, maybe even worse. IMHO WWII was inevitable, but WWI was not. All kings, kaizers and tsars in Europe 1914 were close family. WWI was a family conflict. Too bad most of them were insane because of the royal inbreed.

You have som decent suggestions, but the best I have read about so far, and I don’t remember who suggested this, but if Germany after the invasions of Yugoslavia and Greece, and continued into Turkey and the Middel East, they would easily get all the oil they needet. And the Berlin-Baghdad Railway, started in 1903 and completed in 1940, would have shipped all the oil from Iraq to Berlin. Also the Persian Corridor that shipped most of the Lend-Lease to USSR would be closed. Now Japan could close the Vladivostok route and we know how little went trough to Murmansk. But I guess the Germans weren’t clever enough

@SuperbattleshipYamato

After the archives got de-classified in 2014 a lot of books about the Norwegian Campaign were published, and to this day nobody can give a logical answer why Adolf attacked Norway. There are just no logical reason.

The Nordic countries were neutral and would trade with Germany anyway, and Poland in 1939 was ruled by a dictator so the Nordic democracies did not care. Germany had no need to invade Norway to get Swedish iron ore. That’s a lie.

Chamberlain was pm when Germany invaded Norway, and it was not obvious that he would send Lend-Lease to Stalin. It was Churchill that sent Lend-Lease to Stalin. At that time Stalin was the biggest enemy and threat to the Western Democracies. Also, as you say, this case doesn’t exist in this scenario. And even if planners could predict the future, the main Lend-Lease routes would be across the Pacific to Vladivostok and the Persian Corridor, as in the real war. The Murmansk Convoys were a mix of propaganda and to make Germany keep warships in Norway.

Admiral Reader did in fact advocate an occupation of Norway to get ports, but that’s because he could not imagined that France would surrender after 4 weeks. Now who could? If Reader had realized that France could be taken then he would have wantet the French ports, not the Norwegian ones. On a flat map it looks great but on a globe you realize how far from the Atlantic thay are.

Surely nobody knows why, the invasion don’t make sense, so my best guess is that Quisling talked him into it, after the infamous visit during X-mas 1939.

History buff from Norway here. Now, the Fake Land War startet with the outset in september 1939 and ended in may 1940. But a naval war, aka the Battle of Atlantic, was going on from the outset. So basically it was a hot war, just not on land.

IMHO German control of Norway was not that vital. The UK blockade of the GUIP-gap would stop most of the break out attempts with surface warships, and in 1939 German U-boats lacked the range. It was in fact the capture of French ports that made a difference and boosted the German effort. U-boats from Brest covered most of the Atlantic. So control or no control of Norway really don’t matter, and the Swedish iron ore would come anyway.

UK would obvios win a naval war, like it did in the real war. Germany is not a naval power and can not afford focus on ships. At some point it would need to be a land war. Germany could of course sue for a truce. Then IMHO WWII could turn out to look like the Napoleonic Wars, a series of local conflicts fought by a fluctuating array of coalitions. Boney had 7 of this wars, who knows how many A. would get?

Uncle Joe pumped a lot of oil and iron into Germany in a divide and conquer game. With a truce between Germany and the Western Allies the Russian flow of resources would surely stop.

Basically IMHO Germany had no choice. WWII would alway play out as it did

@The_Good_Captain

Hi Ryan, it looks like you were an official playtester in Renegades North Africa and Stalingrad versions, maybe even more games that I’m not aware of. So I got some questions. How exactely does the playtesting works? It’s basically an economic game based on math, so it would make sense to use computers, AI, data etc to sort out the patterns. And propably thousands of human playtesting games to include the human factor too. And yet still all games are imbalanced or bugged. Many A&A versions have second editions and erratas to try to fix some of the worst imbalances and bugs, but will A&A ever be a perfect game?

@The_Good_Captain

Right, 5 years in the military make me read everything literally, letter for letter, to the letter, if you will. Unfortunately I don’t have power to make you edit your Headline to “I know 5 versions of A&A that surely are imbalanced” so I just move on. I let it go. Not my business.

I am aware of your YT Channel and have watched some, not all, and you have done a good job. I’m not a competitive player so I’m not qualified to comment on most of them. But as a history buff and vet I don’t appreciate silly game mechanics or rules that produce results which don’t make sense in the context of the historical setting, like Submarines shooting down Aircrafts, Trannies sinking Battleships, which was an issue with MB Classic but that have been fixed in later versions. I do like the rules and mechanic to be streamlined for ease of play, and IMHO Infantry shold always cost 3 IPC and not 2 like in N.A, and why do we need so many different Supply rules? Battle of the Bulge had one type of Supply, then North Africa had another type of Supply rule, and now Stalingrad have another Supply rule. And what about Road movement? In Battle of the Bulge everything on wheels move unlimited, in North Africa vehicles move 5 spaces, and in Stalingrad some vehicles move 2+2 spaces on the road. But StugIII and the truck with Katusjas only move 1 even they got the same engine as other vehicles. Don’t make sense to me. And then there is the scripted games. Like in Stalingrad Russian Infantry is restricted form moving in the first 2 rounds because Stalin had OCD and said not one step back. When I play Russia I am not Stalin, and I want my Infantry to move back, but silly rules prevent me. Enouch, maybe I’ll comment on some of your other threads some time. Take care and keep up the good work.

@The_Good_Captain

OK we are cool. My next post will be on the balance and bugs issue. Your statement is that adding one UK Infantry here (Anniversary) and removing a Ge Tank and Sub there (Europe) will fix the balance issue. You are not wrong, but as far as I’m conserned bidding have been taking care of that since 1988.

Looking forward to your next investigation. You now have finished 5 and only 14 more versions to cover.

@The_Good_Captain

The Headline of the video read “Rating Imbalance” Now if you had used that Headline in the Thread too I would’nt have derailed your thread. I’ve played A&A since 1988 and totally agree with your investigation. But of course you had to use “Every versions” and “All versions” and that is not correct. You have so far investigated 5 versions, and we don’t even know what Anniversary edition. Is it the 20th, 25th, 50th Avalon Hill or 40th Anniversary version? That matters.

FYI: As of 2026 there are 19 spin-off versions. 4 are updated or expanded versions of the global Classic. 5 are Theater games. 4 are local games of specific battles. 1 is WWI and 1 is Zombie apocalypse. The Video-games, online games and A&A Minis are kept outside of this.

List of all versions
1981 Nova ed Global
1984 MB Classic Global
1999 AH Europe Theater
2001 AH Pacific Theater
2004 AH D-day Local
2004 AH Revised 20th Anniversary ed Global
2006 AH Battle of the Bulge Local
2007 AH Guadalcanal Local
2008 AH Avalon Hill 50th Anniversary Global
2009 AH 1942 25th Anniversary ed Global
2009 AH Pacific 1940 Theater
2010 AH Europe 1940 Theater + Global when combined with Pacific
2012 AH 1941 Global
2012 AH 1942 second ed Global
2012 AH Pacific 1940 second ed
2012 AH Europe 1940 second ed Theather + Global when combined
2013 AH WWI 1914 Global (for some reason)
2018 AH Zombies Global
2024 Renegade North Africa Theater
2024 Renegade 40th Anniversary ed 1941/42 Global
2025 Renegade Stalingrad Local

Now when you have analyzed and investigated all the games on the list, then you can claim “Every game” and “All games” and I will comply.

Also your investigation is adressed to the expert players that play competitive. I don’t know how many that is. I figure 99% of the A&A community are casual players with a military power fantasy that also are plastic piece junkies, that played with Airfix miniatures as kids and now is a step up the ladder. To back up this:
A&A MB Classic is the best selling physical wargame ever with one million copies sold by 1998, and 2 millions sold by 2008. (if we can belive Wiki) But A&A online only have 11 000 ranked players. And if you play competitive at Tournaments just how many expert players do you spot? Right, my point is valid.

Sorry for the derailing but be careful next time you make a Headline that is in-correct.

@CentralCommando

I remember when A&A Minis come in 2005, some players had the main movements on the Revised 2004 ed map, but resolved the battles with the Minis. You are basically suggesting the same, but switch the Minis with a First Shooter Game online. Could be fun.