Posts made by polywog

If you don’t mind, I’d like to toss in a few ideas for the UK - feel free to use/lose any of them:

Total Mobilization:
Citizens of the UK mobilized totally for war: victory gardens, scrap drives and extreme rationing provided the UK with extra material required to sustain them. Each turn, the UK collects an additional 2 IPC’s during the collect income phase.

Flak Battleships:
Capital ships of the Royal Navy underwent aggressive refit to equip them with strong anti-air defense. Prior to combat involving UK battleships and enemy air units, each battleship may roll one die against each enemy fighter. Like a land-based AA gun, each roll of a 1 is a hit.

Naval Tradition:
Crews of the Royal Navy displayed countless feats of bravery and sacrifice in the face of disaster; trading their own lives for effective fire control and counter flooding. When any surface ship (BB, CV, DD, TRN) is hit in combat, roll 1 die. On a roll of a 6, the ship “survives” the hit and remains in combat.

Sure! I’d love to help.  Let me know what I can do.

By the way, the goal of these cards (like so many other variants) was to point each player towards some historical similarity (Germany produces subs most turns, is likely to develop jets, rockets, etc). Also, I never liked the OOB techs or the NA’s but liked the idea of both.

Yes, they do take the place of NAs. For example, Russia has 4 cards: 1 for turn 1, one for turn 2, on for turn 3 and one to cover all other turns. Before purchase new units turn 1, russia rolls 1 die and follows the instructions for that die roll and lower on that card. Units acquired are placed on their slot on the card until the place new units phase of russia’s turn (so that the player can keep track of which units go in which assigned territories). At the end beginning of russia’s 2nd turn, they use the turn 2 card …and so on. These units are in addition to any “normal” purchases and do not count towards a territory’s production limits.

The infantry are paratroops. They attack at 2 / defend at 3. I opted to not use bombers or air transports to carry them, but rather to assume that transport is available during the combat move from (only) any terrirtory of an ally’s home color. Transport move is 3 spaces & subject to any AA in the defending territory during drop. The units otherwise behave as infantry.

The battleship is Japanese - it’s a normal battleship but attacks and defends at 5. (Yamato/Musashi)

The two German tanks att 4/def 4 and like BB’s take 2 hits to destroy. The US tank att 3/def 4 and has a free non-combat move like the “panzerblitz” NA.

In the rules variant, these units can’t be purchased. They are “issued” to each player depending on rolls determined from “special rules cards”. Sort of like bonus pieces/bonus techs. The cards (attached, but still a work in process) go along with a few additional rules having mostly to do with making techs useful/available/interesting… The idea is to roll 1 die at the start of a turn and do that number on the card and lower for that turn. For the first 3 turns, slots 1, 2 and 3 are “automatic”. I’d appreciate any feedback on the cards or the concept.

Unfortunately, I have a better pic of the pieces, but is waaaay over the 128 k attachment limit.

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I agree washing pieces isn’t 100% necessary, but doesn’t hurt. For detailing, I use Tamiya paints which are pretty durable, quick drying, easy to clean and can take a bit of rattling around in the trays. I added a few decals to some pieces to give them a bit of color (used as special pieces in a rules variant - see attached pic)

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@Imperious:

Fortress america os an ok game, i really like shogun alot.

I also like shogun - like Risk with ninjas. Ahh… the 80’s.

It also helps to think of battles for territories occurring over a period of time - not just minutes or hours. Since planes can’t stay airborne forever, picture infantry overrunning airbases, destroying aircraft on the ground, intecepting and cutting off supplies etc. A little imagination helps here.

@dezrtfish:

Fish Condos: newly built german ships

We call those “bottom clutter”. Same idea.

I didn’t know that about the Shiano. That’s pretty interresting & certainly proves the point about luck (both good and bad) being part of it.

ps. Congrats on passing the 10k mark

the Bismarck was sunk because of a lucky shot from a single rickety obsolete torpedo bomber flying in bad weather at night. That’s war and that’s dice. No LL for me.

i love the game whether winning or “not winning”  :-)

crappy dice are definitely part of the game.

I’m about a year late, but this is really impressive! I look forward to reviewing the rules in more detail.

woops - goofed up the quote on the last post…

what are the russians doing all this time? if they see germany buying navy then they should fully expliote that. germany will be using no airunits on the eastren front. germany is going to hurt if it does that. there will be less battles germany can do and it will lose more units. russia should be able to make a lot of progress in in europe. the reason germany only bought 3 trns instead of 5 is that they need to drive russia back.

Good point… for sure Russia should get aggressive round 2 if the Germans invest heavily in the kriegsmarine. Also, another easy stopper to the German fleet linkup is to dump the russian sub into SZ6 (that is, if it’s still alive after round 1).

Gotcha. I like the flexibility of Z12 block - plus it’s a good meeting point to get the US in there to keep the blocker going. The other two are a bit more expensive/less flexible for the UK.

If russia is looking at 9 infantry to the east and presumably some german threat to the west, they probably won’t be attacking much. On the same token, it would almost be better to garrison with nothing assuming you want to draw the russian forces out & be the one to attack on the next round. 1 infantry garrison is probably a just a waste - too much to sucker out units from russia, not enough to prevent an easy committed attack…

Could also leave the med fleet operating only in SZ 14, 15, 16. Assuming the Japanese can contain India’s fleet and the UK uses up their fighters in the Baltic, it can be a menacing diversion for a little while. Nice to get that battleship shot and a couple of Italian infantry in on Caucasus should Germany feel aggressive/suicidal too…

quick question on fighters and carriers:
for a fighter landing on a carrier, does it cost a movement point to move into the carrier’s sea zone and another movement point to land on the carrier? Or is it considered the same movement?

I have a warm spot in my heart for the mighty russian bb - My first game (old A&A), my cousin bought a Russian battleship (which would be bad enough - but hey, he had exactly 24IPC’s, so it made the math easy). The bigger problem was that he didn’t control the IC in the Karelia. My other cousin (not coincidentally the German player) made him place it in the landlocked Caspian sea south of the Russia IC. …There it remained as expensive board decoration for the rest of the game.

for the most part I like 'em - except it adds A LOT of complication & new stuff to the game. (Stalinist paranoia and the China rules, for example). Being sort-of opposed to IC’s in general and the somewhat long-ish ranges that fighters can potentially have, I gobbled up those rules pretty quickly. …mostly though, I borrowed a lot of the ideas to make simpler versions of these rules.