@Imperious-Leader said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

Can we also discuss Great War? I could contribute more in that regard.

I will try to dig up my copy of east west

I never played it myself, but I followed the old discussions and know some of the mechanics…ish; I don’t mind having TGW discussion in here as well.

I actually (albeit uncredited) was the one who proposed the revised turn order, which was adopted as part of the major revision (1.1? I want to say?) Did they also revise the starting setup a bit? If so, I don’t think that would be reflected in the MapView version…

I might have the rules for TGW saved somewhere; I’ll try and dig them up.

(I’ll get the ball rolling )
Balance Fix: reduced starting forces for NATO

As I’ve been strategizing and theorycrafting a bit, one thing I’ve noticed is that the UK and the US both start with a lot of infantry. What this means is that, even with their transports being spread somewhat thinly across the map, they can usually keep them filled every round – the starting infantry on Japan and the UK home island come to mind, but also that India stack never gets any smaller… Without needing to spend much on infantry in the early game, this negates a lot of the benefit of the USSR having cheaper infantry.

What I am thinking of implementing is an across-the-board reduction in the number of starting infantry for NATO, as follows:

• territories with more than 1 WE infantry start with 1 less WE infantry (France, Italy, Norway, West Germany, Greece, Turkey, Indochina)
• territories with more than 1 UK infantry start with half as many UK infantry (UK, West Germany, France, Iceland, India, New South Wales, South Africa)
• territories with more than 1 US infantry start with 1 less US infantry (East US, West US, West Germany, Italy, Iceland, South Korea, Japan, Philippines)

This would be an overall change of:

• 21 WE infantry (down from 28)
• 22 UK infantry (down from 33)
• 25 US infantry (down from 33)

Since this would also shave down the number of infantry already on the European continent for NATO, it could potentially remove the necessity for a “bid” (or the default of 20 IPCs for the Soviets, on round 0.) For example, I generally find that the USSR needs to max out their round 0 placement on Georgia and North Korea, if they plan to attack Turkey and South Korea (respectively); the need for these extra attacking infantry might be mitigated by this proposed reduction in the defending forces. Likewise, removing 3 NATO infantry from West Germany might make an extra 7 Soviet infantry (between East Germany and Poland) less necessary for the round 1 attack.

For WE in particular, this makes their starting position a little tougher. Having less infantry in Italy and France means that attacking Yugoslavia or Greece on round 1 runs the risk of spreading them too thin. It also makes it harder to stack Norway – which is normally a distracting nuisance for the Soviets. The loss of 1 infantry from Indochina probably doesn’t impact their overall strategy, but it does potentially weaken the India stack.

In a similar vein, a previous balance fix I had suggested way back in the day, was to remove any starting NATO fighters from territories with a value of 2 IPCs: Iceland, Greece, Indochina, New South Wales and South Korea. This would reduce the total number from 16 down to 11, compared with 7 for the Soviets. Admittedly, two of these NATO fighters would be destroyed in West Germany right out of the gate. (A compromise might be to only remove the fighters from those territories that do not also contain an armor unit.) However, NATO would still have an edge in this department, and I feel that the mobility and defensive capability of these fighters is something that needs to be curtailed – it is far too easy for them to be redeployed across the map, to stymie Soviet offensives wherever they may come.

I’ve decided to bite the bullet, and start a general discussion thread for this game.
Post your strategies, house rules, balance fixes, etc. – anything goes!

Some info (and a picture of the map) can be found here:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/6441/east-west-global-war-1948

Back in the day, I had been reading up on all sorts of A&A stuff: some of the “limited” scenarios (where not all nations were used/played) on thrasher’s A&A site, as well as World at War and its use of an “impulse” turn for the Axis.

I kind of wanted to combine some of those ideas, with a setting earlier than Classic’s “Spring 1942” which Larry Harris described (in a video during the credits of Iron Blitz) as the “high-water mark of the Axis expansion.” My knowledge of WWII kind of suggested that the highest mark prior to that, would be 1941 – specifically when most of France’s colonies were still collaborationist, or had not yet been captured by the British, and when Italy still controlled east Africa.

I can recall sharing this with a friend back in 2007, so this sort of comes after the original Europe and Pacific games, but prior to Global. As you might guess, this kind of shared the mindset that would go on to create that game. Essentially, the game is broken into 3 theatres – one Axis power for each. If that Axis power is either defeated, or achieves their objectives, then their theatre merges with at least one other. (i.e. Italy must be defeated in Africa before the western Allies can start to attack Germany)

For simplicity, I kept the starting unit setup the same, with units changing nationality if their territory also changed. For balance, the Axis were given some early bonuses, and (also for historical reasoning) the USA and USSR both had restrictions in the first round. I also included some further clarification to the 2nd Edition rules, as well as some changes (such as adding some complexes, but all complexes being limited in the number of units they can produce.)

Anyways, I have most of the documentation saved, it probably just needs some updated formatting; I wanted to post here first, so as to gauge interest and see if I should go through with the process of cleaning up what I have.

Thanks for reading hopefully there are some enthusiastic responses!

Not location-specific, but I’m just hoping to get in touch with anyone who owns or has play-experience with this game. I own a copy myself, and am just looking for anyone knowledgeable, who would like to discuss strategies for the game – and possibly play in some electronic format or another.

The official site has long since gone offline, but a bit of info still exists here:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/6441/east-west-global-war-1948

I’m not sure if it’s bad form to be posting in this thread after February but anyway…

My name is Janus (also known on other parts of the internet as P.d0t)
I got into A&A with the MB version, back in about 1997 or so(?)
However, the biggest chunk of my A&A play experience is/was with the Imp Games expansion “East & West”: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/6441/east-west-global-war-1948

That company seems to have gone defunct (and their forums went down long before that) so I joined the A&A .org forums a while ago – somewhat passively – but have been following the site’s news via Facebook. When the announcement for A&A Online came through on that channel, it rekindled my interest in E&W. As such, I’ve been trying to track down anyone who owns the game or has played it, and have been working on honing strategies for the USSR.

One such strategy can be found here on the forums, which I ran just as a playtest against myself:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/19172/east-west-by-imp-games-soviet-strategy-playtest

If you’re a fan of E&W, please get ahold of me here on the forums/PMs; it would be much appreciated

Imp Games’ East & West technically came out in 2001, but is closer mechanically to MB A&A, than it is to the A&A:Europe or A&A:Pacific games that came out around the same time (or anything since.) AFAICT the map specifically is derivative of Xeno Game’s World at War.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/6441/east-west-global-war-1948

NATO Counter-offensive

So what would be the strategy for NATO, in the scenario of southeast Asia falling to the USSR?

Well, one method I have found successful in the past is for the UK to move their transports from around India all the way up to Western Canada. With the factory in Ontario, you can be consistently producing 4 infantry to send over to Kamchatka; essentially UK forces in the Siberian theatre just serve to absorb hits from Soviet counter-attacks, meaning the main NATO attack (US forces) remains strong and intact, and can continue to push.

Generally the US needs to hold all the territory in the area (North Korea, South Korea, Kamchatka, East Siberia) in order to have the income to sustain this land-grab; if they gain the Heavy Armor tech, it makes this easier – by building heavy tanks from the factory in East Siberia; their extra movement lets you do a “2 steps forward, 1 step back” move from a fortified position in East Siberia, into the territories bordering West Siberia. The UK can potentially snipe a few territories in this same manner, but the US really needs that extra income more; generally the Heavy Armor tech helps the UK more by allowing them to do “2 steps forward, 1 step back” from a factory built in India, through Pakistan, and into Turkmenistan.

The other place that NATO should look for openings is Turkey or Greece. Typically the US naval units from the Mediterranean will move to the Atlantic, but the WE and UK ships may stick around, if they aren’t destroyed by the Soviets. The US would have to extend themselves pretty far in order to be of any help in this theatre, so it’s best left to the WE and UK allies – assuming that US forces alone are strong enough to hold France, and that using NATO forces in the Mediterranean doesn’t compromise Italy in the process.

Soviet strategy

I think the biggest threat that this Soviet strategy presents, is that it forces NATO to choose between defending India, and attacking Siberia – and may still cause them to lose on both fronts. The presence of Soviet air power in China means that the US cannot leave their transports in the Pacific undefended, forcing the US fleet to make some hard choices:
1. sit off the coast of East Siberia, and watch the rest of Asia fall;
2. split, trying to defend the sea zone around Indochina as well as either the sea zone around Japan or off East Siberia, while trying to move infantry to both theatres every round, or;
3. try to keep all your transports covered, while moving infantry from the Philippines to Indochina every round, and from Japan to Indochina every other round.

Now, if China stops giving aid to the USSR, then this strategy is completely shut down. However, I would argue that this is the always case in this game, regardless of the particular strategy used – and in particular, when the US is prepared to attack heavily into Asia. In this game, the result of the nuclear attack was a Global Outrage, which helped cement China’s alliance with the Soviets; it should be noted that “Chinese Outrage” is also statistically more likely than outraging either of the other 2 neutral alliances, so all in all, the Soviets really need only to fear NATO spies swaying China away – until the Soviets start slinging nukes of their own. 

In terms of technology, the most pivotal advancement for the USSR is to get ballistic missiles. Fusion weapons are nice to have, but not entirely necessary. With the placement of Soviet factories and AA guns as they are, ballistic missiles can easily threaten any place where NATO would be expected to mass their navies – effectively shutting down the shuck-shuck almost permanently, via nuclear deterrence. By contrast, amassing snorkel submarines is too costly, and self-propelled artillery (to win the land war) can take a long time to acquire – and anti-tank guns can prove devastating against them. Long-range aircraft can help expand the umbrella of a Soviet nuclear threat, but generally games will be over before helicopters come into play; they can be helpful for quickly spreading into an undefended Africa, if you for some reason don’t go the tried-and-tested route of treading over the Arab League, to get there.

I was thinking about E&W again recently, so I decided to look over this playtest one more time.

I think clearly the tactic of not trying to heavily reinforce West Germany sealed the Soviets’ fate, but I noticed a few smaller moves that may have also changed the game:

1. Attacking the North Sea (S1):
I think this ultimately caused the problem of having the UK navy at Moscow’s doorstep. It’s always tempting to get those US transports out of the game (and slow down the shuck-shuck), and I don’t think the USSR can take on the British navy on S1 – but the better move is probably to strafe the North Sea with all your naval units (maybe with your bomber, maybe not) and retreat back to the Komi SZ, to defend against amphibious assaults. This also would likely tie up UK bombers in the counter-attack, meaning they could not be used to shuttle paratroopers to France or Norway. Overall I think this is a more sound tactic.

I think lending the Soviet bomber to the European theatre for round 1 worked out ok, since it really wouldn’t be needed until round 3 – when it can be be well within range of both India and Indochina.

If the Soviets aren’t having to defend Karelia/Komi, it frees up more infantry to shuttle towards West Germany. I don’t think it is valuable for the Soviets to conquer Norway, so long as they can keep NATO out, by distracting them elsewhere. If they let too many NATO reinforcements into the area, it becomes a distraction that forces the Soviets to spread too thin.

2. Recapturing South Korea (S2):
On S1, I think it is important to take out the US armor and fighter on South Korea (ideally with as few casualties as possible.) But while the little extra income is nice, I don’t think it is strategically important enough that the Soviets hold the territory in the long run; it only helps if/when the Chinese withdraw their troops from North Korea, because then you don’t have to worry about the US placing there and walking in, for free.

I think the push towards Indochina did a decent enough job of distracting US forces away from Kamchatka/East Siberia. This keeps the Soviets from losing income in that area, but also causes the US to divert their support towards India. Had the Soviets not attacked South Korea a second time, the 2 armor units used in that attack would have been in position to bolster a strafe of Indochina on S3 – with very good chances of wiping out the defenders completely, and only sacrificing a few Soviet infantry in the process.

This would effectively knock WE out of that theatre, stymie the US, and set up the USSR to push heavily into Indochina on S4, with an infantry stack rivalling the one in India (5 infantry in Inner Mongolia, 8 infantry in Sinkiang, at the end of round 2.) If the UK turtles in India, then the rest of the theatre falls like dominos to the Soviets; if they move their force from India into Burma to salvage the situation in Indochina, the Soviet infantry filtering through Sinkiang can potentially crush India itself.

Ultimately the goal of this strategy in Asia is to try and get exactly this result: to make the UK uncomfortable in the Indian theatre, expand the Soviet economy, and keep the US out of Siberia.

So for anyone who’s played E&W, what did you like about the game?

For me, what it comes down to is managing equipment. Like, it’s very much an IPM-style game, so keeping your tanks and aircraft safe while at the same time exerting force as effectively as possible, is the whole puzzle of E&W. The early attacks made by the Soviets are usually about reducing the number of front lines they have to fight on, but also destroying NATO’s equipment (particularly transports, but also armor and fighters.)