TheMarshall
Las Vegas, NV
A&A
Posts made by TheMarshall
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RE: Technology scheme
@ancient:
May I suggest an amendment to your rules. Any roll under a 3 is treated as a 3. This way someone is not totally screwed by continually rolling 1s and 2s. This may have the affect that you will need to raise the tech values a little though.
So the possibilities would be 0, 3, 4, or 5 points, with a 50% chance of 3 points? That takes a significant portion of the randomness out of it. Even with that system, someone could be continually screwed by repeated 6s being rolled.
The purpose of my system was to acheive a greater balance between risk and reward. I think your alteration swings too much away from risk. That’s the nature of the game. Sometimes your heavy bombers roll a bunch of 5s and 6s. The dice bite you some times.
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RE: Technology scheme
The results of my first play-testing of my rules yielded the following observations:
- It seems to encourage technology development far more than the standard rules. Japan, USSR and US all developed technology throughout the game. There were some pretty lucky rolls though (lots of 5s, no 6s), so this might be a little higher than you could normally expect.
- The original numbers for breakthroughs might be a little low, although again the lucky rolling makes it a little hard to tell. I’m leaning towards 12-15-20 as the numbers required for respective breakthroughs, but I’ll probably try one more game with the original numbers I came up with.
- The system can create situations where you’ve already sunk a considerable amount of money into technology that you feel compelled to finish the job. The flip side of this is that if you’re very close to a breakthrough, you needn’t spend a great deal more money in order for it to pay off for you. For example, in my game the US was at a point where they had 9 points in a given category. Given that circumstance, it seemed silly not to spend money on the one die that likely (5/6 chance) would push you over the threshold.
- Overall I think it strikes the right balance between risk and reward. I’ll probably push for some variation of this rule in all my future Global games.
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RE: Pacific 1940 2nd Edition
What about the industrial production chart across the top? How will it work when you put it together with Europe for the Global game?
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RE: Pacific 1940 2nd Edition
SZ6 is fixed, as in it no longer borders Korea?
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RE: Task Force Markers
These look very cool, but why are your ships pointed in different directions?
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RE: Technology scheme
Kreuzfeld: I realize that from a purely statistical perspective, the numbers I’ve chosen reduce the cost of technology. However, I’ve also completely eliminated the possibility of purchasing one die and getting a technology, without eliminating the possibility that you will purchase 6+ dice without getting a technology. I see this as a fair trade-off. But time and testing will dictate whether the numbers I’ve selected are appropriate.
MIR: Trust me, I can all-to-easily get sucked into creating behemoth house rules. (In fact, a friend of mine and I modified A&A so severely over time that we eventually made it into a completely different game.) But in this case, I just wanted to make a few tweaks to the existing rules to make them a little more pallatable for my tastes. And as far as why I put radar under ordnance: I honestly couldn’t think of any way to make radar fit within the same category as any of the other technologies, so I just got it as close as I could.
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RE: How long does it take to play europe?
In my experience, it takes less time if you have more players, because each player has more time to think about what they’re going to do on their turn during the other players’ turns.
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RE: Technology scheme
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Why cock-block developments on rolls of 6?
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Why not let ‘overrun’ points count toward the next development on the same track?
The short answer to both of these questions is that I wanted to stick somewhat with the original spirit of the technology rules that make it quite risky to develop technology, with no guarantee of success and a substantial risk of wasted money. This system is far less risky, but still maintains that risk of money wasted.
There are four basic approaches to technology among the various rule sets of the game. The original rules were all-or-nothing, with no ability to choose your technology. Revised allowed exact targeting of a technology, but was still all-or-nothing. Anniversary, with the researchers and two-track technology scheme, allowed very limited targeting of technology, but chances were very good that your money would pay off for you eventually. Global used the very limited targeting while re-introducing the all-or-nothing aspect. This scheme attempts to find a middle ground from all of these regarding the risk/reward balance and ability to target a technology.
The options you suggest would certainly work, although I’d think you’d probably want to increase the number of research points required for a breakthrough in that case. If you mess around with it in your own games, I’d be interested to hear what you and your fellow players thought.
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Technology scheme
Next Global game I play, I’m going to try out this house rule for technology. I’m interested in getting some feedback from the community.
During the develop technology phase, a player may buy research dice. For each die rolled, the player receives research points equal to the number on the die, except for 6’s which yield no points.
Research point earned are applied to one category of research of the player’s choice. The categories are as follows:
Industry: War bonds, improved shipyards, increased factory production
Ordnance: Heavy bombers, super submarines, radar
Propulsion: Rockets, Long-ranged aircraft, jet fighters
Logistics: Advanced artillery, paratroopers, advanced mech infantryPlayers may not apply research points to more than one category per turn. Once a player has accumulated a sufficient number of research points in a category, he achieves a breakthrough of a random technology in the given category. The research points required for a breakthrough within a category are:
1st breakthrough: 10 points
2nd breakthrough: 12 points
3rd breakthrough: 15 pointsOnce a breakthrough has been achieved, research points in that category, including any overruns, are reset. A player need not achieve a breakthrough in a category before applying research points to another category, but research points may never be transferred.
I like this because it strikes a balance between targeting a technology vs. developing a random technology. It also gives a player, in most cases, progress towards a goal for their money, rather than an all-or-nothing system. I’m not 100% sure about the number of points required for breakthroughs, nor the breakdown of the categories. Play-testing will reveal whether some adjustment of these will be needed.
Thoughts? If you decide to try these rules, I’d be interested in hearing about the results. I’ll post mine after I play a game or two.
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AAA
I must confess I don’t understand the appeal of the new AAA units. Essentially, the AA gun has been neutered, first by only allowing up to 3 rolls per unit, plus giving the attacker back the ability to choose casualties, no longer allowing for the chance to hit more valuable bombers. To my thinking, this significantly reduces their value, yet their cost was reduced by only 1 IPC. Now, instead of having 6 IPCs worth of units to protect against that 8 or 10 plane luftwaffe, it will take 15-20 IPCs worth. Doesn’t seem like a good value to me.
I suppose some value comes from being able to use AAA as fodder, but at 5 IPC a pop, that’s some pretty expensive fodder. But on the other hand, each dead AAA costs nothing in terms of combat ability, at least for that battle.
I get what they were trying to do, making AA guns more suitable for protecting your units instead of constantly using them to shield your industrial territories, but it seems to me like they are just going to be one of those units that don’t get replaced once they get blowed up.
Allow me to add the caveat that I haven’t actually played a game with these rules yet, so maybe it will all become clear once I see it in action. Perhaps one of you can explain to me the error of my ways.
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RE: Balanced theaters (AKA the end of KGF and KJF)
ok I know this will make me look dumb but what does KGF and KJF stand for. Other than that I really liked what you had to say and I’m really looking forward to the global game. I’ve been reading alot on these forums that people want to play AAE40 first before they play the global game so they can get used to the strategies of it before they play the global game. IMO this is a mistake because (for the reasons you mentioned) the global game will require strategies that are unique to the global game. I think that the global game will be so different (at least strategy wise) from AAE40 and AAP40 that it will be a different game altogether. I love it when I can get 3 games for the price of 2.
KGF = Kill Germany First
KJF = Kill Japan First -
Reasons for hope
A few things that jumped out at me from djensens picture-fest that make me think that hopefully AAE40 won’t be the QA debacle that AAP40 was.
1. The national production board actually goes high enough to represent the values most powers will operate at. (Although arguably the US will routinely operate above 72 in AAG.)
2. There are no apparent calls for “artilley” on the setup charts.
3. They included the appropriate battle strip.(Note that I am here talking about true mistakes, rather than stylistic preferences such as using cardboard markers for ICs, AA, etc.)
Time will tell, but maybe they fired the chimp who was in charge of QA while AAP40 was in production.
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RE: My review copy of Axis & Allies Europe 1940 has arrived
thx for the pics, it looks fun, I hope to see more.
There are also 2 new pieces of info in your preview.
1. The game is coming out the 14th vs. 24th
2. Its gonna be sold at Gencon
Can someone confirm this?
Also, its great the Soviets get a battleship :-D.
I was also wondering the validity of point #1… Axisandallies.com states Aug 24th as the release date still. :?
Pretty sure he fat-fingered it. The retailers (e.g. FMG) still show the 24th as the release date as well.
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RE: My review copy of Axis & Allies Europe 1940 has arrived
@Proud:
Im 21 but have the brain of a kid. :cry:
You’re only as old as you act… At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself ever since I turned 30.
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RE: Europe 1940 shows up on Wizards site…with screenshot
This reminds me of “Where’s Waldo?”
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RE: A new look at the same picture.
Nicely done… This really helps to be able to discern the border layout. The first thing that jumped out at me that I missed from the other view: Look at all those territories in S. America!
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RE: Proposed house rules
I’m not much for House Rules. If I had wanted to make my own game I would not have bought one. :-)
House rules aren’t for everybody. Nothing wrong with playing the game as written. I just can’t resist meddling.
Also your fourth version point on VPs seems sort of silly. Why add a complex rule when you could just increase the points required for Victory or add a Win by X rule? This and your first point of not scoring the airfields on round 1 are essentially the same thing. Again add points required for victory or must win by X rule (to simulate your dominance of the air)
Simply increasing the points would only serve to extend the length of the game, while this proposed rule ensures that one side must clearly dominate for a period of time in order to win. Consider this example: The two teams score the same number of points for ten rounds, and then one team manages to score one more point than the other. That team has then won under the original rules. Under this proposed rule, that team would still have to score five more victory points (or whatever number you use) in order to win. This rule would produce a clearer winner, in my opinion. I suppose a “win by X” rule would produce the same effect, but it would be hard to keep track of it using the point markers on the board.
@Imperious:
OMFG. This is bogus. Cruisers were the most potent Anti-Aircraft platforms of the war. As a protector of escorted ships from aerial attack they were the best defenders on average. The destroyer concentrated its defense on ASW because it was faster, while the cruisers could bulk up on lots of smaller guns because they had the deck space.
It’s not completely bogus if you consider that many U.S. cruisers had no AA capabilities except for some .50 machine guns when they were constructed. Not a perfect rule to be sure, especially on the Japanese side, but I just threw it out there for consideration.
The CAP in this game is really to powerful, CAP at this point in the war, did not stop any determined air attack before they reached the ships, heck even at the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” a few Japanese planes got through and attacked the ships, causing no damage. This game has airbattles where all the planes are shot down on both sides in the air phase. WOW!
Having played some more games, I heartily agree. I’m not sure the best way to fix it though. I’ve thought about reducing the air attack of planes by 1, but if you do, it seems like you could produce a huge fighter swarm with nothing that could destroy it fast enough to protect your fleets. Since fighters are so cheap, you can build a lot of them easily. I guess I’ll just have to experiment and find out.
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Proposed house rules
Here is my list of house rule ideas to deal with the issues I posted previously under “AAG: Ups and downs”. Most of these are off-the-cuff, brainstorm ideas, and have not been tested. As such, don’t blast me too badly for dumb ideas. :lol:
All of these rules affect both sides equally, so hopefully they will not break the game. Each rule is designed to stand on its own, but I feel some of them would need to be combined to work best. (Sorry frimmel, you’ll notice the largest section is devoted to submarines.)
Game length/victory conditions
Do not score airfields on round 1
Since it is pretty much guaranteed that both sides are going to score 2 points on the first round, why bother? This would effectively make the game last one round longer than it otherwise would have.Only score airfields that you’ve controlled since the beginning of the round
This would prevent victories through a desperate suicide mission in the last round, where you know you wouldn’t hold it if the game continued, but it gives you enough points to win the game. I imagine this rule would add the most length to the game, since a “back-and-forth” with a single airfield wouldn’t result in either side scoring a point from that field. Since the victory points are designed to simulate the aerial dominance that comes with controlling an airfield, and it would take some time for that dominance to take full effect, this rule makes some sense to me.Move the “Score victory points” action to the beginning of phase 3
This would prevent scoring with airfields you’ve just built. As with the previous rule, this would simulate the time required for your airfield to allow your dominance. Besides that, if one side is about to win, why bother going through the reinforce stage?When scoring victory points during phase 3, only victory points not matched by an opponent’s victory point are scored. Victory is attained when one side scores 6 victory points.
I like this idea best. As long as both sides own the same number of airfields, neither side would score any points from airfields. In order to win, you’d have to control more airfields than your opponent for a sustained period of time, which would again simulate having aerial dominance of the region. Alternately, you could sink a bunch of enemy capital ships. I like this too, because it gives rise to the possibility of winning entirely with victory points scored by killing capital ships, which is unfeasible in the original rules. In fact, under the old rules it is quite possible to win without ever sinking an enemy capital ship. Obviously, it would take forever to reach 15 victory points under this scheme, so you’d have to reduce the number required for victory. I think between 5 and 8 would be good, depending on how long you want the game to last. Or, if you’re in a time crunch, you could just decide to play for a fixed number of rounds and whoever is ahead at that point is the winner.Anti-aircraft fire
Carriers have 1 air attack
Carriers had huge AA batteries, especially on Japanese carriers. They have to have something. I don’t think this would empower carriers too much so that they could safely go without escorts, since they have no defense against other ships, and their air attack is still not particularly strong.Cruisers have no air attack
Cruisers had little in the way of AA armament, certainly not as much as a destroyer. If you are going to give cruisers an AA attack, to be realistic you’d have to give transports one also, since the two types of ships had roughly the same amount of AA armament. I don’t advocate giving transports an attack. I also like this rule because it makes destroyers, cruisers, and battleships a little more specialized, instead of one just being a more powerful version of the previous.Battleships have 2 air attack
Battleships had roughly six times as many AA guns as a destroyer. I think this rule, especially when coupled with the previous two, gives a more realistic ability of fleets to defend themselves against air attacks, while still not making properly-executed air attacks against large fleets folly.AA guns and battleships have an “aircraft disruption” ability which reduces the land/sea attack power of the opposing air force by 2 for each AA gun or battleship. The attack strength of the attacking force can never be reduced below 1. AA guns have 2 air attack.
This would simulate, to some degree, aircraft having to fly in a more evasive manner in order to avoid anti-aircraft fire. This would also make battleships more effective in defending against aircraft without giving it another attack. If you implemented this rule, I think you’d have to reduce the AA gun attack in order to prevent it from being too powerful. Example: Two bombers and two fighters attack a fleet containing a battleship. The aircraft have 6 total attack dice, but the battleship disrupts, reducing the number of dice to 4. Two battleships would reduce the number of dice to 2, etc. This would have to be an either-or with the previous rule; both would make battleships too powerful, in my opinion.At the beginning of phase 2, each side chooses whether to place their aircraft in high altitude or low altitude in each zone containing land or sea units capable of attacking aircraft. If in high altitude, the aircraft lose half (rounded down) of their land attack dice, and the land or sea units lose half (rounded up) of their air attack dice.
I’m not honestly sure this rule would work, but it would allow attackers to have some level of control over how effective the defending AA would be. The problem I see with it is that one altitude might provide too much of an advantage one way or the other and would always be used.Submarines
Submarines have a sea attack of 2, reduced by 1 for each enemy destroyer present down to a minimum of zero. Each destroyer reduces the attack of every submarine present.
This would make submarines rather nasty, unless destroyers are present. Two destroyers would eliminate the attack value of any number of submarines, preventing a submarine swarming strategy from being effective.Submarines have a sea attack of 1, unless the enemy has a destroyer present. Each destroyer only negates the attack of one submarine.
Similar to the last rule, but this would allow wolf-packs to overwhelm a fleet of destroyers while making a lone submarine less effective.Submarines have a sea attack of 1, unless the enemy has a destroyer present. One destroyer removes the sea attack of all submarines in the zone.
This adds the smallest teeth to submarines, and would probably result in submarines behaving as they do now in most cases, since most fleets have at least one destroyer. I think this, coupled with the “submarines submerge” rule described next, most accurately simulates how submarine warfare usually worked (i.e. make a sneak attack, dive deep to avoid the destroyer counter-attack while getting pot-shots in where you can).At the end of the movement phase, conduct a “submarines submerge” action. For each opposing destroyer in the same zone as a submarine, roll one die. On a roll of 1, one submarine in that zone is destroyed. On a roll of 2 or 3, one submarine is subject to attack during the attack phase. On any other roll, the submarine is invulnerable to fire during the attack phase.
This would give submarines the potential to evade fire during the “attack sea units” stage. I would imagine that you would want to prevent submerged submarines from firing if using any of the previous rules. I like this rule because it makes a solo sub attack against a decent-sized fleet a little less suicidal, but the more destroyers there are, the more dangerous it becomes.At the end of the movement phase, conduct a “submarines may withdraw” action. Each submarine may attempt to move to an adjacent zone. Roll one die for each opposing destroyer in the same zone as a withdrawing submarine. On a roll of 1, one submarine in that zone is destroyed. On a roll of 2, one submarine is prevented from leaving the zone.
Shades of the original A&A. This is a variant on the previous rule, and would still give submarines the potential to evade a counter-attack. I find this rule rather unrealistic, as it essentially gives submarines twice the movement of any other ship (whereas real submarines were much slower than surface ships). However unlike the previous rule, it never gives submarines complete invulnerability, and they could still be attacked by units in the zone to which they were withdrawing. Again, the more destroyers, the more dangerous this move is. I tend to like this rule a little better than the previous, despite the unrealism.Submarines have the “resiliency” special ability unless an opposing destroyer is present.
This would give the resiliency ability that most other ships have to submarines, which could be negated by enemy destroyers. This would be designed to simulate not a submarine’s resiliency as much as its evasive abilities. This would, in effect, increase the total cost of submarines, since you’d occasionally have to pay to have them repaired as you do other ships. Of course, if an enemy destroyer is present, all bets are off and the game plays as it does now.Submarines are not destroyed on a roll of 2 unless an opposing destroyer is present.
This would make submarines a little tougher to kill than the previous rule, since two 2s applied to a submarine would still not kill it. It would also allow submarines to remain in the action, since they would never be sent back for repairs as in the previous rule.Transporting using destroyers
Destroyers have 1 space for carrying infantry
This is consistent with history (as least on the Japanese side) and with previous A&A games. I think it makes a lot more sense realistically, and should have a relatively minor effect on gameplay. (I know some of you are think, “If it doesn’t affect gameplay, why bother?” ) The primary effect, I should think, would be to make transports somewhat more tactically important.Destroyers have 1 space for carrying infantry or supplies
OK, OK, a little compromise for those of you who love transporting with destroyers. :-)Questions? Thoughts? Suggestions? Alternatives? Insults? Put-downs?