War Room write up – Game #1
I figured I would write up what transpires the first time my group plays War Room. We’ve read the rules several times, and in stages so that we (hopefully) understand them.
Round #1 (FIGHT!)
Simultaneously plotting orders is insane. You have to keep in mind If/Then/Else statements when you plot your moves. If the US moves before Japan, then this scenario could occur. If they sneak into this SZ first, they could block my intended move. Is it worth bidding oil? What if I bid high and STILL go after the US?
It feels more like you’re playing against your opponent than the initial game set up. We like it.
Observation– On any given turn, you can only plot 9 moves in a round (6 for Italy & China). As the Japanese player, that means out of my 30+ Ground/Air/Naval stacks, I get to move 9. Less than 1/3 of my total forces. In A&A you can move every piece every turn if you so chose. You will find that you are quickly running out of moves. You can’t do it all, and moving small stacks off of far-flung islands becomes even less of a priority unless you’re desperate. I chose to focus on attacking the US fleet round 1 with Naval and Air, while doing a few moves against China.
We have now completed 2 Rounds.
Japan destroyed the starting US naval forces near NZ, but the US took the Solomon islands and has a stack of planes there. A huge Ground force as ready to amphibiously strike Eastern Australia. Wish me luck.
Russia and Japan stare at each other, neither willing to take on 6 stress.
There has been a little back and forth with Indian forces taking then losing Burma, but it’s not a priority yet for either Japan or the UK.
The US is sailing towards Japan, with more naval units being built each round. Japan bid strong and moved first round 1, so has purchased less reinforcements for its Navy.
Germany and Italy teamed up Round 1 (since combined forces are now a thing!) and assaulted the UK fleet near Egypt. The Italian fleet was lost, and the UK survived with one ship.
Germany was defensive against Russia, as it took two turns fighting the UK in the Atlantic. After all was said and done, only a single UK battleship survived on the waters. The UK now has a massive stack of 8 fighters, and the US has 2 bombers 2 fighters in London.
Russia did a round 2 move to take the Ukraine. All ground forces on BOTH sides were annihilated.
For the coming Round 3, I believe Germany (which has only one Air command in the Ukraine) will feel the pain of air assaults. As air units are difficult to hit, and ground units don’t roll much against air, I suspect the UK will do an aerial offensive against German ground units. It may be a reckless play, but we’ve never played before, so let’s see what happens!
OBSERVATION – Air Commands are quite powerful, with each fighter rolling 3 dice (whether attacking air or ground). They are green, so dice rolls in the anti-air portion of combat hit far less often than vs ground forces. So they do a lot of damage, and are difficult to destroy in large quantities, unless you have an equivalent airforce.
OBSERVATION – Things die FAST. Large stacks evaporate during combat. The entire starting forces for both Germany and Russia on the Eastern front died in two rounds.
During the Battle for the Atlantic, Germany chose to have its airforce focus on the UK navy, while the UK and US focused on destroying the German airforce. Both the German fleet and airforce were wiped out in two rounds.
BOMBING DAMAGE TO FACTORIES IS PERMANENT. This means if you focus on Strategic Bombing, you can render factory outputs down to 0. No new units built there.
At the end of Round 2, 2 countries have moved up the Stress Chart to Labor and Civil Unrest (lose 3 resources), China and Germany. This is huge for China, as they have been defeated several times, and only collect 3 resources, meaning they can no longer purchase more units. Ouch!
We may soon start seeing convoy action, as this will be the first round where anybody has naval units left that can actually do so.
