Again 6 hardy souls braved the pandemic! We decided to play a game of 1914 so we could all participate in the same game.
1. 1914
Used 2 house rules: max 4 builds in India; land units move 2 if every territory is friendly. Powers were allocated at random:
CPs - Mike (Aftertaste) as AH & T; Adam (Private-Panic) as G
Entente - Andrew (h0lym0nk) as Italy & USA; Mark (Credulous) as F; Jon (jon1988) as R; Dave as GB.
R was able to consolidate virtually all it’s units into Poland and so put the fear of God into AH & G, who countered with almost equal stacks in Silesia (G) and Galicia (AH and some G). The Entente decided to pursue a G first strategy and R advanced it’s stack into E Prussia. The CPs rubbed their hands with glee! While this might create a possibility of the Entente capturing Berlin it certainly gave the CPs an easy route to Moscow. G put everything it could into E Prussia to fight a battle in which it might have had a slight advantage, so as to prevent the R stack retreating. In order to do this G accepted the need to fall back on the Western Front.
The battle in E Prussia resulted in quite a few more losses for R than G. The dwindling R stack was stuck there without reinforcements while G could add units easily if it wished.
Meanwhile F pressed forward against G’s western borders, reaching the Ruhr. Perhaps F had a slight advantage in that territory and it also had a sizeable stack in Munich to follow up. Unfortunately F lost badly in the Ruhr, effectively ensuring that G would recapture with sufficient force to stall the F attack.
G took out the GB North Sea fleet for the loss of only 2 subs.
Turkey kicked GB out of Mesopotamia and captured Egypt.
All of this in just 2 turns.
The Entente abjectly surrendered!
2. 1941
With some hours of the day left to play we decided to follow with a game of 1941. Dave had to leave so we now had 5 players. Only house rule was an additional GB destroyer off Canada to balance the game. Sides allocated at random.
Allies - Mike (Aftertaste) as GB; Andrew (h0lym0nk) as R; Mark (Credulous) as US
Axis - Adam (Private-Panic) as G; Jon (jon1988) as J.
The Axis decided on a strategy of jointly pressing hard on Moscow, probably linking up in the Caucasus. And this is what they did!
However, a GB & US fleet was established off the coast of Western Europe by the end of turn 1. Normally this takes longer so G was not happy! By the end of turn 2 the Allies had 7 units in Western Europe, including a US and a R fighter, with a combined defensive power of 19. G decided to attack this with the 8 units it had available, with an attacking power of 21. I have just used triple a to discover an attacking success probability of 70%. Risky. But absolute disaster!
Clearly it still hurts!
In the meantime J captured China, the Spice Islands and the Phillipines.
Aware that G would be unable to afford units for the Caucasus given Allied Pressure on Berlin the Axis decided that their chances on Moscow were not going to improve. G’s sacrificial attack was another dice disaster, doing far less damage to R than J needed if its follow-up was to have any chance of success.
After J duly undertook its kamikaze assault, the Axis tearfully surrendered.
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