cross pollination

[PainState]

Axis and Allies G40 is a game unto itself.

War Room is a game unto itself.

I understand the compulsion to cross pollinate the games because the main core of players who have War Room are fans of Larry and his A&A line of games.

I think the games have different motivations and mechanics that make them stand on their own. Now that is just MO. You do what you want when it comes to house rules.

The one thing that I caution against is that War Room is a new experience for all of us. No need to knee jerk react to certain aspects of War Room and say Game X does it better so I will house rule Game X’s “view” into War Room.

I think World in Flames variable ending to turns, where you have no idea when a turn will end is superior to every WWII game that I have played. Yet, I feel that is a unique feature to WiF and feel there is no need to import that aspect into lets say G40 or War Room.

For people to understand one of the unique aspects of War Room, that you can only move 9 commands. Import that into AA G40 and see how much it changes the game. Because if you import the G40 idea that on your turn you can move every unit on the board if you so desire will totally destroy War Room as a game.

One negative of G40 and War Room is that Larry never put a finite end to these “games”. Thus that ensures the Allies will always win in less the Axis go hog wild early in the game. Thus the Axis never have to actually think ahead and play a defensive game. Games like WiF, SPI ETO, and Third Reich have a finite end to the war. If the Allies have not won and the Axis have not won by Sept of 1945 the “game” ends in a draw. Larry is obviously not a fan of a draw in his games, :}

Imagine if G40 or War Room had a finite end to the game. If the Allies have not won by the end of Turn #18 the game is a draw.

[DoManMacgee]

@PainState While I agree that you can’t just go slapping rules from one game to another haphazardly, it’s a bit disingenuous to disqualify all discussion of the idea. People have house-rule’d G40 to hell and back over the years. There’s no reason why examining the ideas presented by another game can’t be beneficial to communities that want to spice up their game.

This is a bit off-topic, but while I disagree with the concept of limited turns for a WW2 Game (neither side in that conflict would have accepted a truce, especially not the Allies or the Nazis), I do enjoy the extra dynamic of “racing against the clock” that it adds to games. Face-to-Face Tournaments for Axis and Allies games impose a time-limit, which usually roughly equates to 5-6 full rounds. This results in strategies being employed by both sides that are noticeably different than “standard” play you’d see in an online league where games continue indefinitely. IMO, the time limit works great and ensures that more unique or “gimmicky” strategies have the potential to be viable.

Interested to hear more about WiF’s end-of-turn mechanic, if you don’t mind. I haven’t played that game before so I’m interested to hear your take.

EDIT: Typos.

[General 6 Stars]

I do agree with the last 2 comments.
As far as combined let that be for now.
As far as axis winning out right I believe takes to long. But every body has there perfected way of playing. As a host of 100 games now the best scenario is a game being played in 1 day.
Like my game starts dec 41-42
So every 3 turns is one year = 11-12 turns
But they mostly don’t get that far in games. If axis are gonna win it will be mostly T6-T9
I’m just saying as mentioned where if it’s end of 45 and neither side has won it’s a draw but technically it’s not. It’s an Allies win IMO.
As I said I respect everybody’s way how they want to play whether it’s for just game play or a bit more historically.

[Midnight_Reaper]

@DoManMacgee said in cross pollination:

{snip}
Interested to hear more about WiF’s end-of-turn mechanic, if you don’t mind. I haven’t played that game before so I’m interested to hear your take.

EDIT: Typos.

Here is a short blurb about WiF’s end-of-turn mechanic. For reference, every turn in the game lasts two months, from Jan/Feb to Nov/Dec, with set starting dates for the different scenarios in the base game:
“D) Action stage: (Steps D1 through D3 are repeated until the action stage ends)
D1) Determine Weather
{snip}
D2) First side’s impulse
{snip}
D2.1) Declare war
{snip}
D2.2) Choose one of the actions: Pass, Naval, Air, Land, or Combined.
{snip}
D2.3) Perform actions
{snip}
D2.4) End of Action stage. The acting side rolls a d10 and compares it to the number on the Impulse track. If the rolled number is less than or equal to the impulse track the turn will end. Some sides may both start and end the turn with an impulse. If the occurs, the initiative goes -1 toward the other side. If all major countries on one side pass, the die roll is -2, if all but one pass, the die roll is -1. Each side must play two impulses each before the turn may end.[i] Here is what the impulse track looks like, the small number in the bottom right is what is used to roll for the end of a turn.”
A screenshot of the impulse track:
(Source)

I hope that helps.

-Midnight_Reaper

[crockett36]

War room isn’t a new game to me. I’ve also house ruled a game of ana with fog of war years ago. A year ago I played with multinational forces. Some of the components will fit into ana seamlessly. Much Ado about nothing. Others like limited with ana or unlimited orders with war Room will create a third or fourth thing. I, for one, will enjoy taking them out for a spin.

[DoManMacgee]

@Midnight_Reaper Thanks for this. Sounds like it would suck to lose actions to bad RNG but I imagine there must be some kind of way you can mitigate it by paying resources or whatever.

[Midnight_Reaper]

@DoManMacgee: The only mitigation is that both sides get at least two turns of orders before the turn might end. First one side (either Axis or Allied) gets a turn to do 1 of 4 things, then the other side gets a turn, then back, then forth, and then back again and things might end on that turn, they might keep going.

Still, before taking that snippet as gospel, you might want to read the whole “World in Flames” rule book, all infinty-1 pages of them…

-Midnight_Reaper

[oztea]

I would like to see a future edition of Axis & Allies adopt War Room’s economic setup (Oil, Iron, OSR) could use cardboard token chips for resources instead of printed IPCs. Helps create differentiation between the powers. Some have certain resources in vulnerable places.

I would also perhaps like to see contested territory (like A&A 1914) be adopted for a Anniversary Edition successor game. Perhaps battles would last 2 rounds maximum, rather than the one of 1914 or limitless combat of older A&A. Perhaps instead of variable turn order, oil could be spent to make a crucial battle go one more round.

I have also wanted attacker targeting in A&A for a while, and that could be a variant on the colored dice.
(Attacker targeting means rolling units in groups by value. A roll of ‘2’ to hit means you can assign it to an enemy unit of equal or lesser value. Planes can shoot planes down, tanks shoot tanks, etc)

[crockett36]

Great thoughts

[PainState]

@oztea

My group did play one game of Global using the A&A 1914 contested territory concept and it did change up the game dramatically. The biggest change was the concept of you just push all in with everything you have and you either win/lose.

Way back in the day we use to play A&A with the blind set up. Two tables, axis on one side and allies the other. There would be a ref or moderator to run the game. Neither side knew what the other side was building or how they where moving. There were rules for recon missions and so forth. It did change up the game big time with the fog of war dynamic of playing blind.

[crockett36]

@PainState tremendous! That’ll keep 'em coming back for more!

[BiggusDiggus]

I know this is a very old thread, but I’ve actually been working on something like this for a couple years now.

Basically, the gist of my thinking was that because the Second World War was basically a war of resources; both natural resource and the land they reside in. I took many concepts from both War Room, Axis & Allies, and Global war to begin my attempt at an ultimate crossover between the three. The goal was for the game to encompass the grander scale of Axis and Allies Global 1940 whilst incorporating the resource management of War Room, and implementing the more unique design choices of Global War but also eliminating the excesses that cause so much headache and delay (terrain and combat, for example).

I want to preempt this by saying the game was nowhere near being completed or even play tested, but I thought I’d share what I have so far here.

The game used 12 sided die for combat, but it also incorporated War Rooms color rolling. For example, while a unit might hit at a 4 or lower, it might not be able to apply that hit to a Plane because, well, it’s just an Infantry Squad. The general idea was that a 1 would correspond to Black in War Room, and could hit anything, where as 11 and 12 were Whites: misses. My plan is that you could always “round down” if you wanted to apply hits to weaker units for any particular reason, but you could only round up to a higher color if there were no possible units to hit of the color that you rolled.

The Die was planned to be:

1: Black — Choice of Hit
2: Yellow — Infantry/Submarines
3-4 Blue — Artillery/Screen Ships
5-6: Green — Vehicles/Aircraft Carriers
7-10: Red — Planes/Capital Ships
11-12: White — Miss

Of course, there were the usual special rules applied to units. So if you’re thinking “Damn, planes seem almost impossible to hit” well with Anti-Air Guns in that they would fire before each round of combat (similar to the 50th Anniversary Edition), which would actually make them extremely vital in combat against large air forces, whereas in 1940 they’re nice to have but rarely would I actually buy them unless I’m the Soviets facing Germany or the Pacific Allies facing Japan. Below is the WIP table detailing the Build Cost and Stats of each unit, as well as any special rules that unit may have.

Again, I would like to reiterate that this table was still very, very work in progress and has not been play tested at all.

This list also includes tech-only units marked with an asterisk (includes Supercarriers as well, but I seemingly forgot to mark them)

There was still a lot of bloat that I was planning to get rid of. In addition to those marked, it was likely that at least one of the Carrier and one of the Tank types was going to go. I was always on the fence about CV Aircraft, and I planned them to be interchangeable with non CV Air unites at Airbases, but this was mostly me going insane with creating plane models in Unity (I was building the game in Tabletop Simulator).

There’s also a lot to be said about Seaplanes and their role in actually detecting navies in certain parts of the world. In my game, it wasn’t a guarantee that two fleets meeting in open waters would result in a battle. A 6-sided die would be rolled depending on what Sea Zone the encounter took place in. Critically important areas, like the Sea of Japan, or the North Sea/English Channel would have a high probability of Combat, but more open areas like the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean might result in two navies completely avoiding each other. If a fleet had Seaplanes docked on their Capital Ships, the Seaplane would increase the odds of detecting an enemy fleet in open waters. An important note is that Naval invasions would always result in combat.

Here is the WIP map. The plan was for a 1939 start. Apologies for the artifacts as the original map I used was a JPG before I started editing it and I simply never got around to fixing those areas since I was only using MS Paint. I eventually planned to hire someone to draw a map from scratch if it was ever feasible to actually create physical copies of the game.

Turn Order is basically the same as Global 1940 with some tweaks:

1. Germany
2. Soviet Union & Communist China
3. Japan
4. United States & Nationalist China
5. United Kingdom + Canada & South Africa
6. Italy
7. British Raj & ANZAC
8. France, Poland & Benelux

Germany begins at war with Poland, France, and the UK.
Japan is at war with China and Communist China, and occupies large portions of Eastern and Northern China.

In my game, the Soviets—while nominally part of the Allies—were actually their own separate faction that had their own goals and objectives that would involve potentially harming the Western Allies efforts. For example, Communist China adopts the Global 1940 rules for China (can only build Infantry, but can place them anywhere). What’s different here is that unless USSR chooses to invest resources for them to produce artillery, they can never produce anything but. While this is feasible in the early game, it’s not so much when the Germans are kicking down the front door. This would come into play if Communist China were to retake a Nationalist territory from the Japanese, it wouldn’t go back to the Nationalists, but instead would go to the Communists, robbing the Nationalists of vital resources that they can use to produce things like Artillery and Tanks freely.

There’s lots of other little things I don’t have time to describe here as this post is already getting rather long. But if you have any questions or ideas I’d love to hear them! For example, I noticed Oztea mentioning contested territory and resources being used to extend a limited number of combat rounds and now he has me rethinking portions of my entire design concept!

[General 6 Stars]

Ya that’s Tigerman’s map or HBG 39 map. If you use sea planes to find fleets the game will take longer since I have tested finding fleets in another game. but then after a certain turn any plane can find a fleet for my rule. Had 2 types of sea planes. Land and ship only. Ship plane move 4, land plane move 6.

I’ll have to read your charts and see what there like.

What’s this aircraft each can roll a 1 before combat ? Dog fighting ?
If it is you maybe interested my dog fighting rules.

[BiggusDiggus]

@general-6-stars I’d definitely love to read them.

[General 6 Stars]

Here’s a setup chart. It shows costs and piece values.

What happens is planes and ships can get bonus plane kills during all battles. let me know if you get this. Can PM me if you want.