Why is Global better than Revised?

[Argothair]

This is a serious question – obviously people here are very passionate about Global; you might play dozens of Global games every year, and maybe you haven’t played a single Revised game in a decade.

The Global map is bigger, and there are more rules, and Global is the more recent release. For some people, that’s enough to justify only playing Global – they want the biggest, most gonzo experience they can find, or they want whatever the latest version is because they like new things or they like official things or it’s just what their friends are playing. Fine.

But if you have consciously chosen some form of Global because you like Global better than previous versions of A&A, especially A&A Revised from 2004, then why do you like Global better? What are the key features? What makes Global more satisfying or more fun? What are you able to do in Global that you’re not able to do in Revised?

[Imperious Leader]

Because revised is broken with endless tank drives because tanks are overpowered in that game. 1942 is a better product and way more balanced…play that or compare to a balanced game//?

[crockett36]

@Imperious-Leader so if you house ruled tanks, would it make the game more playable?

[Imperious Leader]

Well no in our comparison on Global 40, revised is no match. You have way more player options, unit mix, and more Historical realism. Revised is dead. All those folks who made a living at it our out of a job… Id rather play Milton Bradley than revised if i wanted basic—with a bid of course for Axis

[Slip Capone]

@Argothair

My group and I are massive fans of Revised. Since using the WBC tournament rules we haven’t gone back.

[DoManMacgee]

@Argothair

It isn’t. At least OOB Revised is better. It takes a 7 bid to Axis OOB to balance Revised. It’s taken 10 Years of house-rules to make G40 something even remotely resembling balanced, and there’s still no clear consensus on how to solve the Axis-bias the game has. IIRC Siredblood and the 42 scenario are the only ones that are even close.

Balance aside, I like being able to finish a game in under 5 hours.

To G40’s credit, the larger, more detailed map gives way to more strategic options for casual play (I say casual play because there’s only one truly relevant strategy from what I’ve observed, Italy-Germany can-opener your way to Moscow while Japan spams Aircraft Carriers to accommodate it’s massive starting air force).

Another point in G40’s favor (again due to the massive and detailed map), is that the possibilities for customizing/house-ruling the game are endless. That’s probably why no other A&A Game since (42SE, 1914, zombies) has been able to replace G40 as the community’s favorite.

[Imperious Leader]

All AA games require a bid, while Revised requires other changes to be decent. It does not offer much in the way of doing many different things “options”, victory only has a few directions to be successful. Global will always be the most popular option because it finally addresses the Historical “wargame” hunger, while Revised is more like a “game” like “Advanced Risk”…generic and basic-

I hope they make another version of 1914 like E40 with more units

[DoManMacgee]

That’s a fair point. G40 is more of a light war game (although diehard grognards will seethe at the idea of calling A&A a “wargame”), while Revised is more of an “Advanced Risk”, as you put it. I’ve always described A&A to new players as “Risk meets Monopoly”, so you make a very good point describing Revised (and by extension the other “small map” games like 42SE/Classic).

I guess it comes down to what you personally want in an Axis and Allies game.

Personally, I’d want a Napoleon-era game with the A&A Formula and a detailed Europe map similar to 1914 but adjusted for the Napoleonic Period. Larry’s new game seems like it might scratch that itch, but that’s getting a bit off-topic.

[Imperious Leader]

G40 is the closest AA gets to a Wargame. yep

[Argothair]

Very interesting, thank you. So, digging a little deeper, can anyone articulate what it means for something to be a “wargame” or why G40 would scratch the “wargame hunger” better than Revised? In concrete terms, why does G40 feel like a wargame?

Also, does anyone have a link to the WBC tournament rules for Revised? I’m not familiar with them.

And, yes, one thing I like about SiredBlood’s rules is that they encourage a broader variety of strategies, even in competitive play. At the first SiredBlood tournament, I saw neutral crushes, I saw Sea Lions, I saw paratroopers hitting Cairo, I saw India Crushes, I saw serious attempts by Japan to grab the eastern Pacific islands from US/UK, I saw Italians in Brazil and Canada and Pakistan, and I think once, just for variety, I saw the traditional Italian can-openers for German tanks rolling into Moscow. I’m sure some of that is because it’s new and people are still sorting out what works and how to counter the oddball openings, but I also think the victory conditions (where both VPs and IPCs are distributed more evenly across the map) helps players branch out a little, compared to either G40 2nd Edition or Revised, where the vast majority of the money and the VPs are in or adjacent to Berlin or Moscow.

Like, if you look at the strategies available in Revised, the Germans need to hold France / Rome / Berlin, all of which are adjacent to each other, and that’s 22 IPCs and 3 VPs, which is enough to hold out for a very long time. Similarly, if the Russians can keep trading the bubble of territories immediately adjacent to Moscow, that can bring in over 20 IPCs. So almost all the action focuses around those two ultra-rich clusters of money, factories, and VPs. It kind of has to, right?

But what else are you going to do? Either the action has a central focus (in which case people will complain that the only thing to do is go right for the center) or the action doesn’t have a central focus (in which case people will complain that it feels casual and screwy and ahistorical and winds up in stalemates where you trade the same peripheral territories forever). Maybe I’m feeling too philosophical today to talk sense. I’m just trying to figure out what makes A&A games fun and what makes them frustrating, at a really abstract and general level.

[General 6 Stars]

I have only played g40 once and revised like 5 times. G40 for me is not it. Revised ok if you want a more simpler game than g40.
I unfortunately was introduced to 39 games when I got into AA. Sorry but not taking 20 steps back for g40. Hey great game but not for me and not gonna discuss here.
As for changing up strategies like Argo says Siredblood’s game is a good one.
I think the best way to get variety of different strategies is with getting so many points from city’s and bonus points for resources.
Ok not a fan of sea lion but in Siredblood’s game and its good then ok.
I’m saying like in g40 there’s no battle of thee Atlantic with bunch of Ger subs. You probably would need to change setup.
In my game there’s 16 Ger subs and 2 italy subs in the Atlantic. My game you need to send Tacs and DD after those subs. This could go on up to 5 turns a game. The g40 convoys also need to be further away from coast. But as mention probably to much for g40 guys and setup changes.
My game has points for city’s and bonus axis points. 1. Income 2. Mideast oil 3. Dutch Island oil and another Dutch Island oil bonus point each. Plus on setup japs take midway. Then US counters while sending down fleets to grab the 3 island group NOs for bonus cash. But the japs grab these little islands to deny some NOs turn 1 and it forces US to go to Solomon Islands New Britain Manila. If US don’t go down there then japs can bank more money. The race is on. Then they have to deny japs the bonus oil points in Dutch islands. Japs should never have to win game on land except for Calcutta. Just ideas.
Starting to ramble.

[Slip Capone]

@Argothair
WBC rule as requested. We play for 6 rounds as opposed to the time limit as sometimes games are over 2 sessions or include lunch breaks etc.

Tournament Rules:
For games using the Revised Edition, the rule set that will be used for this tournament is the Larry Harris Tournament Rules (v 2.0). No Appendix 3: Optional Rules (National Advantages) will be used. Larry Harris Tournament Rules (LHTR) can be downloaded at http://www.axisandallies.org/LHTR.

Adjudication System:
The determination of who wins a game will be based upon the control of Victory Territories (VTs). The Victory City method of determining a winner will NOT be used. Each side controls 12 Victory Territories at the beginning of the game. The Victory Territories are listed below.

AXIS POWERS-
GERMANY
Germany
Western Europe
Southern Europe
Eastern Europe
Ukraine SSR
Norway

JAPAN
Japan
Manchuria
French Indochina
Philippine Islands
East Indies
Borneo

ALLIED POWERS-
USSR
Russia
Caucasus
Archangel
Novosibirsk

UK
United Kingdom
India
Anglo-Egypt
Australia

USA
Eastern US
Western US
Hawaiian Islands
Sinkiang

If a player holds 18 (or more) VTs for a full round of game play (from the end of a country’s turn to the beginning of that same country’s next turn.), then that player automatically wins.
In the event of a VT tie at the end of the game, whichever side increased its IPC total is the winner. If the game is still tied after reviewing the IPC totals, then the GM will make a determination of the winner based upon the game situation at the time the game ended.
If a player chooses to concede before the game has reached the 18 VT automatic win threshold or the game time limit (4.5 hrs), a default score of 19 VTs and +30 IPCs will be awarded to the winner.

Bidding for Sides-
If the players cannot agree upon which side they will play, then they will bid to play the preferred side.

Players roll one die and the higher roll starts the bidding. The player who won the roll (Player #1) starts with an IPC amount that he is willing to give to the other player for the privilege to play the desired side. The other player (Player #2) then decides if the bid is an acceptable amount to receive for playing the undesired side. Player #2 can either accept the amount bid by Player #1 or Player #2 can counter with an IPC amount higher than that of Player #1. Bidding continues until one player decides to accept the amount of IPCs offered by the other player.

Example:
Player #1 rolls a 5, Player #2 rolls a 3. Player #1 starts the bidding (The player who wins the privilege to start the bidding can choose to defer the first bid to the other player.) Player #1 puts forth a bid of Allies (+4). What this means is that Player #1 wants to play the Axis and is willing to give Player #2 four IPCs to play the Allies. Player #2 must either accept the bid amount to play the Allies or counter with a bid greater than the one offered by Player #1.

Player #2 decides to counter with a bid of Allies (+5). Now it is up to Player #1 to decide if he will accept five IPCs to be the Allies or counter with a higher bid. Player #1 changes his mind about wanting to play the Axis and decides to accept the offer of five IPCs to play the Allies.

The player who accepts the offered IPCs receives that amount from the bank. These IPCs can be split among the countries of the accepted side in any manner that the player chooses. The IPCs can be used to purchase units that are immediately placed upon the board and/or the IPCs can be saved for use during that country’s turn later in the game. Units can only be placed into territories or sea zones that that country controls. A controlled sea zone is one that has units of that country in it. There is no limit to the amount of units that can be added to one territory or sea zone.

Note with these rules a bid of 3-5 to the allies is the most common, with placement usually in Caucasus or India.

[General 6 Stars]

Ha. Flat out all balls to the wall ! Like it.

[Slip Capone]

@Argothair

With the WBC rules, we found that this opened up a lot more options with strategy compared to out of the box rules. Nothing like Global but did open the door to a lot more viable strategies.

[Argothair]

@Slip-Capone Can you elaborate a little bit on how or why these rules opened up new strategies? It looks like almost every territory worth 2 IPCs or more is a Victory Territory. How does playing with this list of Victory Territories change the strategy compared to just saying “whoever has more money after 6 rounds wins?”

[Slip Capone]

@Argothair

I would say that the location of the VTs is more important than their value. With VTs like Australia, Hawaii, Norway, Egypt etc it feels like a more global fight.

In my opinion these rules opened up strategies that didn’t see the time of day with OOB. Just for example the most successful and most commonly used OOB strategy for the Allies was some version of the African Land-Bridge.

To stick with the Allies point of view, since switching to the VTs the below for the Allies have seen success:
Pacific Fleet
Double Asian IC
African Land Bridge and
Scandinavian Land Bridge

Not sure if DoMan wants to give his 10 cents as he played at WBC and is a high level player.

[Imperious Leader]

Well off the top Global offers money- e.g “oil” for holding certain areas ( national objectives) and/or doing certain things ( For Italy keep UK out of Medd) that Historically make AA fall in line with the combatants fought for during the war. The options for players is greater ( new units, more flavor) Russo-Japanese non aggression treaty, etc. The game has invadable neutrals rather than some blanket “you cant enter Switzerland you idiot kind of rules” This gives this version the flavor of a Wargame, while Revised is more Advanced Risk. I did create Axis and Allies Revised Historical Edition that won an award, as it stands to offer many of the kinds of things people would want in a version that caters to Historical sensibilities. Anyway if you just want to mostly buy tanks and shuck them to Moscow have at it.

[General 6 Stars]

@Imperious-Leader said in Why is Global better than Revised?:

Well off the top Global offers money- e.g “oil” for holding certain areas ( national objectives) and/or doing certain things ( For Italy keep UK out of Medd) that Historically make AA fall in line with the combatants fought for during the war. The options for players is greater ( new units, more flavor) Russo-Japanese non aggression treaty, etc. The game has invadable neutrals rather than some blanket “you cant enter Switzerland you idiot kind of rules” This gives this version the flavor of a Wargame, while Revised is more Advanced Risk. I did create Axis and Allies Revised Historical Edition that won an award, as it stands to offer many of the kinds of things people would want in a version that caters to Historical sensibilities. Anyway if you just want to mostly buy tanks and shuck them to Moscow have at it.

Totally agree.

[DoManMacgee]

@Argothair said in Why is Global better than Revised?:

Very interesting, thank you. So, digging a little deeper, can anyone articulate what it means for something to be a “wargame” or why G40 would scratch the “wargame hunger” better than Revised? In concrete terms, why does G40 feel like a wargame?

The gist of it is that G40 has a higher level of complexity and scale than Revised, in terms of number of territories on the board, distinct unit types, special rules/scenarios, how scripted the opening moves are (in the big picture, I mean), etc.

Take your average wargame. Hex-based Grid, super-historically accurate setup (with minor concessions for balance reasons), Chits corresponding to individual unit/battalions/whatever (this differs based on the game). Wargames also typically cover the full timeline of the war, with certain historical events more-or-less pre-determined (i.e. France will lose to the Nazi assault in 1940 every time. Germany will need to declare war on the Soviet Union ever time, USA will enter the war on the Allies’ side after either Japan attacks them or certain conditions are met, etc.).

Does this sort of thing sound more like Revised, or G40? Clearly the answer here is G40. Revised has a comparatively static initial board state set late in the war (~1942), that isn’t historically accurate (i.e. “Pearl Harbor” happens J1 despite the Germans already being more-or-less set up to make their doomed attack into Stalingrad, but somehow the Russians get to make the first move? Also Germany/Italy just gets to take Egypt at the start of the game?). Meanwhile, G40 starts you off in a relatively accurate representation of 1940 Europe, with things like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact, America’s Neutrality, and Japan not yet being at war with most of the Allies all being present and accounted for.

Revised, when played at a high level, looks nothing like World War 2 in terms of strategies used by the Players. G40 doesn’t either, but it comes a lot closer than Revised does. That’s why I call G40 “close to a wargame” rather than giving it the full distinction.

But what else are you going to do? Either the action has a central focus (in which case people will complain that the only thing to do is go right for the center) or the action doesn’t have a central focus (in which case people will complain that it feels casual and screwy and ahistorical and winds up in stalemates where you trade the same peripheral territories forever). Maybe I’m feeling too philosophical today to talk sense. I’m just trying to figure out what makes A&A games fun and what makes them frustrating, at a really abstract and general level.

What makes a A&A game fun/frustrating is a subjective question, I guess I’ll give you my take:

• Fun - Relatively quick compared to other wargames.

• Fun - Straightforward-enough rules, but not for babies like Risk or your typical Milton Bradley/Hasbro game.

• Fun - Exciting World War 2 Action.

• Fun - Decent-to-huge variety in strategic options available to the player. You’re not forced to follow history 1:1.

• Fun - While luck is a factory, the better player will usually win due to skill.

• Fun - Asynchronous Gameplay. The Axis start with more Power, but less Economy. The Allies start with more Economy, but less Power. The Axis have to try their best to gain the economic advantage over the Allies before the Allies’ superior economy allows them to overpower the Axis’ starting advantage. It’s like picking White or Black in Chess, but on a much higher level than just “who goes first”.

• Fun - Ability to make custom scenarios easily, as the simple rules lend themselves easily to modifications, as shown by the hard work a lot of people do on this forum.

• Frustrating - Once optimal play is found for a map, most games usually come down to arguments about bids and dice rolls.

• Frustrating - Because of the OOB system, games can be decided by single rounds of combat if one side rolls well.

• Frustrating - Grind Games. While some long, drawn out games can be breathtakingly exciting, more often than not you’re staring at 20 turns of swapping some clay in Ukraine/some territory adjacent to Moscow and waiting for something exciting to happen while looking at the clock. Face-to-Face rules that impose a strict turn limit do a lot to alleviate this, though.

[DoManMacgee]

@Argothair said in Why is Global better than Revised?:

Can you elaborate a little bit on how or why these rules opened up new strategies? It looks like almost every territory worth 2 IPCs or more is a Victory Territory. How does playing with this list of Victory Territories change the strategy compared to just saying “whoever has more money after 6 rounds wins?”

Basically, the idea behind the alternative WBC rules is that you’re adding more variety in win conditions beyond “Germany stacks INF in Germany/France/Italy”, “Japan builds Tanks and walks into Moscow”, and “US/UK build a death-fleet and try to land in Germany/France/Italy”.

tl;dr Strategic Variety is key. Every country (not Faction) has at least 2-3 different viable ways that they can play the game. Even Russia, to an extent.

Specifically:

• Germany goes after USSR, so if Russia simply spends the whole game swapping Ukraine back and forth, Germany is going to end up winning the VT there. This encourages the Soviets to play more aggressively in the later rounds.

• Norway and Egypt are designed as “freebies” for Germany and UK to steal from one another in the initial rounds. The difference is that later in the game (assuming a 5-6 round time limit), USA is probably going to land in Africa and take Egypt back. This encourages Germany to be aggressive in either attacking Russia to make up the difference, or building a Baltic Navy to reinforce Norway/keep UK out of it.

• The Money Islands (Borneo/East Indies/Philippines) + Australia/Hawaii are made into VTs to force Japan to actually build some sort of navy to pursue them, and to encoarge USA to play in the Pacific. In OOB rules Philippines is the only VC in the Pacific, and as it’s right next to Japan it’s laughably easy to defend. This totally discourages USA/UK from even trying to contest the Pacific, since there are more VCs to be gained by attacking Europe.

• On a similar note, Kwangtung is demoted from it’s OOB VC status, while Manchuria and FIC are promoted to VC status. These territories are situated right next to Japan’s borders with Russia and India, meaning that they become tempting options for early game aggression, or even a US Factory in China.

• The Russian VC in Archangel is completely and totally off the standardly accepted “beaten path” for Germany to take to get to Russia (that being Germany -> East Europe -> Ukraine -> West Russia/Caucasus -> Russia). This can expand the Russian front to include all of the territories between Germany and Russia, rather than just the usual 3-4.

• None of UK’s African territories are VCs. This gives the Axis the choice of either attacking Africa for IPCs to win a potential tiebreaker/fund later turns or just gunning straight for VCs.

• Sinkiang is a VC for the same reason Ukraine is. If Russia just swaps them back and forth with Germany/Japan the Axis will win the VCs in the end. Russia is forced to decide whether to aggressively pursue one or both of these VCs, or forfeit them to the Axis.

Hope this ranting and raving helps. It’s similar enough to Siredblood’s G40 rules, when you think about it. The difference here is that you’re playing to simply determine who has more VCs by end-of-game, rather than trying to prevent the Axis from meeting some arbitrary goal.