While people will continue to have complaints about the game (notably: errata, part counts and quality, unit sculpts, J1 attack, etc), I feel comfortable in stating my belief that AAG40 will be hands down the best A&A game yet.
There are many reasons for this that one could point to, but I believe that the fundamental genius of this version of the game is that it will finally force a truly balanced offense on the part of all players. In previous versions of the game there was usually (if not always) a dominant strategy that was ahistorical and imbalancing. In earlier versions of the global game, it was the KGF strategy, often to the point of ignoring Japan altogether. In AA50-1941, it was the German tank blitz, in AAE, it was the German infantry push, and in AAP and AAP40, it was the India Crush. All wargames are simulation to one degree or another, and simulations tend to break down at the extremes. To use the earlier global games as an example, that extreme was in all three allies devoting 90% or more of their forces towards attacking Germany, resulting in a German turtle, a Japanese juggernaut, a warped and vastly ahistorical progression of the war and (I would argue) a less satisfying game (my group tends to eschew KGF simply because it’s too repetitive and unfun). People blame the Japanese Tank Drive to Moscow on Siberia being too small and too valuable, and while that’s partly true, the larger aspect that people miss is that it happens because the incentives are set up to drive all of the allies away from Japan and towards Germany, meaning that Japan is expanding almost without opposition in all directions. Moscow is actually their closest active opponent. When I play tournament games as Japan, it is not uncommon for me to have the entirety of the Pacific, Australia, Siberia, and Alaska under my control by the fourth or fifth turn, with transports and tanks threatening Africa and North America.
There are two ways that Larry and the other designers/playtesters managed this.
- National objectives, particularly in the Pacific make it worthwhile for US, Japan, and UK/ANZAC to fight over the control of the Pacific.
- Segmented production. By spreading out the Allies production centers, you force them to fight in more areas of the board. For example, when India has no IC, it’s easy to choose to abandon it. You can also choose to build one there, but then holding it becomes even more important and losing it can be crippling. By starting the game with an IC there, you simultaneously give the UK both the incentive and the means to defend it. Similarly, consider the IC in South Africa. The smart money says you need to be buying three tanks a turn there to have a chance of holding Africa, but that also means that you can’t be dumping all of your money into a monster navy or a massive air force of strategic bombers. It forces balance. All of the previous global A&A games had two Axis centers (Germany/Italy and Japan) against three Allied centers (the allied capitals), and the Allied centers were much closer to Germany than to Japan, so no wonder KGF was such a dominant strategy. AAG40 raises the number of Allied production and defense centers from three to seven (US, UK, USSR, China, ANZAC, India, South Africa). I think that this will force the war to become more global and more balanced. There will be more room for strategic maneuver and application of limited forces. The game will become less reliant on gambits and more reliant on cohesive strategies. I think it will be a masterpiece. I can’t wait.
