Weather effect

[seancb]

My friend and I have been working on a weather event that could occur prior to the turn beginning which would make the game a bit more realistic (don’t laugh).
We put a lot of work into it and it makes a few assumption.
First is that a turn is essentially a 6 month time frame. Start round 1 in June 40, Start turn 2 in December 40… on and on.
The second assumption is that certain storms would observe the general time line.

So please feel free to give opinions on the mechanics. If you don’t like them please don’t just say they suck. Let me know exactly what would or does suck and why.

Thanks for feedback.

Weather Events
At the beginning of round 1, a coin is flipped and the winning player has the weather initiative and can choose to roll the seaborne weather events or defer to roll the winter storm events. This order is not changed for the duration of the game.

2 dice are rolled.
When a roll of 2 occurs, a major storm event is now developing and has begun to affect combat and non-combat movement.
In odd numbered turns (June turns) a seaborne storm has developed.
In even numbered turns (December turns) a winter storm has developed.

Seaborne storms – These storms are considered to be 100 year storms which would cause massive loss of life and material in addition to economic damage to factories and facilities.
Two rolls will be conducted. The first roll will be for the Atlantic Ocean and the second roll will be for the Pacific Ocean. These rolls are independent of each other and will be rolled separately. If a 2 is not rolled, there is no developed storm this battle cycle (turn).
In both theaters of war the following rules apply:
No naval movement is allowed in or out of the affected zones during combat movement or noncombat movement phase.

In affected coastal zones and islands, limited land movement is permitted. All land unit movement is reduced by one movement point except for infantry. Artillery without a paired mechanized infantry unit may not move. Land movements (combat or non-combat) into affected zones must immediately stop in the affected zone. No additional movement is permitted.

Air units originating from a non-affected zone may not conduct combat movement into an affected zone. They may, however conduct non combat movement and fly through the affected zone en route to land in a non-affected zone by way of flying around the storm.

Air units in affected coastal or island zones are assumed to be grounded in place and are not permitted to move in either the combat or non-combat phase. If attacked during a storm, defending fighters and bombers will only defend at a roll of 1 to represent armed ground crews defending airfields. Only one selected air unit originating from non-affected zones may land in affected coastal zones during non-combat movement due to the damage sustained to airfields.

Affected airbases and naval bases tiles will receive 3 points of damage each. Affected factories will sustain 1 dice of damage rolled by the affected factory owner.

Roll one die to determine the location of the storm.
Atlantic storms
1/2 – Major Category 5 South Atlantic hurricane has developed and will strike Central America. Path will affect the following sea zones 87, 88, 89, and 90. Hurricane will strike the following islands and coastal areas: Central America, Southeast Mexico, and West Indies. Panama Canal is now closed this turn.
3/4 – Major Category 5 Central Atlantic hurricane has developed and will strike Central or Eastern United States seaboard. Path will affect the following sea zones 88, 90, 101, and 102. USA player will roll one additional die to determine where hurricane makes landfall. 1-3 strikes Eastern USA, 4-6 strikes Central USA.
5/6 – Major North Sea storm has developed. This storm only affects naval movement in the following zones: 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 116, 117, 118 119, 122, 123, and 124. No damage is sustained to English airbases, naval bases or factories.

Pacific storms
1 – Far North Pacific Storm has developed. This storm only affects naval movement in the following zones: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8.
2 –Japanese Typhoon has developed and strikes islands and coastal zones adjacent to the following sea zones: 6, 16, 17, 18.
3 – Central Pacific Hurricane has developed and strikes islands and coastal zones adjacent to the following sea zones: 12, 13, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, and 31.
4 – West Central Pacific Typhoon has developed and strikes islands and coastal zones adjacent to the following sea zones: 21, 22, 23, 32, 33, 34, 47 and 48.
5 – South Pacific Typhoon has developed and strikes islands and coastal zones adjacent to the following sea zones: 46, 47, 49, 53, and 54.
6 – Philippine Typhoon has developed and strikes islands and coastal zones adjacent to the following sea zones: 20, 35, 36, 43, 44, and 45

Winter storms – These storms are large snowstorms that create snow and ice with sub-freezing temperatures that create conditions in which war plans cannot be carried out as planned. Food stores can become useless and fuel stores gel. Weapons malfunction and motorized weapons lose the ability to run properly. Frostbite and hypothermia reduce army readiness.

All land unit movement is reduced by one movement point except for infantry. Artillery without a paired mechanized infantry unit may not move. Movements (combat or non-combat) into affected zones must immediately stop in the affected zone. No additional movement is permitted.
Loading and unloading of transports from or into affected zones is not permitted.

Air units in affected zones are assumed to be grounded in place and are not permitted to move in either the combat or non-combat phase. If attacked during a storm, defending fighters and bombers will only defend at a roll of 1 to represent armed ground crews defending airfields.

Air units originating from non-affected zones may not land in any affected zones during non-combat. However, they may fly through on non-combat or conduct a combat in any affected zones but must land in a non-affected zone.

Naval bases and airbases in affected zones do not sustain damage. Naval bases and airbases in affected zones are to be considered inoperable for this turn.

Roll one die to determine the location of the storm.
1 – Arctic Circle blizzard develops and affects the following territories: Norway, Finland, Vyborg, Karelia, Novgorod, Archangel, and Nenetsia
2 – Central Russia blizzard develops and affects the following territories: Belarus, Smolensk, Vologda, Russia, Bryansk, and Western Ukraine.
3 – Southern Russia blizzard develops and affects the following territories: Bryansk, Ukraine, Rostov, Tambov, and Volgograd.
4 – Eastern Europe blizzard develops and affects the following territories: Baltic States, Poland, East Poland, Slovakia-Hungary, Romania, and Bessarabia
5 – English blizzard develops and affects the following territories: United Kingdom and Scotland.
6 – North American blizzard develops and affects the following territories: Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Eastern USA, Central USA.

[General 6 Stars]

You need to keep it KISS.  To many things in just that event. I’ll post a Russian winter chart that I use if you want to see it.

[General 6 Stars]

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[Der Kuenstler]

I agree that some sort of weather system should be added to Axis and Allies, but it should be simple in order to stay consistent with the rest of the game.

Larry Harris, Axis and Allies inventor, said on his website: “I designed A&A with simplicity in mind. I personally was feed up with only being able to find very complex simulation games that were around at the time I designed A&A. Whether or not A&A is too complex is always in the back of my head when designing the different variants of the game.” - LH 11/10/08

Your basic idea of adding weather effects is good but IMO you should greatly simplify it. As William Golding said, “The greatest ideas are the simplest.”

[seancb]

The only reason this is complicated, which it really isn’t. You roll 2 dice. get a 2 roll another dice and look up the chart. If you don’t roll a 2, then continue on as usual. I think it seems complicated because of the length of the post. It’s no more complicated than a SBR. We had to make a way to determine where the storm was.

[CWO Marc]

I concur that the thing to aim for is a simple, easy system that adds just a bit of interest to the game, without creating too much added work or becoming a significant source of large-scale random destruction.  Or to put it another way, it would be best to avoid a weather-simulation system that slows down play sufficiently to be noticeable, or that has impacts large enough to potentially have serious strategic repercussions on the course of a game.  The fact that the house rule is rather long to read suggests (at least to me) that it might be cumbersome to implement in actual play.

A fundamental question that would need to be considered is: what function is a weather-simulation system intended to serve?  In WWII, there were as far as I know only a few cases in which weather had a major strategic impact on the course of events; the only three I can think of were the effects of the Russian winter on the Barbarossa and Stalingrad campaigns, the weather systems over which Eisenhower had to make the correct decision on the eve of D-Day, and to a much lesser degree the winter storms in the Atlantic that affected Germany’s U-boat offensives.  Other than those ones (and whatever other significant ones that haven’t occurred to me), weather’s main effect on military operations in WWII (as in many other wars throughout history) was simply to make life more miserable for everyone on both sides.  To quote Robert Mitchum’s character in the movie The Enemy Below, “It’s always either too cold or too hot wherever there’s a war on.”

[seancb]

As you stated Marc, not many weather events were experienced. This is represented in that you have a 1 in 36 chance that this will even be an event at all. It simply adds a bit of excitement to the beginning of the round. And maybe, just maybe, if a player needed a little help from a higher power to hold off an invasion or attack or reinforcement, a storm may just be the answer!!!
Sean…

[General 6 Stars]

No Monsoon. From what I saw troops had to move stuff with horses and rode bikes.

[CWO Marc]

@seancb:

And maybe, just maybe, if a player needed a little help from a higher power to hold off an invasion or attack or reinforcement, a storm may just be the answer!!!

It could, of course, also work in the opposite direction: a player who’s already in trouble could have the final nails driven into his coffin by a bad weather dice roll, which at best would probably generate a lot of cursing on his part and at worst might lead him to pledge that he’ll never use the weather house rule again.  Particularly if the weather house rule revolves around huge storm-of-the-century meteorological events that produce severe damage over large parts of the game map.

If the proposed system is indeed based on the concept that there’s only a 1-in-36 chance of a weather event happening (and I must admit that this element escaped me, given the rather lengthy and – to me at least – complex formulation of the house rule), then my suggestion would be to speed up and simplify the application of the rule as follows:

• Step 1: At the beginning of a round, a 2-dice roll takes place to determine if a weather event will affect the round.  If the outcome is a double 6 (for which there is 1 chance out of 36), then a weather event will occur and the players then procede to Step 2.  For any other outcome (for which there are 35 chances out of 36), then no weather effect will occur and the players continue to play normally.

COMMENT: The point of Step 1 is to reduce the work involved (in both reading and applying the rule) to an absolute minimum by eliminating from it everything except the 1-in-36-chance that a weather event will occur.  After all, if the chances of such an event are almost zero, then why should the players need to concern themselves in Step 1 with any other details about the weather house rule?  [The only other element I’d add to Step 1 would be a simple system to determine who rolls the weather dice.  Suggestion: use two distinctly-coloured weather dice and initially give them to the player who plays first in the turn order; he gets to make the weather roll for the first round; once that’s done, he gives the weather dice to the second player in the turn order, who will make the weather roll for the second round, and so forth.]

• Step 2 (used only if Step 1 has produced a double 6): Use a simple table-and-dice-roll combination to determine what kind of weather event has had what kind of effect on what players in which location.  The result is then applied.  No other steps are involved.

COMMENT: I deliberately provided no details in Step 2, in order to keep it purely conceptual.  My general suggestion for the table, however, would be to follow three principles:

a) The effects of bad weather should almost always be minimal, or to put it another way, “annoying but minor.”  There should be almost no chance of bad weather producing an effect so severe that it will have major effects (good or bad) on a player’s situation.

b) Bad weather should usually have a negative effect on both sides if it occurs in an area where both sides are present.  As I said previously, bad weather tends to make everyone miserable in a combat zone, regardless of which side they’re on.  Admittedly, there were some situations in WWII in which bad weather favoured one side in a zone of operations, but when this happened it was partly because of additional factors that were non-meteorological in nature (for instance, because the Germans were convinced that Barbarossa would be completed before any winter clothing for the troops would be needed).

c) The results of bad weather should be quick and easy to apply, ideally in a single step.  For example: at sea, the effects of bad weather would be easier to apply if they simply involved a small number of immediate ship sinkings (meaning they’d be applied at once, and then they’d be done with) than if they involved combat modifiers that would affect every round of combat (in which case they’d be a protracted headache).

[seancb]

slow day here at the office no projects yet…
The mechanic you describe is exactly how we wrote it. The “weather roller” is detemined for the rest of the game at the beginning. One set of players or player is in charge of the summer storms and one is in charge of the winter storms. The second roll determines where the storm is happening. It’s really only meant to introduce some randomness to the game and in essence make the game “harder to win… or lose”.

The weather affects everyone which is why it is done at the beginning before Germany begins their turn in G40 games for us.
It doesn’t totally cripple you as far as movement. Planes are grounded if they are in the zone. If you have planes in an unaffected zone, they can still attack or fly around the weather given they have sufficient movement range. It still allows for limited land movement. You just can’t count on a horse to drag your artillery now.

We did look at sinking ships but felt that they would be safe but couldn’t move was a bit more fair. Kind of “riding the storm out”.

We have playtested it, and in only 3 instances has it totally hosed a player. We kind of feel that’s just part of the deal when it comes to mother nature (Stalingrad, Moscow, etc)
Given that all players know where the storms could occur, you have to be a bit saavy about where you put your stuff.

We like it and just wanted to share. Try it out one time and you’ll see it isn’t as devastating as it would seem.

[General 6 Stars]

This is what I’m going to use for my G40 game.

Turn 1     Fall/Winter           39-40
Turn 2     Spring/Summer   40
Turn 3     Fall                       40           Rasputitsa
Turn 4     Winter                  40          Winter
Turn 5     Spring                  41           Monsoon
Turn 6     Summer               41          
Turn 7     Fall                       41           Rasputitsa
Turn 8     Winter                 41-42      Winter
Turn 9     Spring                  42           Monsoon
Turn 10   Summer              42            
Turn 11   Fall                       42           Rasputitsa
Turn 12   Winter                 42-43      Winter
Turn 13   Spring                  43           Monsoon
Turn 14   Summer              43            
Turn 15   Fall                       43           Rasputitsa
Turn 16   Winter                 43-44      Winter

Winter - Russia can declare 1 winter per game that matches chart date. All inf defend at
             3 in all Russian territories for 1st round of combat only.

Rasputitsa - When date comes up on chart all motorized units for all countries move only
                    1 space in non combat.

Monsoon -  When date comes up on chart all ground troops can’t move in non combat in
                  Yunnan, Burma, and Indochina.

I am also using Event cards. Each country gets like 8 good cards and 8 bad cards.
Those cards will have weather effects in the bad cards.
1 card will have no planes can fly do to fog or storms and 1 card for ships lose -1 movement.

Thats just 2 weather cards mixed in with 16 total cards. So you may never see a weather card.

Now all these events may be tweaked if to strong.
Still haven’t decided whether to use a D12 and on a roll of 4 or less the Rasputitsa and Monsoon goes in effect only.

[General 6 Stars]

I did move the Monsoon up from summer to spring. Japan seems to be in Burma at that time in our games.