How long is a turn in real life?

[Rammstein]

Hi all,

I just wanted to share my thoughts on how long a turn, or full round of play, roughly translates to real life time. And when I say “round”, I mean Germany through to France.

The way I see it, each round represents about 6 months of time. Round 1 is Spring/Summer 1940, Round 2 is Fall/Winter 1940, Round 3 is Spring/Summer 1941 etc…

To that end, you could get a historical feel for the game on any given round by using this theory. For example, Round 5  is the first half of 1942, and the game seems to roughly translate that to actual history in some ways, relative to strength of powers I mean.

Here’s a vague outline, and IMO, not unreasonable to how you could play it in game:
R1 - Spring/Summer 1940 - Germany blitzes France
R2 - Fall/Winter 1940 - Battle of Britain/Atlantic
R3 - Spring/Summer 1941 - Operation Barbarossa
R4 - Fall/Winter 1941 - Pearl Harbour (yes, I’m Canadian)
R5 - Spring/Summer 1942 - US enters war, Operation Torch

…and so on. I know that obviously the game won’t play out even close to EXACTLY how the war really went, but I suppose if you wanted to know which turn in Axis & Allies a certain historical event occurred, you could use this as a guide.

What are your thoughts on this? To me it adds an extra bit of flavour to the game to think “Oh, wow, it’s 1944 (Round 9), things are getting really heavy now…D-Day is indeed feasible”.

Cheers!

[otahere34]

My gamming group figured this out also. We just considered that France fell in mid 1940 and then the battle of Britain lasted from late '40 to '41. so it was roughly the same logic but I’m just confirming your findings with my own  :-D

[Guest]

I think each round is supposed to be 3 months.

[knp7765]

Actually, I think 6 months per round would be a closer comparison.  If we are starting in Spring 1940, an 11 round game would bring us to the end of the summer 1945.

Allthough, I would point out that usually none of my games goes as depicted in history.  Usually, if the Axis win, it’s a fairly short game of 7-8 rounds which would put us in mid to late 1943.  That in itself is kind of odd since by 1943, or at least the second half of 1943, the Allies started getting the upper hand in most fronts.
If the Allies win in our games, that usually takes longer, about 12-13 rounds.  That would actually put us about mid 1946.

Still, I think 6 months would be closer than 3 months, unless you just plan for really long games.

[Col. Ty Webb]

I asked this question before and Kreig came back with a great answer from Larry.

I don’t have the quote, but it was pretty much saying that time in this game (not in global 40 exclusively) is like a rubber band where its stretched in some points and shorter in others.

Where some battles might be able to fit some sort of time frame, movement of units don’t fit. Using six months as a base means that it takes ships over a year to get from the US to the action in the Pacific. Planes could have flown around the world a couple times, let alone made the flight from the US to Russia, in six months.

It’s nice to be able to do because most of us that play the game also know a lot about the the battles, but it’s more feasible to say I think D-day is possible because you notice an anglo-american armada forming than it is to say because it’s round 9.

If I had to make my own personal guess I would probably say four months, going on a mix of how long the games lasts and what the other posters have said about it supposed to being three months.

At 12-13 turns (at turns of 3 or 4 months each) that makes it 1944 when the game ends, and historically you can Hitler really had no shot of fending off Russia once the west landed in Normandy. He probably didn’t anyway, but the war was over once Overlord was succesful. If you wanted to go the extra four or so rounds to make it summer of 1945 the axis would be in complete shambles by then.

[CWO Marc]

@Col.:

I don’t have the quote, but it was pretty much saying that time in this game (not in global 40 exclusively) is like a rubber band where its stretched in some points and shorter in others.

That’s not only a good description of the game’s time frame, it’s also a good description of the game map, whose scale varies from place to place.

[crusaderiv]

3 month…I agree with Vance.

[Gargantua]

it’s also a good description of the game map, whose scale varies from place to place.

LOL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmBo8q0akGo

[Guest]

A+

[crusaderiv]

Cool. and I watch the video: best war room of the world….realy cool.
We play our games in my living room, we have a lot of place for flags and gameboard
but I have to remove everything at the end of the game because my wife doesn’t appreciated
the nazi and IJN flag. :-o

[oztea]

I like to think its 4 months to a turn. Makes it easy to figure 3 turns to a year.
3 months seems too short, 6 months seems way too long.
Also 4 months works well with the seasons….considering, 4 months out of the year the weather is dismal (December, January, Feburary, March)
If ever I made weather condion rules, I would set the 4 months to a turn as my bar. And have one winter conditons period, and two normal conditons seasons.

[knp7765]

Hey oztea,
I think that sounds like a VERY good idea, 4 months per turn.  You could make it every 3rd turn having the bad weather conditions.

I’m thinking it would be much simpler for gameplay if you made that a general rule, in other words the entire board is affected the same.  Every 3rd round is considered bad weather conditions which slows down movement, perhaps attacks would be -1.  Maybe even limited or NO air operations during that round.  That could throw a kink into some strategies.

The reason I brought up making this a general rule is realistically, some areas of the world wouldn’t be affected by “winter” conditions.  Units in North Africa or SE Asia wouldn’t be affected the same as units in Northern Russia.  Also, ships in the Med wouldn’t be affected  the same as ships in the North Sea or Baltic.  Also, in places like Australia, South Africa, etc., the winter months would actually be summer for them.  This could make the game extremely complicated and hard to remember which area is being affected how.  So, I would suggest this rule be a general, entire board rule that affects any units, anywhere on the board on the same turns.  It may not be meteoroligically accurate, but much better for game play I think.

[Cpl.Hicks]

It keeps me bothering and busy, questioning the real versus game time.

I like the idea, “like a rubber band where its stretched in some points and shorter in others”.

However, according to Larry Harris’s Designer’s Notes A&A Europe 1940 2nd edition, Larry writes;
“From a game design point of view, I’d have to bridge some spans of history. Spring 1940 through December 7, 1941, represented a year and a half. I wanted certain historic milestones to occur in the game and they had to occur in their proper order. I quickly decided that the game would have to start with the Battle of France. France had to fall, and fast. The problem was, France was no small, token nation, and its military was first class. In June 1940, the British and other remnants of the Allied armies had just evacuated Dunkirk, leaving behind tons of equipment. I decided to begin the game at that moment.”

Also according to the manual,
A&A Europe 1940 2nd edition, the Political situation, United States, page 37.
“However, if it’s not yet at war by the Collect Income phase of its third turn, the United States may declare war on any or all Axis powers at the beginning of that phase.”

Keeping in mind the above, I came to the following solution.
The first 3 Turns seems tot take about 7 months per turn. From turn 4 and following up turns, these turns can be about 4 months per turn. The so called ‘rubber band’ (effect) from Larry.

Combining and interpreting the different input, I come up with this scheme:

Turn 1 (7 months):
Month 1. Mar. 21, 1940 - Apr. 20, 1940
Month 2. Apr. 21, 1940 - May. 20, 1940 (May 10th, Invasion France.)
Month 3. May. 21, 1940 - Jun. 20, 1940 (May 26th, Dunkirk.)
Month 4. Jun. 21, 1940 - Jul. 20, 1940
Month 5. Jul. 21, 1940 - Aug. 20, 1940
Month 6. Aug. 21, 1940 – Sep. 20, 1940
Month 7. Sep. 21, 1940 - Oct… 20, 1940

Turn 2:
Month 8. Oct. 21, 1940 - Nov. 20, 1940
Month 9. Nov. 21, 1940 - Dec. 20, 1940
Month 10. Dec. 21, 1940 - Jan. 20, 1941
Month 11. Jan. 21, 1941 - Feb. 20, 1941
Month 12. Feb. 21, 1941 - Mar. 20, 1941
Month 13. Mar. 21, 1941 - Apr. 20, 1941
Month 14. Apr. 21, 1941 - May. 20, 1941

Turn 3:
Month 15. May. 21, 1941 - Jun. 20, 1941
Month 16. Jun. 21, 1941 - Jul. 20, 1941
Month 17. Jul. 21, 1941 - Aug. 20, 1941
Month 18. Aug. 21, 1941 - Sep. 20, 1941
Month 19. Sep. 21, 1941 - Oct. 20, 1941
Month 20. Oct. 21, 1941 - Nov. 20, 1941
Month 21. Nov. 21, 1941 - Dec. 20, 1941 (December 7th, Pearl Harbor.)

Turn 4 and further (4 months):
Month 22. Dec. 21, 1941 - Jan. 20, 1941
Month 23. Jan. 21, 1941 - Feb. 20, 1941
Month 24. Feb. 21, 1941 – Mar. 20, 1941
Month 25. Mar. 21, 1941 - Apr. 20, 1941

What are your thoughts?

[General 6 Stars]

Ya depends on game. I always felt US should get to declare war on T3 instead of turn 4 if for G40 OOB.

[CWO Marc]

@Cpl-Hicks said in How long is a turn in real life?:

It keeps me bothering and busy, questioning the real versus game time.

The first 3 Turns seems tot take about 7 months per turn. From turn 4 and following up turns, these turns can be about 4 months per turn. The so called ‘rubber band’ (effect) from Larry.

An analogy to this rubber band concept would be the method for converting a dog’s age into “people years”, the situation being (or so I’ve heard) that you can’t use a single conversion factor; instead, you not only have to make different computations for different dog breeds, you also apparently need to use different conversion factors at different growth stages.

A&A similarly has “springs and rubber bands geography”, with various parts of the world compressed and other parts of the world stretched to allocate more elbow room to the areas where there was the most action during WWII, and to reduce the large-area but low-action parts of the world (such as the south-east corner of the Pacific Ocean). A god example is China on the Pacific 1940 map, where compared to its real-world geography it’s highly compressed in the east-to-west direction compared to its north-to-south dimensions.

[General 6 Stars]

Ya. I’ve also seen it where one side is playing later than the other side.

[barnee]

usually takes me about an hour to play a round.

oops misread the question :)

[Cpl.Hicks]

@CWO-Marc

It’s another and interesting way to approach this issue indeed.

Something else I sometimes seem to forget, although I’d like to think about it otherwise. Axis & Allies is a great game. I enjoy playing it since the very first edition in the eighties. And although I really would like to see Axis & Allies as to be a WW2 simulation like board game and sometimes even feels like one. In my opinion the truth however is, it is not and never wasn’t meant to be one either.
In the time scheme I’ve shared I have only taken into account, the ww2 events in relation to the months and seasons in a year.
Things are getting a bit awkward when you try to involve the movement of units as well. A Liberty transport ship wasn’t a very fast ship. But even a slow vessel like a Liberty class ship under ‘normal’ conditions, didn’t need a couple of months to cross the Atlantic.

And this is where I would like to think about the rubber band approach. Where I can enlarge the feeling of a ww2 simulation game, I’d like to tighten the rubber band a bit and give it all a more simulation like feeling. On issues like ‘travel time versus distance’ maybe it’s possible to loosen up the rubber band a bit.

[CWO Marc]

@Cpl-Hicks
The simulation/realism issue you raise is an interesting one, and in my opinion there are two aspects to the problem. In a narrow sense, there’s the purely mechanical stuff: A&A is very abstracted, and it leaves out (or barely deals with) some crucial elements of WWII, notably logistics. The Battle of the Atlantic, for example, was essentially a multi-year supply battle whose first objective was to keep Britain alive and whose later objective was to build it up as a springboard for the cross-Channel invasion of western Europe. An even better example is the war in the Pacific: the whole point of the war was for Japan to obtain the natural resources it lacked at home (most crucially oil), which meant conquering the Dutch East Indies and nearby areas like Malaysia (where the resources were located) as well as the Philippines (to secure the shipping lanes between the DEI and Japan. Unfortunately for Japan, the Americans understood the importance of logistics better than the Japanese did: they focussed their submarine operations on those shipping lanes with the aim of gradually strangling Japan, and by 1945 they had succeeded in doing so. Japan, for its part, had too few transport ships, used inefficiently the ones it did have, and gave too little attention to convoy protection – all of which is astonishing, given the underlying purpose of the war. Realistically simulating all this in A&A would require a substantial overhaul of the game and would greatly change its nature.

More broadly, though, there’s the problem that simulating WWII as a whole (not just a specific part of it) creates an inherent problem. WWII was a long and complex struggle with all sorts of points at which factors such as strategic decisions could have changed radically all the subsequent events. Hence the following quandry: in order for a game to faithfully reproduce all or most of WWII’s major events, in the correct sequence, would have to be highly scripted, perhaps even to the point where its outcome is predetermined, which potentially isn’t much fun. Conversely, an unscripted game would almost inevitably deviate from history at some point or another…and the earlier the start date (say, 1940 as opposed to 1942), the bigger the deviations tend to be, which runs counter to the aim of having a realistic simulation in the first place. So in general, I tend to see A&A as a board game which is set in WWII rather than a board game which simulates it. An analogy I’ve heard is that there’s a similar difference between Monopoly, which is board game that has real estate transactions as its theme but which is highly abstracted, and the sophisticated financial simulation games or exercises which are sometimes played in business schools for instructional purposes.

[General 6 Stars]

Yes Marc you are right on. In my game you can represent the battle of thee Atlantic which can last up to 6 turns and on the Pacific side Japan can get the Dutch Island oil for the win. It can be done and it is happening on both sides in game. As you mentioned yes you would need to make setup changes. What’s also nice is you can add event cards to represent certain things that happened in war and or you just give certain things to each country on a turn as far as advanced weapons.
There is so much you can do. How much you want and major play testing

One issue is the convoy boxes in g40 are not out in the Atlantic away from shores.
I’ll post pick of my Atlantic setup

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/assets/uploads/files/1569285166963-img_7321.png

Each sub inside convoy box does the damage of the number and any sub touching outside of convoy box is doing 1 icp damage too.
Don’t mean to get off topic here.