9 player dilemma

[ItIsILeClerc]

I’d try to divide experience and strategic strength as evenly as possible between the 2 sides.
Who plays what largely depends on the level of fun you want to give to a certain player and how ‘serious’ your game is going to be  :lol:.

I’d say playing France means the least fun, followed by China (if Japan is played by a strong/experienced player). Most fun/action for the smaller countries comes from ANZAC, India (if you want to split it off) and Italy.

Good luck deciding and have fun playing!

[gamerman01]

@emptysuit:

haha, playing, just, France seems like a punishment.

Better than playing the neutrals!  :-D

[gamerman01]

There you go -

Keep in mind, they would get a fair amount of dice rolling action early on.  Neutrals includes the pro-Axis and pro-Allied ones  :wink:

[BluGerman]

Thank you guys so much, you have saved the day  (i think i will make someone play france if they spill something on my board :p)

[Witt]

Yes, very appropriate; I like it. Then get him to stand outside in the cold until its time to do his go.
The French weren’t consulted on military policy anyway, so seems doubly fitting.
Whatever happens, I hope your evening works out and all have fun.

[General Veers]

@rjpeters70:

I don’t know, playing “Neutrals” (excluding Mongolia) might be fun as a separate power, if there was a chance someone would invade a state.� Make each Neutral part of the “larger” neutral faction, and you can build on any “neutral” territory.� Might be cool.

Wouldn’t be any more artificial than say Afghanistan suddenly picking a side because one of the power blocks suddenly invaded say Argentina or Sweden.

Letting neutrals build up armies would add interesting wrinkles to Neutral Crush strategies. Imagine Sweden, Spain & Turkey adding an infantry every two turns or even an AA gun. Also wouldn’t be crazy to let the 0 IPC territories an add infantry every four turns or so.

On a separate note I wish there were decals we could use to manipulate the existing map, since Spain and Turkey should each be split into two territories.

[General Veers]

Yes, Turkey provides a shortcut into the Middle East and Spain makes an excellent airbase for the Axis.

The Allies can do this too since Spain is a good landing spot for a European invasion but the UK needs to have firm control of the Middle East to press into Turkey and the Balkans.

[gamerman01]

A “real” “neutral crush” involves either Alliance positioning themselves to attack and overwhelm at least 2 of Spain, Turkey, Sweden, Afghanistan, within a single round, in my mind (and ideally some of the smaller ones too).

Anything less is “attacking the neutrals” but not a “neutral crush”  :-)

The term Crush is reserved for, well, Crushing!  :mrgreen:

[General Veers]

Yeah, I should’ve clarified, since the strategy hinges on taking two of Sweden, Spain & Turkey in the same turn. The Axis player will just have to accept the US (or even ANZAC) scooping up South America and UK getting help from the Portuguese colonies in Africa.

Germany and Italy can cash in from the Middle East NOs and get a back door to the Caucasus and Egypt.

R1 seems a little early to try it, I think R3 would be the safest (especially attacking from Greece).

[CWO Marc]

@BluGerman:

So my question is, is it better for 9th player to play france?…. or should i make him something like pacific U.K.?

Interesting discussion because the number of actual or potential player nations varies depending on assorted factors.  There are nine powers in Global with their own distinctive infantry sculpts (US, USSR, UK, ANZAC, Germany, Japan, Italy, France and China), but the last two are odditities: France because it gets largely knocked out in the first round and China because it essentially has no equipment pieces and because it operates under restrictive rules…so that brings the number of full-scale players down to seven.  The number then goes up to eight if you split the UK into separate European and Pacific components (as reflected by the income dual-tracking system used in Global).  An added twist, which has been mentioned by several people, is the potential to have all the neutrals controlled by a designated player, since the neutrals have a distinct status in the game.  (The concept could even be taken a couple of steps further by distinguishing the neutrals with standing armies from the neutrals without standing armies, well as the pro-Allied neutrals from the pro-Axis neutrals and the strict neutrals…but that’s probably splitting things too finely, unless you’re operating under special house rules for neutrals).  With the addition of extra house rules (and pressing into service some of the existing sculpts available from HBG), a minor role could also potentially be assigned to two countries which have no sculpts but which do have their own distinctive map roundels: Canada and the Netherlands.

If you expect to play fairly soon with your nine-player group, under the official game rules, you’ll probably have to go for simplicity – maybe something like this:

1. US
2. USSR
3. UK (Europe)
4. UK (Pacific)
5. ANZAC
6. Germany
7. Japan
8. Italy
9. France, China, and Neutrals