Hi Ichabod! Nice to see you here, and glad that HR list brought you to this one. I’m really hoping that as more people contribute to the list, it might introduce others to some cool ideas that have been floated in the past.
This particular HR was an outgrowth of my experience playing AA50. On that board I found that simply by altering the turn order such that China opened the sequence, really helped to make the game feel more balanced and somewhat more engaging for the person tasked with controlling China, but with less distortions to the opening round than a typical bid. I think the implementation in AA50 was somewhat more elegant, because it didn’t actually alter the sequence of Nations (since the US/China still ended up ‘piggy backing’ after the first round) but just changed how that sequence began.
In G40, the turn sequence itself is altered, but I’ve found that this doesn’t present a huge challenge once you get used to it. As a simple mnemonic device, I like to use the cardboard flag roundels, and place them in a row describing the new turn order somewhere off to the side of the map. This helps everyone to see the turn order at a glance, and makes it less likely that someone accidentally gets skipped over out of sheer habit haha.
Honestly, this China first house rule is my go to for G40. I like it because it allows one to maintain the implicit idea that the set up cards and the OOB starting units are meant to represent an actual historical distribution of forces for the start date. It assumes that the designers did their due diligence and historical homework, when they provided us with these set up cards in the first place. One of the things I find frustrating about bids is that, while potentially interesting for the gameplay, they kind of break with that idea, by introducing additional forces where they supposedly aren’t meant to exist at the time. Similarly, providing nations with additional starting cash (rather than extra starting units) might be somewhat more abstract/believable, but even there, changes from the OOB cards suggest a disconnect between the game’s set up and the historical reality it’s meant to reflect. Of course I’m not so naive as to think that the set up is perfect for historical purposes, but you kind of need some shared suspension of disbelief, that the OOB units/cash are supposed to reflect something in the real history. 1 tank = such such for this period, 1 sub = such and such etc.
By contrast, turn order seems rather more flexible to me, because there is already a built in understanding that the game is making some necessary abstractions here, just for the purposes of creating a turn based game. In reality we know that the belligerents were all making their moves simultaneously, but accept the division into turns for gameplay purposes. Of course at some point you can throw up your hands and say it’s all an abstraction and nothing is accurate, but that is a bit extreme. Its nice to have something to hold onto and say “ok this is our fixed point of departure” and for me it makes sense to keep the OOB starting units for that, and instead adjust the turn order as a balance corrective. When it works, it provides a similar benefit in terms of extra units (that might otherwise be dead in round 1) or extra cash (that might otherwise go uncollected in round 1) but it does this more indirectly… as a result of normal gameplay using the normal mechanics.
Now granted, it’s not going to fix every possible issue one might have with the OOB game. Axis bombers will still be nuking Allied fleets, people will still ignore zero ipc islands, and the Victory Conditions for the Allies are still completely unachievable in a normal game session. But at least it gets a you a bit closer to a game which is balance by sides, without requiring the direct addition of more units to the starting forces. I think it preserves the same basic character of the OOB game, while providing a somewhat more grounded representation of the war in China.
And despite what I suggested before, you could always just throw a bid on top of this change if desired. At least it would be a much smaller bid in that case haha.
:-D
If you can find a willing opponent, let us know how it goes. I’ve found that the people in my playgroup have a lot more fun on the Pacific side of the map using this HR, with even the Japanese player appreciating the added challenge it can provide to their usual mech drive.
