Dijitz House Rules Part 4 - Nation Objectives

Here are some of the house rules I have come across to help china in AA50, all of these work for 1941 and 1942 setups unless mentioned otherwise. The rule that no more units can be placed in territories with more than three chinese units is still active. Most of these rules can be used together, though you might want to keep it simple and just use one or two. And you dont wont to make china TOO powerful! I can’t take credit for most of these either!

1-China’s economy: China is able to collect and spend IPCs like any other country, similar to g40, although is only allowed to buy infantry and at 2IPCs a piece. This allows China to save money plus gives a bit more of an incentive to the allies to take manchuria/kiangsu.

2-Burma road: If the Allies control India, Burma and Yunnan China gets one extra infantry per turn. Optionally you could allow the USA to buy one artillery for China instead, if the allies have these territories. Another option is that China could buy their own artillery at (3 or 4?) IPCs instead, if playing with China having an economy (like above).

3-Changed turn order (my fav): China gets to go before any other nation, at the start of a round. Since the USA is last and China is first, they can still go at the same time (except for the first round). This allows China to prepare for the japanese invaders a bit better.

4-Round up rather than down: When China has an uneven amount of territories, round up instead of down. Can’t be used with the ‘China’s economy’ rule.

5-Extra starting infantry: 1941 SETUP ONLY: China starts off with two extra infantry in Yunnan in Ninkang. I believe this was suggest by Larry Harris himself so that china can’t be completely destroyed in round 1 by japan. If you wish, in the 1942 setup you could start with one or two more infantry in yunnan to protect the flying tigers.

6-USA replaces flying tigers: If the flying tigers has been taken out by the axis, the USA is allowed to replace it for 12IPCs (10+2shipping).

7-Less restrictive movement: China is allowed to move into Burma. Maybe French Indo China too, though this might be questionable. Another option is that the flying tigers can also move out of China temporarily, though still needs to land in Chinese territory.

Personally I have only been able to test 3 and 4, which seems to work okay. If you have any suggestions, additions or constructive criticisms feel free to comment  :-)

Moderator’s edit: Added tag [Anniversary] to title.

@Erocco:

Am I blind or there is no victory deck to download? I understand everything is on YG’s website but I can’t find the VO deck filke.

It’s coming this week, check in around Thursday.

It was something like this, that I had in mind.  :-D

Based on your feedback, I’ve made a couple of tweaks to the variant. The most recent version is attached for play testing.

Changes from the original version are indicated by underscoring:

Revised Russian National Objectives

1. Spread of Communism: Bonus for Russian control of originally Axis/Pro-Axis territories is confined to mainland Europe (excluding Africa, Iraq, mid-east Islands, etc.).

2. Lend Lease: Russia receives +5 PUs, when at war with Germany/Italy, if at least one of three historical Lend-Lease lanes is “open” (i.e., the lane territory is friendly-controlled and there are no enemy warships in the corresponding sz). The Lend-Lease lanes are as follows:

a. Archangel, sz 125
b. Persia, sz 80
c. Siberia, sz 5

As in the original version of the NO, the presence of non-Russian allied units in originally Russian territory cancels out the objective.

(Hat tip to calvinhobbesliker and ItIsILeClercs for this change. I enjoyed reading up on the subject)

Other Allied National Objectives

1. Western Europe Beach Head: Allied control of at least two of the following gives USA +5 PUs if at war: Normandy, Holland, Western Germany, Denmark.

(Hat tip to The Hessian for this change)

2. Southern Europe Beach Head: Allied control of at least two of the following gives UK + 5 PUs: Southern France, Sicily, Sardinia, Greece.

3. Vital Forward Bases: Allied control of all of the following gives USA +5 PUs if at war: Wake Island, Midway, Caroline Islands, Marianas, Marshall Islands.

(Hat tip to Gencre for this change)

Air Raids

Fighters attack and defend at 2 during air raids. Strategic and tac bombers attack at 1.

Play-Testing

Over the last week, I had the chance to play test the variant a half-dozen times times, both as Allies and Axis. Some observations:

1. Axis players generally were more proactive in defending Western Europe against small-sale allied incursions.

2. In two games, Italy used its surving transport (after Taranto) to move defensive units to sicily and sardinia.

3. In all but one of the games, the changes to the Lend Lease objective effectively extended Russia’s +5 PU bonus until entry of allied units into Russia (usually by round 6 or 7). Mostly, no serious effort was made to contest the objective. However, in one game I was able to defeat it by getting a sub to sz 80 by round 4.

4. The 2 attack/defense value of fighters during air raids significantly reduced the frequency of unescorted bombing raids. Dark skies was not attempted in any of the games I played (whether due to the changes, or a coincidence, I don’t know).

5. The “Vital Forward Bases” objective encouraged “island-hopping,” as well as early naval engagement in the central-pacific, which was fun.

Thanks again for ur feedback guys. Am curious to hear your thoughts on the changes. Shoot me a message if you’d like to arrange a play test.

RegularkidG40BalanceVariantv5.tsvg

@mattsk:

About your HR, Russia is merely strong enough to protect Moscow, not talking about some far east adventures.

I guess one way to handle this would be for the HR to say that Russia can declare war on Japan after two conditions have been met:

Germany has been defeated Russia has had time to transfer many of its forces from Europe to the Far East

This is basically what happened in WWII.  Stalin had an agreement with the Americans and British that he would declare war on Japan three months after Germany’s defeat, to allow him time to shift his forces eastward.  Which he did.

I was referring to sun tzu’s comments and land battles, sorry for any confusion

you have to build bombers to carry paratroopers and you only carry one of them and that can only be dropped 2 spaces away from friendly forces. The bomber commitment alone precludes the issue of “flying shock armies from buck rogers”.  Unfortunately some feel that you should be able to build and use them w/o bombers and i know 100% that this is a broken game, however, the OOB is somewhat balanced.

but if you feel its not balanced you can impose a “training cost” of 1 or more IPC every time you drop airborne, paid to model training of these elite specialists. Also, limit the build of one airborne per turn ( example: if you build 3 bombers in a turn you only can use 1 additional airborne drop the turn following placement and 1 each following turn for the next 3 turns)

This would preclude the really stupid and impossible idea of Germany building lots of bombers and thinking they will have an immediate Sealion because they didn’t buy anything for 5 turns and all of a sudden spurged on bombers as some kind of trick.

Yeah, on that note, I may have voted for Game Balance, because what’s the point of playing if the scales are already tilted one way? But that’s mostly in reference to playing Traditional. Our standing house rule is basically, “Never play the way WWII actually went down. Switch up allies whenever a nation gets eliminated.” If you do it that way, versatility usually comes about of its own accord. :wink: