Fake armies

@dirk2243:

General Patton led a fake division made up of Rubber/inflatable tanks prior to D-day in order to fool the Germans.

Ah yes, the notorious First United States Army Group, or FUSAG.

I have heard of people playing with two board games and one person as a mediator in the middle to create some sort of ‘fog of war’. If you had a house rule for recon with strategic bombers then this could be useful to implement. Time consuming, but possible.

@TheDefinitiveS:

I have heard of people playing with two board games and one person as a mediator in the middle to create some sort of ‘fog of war’. If you had a house rule for recon with strategic bombers then this could be useful to implement. Time consuming, but possible.

I’ve done that.  It’s super hard to keep going as the moderator gets bored, gets drunk and ends up kicking over both tables and runs screaming from the house.  However….

Dirk,

perhaps just give each Axis nation 4 “fake” units (armor pieces probably) and on the bottom of the little tank, with a magic marker, put a big F.  Each allied nation could have 3 “fake” units.  Or maybe just give America 3, England 3, Russia 3, Germany 4, Italy 4 and Japan 1? (Both sides have 9 then.)

They don’t cost anything and are placed at any point but are removed once destroyed.  If the territory they are in is attacked, then each “fake” unit is automatically destroyed per AAG40 transport rules (they die last and cannot defend themselves.)

The enemy would know you are putting out a fake army somewhere, but they won’t really know WHICH is the fake until they flip over the tank and see the big F on the bottom.  If you go with normal rules, then you can just say that tank division failed Tank Commander school.  Eh?

For transport/movement purposes, treat them like any other armored unit.

I think that’s a really interesting idea. Jen’s solution I think would be a good alternative, giving a set number of units free to each country because Garg is right why spend IPC’s on fake units when you can buy real ones.

I’ve wondered frequently about how to create that ‘fog of war’ atmosphere but short of having to seperate boards I haven’t really come up with anything. It would allow for scout planes and recon units, spies and the like. But it would make the game that much more complicated. In Panzer Blitz you can create it by keeping the tiles picture down, but turning a tank upside down is still an upside down tank ;).

C

Didn’t the chinese and british have airfields full of fake wooden fighters?    Guess it would be a bit hard to do in our games seeing as china only gets one fighter……

I’ve often thought the United States should be able to replace that fighter squadron if they could just manage to get a plane to China and leave it for a full game round (Germany through France all the way to China’s next turn) before converting it.  You know, give everyone a shot at killing it?

I’ve done the seperate boards thing.  It was with vanilla, but it worked out nicely.  We tried it once with AA50 but after buying three sets (1 for the moderator, 1 for the axis and 1 for the allies) we were not too happy with the results.  Then again, after everyone was drunk and high on pepperoni, mistakes started to happen and it spiralled out of control.

@Cmdr:

I’ve done the seperate boards thing.  It was with vanilla, but it worked out nicely.  We tried it once with AA50 but after buying three sets (1 for the moderator, 1 for the axis and 1 for the allies) we were not too happy with the results.  Then again, after everyone was drunk and high on pepperoni, mistakes started to happen and it spiralled out of control.

I would imagine things like that would be difficult to manage. In one respect I think it’s fair your enemy see some of things you have avaiable. What units are on your airbases, what’s in your harbours that sort of thing. I don’t think enemy should be able to see where my Navy and full armies are that aren’t acvtively engaged somewhere. I don’t think he should get to see where any of my subs are until they’ve attacked something. And after that he should only know their last known location.
Would be very hard to administer, but it would add an interesting mechanic as well.

If a software was developed it may be able to handle something like this. You may also see less stacking (especially in the Pacific) as you could have units going off not needed to be protected as they havent been seen yet. Armies may be able to be managed more efficiently having this cloak of invisibility. You could have radars on islands so that they show where sea units have finished their movement  in the surrounding seazones. If they do not have this then they are vulnerable until attacked.

@Carnage:

@Cmdr:

I’ve done the seperate boards thing.  It was with vanilla, but it worked out nicely.  We tried it once with AA50 but after buying three sets (1 for the moderator, 1 for the axis and 1 for the allies) we were not too happy with the results.  Then again, after everyone was drunk and high on pepperoni, mistakes started to happen and it spiralled out of control.

I would imagine things like that would be difficult to manage. In one respect I think it’s fair your enemy see some of things you have avaiable. What units are on your airbases, what’s in your harbours that sort of thing. I don’t think enemy should be able to see where my Navy and full armies are that aren’t acvtively engaged somewhere. I don’t think he should get to see where any of my subs are until they’ve attacked something. And after that he should only know their last known location.
Would be very hard to administer, but it would add an interesting mechanic as well.

We said that Fighters could “scout” two territories out, so if you had a fighter on the board, you could see all enemies within two territories.  Armies could see all enemies adjacent to them.