Best Alpha Modifications

I like the new AA rules a lot.

Oups… I should have read this one first (than Worst modification).

Thing is, so many differences between alpha2 and alpha3, kinna hard to answer "What element has had the best modifications since OOB? ", don’t you think?

Anyhow, I will say the setup (but Scrambling and National Objective are good improvements too).

@Young:

Scrambling is an obvious improvement, but my dark horse vote goes to (call me crazy all you want) SBRs.

Which one do you prefer most, Alpha 2’s or Alpha 3’s?

There’s a lot of good choices there and there are things I like about many of them, but I would say the best change from OOB rules is scrambling.  In OOB, you could only scramble from airbases on islands, which meant no scrambling from airbases in places like Eastern United States, Western Germany or even United Kingdom.  Like those places wouldn’t scramble for defense?  That’s just silly.
Also, OOB let you scramble an unlimited amount of fighters and tacs from the airbases.  That meant ususally that SZ 6 was nearly impossible to attack because Japan could field 15-20 planes if not more.  It’s better to have a limit, although I admit that sometimes I wish it were more than 3 planes.

I like The Mongolian Rule

Just wish they also kept the 12 IPC rule to go with it.

I like the new setup, the NOs and the scramble.

The set up changes are my vote, espically on the pacific side of the board.  Even though Japan still has a ton of aircraft it is fewer than what they had in OOB.

Scrambling is also a big improvement and that would probably be my number 2 vote.

AA Guns by far!  For once they are a REAL unit!  (Before they were just something you used in opening fire and had no basis in reality or realism in my opinion.)

scrambling! Imagine being able to take out every single UK ship on turn 1….

@Young:

I suppose the rule disallowing America from building a Major in Finland, was very significant for balance as well.

You mean Norway. But yes, it’s a big difference

I think scrambling and the AA rule changes are my favorite. The rule keeping airforces from scrambling off anything that wasnt an island contained in a single sea zone was a hold over from the old pacific game, the first one to ever use naval or air bases, when all of these bases were only on islands to beging with. It needed to change and has added so much more to game play.

Having AA be its own unit really needed to happen. With all the new facilities and bases comming with their own self-contained AA, there really wasnt much point to independent AA as its primary function in previous games had been to protect ICs. Its neat, keeps the simplified old rule for AA for facilities and bases defense, and adds a component of AA to standing armies.