Neutral Blocks Discussion - Delta+1

Thanks! Aside from being slanted toward the Axis like in Anniversary 1942 it is a great change of pace.

Played our first game of 1914 tonight and had a blast. Afterwards, we brainstormed some additional house rules (because gamers, I suppose), and one stuck out. Before I say this, let me note this is a very casual crowd.

Rule: A neutral minor power when attacked by one faction or the other sides with the one that did not attack it. If it is able to repel the invasion, it becomes a fully functioning member of the alliance it joined. It has IPCs, builds units, deploys them, and attacks.

Cause: Almost no reason not to attack some of these nations. Defeat means nothing- the scale of units involved means a small handful of units lost is not a true blow. The potential IPC gain outweighs the risk in all but a few instances. By making neutral powers a bigger threat, hopefully players will only attack those they deem important to a war winning strategy and not just as random acts of violence for IPC gain. This can lead to silliness with Switzerland and the Nordic countries along with Spain among others.

Mechanics: New factions get 6/8 IPCs plus whatever IPC total is on their territories. From this point we had some disagreement:
1- They are a fully active faction with no restrictions.
2- They can only attack the faction that attacked them and their territories.
3- They can only counter attack into the territories that the attack against them was launched

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I posted this in the 1914 forum, then I saw the House Rules forum.  I believe that is the forum suited for the idea. I would message the mods to move this thread but their profiles indicate they’ve been gone for a while. I apologize for my faux paus.

Well the idea was to take all the “at war” related NOs and just streamline them into a single simple to remember rule with a straight forward easy to remember bonus. G40 is poorly balanced to begin with. I wouldn’t suggest this as the sole corrective for game balance, since clearly, if you want a game balanced by side, you’re going to have to tweak the board in more ways than this. I just find it annoying how for example, Russia has no incentive not to declare on Japan immediately, or how there is no mechanism to support neutrality in so many instances with various powers. Even if the decision to declare is still fairly obvious,  at least this gives you something to consider,  and something that holds for both sides along a neutrality pact, instead of so many 1 sided DoW bonuses. There are a bunch of silly NOs that seem to exist for no other reason than to give certain nations +5 here and there. I’d just as soon ditch all of them in favor of a single rule that handles neutrality across the board.

I think it might be novel if this included a nod to the pro - side neutrals too. But again, I don’t see this as necessarily a balance driver, more something I prefer for rules consistency with all powers.

When you get down to it, I just don’t think the DoW bonuses +5, belong in the National Objectives list. They cannot be contested the way other NOs can, and the way they are worded OOB, these objectives don’t seem to drive the gameplay in a very meaningful way. I would seperate them off from the other NOs and provide a universal rule that can be handled in a line or two, applying to everyone equally. Then replace the existing Neutrality/DoW NOs currently in G40 OOB, with some NOs that are more interesting as gameplay drivers.

My usual approach for Axis and Allies, going back to AA50 and now with G40, is to replace specific National Objectives, with universal or general Objectives that accomplish similar gameplay effects whenever possible, since I believe the latter are better for the game flow and easier to remember. Basically if you can replace half a dozen Nation Objectives, with a single General Objective (that applies the same way for all nations) that is ideal.

Thus far I have used this neutrality bonus idea, in conjunction with a VC bonus idea, and a few others to more less strip G40 of “national” objectives altogether. Then if you wanted to bring NOs back into play, to do something more streamlined,  with just 1 or 2 high value NO per nation, on areas of the board where the gameplay/strategic interest would benefit from their inclusion.

Along these lines, for consistency and to provide additional income for Germany and Italy, it might make sense to include China in the neutrality rules. I gripe on China constantly, but in this case you’d have a potential +10 for both sides if G/I opt not to declare on it. Axis would have to decide if they want the extra in Europe, but only at the risk of a stronger China vs Japan. Which might have an interesting effect on balance. I’ll edit to the lead post to reflect this option.

You’re correct CWO marc, that was more or less exactly what I was suggesting.  :-D But its just a suggestion.

I find that a collaborative approach is generally stronger, than trying to strike off and develop a bunch of independent competing systems that are trying to achieve similar goals. House rules likewise are more fun when you get a couple houses trying the same thing to see how it plays out.  Forums communication is slow sometimes, since we have lives outside of A&A, but I’d trust YG to pull in the reigns, or excise the extraneous, if I’ve gone too far left field.

The main reason I think it’s cool to try and attach values to the standard deck, is that it’s very easy to tweak and test the advantages this way. So from a development standpoint, it is possible to test things right away before we plug in values and set the deck. Rather than drafting rules first and sending it out to the printers in China, only to find a week or two later, that it would be awesome to add something or tweak some aspect of it.

@Young:

Sorry for my absence here, I’m working on many different things at once.

My plan is to create a deck with 54 cards…

2 of each nation specific strategic advantage cards = 32 3 of each community specific strategic advantage cards = 15 1 of each nation specific progressive advantage cards = 7

If all this can be easily translated into a generic playing card deck, than all is good… However, my custom cards look much better than a regular deck.

Thanks for all the comments and interest in this idea, I will address all your post’s in detail soon.

Cheers.

Oh cool there’s the man! So with a 54 card deck planned that matches exactly a full deck including jokers! I expect also that the printers print with those numbers in mind for their boxing. This is a strong start because it means you’d have the same number of total fortunes cards as you have in a normal deck.

So picture this, to achieve a specific 1:1 card to card ratio, all you’d have to do is flag the joker… (You mark it with a felt pen on the face side.) Now you have 54 distinct cards, and you could match every card in your fortunes deck to a card in the flagged standard deck (both jokers in play.)

Now consider that all you would need at that point, to make the fortunes deck a standard deck (a deck that could function just like a real deck as well as a fortunes deck), is to include one small graphic in just one corner of the card!

It could be very small, and doesn’t need to be mirrored (not on two sides,  head and foot, just at one or the other.) Tiny as you like.

Envision a small K inside a Heart, or an A inside a spade, a 10 inside a diamond,  or a 2 inside a club. All small and tucked off to the lower right hand corner of the card.

These symbols would look badass anyway, like tiny war code designations!  :-D The sort of thing one might paint on the side of a bomber, or draft up in a patch. It could look cool and unassuming, but provide addition functionality, while retaining the overall aesthetic cohesiveness of a WW2 era Fortunes Deck. It could even provide a shorthand reference for the individual cards.

Manhattan Project = Suicide King, K inside the Diamond
Or things of that sort. For each card

You know like code hehe

It wouldn’t dominate the card aesthetically, it only needs to be large enough that it can be read by the player holding the card. This doesn’t seem like too tall an order, considering that this one minor addition of suit/number info, would expand the potential use of the deck considerably.

Think of all the things you could do with a standard deck of cards, one that had cool art and cool R&D bonus rules. It just seems fairly easy, so I thought I would make the case. Not only could you use it for R&D, but you could do R&D and anything else you can create with a full deck of playing cards. It just seems like an easy win on all counts.

And it would make testing the fortunes pretty easy.

There are only two conditions you need to meet for this to hold up in translation.

First: Uniform backs
If the backs of the cards in the fortune deck are not uniform,  then the fortunes deck could not function as a normal deck (even if they all have suits/numbers). However, a normal deck could still have the fortunes values translated onto it in that case. Going one direction fortunes translates to standard (but not the other way round unless the backs are uniform.)

Second: Each card is distinct.
No two cards in the fortunes deck are exactly alike. (Unless you want just 2, in which case you could use unflagged jokers.) This would make translation pretty simple. We could start playing with it tonight if wanted :)
Again you could translate one direction, but not the other unless all cards are distinct.

Anyhow, these are just suggestions, but I think it could be cool. I like the first edition Delta deck a lot. I’d play black jack with it or crazy 8s or poker, if I could!

These rules use the OOB maps for AA50 and 42. They are current files.

@oztea:

Moving through a seazone doesnt entail moving anywhere near said islands.
Combat in a sea zone is ‘assumed’ to take place at least near the islands involved because the defending fleet is likeley within a few miles of land.

A neat idea, but perhaps too powerful to assume that planes on midway are scouring the entire seazone (100s of sq. miles) in force, just waiting for Jap ships.

Scrambleing is just that……the unit gets news the enemy is in the area, and takes off to assist friendly forces.

It is an expansion of this idea. Airbase receives intel that an enemy task force is moving through the area, either by patrol planes, code-breaking or coastal watchers.

I like the China mod Idea, would like to give it a try.
However, I think these might be some possible options for the House rule.

1.  China can only purchase Infantry and artillery,  perhaps add a new unit, Cavalry!  at 2,1,2,4?
2.  U.S. is and Russia can fly aircraft to chinese capital, on subsequent turn they become chinese.
3.  Japan should start with a bomber and an extra sub or destroyer in 41 and an extra carrier and f2 fighters in 42 to balance this out.

On East and West, by Imp Games, each neutral country has a prearranged force setup as well. China, the Arab League, and the OAS all have different territories with a different amount of units. Just thought you’d like to know.