Recap of global game played 12-3-11 with photos

Kamikaze are a defensive weapon, which are resolved at the beginning of the combat phase, so the attacking air units have already launched from their carriers are not in danger (unless they are “guest” air units). As such, they will participate in combat even if their carrier is hit, and will have the remainder of their movement to land as normal afterwards.

Yeah, I wish they put the couple of rules not in both books in the global section at the back.

Europe has the straits rule.
Pacific has Kamikaze and China rules.

If you’re aware of that, it isn’t too much of a problem.

Both options contain oportunities to comand several forces as the game progresses.

Cool avatar, I’m jealous.

@zanetheinsane:

@knp7765:

Now I had all those infantry, artillery and tanks stuck in Morocco with no way to get anywhere important.

That’s why I always land in Gibraltar. It’s rare that something horrible happens, but when it does… Spain is always an option. Get with the UK player who can hopefully take on Turkey. Not the prettiest course of action, but sometimes you have to make hard decisions, and getting an Allied foothold in Spain isn’t the worst you can do.

Hmmm…interesting choice. Early on in playing Global, we had 3 different games where the Axis attacked strict neutrals. In fact, we even adopted a house rule using Neutral Blocks so only certain strict neutrals would be affected – Europe, S America, Africa, Middle-East, Mongolia. So if say Sweeden was taken by Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Portugal would go Pro-Allied but Argentina would still be strict neutral. I know some people put Turkey in the Europe block, but we decided to put it in the Middle East block.
We have NEVER had the Allies attack a strict neutral. For one thing, they are usually too busy fighting the Axis to expend resources fighting a neutral. Plus they don’t want to give the Axis any free infantry and territories by turning the other stricts into Pro-Axis, even if it’s just in that block. Also, I guess we just kind of have the mindset that the Allies are the good guys and having them violate a country’s neutrality just doesn’t feel right.
In most of our games, we have played with the strict neutrals basically off limits, both by the Axis and the Allies. Perhaps we should re-think our strategies and start involving the neutrals more in our games.

@Make_It_Round:

I think it is possible, however tedious, to count the number of meaningful choices that players have in any given game, and to guess at one’s enjoyment threshold in terms of these.

It is utterly impossible to count the number of meaningful choices that players have in any given game because each “meaningful choice” is a product of the other “meaningful choices” that were made previously. Furthermore, each “meaningful choice” is then subject to all of the possible dice outcomes, and thus multiplied by all of those possibilities and then multiplied by all of the “meaningful choices” offered by the various non-combat possibilities as they are determined by the dice outcomes. As you can see we get into these massive factorial situations where we are multiplying massive exponentials by even more massive exponentials until what is essentially infinity.

To make a comparison: In chess there are only 20 possible moves to make on the first turn. (16 pawn moves and 4 knight moves) The opponent is faced with the same. So the possible combinations for the opening 2 moves (1 each) in chess is 400. None of which are absolutely stupid. there are 8,902 possible moves by 2 each and by move 7 there are almost eleven MILLION possible positions. That’s without dice, with only 2 players, with a much much much more limited scope for unit movement, no scope for adding units and far far fewer spaces.

Now you asked about the “meaningful choices”. Some work has been done in this regard in chess and it seems that in the average game of about 30 moves (moving a single piece at at time. There are over 4.5 MILLION games outcomes in smart competitive situations. Now, multiply that by the factor of dice, multiple movement of units, game spaces, purchases and the fact that most AA games will see over 100 times that 60 units move factor and you have an utterly infinite combination of outcomes.

Which is part of the reason it is so much more entertaining than chess.

…or maybe just because we get to play with little tanks and planes.

I agree with the thinking here that we should stick to OOB rules for at least a little longer. I don’t mind a few official changes here and there. I always use the errata and FAQ’s that are released after a game comes out due to misprints in the manual or an obvious balance problem (AAP). However, these sweeping changes are too much too fast. Its almost like a few influencial people screamed too early and no one else was able to say, “lets slow down and take a more methodical approach to the changes.”
It seems like we are being caught up in a rushing river and can’t get out. Alpha is evidence that the squeaky wheel gets greased.

I will stick to OOB rules until something official comes out and then evaluate it. If there are a few reasonable changes I will use them, but if it is anything like these Alpha changes, I most likely won’t. I never used LHTR for the same reason.

You misunderstand my post - there are only ever four powers, with the neutrals acting just like OOB, but with different alignments.

It really should be:

1939- June 1941 Four Power game (Allies[UK & F], Axis[G & I], USSR, Japan)

Becomes three power game after June 1941 (i.e. USSR joins the Allies)

Becomes two power game after December 1941 (Japan joins the Axis)

It’s reasonable to assume that the USA only ever joins the Allies, and that (before June 1940) Italy only ever joins the Axis.  The position of China is tricky, since we don’t want to exclude the possibility of an Allied/Japanese alliance, but where does that leave China - a neutral that the other powers (i.e. not Japan) can send aid to without it being a DOW on Japan?