Cards for Axis and Allies 1940

Whether or not any of the individuals that you use in these cards were accused/convicted of war crimes is irrelevant.  I know that the atrocities were a part of the actual history of WW2, but in Axis & Allies we don’t deal with that part.  We only deal with the military conflict.  So if these individuals participated in the military war effort, they should be included.

Here’s another way to look at it;  in many of our games, the Axis win and take over the world.  So, in that case, there would be no Nuremburg trials.  Those individuals that were accused of war crimes in actual history instead would be hailed as heros of the Fatherland.  Remember, it’s the victors that write the history books.

By the way dannyboy2016, love your artillery piece.  That’s the 800mm Gustav, right?

@dannyboy2016:

Maybe, if Germany is at war with the USSR and Japan isn’t then you could get some free reinforcements in Moscow to represent Siberian forces that were rushed there (including many tanks, which sadly aren’t in Holy Larry’s oob for Siberia). Do you have any ideas on what Sorge’s effects should be?

The idea you’ve just described sounds pretty good.

@dannyboy2016:

Anything else you guys would want to see? I’d like to get Russia and the German set in stone first before moving on to the UK, US, Japan, Italy and then revising the minors.

How about a card for:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_of_Life

@dannyboy2016:

For the issues of German Chiefs of Staff I’m going to take people from the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Supreme Command of the Armed Forces) as well as people from the Oberkommando des Heeres (the Army High Command). Despite the names, the OKH was basically independent of the OKW until a few days before the end of the war. Thus I’m considering the following individuals for the Chief of Staff cards for Germany:

Wilhelm Keitel- Head of the OKW
Alfred Jodl- Keitel’s deputy
Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring- The Head of the Airforce (nominally under the OKW, had the highest rank in the German Military)
Grossadmiral Erich Raeder- the Head of the Navy through 1943 (nominally under the OKW)
Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Brauchitsch- Head of OKH through 1941
Adolf Hitler- Head of the OKH through 1945
General Franz Halder- Army Chief of Staff (under OKH head) from 1938 to 1942
General Kurt Zeitzler Army Chief of Staff (under OKH head) from 1942 to 1944

Grossadmiral Karl Donitz was in charge of the Navy after Raeder, and General Heinz Guderian followed Zeitler as Army Chief of staff. I’m uncertain about whether to include them as regular commanders or as Chief of Staff Cards. Would it be more fun for Heinz to be commanding an individual army (he got so close to Moscow, after all) or giving him an army wide bonus?

The Guderian question is particularly vexing to me. I think he was a great commander, but I also think he was the best Chief of Staff that the army had. Plus, he basically invented Blitzkreig.

I like the idea of your cards (made a smaller deck for Classic a few years ago), but I really think that you should reconsider some of the names you mentioned above, not because of war crimes issues but because of their incompetence, like Keitel and Goering.
I like the division you made regarding the 3 levels for people, strategic/operational/tactical, what you could do probably would be that each person can have more than 1 skill. For instance, Guderian could play all the 3: as Inspector General for Armor he became responsible for tank design and improvement (strategic); as Chief of Staff he would improve movement of armor (operational); as Army commander any tanks would hit with a 4.

@dannyboy2016:

Anything else you guys would want to see? I’d like to get Russia and the German set in stone first before moving on to the UK, US, Japan, Italy and then revising the minors.

Industrial Redeployment (IC from Ukraine to Urals)
Shock Armies (or your Guards Divisions)
Deep Battle
Maskirovka
Siberian Divisions

an idea for a Russian event card is a winter war card to represent the Russian invasion of Finland before the Germans attacked. on the first round of combat Finnish units defend at a -1 and Russian  attack at a +1. on the second round Finnish defend at a +1 and Russian attack at a -1 or regular. all rounds after that are normal. this would apply only once to a Russian attack on Finland.

@Hobbes:

I like the idea of your cards (made a smaller deck for Classic a few years ago), but I really think that you should reconsider some of the names you mentioned above, not because of war crimes issues but because of their incompetence, like Keitel and Goering.

Alternately, these could be treated as “disadvantage” cards, with negative effects, for offensive use against another player rather than to boost one’s own country.  The same concept could apply to “negative techs” like the defective US torpedoes mentioned in another thread.  So for example, if the player for Japan happens to get a “defective US torpedo” card, he could play this disadvantage card and thus negatively affect the US player.  It’s the reverse concept of an “advantage” card – for example a Japanese Long Lance torpedo “positive tech” card which the player for Japan would play to positively affect himself.

I think that’s a very good idea. :-D having disadvantage cards will let you have advantages that are usually just luck in real life (like Hitlers refusal to move his tanks from upper France to Normandy allowed the allies to gain a foot holed which would not have happened if Hitler had moved his tanks.) the disadvantage cards could provide advantages over specific countries.

These are pretty cool. If you don’t already have this card, it could be a battle of the buldge type card. When German forces attack allied forces on Europe the allied forces don’t get to roll the first round. For Japan you could have a Pearl Harbor type card, where the first time you attack the U.S. navy, they don’t roll the first round. IDK for Italy cause i don’t really know to much about them.

let us know what you might be having trouble with ideas :-)

@dannyboy2016:

Deep Battle- Any interesting concept, but how would you depict it as a card? Also, wouldn’t you say the Doctrine more or less died with Tukachevsky a few years
before the game starts?

Deep operations theory was behind Soviet strategy during the entire WW2 and up until 1991. Since it consists of conducting attacks on a wide front with the propose of hiding the actual objective (which is attacked by a 2nd and 3rd echelons of armies) you can replicate it with something like this: if the Soviet Union attacks 2 or more contiguous territories and wins it can choose to freely move the surviving units between those 2 territories during non-combat, but always leaving 1 unit behind.

Maskirovka- I would consider this kind of tactics, but I’m wondering how to represent them in a card. Maybe something like a limited version of the lucy spy ring’s effects but that can be done every turn. Or maybe allow the Soviets to take their noncombat turn before their combat turn?

It can be something like the UK’s Enigma National Advantage.

@dannyboy2016:

Your mention of Deep operations and Maskirovka has given me another idea. What if I had “Doctrine” cards for each country. You could only have one doctrine at a time.

I’m not sure that you’ll find doctrines for every country.

@dannyboy2016:

Your mention of Deep operations and Maskirovka has given me another idea. What if I had “Doctrine” cards for each country. You could only have one doctrine at a time.

I don’t know if this would qualify as a doctrine, but the Americans and the British had a lot of disagreements from 1942 to 1944 over their strategic and operational philosophies.  The British favoured things like indirect blows around the fringes of occupied Europe (for example Churchill’s depiction of Italy as the “soft underbelly of the crocodile” – which, considering how mountainous Italy is, turned out to be naive when the Allies invaded there) and long, thin, rapier-like strikes like Operation Market-Garden (which failed).  The Americans preferred head-on attacks like the Operation Overlord landings in Normandy, and advances along a broad front like the drive towards the Rhine in 1944-1945 – a method of warfare I’ve heard called the “Ulysses S. Grant approach”.

Ghost One- The Winter war already happened before the game started. Russia actually controls some of Finland that they took in the war at the start of the game.

yes you are right i forgot it happened right before the war
best of LUCK in your job search :-(

i have a i think a great idea, it seems that there will be a lot of cards for each country because of all the different card types and from what dannyboy said at first that each country  will choose one card at the beginning and must purchase additional cards that you probably won’t get to use very many cards each game. but my idea is instead of choosing one card at the beginning of the game each country will separate the Puppets, Cabinet Ministers, Commanders, National Advantages, and Doctrine cards into stacks and choose one from each. when they are done all the cards are shuffled together (except the 5 you choose off the top) for the game stack for that country. if they do this then it could represent the government for each country at the beginning of the war. this way you start the game with your own set up and get to use the cards right at the begging. also i thought that it would be better to instead of buying new cards with ipcs you could buy them with points earned at the purchase units faze by counting how many territories you have with an ipc value and dividing by (2 or 3?) and add that to the ones you may already have and that is how much you have to spend on cards (also maybe you can earn one every time you win a battle). these points would rep public opinion of the war or maybe how the government is handling the war at home and abroad.
i just thought of this and its late so there might be some things that don’t sound right.