The Great War 1914-1918: Clash of Empires

Anyway, if folks are interested in joining the development team, I could use the help.

This is an update on a project I began some time ago, Axis & Allies: World at War.

The goal is to create a single, custom game map, ruleset, and playset for use in private games. In short, creating an Axis & Allies variant similar to Global War, but without the intent to mass produce or sell the product commercially. This means that I will engage a professional mapmaker to create a high-quality play mat and play aids (e.g., charts, roundels, cards, etc.).

In terms of mechanics, this will be a card-driven game like Amateurs to Arms and Mr. Madison’s War bolted onto the Axis & Allies core rules. Basically, players will draw from decks of cards that set global conditions, activate neutral nations, and let them activate units in given territories. Rather than being able to move all units every turn, players will spend Operations Points to move specific armies. Additional Operations Points can be obtained through card play, from possession of strategic resources, and by building and placing supply columns. The latter are units that move along with armies, allowing the player to activate that stack every turn for free. They may, however, be captured by the enemy.

The game will feature both territories and point-to-point movement. Possession of a given number of points within a given territory translates to ownership, which yields a production value in IPCs. The game pieces will be a mixture of plastic pieces and traditional counters.

We will use an alternate history to bring all corners of the map into play. The map is inspired by both Harry Turtledove’s Great War series and an alternate history saga known as The Feast of Eagles, which imagined a world in which Europe remained largely divided after the Wars of Religion. The major conflict in North America is between the United States and the Confederate States. In South America, Argentina squares off in a naval race with Portugal, which retains its Brazilian colony. In Europe, a Franco-Russian alliance is opposed by the British and the Austrians. Minor powers include Castille (British-allied), the Two Sicilies (French-allied), Poland (allied with Sweden), and a restored Byzantine Empire. At the onset of the twentieth century, the French also dammed the Mediterranean, flooding the Lake Chad Basin. A similar project was undertaken in the Congo. Along with the Great Lakes, both African “world lakes” are accessible by a new canal infrastructure that admits oceangoing vessels. Japan squares off in the Far East against an ascendant Russia, a China of dubious strength, and the United Netherlands, not to mention the British.

At this point, I have a notional set of units. Again, feedback would be excellent, especially by folks that are good at optimizing builds. Which proposed units are unlikely every to be built?
Axis and Allies Units.pdf

My wife and I have played Richard Karpusiewicz’s “Great War” rules for AAE a couple times and thoroughly enjoyed it. We’ve thought of some rule changes that seem to enhance it, and I’ve put together a nice-looking manual for the whole thing (including new marker tokens for the WWI nations). The revised and reformatted rules are available as a PDF; I can’t post links yet, but you can get it here:

docs.google.com/open?id=0B4OjxFZJoutMQmMxOGJ3VzJBYUE

The end of the PDF summarizes most of the changes I’ve made to the rules. I’ve also laid out the new marker tokens for the Avery 4x6" circle labels, product number 5408; the PDF for that is here:

docs.google.com/open?id=0B4OjxFZJoutMX1p5ZTNDNEM2alk

I’ll eventually publish the LibreOffice source documents, SVG files and whatnot as well, in case others want to make further changes. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find Richard’s original rules online anymore. I haven’t played this scenario enough times yet to know whether it’s balanced; our first couple of games seemed to tilt slightly in favor of the Allies, which is partly why I shortened the number of turns until the Russian Revolution, and also added a probability of France having mutinies.

I hope my enhancements help to keep this great scenario alive, and I would love to hear feedback from anyone who plays it (either Richard’s original version, or my modified version).

Okay i get ya now. ya I know this isn’t like A&A. Thats why I like it.

During French innvasion Napoleon said: “If I’ll capture Kiev, I’ll take Russia by it’s feet, if I’ll capture Petersburg, I’ll take it by it’s head and if I’ll capture Moscow, I’ll destroy it’s heart”.

-http://spirit-of-moscow.com/journalofmoscou.shtml

Global War 2.0 is available for Triplea.

Download at: http://www.tripleadev.org/forum/viewtopic.php?showtopic=10246

Its a hybrid system with risk and AA. Takes about 3 hrs to play. Its been for sale for a number of years. I print a few every few months. Remember this is a large top quality map about 3 x 4 feet

Honestly, if you play the board game for the map and pieces, then you should avoid most of the board games out there.

As far as 4 revisions in 10 years, maybe that’s a bit high, granted, but….  I can tell you a fact that in 10 years, Dell has gone through more server revisions in those same 10 years.  Does that make their products (or substitute Apple, IBM, HP, etc) any worse?  That’s the worst comment I’ve ever heard.  Not only that, but revisions are there to help make the game better.

Ok, rant off.  Talking about World at War 2005 now.  The game is ok, but unfortunately when combining the latest rules from Axis & Allies (which this is based off of), the Allies has too much of an advantage.  Especially when comparing this version with the 3rd version.  There are now factories in India and Australia for Britain to use, you can still purchase infantry off of factory sites, but at a max of 1 per land and they cost 1 IPC more, which hurts Germany a ton since they can’t keep Africa.  Then again, Britain got a bump in Africa as well with the tank defending on a 3 now and they get an extra artillery piece, so you really have to commit in Africa to take it and hold it.

The technology rolls are interesting, but kind of confusing to understand at first.

I’m actually on this forum to see if anyone has brought up house rules or variants to make the game a little bit more balanced.  I believe the Allies should win about 60-65% to keep in line with history, but this version (and the previous ones as well) gives the allies about 80% chance to win.  This is assuming average dice rolls.  We’ve played around with giving Germany super subs and Japan get fighters to start, but it didn’t help all that much.  Japan usually never has a problem and the jet fighters were just the icing on the cake.  Super subs really didn’t help Germany as much as we had thought it would.

Anyone else try to do something different with this game?