Russian Rev ideas

I’ve played with the house rule of- everyone(except China) gets one free roll at the beginning of every complete round. If you want more, you use the OOB rules for R&D as usual.

@Valladares
There’s been a lot of discussion on CAs. Two of the more popular opinions seem to be letting them transport 1 Marine/Elite type unit for amphibious attack. The other is giving it some sort of AA capability.

As far as Mech, their mobility is their worth imo. Combine them with Bombers for striking power and they can be quite effective. Some countries will use them more than others. Germany and JPN and UK coming up out of Africa probably the most. I tend to not as much with USA as I like Inf/Arty to establish a beachhead in Western Europe. Then some speed units out of the factories, especially if I’m in Norway. I don’t usually go into Africa with them, but you’d want speed there too imo.

It’s nice to have a small mechanized force with Russia if you can afford it. Just having the threat of a Quick Reaction Force can limit some moves by the enemy. Or at least make them think about it.

Usually like a 2:1 ratio with Armor. Especially Germany. Not sure how others do it. I should probably study some more games others have played. It seems I always get sidetracked doing other stuff though :)

Yes Dorowar my token system works really well. It adds a mission based element to the game that probably can’t be duplicated with any other type of house rule. It is such a game changer that you don’t need to put in a bunch of other house rules. Rolling the D6 first and then choosing the chart takes more chance out of WD than you might think and everyone should give that a try no matter how they play R&D. My guess is your play group will want to adopt that for sure.

I don’t know if you’ve ever played the 1914 Tournament Rules, but they have something there that is a specified threshold for each nation that puts them in economic collapse. Perhaps an idea for you might be to determine an IPC level for each nation that must be met in order to develop weapons in lieu of NO’s. That is kind of the same thing as what I do - force a nation to be worthy of developing a weapon. That combined with your research token and some cash and you start rolling for a weapon.

Whatever you decide to do let us know how it works. Some of the best ideas are the ones we get from others here.

The whole problem lies on Japan’s absurd overpowerness. No matter what house rules are present, Japan will always take Soviet far east and China. Allies have nothing to prevent it.

Why Japan’s role is always trying to rescue Germany via marching to Moscow? Why Japan always outproduce Germany and USA? It is neither fun, nor historical plus it totally deprives Pacific front and two ocean going approaches for USA.

Typically USA esablish a pipelines in North Africa while abandons Pacific, Britain in N.Russia, Germany turning into surviving mod waiting Japan to recue. I’m really sick of to see the same thing.

The solution is make Germany 2 times stronger than Japan considering 1942 borders, make Soviet far eastern and Chinese territories less valuable (Making two territory worth 1 with Nos), Hawaii factory with 2ipc value, then rebalancing.

I agree with the initial premise of this post. Russia could definitely use a boost in 1942.2

@Der:

Or you could give Russia production bonuses after holding out a while, to represent the increased production over time. Like after round three Russia gets 3 bonus IPCs per round, after round six they get 6 IPCs per round, etc.

This is one of the more interesting ideas I’ve heard in a while. I like it for its simplicity. You could play this way with a direct correspondence between Round and IPCs awarded.

Round 1 = 1 ipc
Round 2 = 2 ipcs
Round 3 = 3 ipcs
Round 4 = 4 ipcs
Round 10 = 10 ipcs
and so on

this would mean that the effect on the early game would be fairly minimal, but each round that the game progresses, the Russian advantage would become more potent. The higher boosts would also kick in at precisely the time when the Russians need more loot, since all their land has been snatched. This would give the Axis a strong incentive to attack early, rather than trying to wait it out. So for example, as Germany, if you had choice between a somewhat risky attack on Moscow, or waiting 3 more rounds for Japan to back it up, you might just go for the attack rather than facing the extra lend lease loot that Russia receives. Each round you push the game out the larger the benefit becomes, which would encourage faster game resolution, at least on the part of Axis. Not sure might work.

I support basically anything that gives the Russians a boost on this board.

My favored change (in terms of a hard and fast set up adjustment) is to just give the Russians a bomber. Which seems to work fairly well at balancing this board in my playgroup :-D

Agreed.
And well obviously, the rule would also go hand in hand with “no allied units in soviet territory”

It’s simple, yet a bit more sensical than what we have now: In any turn you wish to attack strict neutrals, you have the option of “buying off” any remaining ones so that they stay neutral.

Case in point: Germany wishes to attack Sweden, but obviously doesn’t want to turn Spain or Turkey against them. To keep them as strict neutrals, Germany must pay 2 + 2 (the IPC values of each territory).

If it wants to include Afg. and Saudi Arabia, then 2 + 2 + 2 + (say a min of 1 IPC, for those territories with no IPC values).

These territories would also stay strictly neutral in the event of an Allied attack (although perhaps that can be debatable). Also, the IPC costs themselves: perhaps double the tt value would be better, but those are, of course, details.

Thoughts?

i play with the winter, infantry are effected also- need a pair of 1’s to get a hit. also spring means mud in russia so all axis tanks move 1 space instead of 2.