My friend and I played with the new tournament rules and we generally like the new economic and political collapse scenarios. However, we also found that it was making the game a bit absurd. Italy, instead of protecting itself more, landed troops in Ankara (the Turkish navy was gone and the French navy was sitting in the territory, and the British and French had both failed in landings due to mines) because it was enough to push the Turks into total collapse on Turn 3.
These sorts of moves became common, too, because nations couldn’t do anything on their own turn to stop the collapses. Italy and Russia both collapsed on Turn 5, but by then Austria and Germany were almost out of troops and the French had a massive army moving East, and England was a monster collecting 65 IPCs each turn and churning out armies in India to move to the Balkans. The new strategic movement rules made it easier to shuttle those troops north.
We were unclear on whether the 2-space movement could be used to reinforce contested territories and so we didn’t allow it. I think if we had the game would have been completely ridiculous.
Anyway, our conclusion was that real strategies were being forfeited in order to force collapses in ways that made a mockery of anything approaching something mildly historic. In other words, the game was becoming as silly as the old 1983 MB version of A&A could get, with massive stacks in weird places and huge stretches of empty board.
We would propose, after playing with the new rules, the following change to the collapse rules (which are still much better than the Russian Revolution rules in the rulebook): at the beginning of the turn, check for collapse. An economic collapse or greater means that the nation doesn’t get to spend its money. It then has its turn to try to avert the crisis. If it fails, at the end of the turn it suffers the consequences. Example: Italy has only Naples with Rome contested. If it relieves Rome, it stays in the game but doesn’t collect money because at the end of the turn it’s still in economic collapse. If the US liberates Piedmont, on Italy’s next turn it can buy units because it is no longer in any sort of collapse at the beginning of its turn.
This seems to be a better way of making the game more interesting while not letting the collapse rules turn the game into a total farce.
As an aside, I will say that I am glad I bought a second copy of the game because we would have run out of pieces and markers otherwise.
We were unclear on whether the 2-space movement could be used to reinforce contested territories and so we didn’t allow it. I think if we had the game would have been completely ridiculous.
Yes you can reinforce contested areas, and in fact attack if you choose to.
Your game actually ran similar to one of the games we played with Italy going into Turkey to try to force economic collapes. It did work, but the Turks recovered. With help from the French and US, Italy avoided economic collapes though.
Personally, I think that for a home game playing without the economic/political rules but using everthing else is great! You could apply the economic/political collapes to the Russians as an alternate to the OOB rules and I think they would be better.
The 2-move rule and increased naval move from a naval base are the key rules that improves the original OOB rules. Set up changes also are good.
Kim
We prefer the collapse rules because the Russian Revolution wasn’t some preordained event, and other countries had similar issues. The British had serious issues over Irish home rule and Labour, the French had their mutiny, Germany and Austria both came close to collapse, the Turks were close several times, and so we prefer to have the collapse rules over the terrible Russian Revolution optional rule. Having it only apply to Russia also is a terrible idea because it makes the game a predictable and repeating one, where the only strategy is an Eastern one. The collapse rules make a Western strategy better, which equals more variety.
That’s a fair assessment. Do you think that perhaps the level for Italy and the Ottomans should be raised then?
Kim
That might make sense. Either that, or have contesting the capital as a precondition to checking for them. However, in all three cases, the situation was caused by sneaky moves of troops to places just big enough to cause them to be contested, which is why I suggested giving the country the entirety of its turn to try to correct the situation (like in WWII games of A&A when a capital is captured). As it was, we sent armies on suicide missions right before the turn of the country in question just to trigger the collapse, even though the moves would otherwise NEVER have been made (like sacrificing a considerable army just to have 1-2 units survive, thereby contesting a territory).
