Real value of units

Hi everyone,

I have been enjoying using these unique units for 1942 Second Edition Tournament Rules.

Russia:
Cavalry c3/a2/d1/m2, can Blitz. Max 5 on the board at any time.
Purpose: Allows Russia some more attack power. Sometimes it is really difficult to buy tanks with the USSR’s limited income but you need still need the ability to move 2. Since they defend at 1, they won’t make the final battle for Moscow any more difficult for Germany. This unit adds some interesting attack possibilities especially if Russia has a decent air force.
HBG has some pretty sweet cavalry sculpts and they have colors that match nicely with the OOB sculpts.

Germany:
Maus Tank c8/a3/d3/m2, 2HP, can Blitz. Max 5 on the board at any time. Can only be built after Round 4. Repairs for free if it starts its turn on a friendly IC.
Purpose: Gives Germany another hard hitting unit. This one is mostly for fun and I don’t think the stats are very overpowered since I’ve put a limit of 5 on the board at any time. I also wanted to give Germany a bonus since I gave Russia Cavalry.
HBG has a Maus tank sculpt I use. I think Germany only built like 4 of these tanks irl but they’re fun to have in the game. If you prefer you can call them heavy tanks and use a sculpt of a tank that was actually produced in earnest.

US:
Marines c3/a1/d2/m1. Attacks at 2 on amphibious assaults (not supportable by artillery on amphibious assaults) Max 5 on the board at any time.
Purpose: Represent the US Marine Corps and allow Island Hopping to be a bit easier for the US player.
I used HBG’s dark green Marines for these units.

To balance these units, I also play with the “Tokyo Express” rule which gives Japanese Destroyers the ability to transport 1 Infantry. I haven’t figured out a good UK bonus which would balance well with these small tweaks.

My group also really enjoys the “free factory” House Rule, which gives each player (besides Russia, we decided the Russian extra factory does nothing but help the Axis) a free IC before the game begins with the condition that it must be placed on a territory worth exactly 1 IPC. Typically, Germany puts theirs in Libya, UK chooses either Persia or Belgian Congo, Japan places theirs on Malaya, and the US chooses Sinkiang (sometimes West Indies if the US player is wary of Japan producing on the free factory). We enjoy this rule because it keeps Africa interesting for quite a while. Sometimes the US will get to place a fighter or two in China.

As another house rule, we often give each player one tech token at the start of the game as well. Russia is typically excluded because the Axis players in the group contend that a) Russia had a dearth of scientists at the time due to purges, and b) they would rather each side only get two tech tokens, and I tend to agree with them.

Our club has added technology rules that really speed up the game and offer much more variety. One of the most significant is that each country has rail movement. If you want to discuss, best way to reach me is by email at jonkrost@comcast.net

Using BBs and CAs as bombers doing an SBR sounds pretty cool. I guess they would be impervious to interceptors though ? Maybe tacs could intercept ships only ?

Think it’s just a matter of finding the right numbers for your fortresses piscolar. You’ll just have to playtest it out. My concern would be that they’re not too powerful so they can’t be cracked. I like the idea of having a ground unit present to activate them.

@Tamer:

I like your original idea, but what about carriers?  They were the most important ships to keep afloat during the war, and a great deal of repair was done for them as well.

I do not recall any instance off-hand during the war in which a carrier was re-floated after having been sunk and then returned to active service.

The Amagi and Graf Zeppelin were both sunk and re-floated, but neither saw active service during the war and Graf Zeppelin wasn’t even complete.

The re-floating idea is kind of cool, but it may need to be reduced somehow to make it a more rare occurrence. As Marc said, it was a long and expensive process and not every ship that was sunk qualified for such a salvage operation. Unfortunately with A&A, we do not have the granularity in gameplay to determine how badly ships are damaged.

I suppose that you could modify the rule so that after combat you need to roll for each ship lost to determine IF it can be salvaged. Say you need a 2 or less to float a given ship. If you roll that, then you can decide to pay half to re-float.

It complicates things, but definitely makes it so you can’t just regenerate 2 battleships and 3 cruisers if you want.

I will offer another limitation that sounds logical to me, but you can consider:

Ships may only be raised on the following turn and to do so, there may not be any hostile warships in the sea zone where the ships were sunk. This implies that any ships not raised the following turn will be lost forever, as you said, and that the territory with your naval base cannot be taken by the enemy in that time.

Example:    Gibraltar is amphib assaulted by Italy. All UK warships are destroyed. Italy has no warships present in sea zone, only transports. Italy takes Gibraltar. US player lands and liberates Gibraltar on their turn, returning it to UK control. The UK player cannot then re-float ships lost in previous turn combat with Italy because they did not retain full control of Gibraltar.

Somewhat complicated perhaps, but I think some of these limitations need to be placed, otherwise I see this as being a huge advantage for the Axis. Germany and Italy in particular, because they tend to hole up their navies in home water areas and can potentially get double the naval power at half the cost. It will further incentivize them to stock up and stay in port knowing they can effectively respawn capital ships on the cheap. An element of chance and tactical consideration should be added so that it isn’t just automatic.

Soviet Union/Partisan/0/1/1/Can be built in any red terrirtory/1/Infantry with roundel under it

How about making it 0/1/0 Cost 1, and can build in any original Soviet territory up to IPC value. That will limit the number, movement, and use of these troops, but still helpful during a German invasion.

Lately I play them as 8 Ipc defenseless units that can transport 2 inf. there range is 5. So typically they have a round trip range of a fighter unless they take off from airbase and then the round trip is that of a bomber.

If you plug them into a combat simulation ( online) the odds give you these results.

You mean bells of war?