So I was thinking the other day about a way to spice up a game of Axis and Allies and it hit me. In Magic the Gathering there’s a multi player option. First you take 2 of the same cards for each player. Such as germany is the ace of spades (you would have 2 ace of spades). Every country gets a card to id them. Then with 2nd set of cards get dealt out to each player. the 2nd card is put face down so only the one player can see it. You can only Declare war on the player’s card you have face down. If you get your own card you can declare war on anyone you want at anytime. in my example germany would be the ace of spades that card would sit face up on the table and face down would be say the ace of diamonds (Italy) so Germany can declare war on Italy at anytime. When you conquer someone you get there card also. It would be a very long game and very very different than any game you’ve played before. Game goes till last man standing.
This wouldn’t really be spicing up A&A; it would be more like using the A&A board and pieces to play a completely different game whose basic scenario would have nothing to do with WWII on any kind of realistic level. From a purely practical point of view, the main problem is the one you’ve already identified yourself: it would take a huge amount of time to play such a game. The complex and lengthy A&A mechanics are ill-suited for application to an last-man-standing elimination-style game, for which a faster-paced system is much more appropriate. Acheiving all-out victory by one of the two official A&A power blocks is hard enough to do in the real game, which only requires (if you play with total victory as an objective) that one of the multi-country alliances (rather than a single country) come out on top. Magic: The Gathering and A&A are both manufactured by WotC, but in my opinion that’s about the extent to which there should be any connection between the two games.
Also, in a game like that, who would want to play ANZAC, Italy or France? They would be at such a disadvantage.
Of course, I guess you could get strange scenarios where Russia drew a card to declare war on France or ANZAC. In that case, it would take Russia so long to get down to where they could actually attack them because Russia has almost no starting navy and no transports.
Also, it sounds like while one country could draw the card to invade another, a third country could end up drawing the card to invade the first. That could end up with some really weird scenarios.
Okay, now I am curious.
Let’s say Russia drew a card to invade France.
Then England drew a card to invade Russia.
Then Germany drew a card to invade England.
In this scenario, Germany and Russia would NOT fight each other, right? But if Germany conquers England and get’s their card, then Germany can invade Russia.
By the way, what exactly is meant by “conquer”? Does it mean capturing the enemy capital? OR destroying every last unit of that enemy?
i think to speed up the game it would have to be just taking the capital. And if I was Russia and I drew Anzac’s card then I would sit and wait someone will attack you and then you conquer the person with your card. Thus getting you’re own card and freedom of action to fight whoever you want.
Another idea is if you could make up a small set of cards, each one with a different country on it. You wouldn’t have to give each player the first set of cards, just deal out the one set that each player keeps face down.
Then it’s like you said, if you get your own card, you can attack anyone you want. If you get another country, then you are at war with just that country and which ever other country got your card.
This has interesting possibilities.
