DK's Hybrid Axis and Allies Map and Rules

Greetings friends,

I have finished my first version of the Solitaire variant. I’m affraid I still have to test it. If there is any volunteer here to test it I will thank you!

Here you have it: http://www.mediafire.com/folder/jxx1jyxyhsbyh/Axis_%26_Allies

There are 3 files:

I will thank you feedback about rules if you can test them, your corrections and suggestions too.

Best regards,

Jose Manuel

Hey Young Grasshopper,

Can you say a few words about why you’re writing these house rules, who they’re for, or what you hope to accomplish with them? Hard to offer comments in a vacuum.

Because there are no neutral victory cities in Anniversary, I’m not sure your VP system changes anything beyond just counting up each victory city as one point. Any time I take a city, that means you lost a city, and vice versa. Normally, when I take a city, I gain +1 VP and you lose -1 VP, so the total VP swing per city is 2 points. Under your system, when I take a city, I gain +2 VP and you lose -1 VP, so the total VP swing per city is 3 points.

That’s it – you’re changing the swing from 2 points to 3 points, but it’s not like you can conquer half a victory city, so it really doesn’t matter if the swing per victory city is 2 points or 3 points or 50 points. I’m pretty sure it all works out the same in the end. No? I imagine you’re trying to reward players for being aggressive/proactive, but I don’t think your rule actually accomplishes that.

Also, to echo Baron Munchhausen’s concern, I don’t like the idea of allowing intercepts against bombers that only deal 1d6 damage, because then it virtually never makes sense to launch a bombing raid. It really doesn’t pay to launch more than 2 bombers against the same factory (you wind up wasting some of their power because the damage gets maxed out, but you still risk losing them to flak). So if I can defend my home factory with 2 or more fighters (really not that hard) then there is no point in bombing anything – between the 2 pips on the fighter and the 1 pip on the AAA gun, you have almost a 50% chance of losing your bomber on each run. 50% chance of dealing 3.5 damage vs. 50% chance of losing a 12 IPC bomber is a terrible trade-off. Sure, you could escort your bomber with fighters – but nobody in Anniversary has that kind of air power to spare. If you can spare 4 planes for a mediocre bombing raid, you should be using them to take territories. Just my two cents. If you’re going to import the interceptor rules, I’d like to see some kind of buff to the bombers.

@Arreghas:

You are indeed proving to me that changing any rule set is complex indeed and requires very thoughtful analysis.

Yes, that’s quite correct.  An important point to remember is that a complex game such as Global 1940 is similar to other complex devices (such as automotive vehicles): they are systems consisting of multiple interrelated parts which are designed to work together in a particular way and which reflect many design choices and compromises.  Sometimes it’s possible to make minor or even major alterations to some of those components without affecting significantly the performance the overall system, but sometimes even a minor adjustment to a single critical component can wreck the whole thing.  (Take as an example the recent Galaxy Note 7 debacle.  There’s been speculation that Samsung may have changed the electrolyte in the lithium-ion batteries to something less stable, or that it may have gone too far in thinning the separator which keeps the positive and negative sides apart so that the battery doesn’t short-circuit and overheat.)  And design considerations have to take into account the fundamental question of what purpose the system is supposed to serve.  A luxury limousine, a Formula One race-car and a semi-trailer truck are all automotive vehicles, but they’re all optimized to do specific jobs and they all place different leves of emphasis on different capabilities such as passenger comfort, baggage / cargo-holding capacity, speed, fuel consumption efficiency and so forth.

Just finished a game with the Europe only setup. Had to make a few modifications (changed the artillery piece in Paris to a tank and the artillery in Western Germany to a mech; pulled a few subs/tanks from my 1941 game) due to the Germany setup requiring more pieces than the game comes with. Other than that, had an absolute blast, definitely seemed balanced. Thanks.

What would be neat is if you can arrange it so that all the war crimes result in IPC gains but have morality point losses.  If at some point those war crimes result in tangible bad things happening to you (e.g. Fifth column etc), then you have to balance the benefits against the potential harms and it really becomes a game of “How much can I get away with?”.

Using D12’s or D10’s also expands the option of having different countries units be more powerful then others, for example a German tank was more powerful then a Japanese tank, with a D12 system this could be represented.  :-D

I would like to see a deluxe version of AA42 that has all the goodies in it like Revised.  :)

These rules use the OOB maps for AA50 and 42. They are current files.