@Young:
@theROCmonster:
How would it hurt them more than help them? If you don’t play with the merged income rules then is the factory in India still a place where you can place up to 10 units?
The distribution of units to protect both London and India is like walking a tight rope, the Commonwealth takes a piece of the UK income and builds units on the outside (Ottawa, SA, Sydney) when that money is needed to protect the inside (London, Cairo, India), and no… you can’t build 10 on India with Halifax rules. Thats what we have found anyways, we prefer the modified production units only, however, a different group may find a way to use the Halifax rules to the Allies benefit, but we are not using the single income, or Commonwealth… just the 3 type production units.
I don’t know, I’ve been playing a variant of the Halifax rules commonwealth version 2, and I enjoy it quite a lot. What we do in my playgroup is to eliminate all National Objectives, and replace them with general objectives for control of VCs, and a consistent DoW bonus +5 for neutrality which works the same for all nations (simplifies the neutrality rules). No restrictions on when nations may make their DoW. We set factory locations from the outset, all VCs have a minor factory at the start of play. No additional factory units may be purchased. Minor factories cannot be totally destroyed, but can be damaged by the owner on scorched earth withdraw. Commonwealth capital is at Sydney, to provide a 3rd major pacific target, to counterbalance for Calcutta, and we treat the Commonwealth power like all the others, no special rules pertaining to it. The production profiles as outlined in standard Halifax. Then we add in a minor at all VCs, and that’s it factory-wise. No more production can be purchased anywhere on the gameboard. This means Japan can have their initial starting factories, and factories they can capture, but that’s all. The affected territories are Poland, Kiangsu, Kwangtung, Philippines, Hawaii, Cairo and Ontario which all have a minor at the start. I find it an elegant and a much simpler way to play the G40 game. Uses the 3 tiered scheme, but eliminates the production unit as a purchase option from the game completely. Most will get knocked to minors by the end, but we don’t remove the minor factory unit completely on capture, instead we have captured factories max damage when taken, but the locations are always set from the beginning in terms of where new units can be spawned.
The basic idea being that if you reorient Japans production, and restrict new production from entering the board altogether, that you can dramatically simplify the gameplay. All VCs have a minor, and then there are the Majors on the board from the standard set up. (I was open to adding a minor at Korea and Romania as a possible option on the set up, if you really want to give a nod to Axis, but nothing more beyond that.) Essentially just picking all the places you want to have production, fix it from the beginning, and remove the units from the purchase roster. I’ve tried doing this with 8 nations UK/Commonwealth and 7 (China under USA), though I favor the latter. In such games there could never be a factory on FIC, Malaya, Persia etc. Balance for the situation is handled through adjustments to starting income, and by the general bonus objectives. I have fun with it, though I suppose I understand if others are less willing to alter the set up to that extent.
I don’t think its all that hard to get the Canada and South Africa, Single UK economy up off the ground if you use the +5 per VC controlled method over regular NOs. It brings more money to everyone as a way to achieve game balance and restricts the potential production locations at the same time.
