I guess my particular concern is along the lines of what’s been mentioned by a few other people: the question of scale. The scale of A&A, and the level of abstraction at which it operates, means that it depicts (for most practical purposes) the actions of very large military formations (armies and fleets) over blocks of time that represent many months. Partisans, by their vary nature, functioned in very small groups, had very limited equipment, and for the most part engaged in very small-scale and short-duration raids and sabotage. Sometimes they didn’t even do that much, preferring instead to focus on non-combat activities such as rescuing downed pilots or collecting intelligence. It was also a rule of thumb that irregular forces of this type should avoid getting into a conventional military battle with the enemy, since the circumstances of such a conventional battle would heavily favour the conventional army. The liberation of Paris is the exception that proves the rule: de Gaulle claimed that Paris had been liberated “by its own hands”, and films like “Is Paris Burning?” make the valid point that the Paris Resistance really did rise up against the Germans…but the situation is more complicated than that. Most of the German garrison in Paris had already left of its own accord by the time the Resistance came out into the open, in view of the fact that the Allied armies were advancing rapidly across France after the Battle of Falaise. And even against this greatly diminished German force, the Resistance was only able to secure certain important locations in Paris. It took the arrival of the Allied armies (with Leclerc’s Free French component allowed to arrive first, for symbolic reasons) to persuade the German commander of Paris (I think his name was von Cholditz) to formally surrender his garrison (to a U.S. Army lieutenant, if I recall correctly).
So on the scale of A&A, the day-to-day activities of partisans would essentially be invisible. Their cumulated activities over a period of six months to a year could perhaps be registered through a single, simple adjustment roll of some sort – the kind of system Godleader mentioned, for instance – but I’d be concerned about anything more detailed than that. In other words, I’d be concerned about the concept of running partisans using rules that are longer and more complex than the rules which govern the use of regular armies. The detailed partisan rules mentioned above actually sound better scaled for – and potentially quite intersting as the basis for – one of those “Axis & Allies Express” mini-game concepts which were discussed here a few years ago:
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=21679.0
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=22181.0
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=22122.0
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=26809.0
