Stupid A&A G40 Rules

planes can’t hit subs when the subs are attacking is a stupid rule - leads to a single sub wiping out transport fleets that are otherwise protected by airfields

Being able to retreat all attacking forces to a single territory after a single round attack. I understand why the rule is there, but it can lead to ridiculous situations. Isolated pockets of infantry make the magical 2-step retreat to safety after being assisted from 1 unit from this safe location.

The Defenseless Transports rule, but only to a point.
I don’t like the idea of a single warship or plane being able to take out a whole stack of transports with no effort.

@knp7765:

The Defenseless Transports rule, but only to a point.
I don’t like the idea of a single warship or plane being able to take out a whole stack of transports with no effort.

Well, if you want, you can sit there and roll the die for that single ship over and over and over until you score enough hits to sink the transports. That’ll give you back some of that effort you’re missing.

A transport not able to off load units into 2 territories from the same sz in combat move.

Not really a rule, more lack there of. I think the game needs some type of coastal def against an amphib. In most cases you leave the coastal territories empty, and stack the inner territory for a counter attack. This is just wrong IMO, you should be able to build an Atlantic Wall that won’t get wiped out easily. I liked the some of the old German national advantage from Revised that gave inf or art a def bonus on the coast. In G40 something like an art first strike (casualties don’t fire back) that also gives art a +1 def boost when paired with inf in the first round defending against amphib (yeah art firing a kill shot at 3 for the first round when paired w/inf). Then you could probably give shore bombardment its first strike kill shot back as well (but bombardment should be at lower value of -1, and also include destroyers).

Clearly. Bombers attack? at 1 and fighters defend at 1 in air battles. Not good. Maybe ok if you could scramble tacs,  but you can not

@oysteilo:

Clearly. Bombers attack? at 1 and fighters defend at 1 in air battles. Not good. Maybe ok if you could scramble tacs,  but you can not

I believe def ftrs roll at 2 in the dog fight, escorting ftrs roll at 1 as do the attacking bmrs and tacs

But how about bomers being the king of the sea attacking at 4?

Wild Bill, Defending Fts are one too.
Is stupid, as you say, that Bombers can hit ships from 20000 feet or more. they should be for SBR only. Their 12 cost is ridiculous, given their various powers.

The combination of conditions that must be met before a nation is allowed to purchase and deploy units.  It’s stupid for two reasons.  First, in France’s case, that combination of requirements makes it impossible for France to acquire new units after its capital has been seized, even though France (in the non-Vichy game scenario) is partnered with Allied nations who in real life supplied lots of war materials to each other, and even though France (in the non-Vichy game scenario) still controls many territories of its colonial empire.  Second, to add insult to injury from France’s perspective (and from the perspective of rule consistency), China gets a special dispensation from these requirements and is allowed to acquire infantry and artillery even though it has no capital at all (not just an occupied one) and is not allowed to have any industrial complexes.

@teslas:

@knp7765:

The Defenseless Transports rule, but only to a point.
I don’t like the idea of a single warship or plane being able to take out a whole stack of transports with no effort.

Well, if you want, you can sit there and roll the die for that single ship over and over and over until you score enough hits to sink the transports. That’ll give you back some of that effort you’re missing.

That is why I said “to a point”. I am all for a warship or plane killing a transport without a fight, just not a whole stack of them. 
This is why we use a house rule that limits this to 3 transports per warship/plane. So if you want to sink 5 unescorted transports, you have to commit 2 warships and or planes. If you want to sink 10 transports, you will need 4 combat units.

@WILD:

A transport not able to off load units into 2 territories from the same sz in combat move.

Not really a rule, more lack there of. I think the game needs some type of coastal def against an amphib. In most cases you leave the coastal territories empty, and stack the inner territory for a counter attack. This is just wrong IMO, you should be able to build an Atlantic Wall that won’t get wiped out easily. I liked the some of the old German national advantage from Revised that gave inf or art a def bonus on the coast. In G40 something like an art first strike (casualties don’t fire back) that also gives art a +1 def boost when paired with inf in the first round defending against amphib (yeah art firing a kill shot at 3 for the first round when paired w/inf). Then you could probably give shore bombardment its first strike kill shot back as well (but bombardment should be at lower value of -1, and also include destroyers).

In the game Shogun (now called Samurai Swords), when an invading force is attacking across a sea lane, the defending units each get to roll for one free shot and any hits do not fire back. Then the attack proceeds like any other attack.
Perhaps such a rule could be incorporated into A&A. Defending units in an amphibious assault get one free defense roll and any hits do not fire back. If we did this, I would also agree that the shore bombardment be an immediate kill and not just a casualty, plus allow destroyers to join in @2. However, I would not lessen the bombardment values of cruisers (3) or battleships (4). After all, you aren’t going to generally have that many of those ships to bombard with and if you do, then you have invested a LOT of money in a bombardment fleet so maybe you deserve those strong hits.

@wittmann:

Wild Bill, Defending Fts are one too.
Is stupid, as you say, that Bombers can hit ships from 20000 feet or more. they should be for SBR only. Their 12 cost is ridiculous, given their various powers.

Wow I missed that change in SBR (def ftrs going from 2 to 1 in the dog fight). Maybe our group will see more SBR now lol

Yea bmrs are over powered in normal battles to have that cost and range, especially at sea.

@WILD:

Not really a rule, more lack there of. I think the game needs some type of coastal def against an amphib. In most cases you leave the coastal territories empty, and stack the inner territory for a counter attack.

Well… I had hoped that included in AnA40 were Block Houses which are in the D-Day game. These plotted around vital coastal coastlines would be an extra pest when the enemy does a
Shore Bombardment/Amphibious Assault having to deal with them.

Of course you can add them as a House Rule.

Stupid Rule I think is the Research & Development. You can buy as many you want, then roll, and if you miss keep all of your token till the next turn.
Also…If you do get a successful 6 you then roll onto the chosen chart of choice. The best part is that if that one you rolled you already have, no worries, just roll again till you get one! Thankyouverymuch

BH

I’ve always been in favor of a “maneuvers” roll for transports: each transport gets to roll for a 1.  If they get it, they survive.

GH: agree that the victory conditions for the Allies make no sense.  I remember a lost game for the Allies where Berlin and Rome had fallen, but on the next turn Japan won by having 6 VC’s (a series of DD blockers made it impossible for the Allies to get it back on their turn).  Makes absolutely no sense.  I’d like something like this: Allies win if they capture Berlin OR Tokyo OR Rome + they control Norway, Normandy and Germany does not control Leningrad, Stalingrad or Moscow.

As for a rule I don’t like, bombers can travel too far.  So Japan takes the Philippines then plants a few bombers there.  Those bombers can reach India, Sydney, any DEI other than Sumatra, anywhere in Mainland China, etc.  Even reducing their movement by just 1 space would balance them out.

Units destroyed by offshore bombardments being able to shoot back at your landing troops.  STUPID!  House ruled that crap away.  Bombardments are instakills!!  Always gets me on triple A.

Never thought of that. Stupid!  New house rule!!

So, just to be clear, we have one guy here asking for amphibious assaults to be nerfed, and then we have another guy asking for amphibious assualts (specifically bombardment) to be increased in power (by their casualties not shooting back). Alright.

The rule change from A&A '42 where only one boat per landing unit can bombard was necessary, and helps with coastal defense. I don’t think there’s any good way to “fix” coastal defenses without adding several new rules, and perhaps this was not done for simplicity’s sake. Furthermore, in this game, even in land battles, it is very often better to fall back and counterattack than it is to try to defend your ground. Why the same shouldn’t be true for coastal assaults isn’t clear to me.

The dogfighting I feel is 100% fine. As someone else said, the situation for bombing raids in the war wasn’t some kind of grand aerial battle most of the time. It was a chaotic stew of firing relatively blindly, with the offending side flying into ground-based AA fire after a period, and the defending side not not often following them there. Having your bomber wings and fighters all roll 1’s for one round seems like both a somewhat accurate representation of this, as well as a way to allow you additional, yet conditional, defense against being SBR’d.

Transports being able to drop off at only one territory makes sense to me. It’s a pretty large logistical undertaking to offload troops. Doing it twice in one turn, along with picking up twice in one turn, is a pretty extreme adjustment. It would also drastically alter gameplay. Being able to land two infantry, one each in two territories, is a pretty hugelargebig difference, and generally favors the Axis (hello northern africa, money islands, multiple australian territories to prep for a landing zone for JP planes on the next turn, one transport to snag ireland/scotland during sea lion to prevent US bombers from having a place to land, etc, etc…).

Transports having some kind of way to defend themselves also seems weird, and would be a massive change to the G40 experience. The point of transports, as the rules are written now, is to keep them shielded, always, or make the sacrifice. Transports were not fast nor were they maneuverable.

The following are not meant to discuss potential house rules, but are to just mention what some people have suggested and how the changes would, without any potential (rational and decent) argument available against the facts, affect the game.

If you placed a limit on how many transports could be killed by a single unit, okay, that kind of makes sense, but how often would that even come up? Four transports sitting there. A destroyer comes in, can only kill three. Alright, one is left alive. It still can’t pick up any units from that Sea Zone on its turn, for instance. Do you really need this edge case rule to keep your one transport alive? It sounds to me like this is only a problem for people who have had a stack of naked transports killed because they forgot to count how many spaces enemy planes and boats could move.

If transports had a small, random chance to survive, that would be annoying for both sides, and also lead into rules complications/additions about amphibious assaults or moving over submarines undefended. Just think about the G1 single sub hitting the Canadian Dest/TT. 1/6th chance that your 50/50 gamble just doesn’t work… super. And by “survive”, do they just sit in the sea zone? What about amphibious assaults where the offensive sea battle fails? Adding a rule like this would require more supporting rules, somewhat further violating what little bit of simplicity G40 is able to retain.

Implementing tranports defending on a 1 and being able to take hits as in A&A 42 would be an extreme change

There’s nothing you can do to “fix” the rule of defenseless transports without redesigning several parts of the game.

As far as France goes, it really did crumple up like a beer can on the forehead of a stupid frat guy shortly after Paris fell (or before, even). China and France were extremely different situations, and I don’t think the China rules “insult” France, especially since they are so specific. Yes, France still “had” its Colonial empire, but the organization just wasn’t there. Had Washington D.C. fallen, would some part of America had continued to fight? Yeah probably, from some other cultural/industrial/political/military center: Chicago/Sanfran/etc. If London fell, would Canada still operate? Yeah, sure, and the game even splits it up into UK Atl/Pac. But you can’t convince me that the French colonial empire would have the same solidarity and ability to mobilize, especially given some historical insight on how well their colonies did/did not actually like them, and the vichy also trying to claim rightful custodianship. The capital = everything rule for nations is there for simplicity, and to force you to want to defend it. Moreover, France, more than any other nation save Japan, actually did depend on its capital territory as much as the game seems to force you to.

One I do agree is weird, but I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call stupid, is the retreating rules as previously mentioned. I can understand having them from a game simplicity point of view, but using them to warp slow units around the map always feels lame, even when I’m the one doing it. The only consistent use of this I’ve seen, however, is G1 for the Yugo shenanigans.

The OOB victory conditions are a bit of a slog for the allies, and it is strange that Japan can win by taking Hawaii, of all places, and all of a sudden, even though Russia/UK Atlantic/America are all making ~double their original income and are now coming for Japan which is only making ~100. “Okay, the vast majority of the world’s industrial capacity is now concentrated on one goal: killing you.” “Too bad, I took these tiny islands just now.” “Oh ����, yeah you did, okay, we surrender.”

I think the rule is there just to make sure you feel like you must play both sides of the map. My group often houserules this to a global VC # requirement, for both sides, to alleviate it.

edit-
And battleships cost twenty. Twenty dude. Not being able to bombard after taking a hit seems like a needless punishment. These units are supposed to be worth their cost. Being fully operational even after surviving combat is part of that.