I’m new to the forum and the league. I’ve only played a handful of Balmod games, with one still in progress against Mr. Roboto; a much better player than I.
Therefore, I don’t want to render judgment myself on BalMod. But I feel as though the Axis still have a strong advantage. How do more experienced veterans of the league feel about it?
@The:
I’m new to the forum and the league. I’ve only played a handful of Balmod games, with one still in progress against Mr. Roboto; a much better player than I.
Therefore, I don’t want to render judgment myself on BalMod. But I feel as though the Axis still have a strong advantage. How do more experienced veterans of the league feel about it?
It has been my experience (of losing to Mr. Roboto) that whichever side Mr. Roboto is playing always has a strong advantage. :lol:
I don’t play online, and I’ve never played Balance Mod, but I understand there are quite a few changes from oob, and I’m curious as to how this BalMod became so widely accepted among experienced players… is it really that good?
Well I am hardly “experienced”, but have completed one balanced mod game with 4 more currently being fought.
In the completed one, my much more experienced opponent adjusted the NOs by removing 4 allied ones, being of the view that the Allies are overly advantaged. I played allies and lost, but it took over 30 turns for axis to win. All of which strongly suggests that axis do not have the advantage, certainly if those deleted NOs remain.
I am playing allies in all the 4 current games. In one allies is winning. In the other 3 it is too early to say.
One of the authors of balanced mod shared a while back that at that time honours were even between axis and allies in the last 18 games on either the tournament or league board (I cannot remember which).
Sealion is much easier now with the NO +5 for capture of London. It makes it easier for Germany to sustain an early economy. With an more powered Italy now it is easier to assist Germany in Sealion. Germany doesn’t have to waste planes on taking down ships in the Med anymore.
Make sure you guard London round 1.
@Young:
I don’t play online, and I’ve never played Balance Mod, but I understand there are quite a few changes from oob, and I’m curious as to how this BalMod became so widely accepted among experienced players… is it really that good?
Yes, it is.
2nd edition is very unbalanced according to league statistics. This year the Axis are 140-91, and that’s with the smallest bids being around 15 (I think almost everyone limits the bid to one unit per zone/territory)
Balanced mod at this point is 25-24, which is a fairly small sample size
If anything, I think the Allies might have been given too much (I have played 2 games as the Allies where I give up 3-4 of the new NO’s)
But this game, YG, is a huge improvement. The China rules make it much harder to steamroll the Chinese. India is given a much needed boost of 3 IPC’s a turn. Russia’s NO’s and UK’s NO’s are supplemented and broken up so it’s not all or nothing (you can’t stop all of Russia’s bonus income merely by sticking a sub in 125), and the cheesy non European +3’s are taken away from Russia, which will make players just focus on the German front like they should. And then there’s the marines.
I am playing balanced mod exclusively now and only playing 2nd edition when I have to, like in league playoff games.
@The:
Therefore, I don’t want to render judgment myself on BalMod. But I feel as though the Axis still have a strong advantage. How do more experienced veterans of the league feel about it?
The Axis do not have a strong advantage in the balanced mod game. The Allies were given many, many advantages that in my opinion offset or more than offset the standard need of an Allied bid. You will get more Italy action again (taking the bid away) but the Allies are given a lot. A LOT
So where can I read the complete rules with all the changes?
It’s stickied in the league forum - says “rules and download”
The USA NOs are very powerful. Balanced Mod is great because it forces the axis to do their thing FAST before the allies get the economic advantage. Just as it should be.
Giving the Axis split victory conditions over-compensated for the earlier Allied advantage. The breaking up of the previously automatic USA Homeland NO (and maybe was reduced too?) was good for gameplay but was also a big blow to the Allies. As variance noted, the Balanced mod gives a lot more money back to the USA.
The Berlin complex was made major (as it should be) and the Ukraine complex added (which of course helps Germany a lot). Good changes, but all helped the Axis a lot. It is rather staggering that in the league the Axis, with 15-30 or so in Allied bids, is winning over 60% of the games this year in the league
Never tried it myself, but if it’s popular enough that probably won’t matter. The nice thing about a mod is that you can always mod the mod. The kind of players who are willing to try a modification are the sort who are probably willing to accept minor tweaks to that mod later on, if it still ends up tilting to one side over the other.
I think the hardest thing to do, is simply to persuade enough people that its worth their time to try something new, or something that departs from OOB with the aim of making the game more fun. Usually the problem is an overabundance of mods or HRs, such that its hard to popularize any one mod or rules change over another. Thankfully the people in my playgroup have been pretty open to house rules or set up changes, but even then they sometimes suffer from an HR overload. The desire for consistency sometimes trumps other considerations.
I still wish that alternate scenarios would receive some official support. It wouldn’t be very hard to do. All it’d require is a new pdf set up chart that players could download, or an addendum to the manual/faq providing some different official alternatives.
Unfortunately in the cases where this is done, it’s usually meant as a fix to some oversight or some misprint for the boxed game, rather than as an optional alternate game.
Even the most popular kind of alternate scenerio, the bid game, has never been addressed officially. It’s kind of a bummer, because absent some official guidence/sanction from the designers, the player base tends to splinter over these things, with lots of different ideas, none of which ever seem to gain enough traction to provide a long term solution to perceived imbalances with the OOB game.
I found a few things called balanced mod just by doing a Google search, but could someone help me out and post a pink to the most recent interaction for me?
I found a few things called balanced mod just by doing a Google search, but could someone help me out and post a pink to the most recent interaction for me?
Here you go nicbizz:
@The:
Therefore, I don’t want to render judgment myself on BalMod. But I feel as though the Axis still have a strong advantage. How do more experienced veterans of the league feel about it?
The Axis do not have a strong advantage in the balanced mod game. The Allies were given many, many advantages that in my opinion offset or more than offset the standard need of an Allied bid. You will get more Italy action again (taking the bid away) but the Allies are given a lot. A LOT
I need to play more Balanced Mod games at least with the Allies. It is an interesting Mod.
Sealion is much easier now with the NO +5 for capture of London. It makes it easier for Germany to sustain an early economy. With an more powered Italy now it is easier to assist Germany in Sealion. Germany doesn’t have to waste planes on taking down ships in the Med anymore.
Make sure you guard London round 1.
Unless the BalMod has been, well, modded, my Game Notes shows no revision to any German NOs, to include an addition of a +5 for London cap.
Thank you, sir. I find the marine idea interesting, but I’m not a fan of loading troops onto warships….why not just give transports the ability to carry a marine in addition to their normal compliment (infantry, tank, marine)?
Thank you, sir. I find the marine idea interesting, but I’m not a fan of loading troops onto warships….why not just give transports the ability to carry a marine in addition to their normal compliment (infantry, tank, marine)?
That sounds reasonable, I guess they wanted to give extra value to warships.
The USA NOs are very powerful. Balanced Mod is great because it forces the axis to do their thing FAST before the allies get the economic advantage. Just as it should be.
Exactly!
Also, cyan, the +5 for german control of London has not been implemented yet. Just an idea were tossing around
Thank you, sir. I find the marine idea interesting, but I’m not a fan of loading troops onto warships….why not just give transports the ability to carry a marine in addition to their normal compliment (infantry, tank, marine)?
Why aren’t you a fan of loading marines onto warships? Have you tried it?
Also, we did toy with the idea of increasing transport capacity to allow carrying a marine as a third unit (or to allow 3 marines to a transport). The result was that marines were invariably purchased for every transport, as a consequence of which they were vastly overrepresented on the board. You really should try playing with marines on warships, if you haven’t. Its a lot of fun and has a firm historical justification.
