GeneralHandGrenade's House Rules

@chrisbump86

Let me know how it goes (I never tried this before, I’ve been a bit busy)!

Updated. Simplified the rules more.

@Topmat

AxA has often been called a “beer and pretzels” wargame, I suppose because it is fairly simplistic and available—FOR a wargame. That’s not because AxA is elementary or easily mastered, its because other wargames tend to be even more rules-heavy and detailed, which makes some of them famously and notoriously unplayable. They may have an attractive theme or rules, but the “chit” game era (60s-80s) built up to a crescendo before it burst. PC Computer gaming was a major catalyst for this; the ASL/Avalon Hill/SSI style games BEGGED for a computer to handle some of the more complex calculations, setup, rules etc.

I think AxA has the general appeal and longevity it does precisely because it appeared after this “First Golden Age”, and is not married to overcomplex or overly realistic considerations, its a truly “abstract” wargame, where each step (building, conquering, purchasing, combat, movement) is fairly simple, but all together, they are complex enough to satisfy long-time players while only barely overwhelming the new ones.

And, the fact that AxA doesn’t try to simulate or do everything a wargame possibly COULD do is the very reason why there is enough room left in the game to add more, but that’s not necessarily desirable. If the game was already highly complex, rich and random, it would already have many of the things that people are trying to add to it—but its likely no-one would play it. I think most of the more complex house rules systems for AxA fall into this trap, by pushing the complexity/time investment level out of the Goldilocks zone.

I bought a “political” Avalon Hill chit game in 1992, Republic of Rome (4/4 difficulty rating). When I read the instruction manual, I was blown away-- I understood nothing of what i’d read… until I read it for nearly 2 years. We only played it in college 4 times, and the Republic consistently lost as a group. Its a great game, but its also an example of a highly complex simulation game with a narrow audience from the first era–very few people still play these games because they lack any general following or appeal in the internet age, and have been replaced by computer-style games, like the Total War and Europa Universalis series.

The Nazi practice of infiltration of the politics of a neutral they want on their side. They finance, provide support and weapons to overthrow and supplant the existing government.

Yugoslavia
Hungary
Romania
Bulgaria
etc.

There’s no official answer that I know of.  A&A is such an abstracted game that, in one sense, it would be meaningless to say that game unit X corresponds to real-world military (or naval) formation Y.  Given the scope of A&A Global 1940, however, the various unit types on the map would roughly correspond to large formations if we were to assume that the allocation of units in the rules corresponds to real WWII numbers.  As an example, Germany’s invasion of the USSR was carried out with over 150 divisions – so from that perspective, the small number of sculpts on the actual board could at best only correspond to army groups.  At that level, it shouldn’t even be possible to differentiate between the components of the army groups, nor even of their consitutent armies or corps; the highest-level tank formations in WWII were, I think, armoured divisions and (one level further down) tank brigades.  So one way to look at the game would be to imagine that we’re not actually seeing the military formations themselves, but rather a patchwork picture showing some of the elements of those formations, with some of these elements being high-level ones and others being lower-level ones (like tank brigades).

Good points, General Veers.  Thanks for your insights.

I was referring to sun tzu’s comments and land battles, sorry for any confusion

What taste better, an apple or an orange?
Depends on the person.

Like Cmdr Jennifer said:
@Cmdr:

The destroyer in my mind is the submarine of old with the ability to defend itself against air attack in place of the sneak shot ability.

In my mind, the submarine is the new piece on the board.  Here’s a cheap unit you can toss out for naval attacks and it helps keep your opponent honest.

The sub is a new type of unit, which acts differently than in any other A&A games.

Sure, there are some things we miss about it - but now subs can move about without getting hit by aircraft!

This is awesome!  :-D

A side note: sub stalling is not a problem any more. (A&A Pacific)

Think of subs as a different unit, with new strategies to come up with.

Think of subs as an attackers unit.    :-)

One example, after the US fleet has moved away from sz56 (West coast), subs can be mobilized in sz56 and catch up with the main fleet with out needing AC/ftr protection from Japan’s aircraft.