• Why are single destroyers or Infantry allowed to stop a major task force or army group? Why does this rule exist and what is the intent of this rule simulating? Why are fleets and armies not allowed to break down into task forces/battle groups with the screening group paving the way for the striking  force to continue an attack after the territory has been cleared of the blocker? To declare this move is a pretty simple maneuver to communicate


  • You certainly could change the rules in house games, but I like games where a “brilliant general” can thwart or delay an impending attack.  If we reduce the strategy portion of G40, it just becomes a dice rolling exercise.  The complexity of the game is already relatively low in the scheme of things with not many options for each round.  I would say that most players are contemplating only three or four different options for a given round; this isn’t chess and I don’t want it to fall all the way down to the level of checkers.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    I think most people agree that this rule is unrealistic, and also that the defender should be allowed to retreat.

    However, AxA’s combat system relys on just a few basic dynamics for the attacker vs the defender.  Both attacker and defender want to stack up and stick together.

    Separate teams have the disadvantage of not being able to attack together, but they do get to attack in sequence (can-opening) and defend together.  Small groups of units get slaughtered by maneuver units.  And wherever you do build up in force, the defense is all or nothing (no retreats, limited opty’s to invite in more defending units eg scrambing).

    Because of these dynamics, you don’t necessarily need to put units in areas that aren’t threatened at that moment.  You are encouraged to concentrate your forces and strike in coordinated ways, which simulates combined arms and grand maneuver.

    Blockers add a kind of certainty to how this will play out.  1 unit alone cannot win most battles.  However, it can “win” the defense by blocking a much larger ## of offending units.  This is essentially another defender’s advantage;  he cannot absolutely determine whether he will be attacked but he can place his units in a way that limits what offensive units can come.

    So, to apply that to the Hawaii dance, if the US sits on Hawaii and enjoys its airbase protection and proximity to San Fran, then they can easily be screened out by 1 DD.  Likewise, they can screen an attack by Japan out with 1 DD.  If the USA wants to move into an “unblockable” position (within 2 SZ not 3 SZ) from SZ 6, he has to take a much bigger defensive risk also.  The various map areas that are fought over all have this dynamic–if you want to be able to attack from multiple directions or for certain, you must put units closer to the frontlines, which puts them at risk.

    This is the ‘chess’ that ABH refers to, IMO.  The game has a very sublime risk/reward analysis and while setting up all your microbattles and garrisons and deciding how to spend your $$ are fun, they aren’t really the bread and butter of the game.  The bread and butter are those giant “moving parts” strategic attacks/defenses where you are bringing in stuff from all over the board, and having to plan 1-2 turns in advance on both offense and defense in order to bring the right stuff together at the right time (and also finding a place to land afterwards :)

    So, I feel like the game sacrifices some realism for a really fun chessy dynamic.  It also sacrifices complexity by not looking at things like supply lines, unit quality (all units of the same type are the same), or team based advantages (all teams have the same buy menu), or command/control (that’s you).

    A game about nuclear war could be realistic but it wouldn’t be any fun (build up for 6 hours then nuke it all away).  A game about the Cold War could be realistic but not fun (“I bang my shoe on the podium, again”)

    That’s why they keep making games about WW2–it was a war of maneuver on a grand scale that probably wont ever be repeated in its scope, that has dynamics that can be represented pretty effectively in a game.

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