There are a lot of things I like about DKs map, especially for a game at the level above AA50. But that scenario includes 7 player nations + neutrals and a Soviet Union at like 20 tiles. What I had in mind was more like the classic 5 man set up. In the nova board above the USSR was imagined with 9 starting tiles for a total value of 21. The 1942.2 board has the USSR with 11 starting tiles and a value of 24.
I was thinking something more like just 8 starting tiles, but with a higher total value (maybe 30ish) where that value is concentrated in fewer overall territories. The Soviet Far East in particular I was picturing as a much larger and more significant tile, with a production profile so that it can be reinforced, and a starting unit distribution that has Japan and Russia more or less deadlocked over the Manchuria/Soviet Far East front in early rounds.
Instead of what we’ve seen in previous iterations where its too hard to cover the Soviet Far East against a Japanese amphibious coastal assault (so it just gets abandoned), you could instead get a slow build/stack vs stack along that border, with a simpler map geometry that allows units to shift from the Pacific to the center, the same way it works on the eastern front vs Germany. Fewer tiles and more reach basically.
The dynamic would be an extended Russian center pocket so that the Soviets have a way to get back onto the Pacific side in one or two turns instead of like 3-4 turns, and then have the counter weight stacking vs Japan be along the Manchuria front instead of pulling all the way back to Moscow.
Or I suppose if people are really wedded to the idea of a Soviet Far East deadzone, you could have the main eastern production hub be a larger central tile like combining Vologda, Evenki, Yakut into a single territory. But something on that side of the map that anchors the Russians and gives them a way to function in the far east so they can hold against Japan instead of just retreating. No need for a NAP or anything that complicated, but just trying to stabilize the movement along that front with the production/unit distribution so it’s more gridlocked against Japan. The same decreased distance would also allow for more interesting KJF positions, or favor endgame redirects where the Allies can shift fronts more easily from the Center Pacific to Center Europe or vice versa.
It would be an inversion of the trend from the last three 1942 boards, where Russia got more eastern tiles and fewer units to cover them, to a situation with fewer eastern tiles and more units to cover them basically.
ps. Maybe something more like this?.. just rough hacking up one my old tripleA draft thumbnails in paint real quick, little choppy here but you can sort of see what I’m driving at. Kind of turning the geometry of East Asia around, so that the split in the Soviet Pacific and in China is simpler to reinforce and not such an easy steam roll Japan. Depending on how flexible you get for the ipc totals, you could basically give the Russians their Pacific production hub in either the Soviet Far East tile that encompasses like Yakut to Murmansk, or you could still it in the large tile that encompasses everything between the Urals and Siberia. Either way the Russians could redirect a lot more easily.
I think the same thing for China, where you could still have just the 4 starting tiles of 1942.2 but set up the geometry so its more defensible in tiers, instead of just allowing for a quick punch from the coast to the soviet center.
Perhaps the blocking here is a little too large for some tastes. I actually think you could also create a similarly stable warfront with a lot more tile divisions, but that would require one of the current eastern tiles like Yakut to be worth a lot more, with a larger overall economy, if Russia is meant to be trading constantly for a bunch of low value spaces. But this seemed like it might be simpler. Just with larger high value tiles that really don’t trade hands until someone is going for the win.
