My trouble with dice - and are casino dice the answer?

@Matt-Hyra Alright, Thank you for letting me know!

in my table top test of Anniversary edition, which I just got, i have only needed the battleboard a few times, when units greater than 10 on attack and defense.
It’s interesting how bad dice rolls can doom a larger attack force and reshape the game drastically. In this game the dominant countries have each had a really bad turn of dice rolls change their fate. Another thing for dice is the technology rolls, so far, only 1 country has one and many many IPUs were spent trying to get them, which also affected the games early stages for Germany.

4c181f6e-66ba-48c7-9dda-c7b30a7cc211-image.png

Lol this combat between a destroyer and a sub lasted for 13 rounds. What is your longest DD vs sub battle ever?

Introduction
Hello! I’m sorry if this is posted in the wrong place. I’m new to the forum, but not A&A, and I’m inquiring about a way to help new players.

Lately, I’ve been reading through the rules to Spring 1942, 1914, and the 1940 versions as I’ve tried to form a new gaming group. In my opinion, these rule books are vastly too wordy. (Examples below.)

To that end, I’m wondering whether anybody has rewritten the rule books to make them more concise–and if not, whether anybody would find it a valuable thing for me to do.

To be clear, I’m not asking for a set of beginner-oriented house rules; I’m asking about alternative drafts of the rule books with equivalent gameplay.

Examples
I’ve noticed a few kinds of ways that the rule book can be improved. Here I provide a description and an example for each. (All excerpts are from Pacific 1940, 2e.)

Eliminating redundant explanations and examples

Air Defense: An AAA unit can fire at an air unit only when that unit attacks land and/or air units in the territory containing that AAA unit. AAA units fire only once, before the first round of combat. Each AAA unit in the territory may fire up to 3 shots, but each attacking air unit may only be fired upon once. In other words, the total number of air defense dice rolled is 3 times the number of AAA units, or the number of attacking air units, whichever is the lesser. For example, 5 fighters attacking a territory containing 2 AAA units would have 5 shots fired against them, while those same 5 fighters would have only 3 shots fired against them if there were only 1 defending AAA unit.

This can be drastically shortened by eliminating the redundant examples and explanations:

Air Defense: An AAA unit can fire at an air unit only when that unit attacks land and/or air units in the territory containing that AAA unit. AAA units fire only once, before the first round of combat. The AAA units in the territory collectively fire a number of shots equal 3 per AAA unit, or 1 per attacking air unit—whichever is fewer. Roll 1 die per shot.

Even the remaining sentences could be shortened considerably, but that’s beyond the scope of this point.

Eliminating redundant caveats

Add 2 to each die rolled for a strategic bomber (but not for tactical bombers), then total the result.

I don’t think that this parenthetical note is necessary. If the instruction didn’t mean to exclude tactical bombers, then it would have said “strategic or tactical bomber”, or simply “bomber”. It should read:

Add 2 to each die rolled for a strategic bomber, then total the result.

Utilizing existing keywords

Strategic Bombing Raid: A strategic bomber can either participate in normal combat, or make a direct attack against an enemy industrial complex, air base, or naval base. Such an attack on a facility is a strategic bombing raid (see “Strategic and Tactical Bombing Raids,” page 16).

The word “facilities” is used a dozen times throughout the document, and the meaning of that term is explained in the Unit Profiles section. This should read:

Strategic Bombing Raid: A strategic bomber can either participate in normal combat, or make a direct attack against an enemy facility. Such an attack is a strategic bombing raid (see “Strategic and Tactical Bombing Raids,” page 16).

Introducing new keywords

I don’t have a clean before-and-after for this one, but I’ll provide two ideas.

The mechanics of offshore bombardment, anti-aircraft fire, escort & interceptor fire, and perhaps even kamikaze strikes seem like they could be usefully generalized to the concept of “opening fire”.

Just as battleships and carriers are grouped into “capital ships”, it may be helpful to group battleships and cruisers into “gunships”—ships that are capable of offshore bombardment.

This technique can negatively impact readability if it’s overused or used poorly, so I would appreciate specific suggestions here.

Side-barring historical context

I sincerely appreciate the historical nature of A&A, but the free flow between historical context and the instructions themselves makes finding a rule unnecessarily difficult.

While being invaded by Japan, China is also fighting a civil war. This limits China’s interests to matters within its own borders, resulting in a limited range of occupation for Chinese units. They can be moved only into territories that have a Nationalist Chinese emblem. However, Kwangtung and Burma are special cases. Although they are not Chinese territories, Chinese forces can move into them. These are the only non-Chinese territories that Chinese units can occupy. China can even temporarily control them, but only if it recaptures them from the Axis while India is under Axis control. Chinese units cannot be loaded onto transports.

This can be split to an instruction section:

Chinese units can be moved only into territories that have a Nationalist Chinese emblem. However, Kwangtung and Burma are special cases. Although they are not Chinese territories, Chinese forces can move into them. These are the only non-Chinese territories that Chinese units can occupy. China can even temporarily control them, but only if it recaptures them from the Axis while India is under Axis control. Chinese units cannot be loaded onto transports.

…and a flavor-text section:

While being invaded by Japan, China is also fighting a civil war. This limits China’s interests to matters within its own borders, resulting in a limited range of occupation for Chinese units.

Ideally, I would place this section in a box on the side of the page, similarly to the Combined Arms graphic.

Conclusion
I know that was long-winded, but I think that underscores my point; there are a lot of ways that the rules can be made more concise.

I’d be happy to hear any of the following:

whether you think that a rewrite like the one I envision would be useful to new players critiques of the techniques that I’ve identified, or the ways that I’ve used them in the examples ideas for new keywords if I were to rewrite the entire instruction book, would anyone have the time, interest, and graphic design skill to turn the new version into a pretty booklet?

If you’ve made it this far, then thank you very much for your time and your consideration. GL HF!

@Nuts

👍👍

The dice rules for both “Low Luck” and “No Luck” (that means “No Dice”) ways to play, in pdf file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x4j29q8euk5u8hv/A%26A Dice options.pdf?dl=0
(The texts are not entirely mine, but I do not remember the sources. However, it is from the time when we played on “Game Table Online”)

“Low Luck” Rules for Axis & Allies:
The common way to play with Low Luck is like this…
For every combat round you add the values of the attacking and defending units.
For instance if you are attacking with 4 inf and 1 fighter and the defender has 2 inf, then the attacker has 7 attack points while the defender has 4.
Every 6 points means that you’ll get a hit, and you roll a dice for the leftovers.
On this case the attacker would have 1 automatic hit, while rolling a die and hitting with a 1, while the defender would roll a die to hit on a 4 or less.
Imagine both the attacker and defender had 1 hit each. On the next combat round the attacker doesn’t have to roll (it has 6) while the defender rolls for 2 or less. And it goes on until one or both sides are destroyed or the attacker retreats.
The same applies for ships doing land bombardment during amphibious assaults.
Example: For two Battleships you have 8 firepower points in bombardment, so you get one automatic hit and you roll the dice for 2 or less to get a second bombardment hit.
For the Antiaircraft guns if the attacking airplanes are six you get one automatic AA hit. If they are less than six you roll the dice and if you get the number of planes or less you get one AA hit.
Example: For nine attacking airplanes you get one automatic AA hit (for the first 6 planes) and you roll the dice for 3 or less to get a second AA hit (for the remaining 3 planes).
Alternative rules (for AA guns):
With AA shots you can either roll individually for each plane, or you can roll for each type of plane.
Or just add up all the attacking planes and divide that number by 6. 11 Fighters, 11 Tactical Bombers and 2 Strategic Bombers = 24 Planes, 4 planes are lost.
The thing with that approach is that it allows for very effective strategic bombing campaigns. You send 6 bombers against an IC on a territory worth 8 IPC or more (on Global 40 against a Major IC): 1 bomber gets shot automatically by the AA, resulting in a loss of 12 IPCs but the other 5 bombers deal an average of 3.5 damage to the targeted IC. You keep buying one bomber to replace the lost one and the other guy has to either pay a lot to build units or abandon the IC.
…
…

“No Luck” (that means “No Dice”) Rules for Axis & Allies:
The total firepower points of the fighting units divided by 6 and rounded gives the number of hits. That means if the firepower points are 3, 4, 5 or 6 you get a hit and if they are 1 or 2 you don’t get hit. For example:
Three attacking tanks (firepower 9) causing two hits to the defender (one for the first 6 points and one for the remaining 3 points of the total firepower).
If the opposing fighting units have low firepower (less than 3 points) and no one can do a hit to each other, you must keep the leftovers between battle rounds until there is at least a 3 firepower hit. For example:
Two attacking infantries (firepower 2) eliminate one defending infantry (firepower 2) in two battle rounds.
Antiaircraft guns (AA):
The total number of attacking airplanes divided by 6 and rounded gives the number of AA hits. That means if the number of airplanes is 3, 4, 5 or 6 you get an AA hit and if it is 1 or 2 you don’t get hit. For example:
If the attacking airplanes are nine the AA gun causes 2 hits (one for the first 6 planes and one for the remaining 3 planes).
Alternative rules:
Whenever you have a battle, you add up each of the different types of attacks, just like low luck. The difference is, you keep the leftovers between battles.
No hits are inflicted until a total of 6 is reached.
Example: I attack with 10 infantry against 3 tanks.
Round 1: I have total attack value of 10 (10 infantry attacking at 1). Total defense value is 9 (3 tanks defending at 3). So I get 1 hit, and the defender gets 1 hit. However, the remainder is NOT rolled, but saved for the next round.
Round 2: I now have 9 infantry attacking 2 tanks. My total attack is 9; the total defense is 6. HOWEVER, we add the leftovers from the last round, so my total attack becomes 9 + 4, while the total defense becomes 6 + 3. That makes for 13 and 9 respectively. I get 2 hits, the defender still gets 1 hit. Now I have 8 infantry, the defender has nothing.
Obviously antiaircraft guns become totally useless because you can attack with up to 5 planes, and nothing will ever get shot down (the AA gun total never reaches 6 or more since it only fires once).So the solution is to keep a running total for AA guns not just between combats, but for the WHOLE GAME, and knock off a fighter (or a bomber) whenever the total hits 3.Same thing for battleships.

I posted a video on YouTube a few days ago on the topic of AA Guns and thought I would share it here too. You can check it out using the link below:

Are AA Guns Worth Buying?

Cheers!