"East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion

“The 2nd Great War”

My idea for using the TGW map for a WWII scenario basically involved breaking the war into phases, starting in 1939 (after the surrender of Poland); in hindsight, 1940 (after the fall of Denmark and Norway, with the USSR annexing the Baltic states) probably makes more sense.

Basically, most countries would be inactive, until certain triggers happen. (I never got deep into the rules/setup, so this is mostly just a thumbnail sketch.)

Phase 1: Germany invades Belgium and Netherlands; once conquered, Italy becomes an active Axis power
Phase 2: Germany invades France; UK becomes an active Allied power; once France is defeated (Axis capture 50% or more of French territories by IPC value, OR capture Paris) Vichy France is established
Phase 3: the minor Axis countries (“Danubian states & Finland”) becomes an Axis power, allowing Axis units to move through their territory; they become an active Axis power after Germany conquers Yugoslavia
Phase 4: After conquering Greece, the Axis can invade the USSR; after the USSR is attacked, the US joins the war (as an active Allied power/contributing full income/etc.)
Phase 5: Once Vichy France is defeated (Allies capture 50% or more of Vichy territories by IPC value) Vichy France is absorbed by Germany
Phase 6: Once Italy is defeated (Allies capture 50% or more of starting Italian territories by IPC value) Italy is absorbed by Germany

Major Neutrals: (all use 8 IPCs for purposes of influence scale?)

• Spain: favours Germany or France(?)
• Yugoslavia: favours Italy or USSR(?)
• Turkey: favours Danubian States or UK(?)

Territorial Changes (to reflect 1940)

• Germany: add Austria, Bohemia, Carinthia, Tirol, Poland, Galicia, Denmark, Norway; remove German Africa Convoy
• UK: add Mesopotamia, Palestine, German Africa Convoy; remove Ireland, British Africa Convoy
• Italy: add Albania, Carniola, British Africa Convoy
• France: add Syria
• USSR: add Armenia; remove Finland, Poland

New nations:

• Danubian States & Finland: Finland, West Hungary, East Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria
• Yugoslavia: Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro
• Turkey: Thrace, Anatolia, Ankara, Kurdistan

On the topic of homebrews, would anyone be interested in my rules for playing an E&W scenario, using the RISK: Reinvention boardgame?
It’s definitely a lot more of an abstraction, but the idea was to keep some of the same feel as the original.

Let me know if you’d like me to share it here; if so, I’ll go look at my notes and clean them up a bit, then do some posts about the scenario.

Minor gameplay adjustments:

Having had the opportunity to start playing E&W regularly again, I would like to share a few observations:

1. I think the Soviets are capable of winning under the standard rules/setup, but they must play a very strict, 100% IPM strategy. Also, using the straits rule and not allowing aerial retreat from amphibious assaults greatly benefits the USSR.
2. The “Operation: Underbelly” India strategy for the Soviets is (at best) a pyrrhic victory; you’re required to dedicate so many resources to the battle, that you cannot possibly win the war.
3. The Soviets are strongly incentivized to start attacking China, if China is not providing income to the USSR – even in a case where the Soviets are still doing well in the game.

To address some of these things, I have a few suggestions for minor gameplay changes which (if not necessarily capable of fixing any perceived imbalance) could at least open up more gameplay options, and thus allow the game to be fun for longer:

• Change the Soviet’s free counter-intelligence roll to be a free spying roll of any kind.
• Start the Arab League at +0 Soviet, instead of neutral; change the Suez rule such that the canal is only closed to your alliance if the Arab League is contributing income to the other alliance.

In concert, these changes address a few issues.
Since the Soviets cannot really afford to invest in spying (while NATO has an easier time of doing so – and I would argue they must invest in it, to some degree) changing the counter-intelligence roll allows the USSR to participate in the diplomacy game. It also makes it so that this roll is usable even if NATO chooses not to purchase spies. Changing the Suez rule also brings it more in line with the general rules for moving through neutral territories; it always seemed like kind of a weird outlier to me.

This also opens up two distinct options for the USSR: focus on influencing China to increase your income (and maintain the other benefits that come with it), or start influencing the Arab League in order to provide a route of attack into Africa.

Typically, if there is any action in this region of the world, it is the USSR invading the Arab League as basically a “game ender” towards the objective of an economic victory. It is difficult to do a complete, successful surprise attack on the Arab League, since the USSR likely has no navy after the first round or two. By making the Arab League easier to bring under Soviet influence, a different Africa strategy now becomes more viable. I think this is important for gameplay variety, knowing what we now know with regards to going after India or attacking China.

Tech/Spying revamp: Breakthroughs

Coming back to this, the 2nd half of my previous house rule thread outlines what I call the “breakthrough” system; this replaces both the spying and technology phases.

Each nation can make a number of free breakthrough rolls equal to:

the number of free tech rolls they get, under the baseline rules + the maximum number of spies they can have on the board at a time, under the baseline rules

This gives us the following numbers:

• USSR: 3
• WE: 1
• UK: 1
• US: 2

Each nation may also purchase a number of additional breakthrough rolls on their turn, up to the number of free breakthroughs roll they can make; the cost of an additional breakthrough roll is equal to the cost of an infantry, for that nation (2 for USSR, or 3 for any of the NATO powers.) Being that E&W is fundamentally still an IPM game, this is intended to make purchasing breakthroughs competitive with purchasing infantry.

Breakthrough results:
on a roll of 1, you may do one of the following:

• gain a diplomatic success at a neutral alliance (OAS, Arab League, or China)
• gain a full step in one technology tree

on a roll of 2, you may do one of the following:

• gain a diplomatic success at any minor/independent neutral
• gain a half-step in one technology tree

You may only apply one breakthrough to any tech tree, per turn.

Optional rules:

• The USSR may use a 2 to influence China
• (revised NATO tech sharing) If a NATO partner uses a 1 to gain a technological advancement, both other NATO partners may each gain a half-step in that same tech tree. This is still not allowed for the nuclear weapons tech tree.
• (revised USSR counter-intelligence) The USSR may make one free counter-intelligence roll on their turn; if the result is a 1 or 2, this roll can be used to foil a matching NATO breakthrough on the same round, only. The USSR may also purchase 1 additional counter-intelligence breakthrough on each of their turns.

These optional rules combined, would in theory make it easier for the USSR to keep China in the fold, since it also encourages NATO to use their 1s on technology rather than diplomacy.

Essentially, I’ve come to the conclusion lately that nuclear tech is supremely important for the USSR, and the only viable NATO counter is diplomacy. The problem is that the USSR gets free tech rolls AND free rolls to foil NATO’s spies (i.e. their attempts at diplomacy.) In my opinion, this is where the late-game imbalance lies, and short of just completely removing tech/spying from the game (or imposing nerfs on the USSR) the only other real fix is to move towards something where all sides can make any type of rolls they want (i.e. in the base game, US having a free tech roll when they really need a free diplomacy roll, IMO.) Allowing for more rolls overall, should also decrease the randomness by flattening the bell curve. It’s also just fun (in my experience) to get to see more techs in play by more countries, and more neutrals getting active – and allowing that to play into your strategies more reliably.

Analysis of the Early Game

So after getting resoundingly thumped by our forums’ very own @The_Good_Captain (in roughly half a dozen games) earlier this year, I find myself having another big think about E&W lately.

(One thing I should mention was that we hadn’t yet dug up the Imp Games E&W FAQ while we were playing; probably the most significant rule clarification in there was that aerial retreats are allowed. So that will have an impact if/when I ever get rolling with an opponent again.)

Anyways, what we learned is that is it is very plausible (with the round 0 bonus of 20 IPCs) to have the USSR capture basically all of the frontline territories on round 1:

• Norway (2)
• West Germany (4)
• Greece (2)
• Turkey (3)
• Pakistan (1)
• South Korea (2)

What you end up with is an income tracker like this:
USSR: 62 (+4 more, from China)
WE: 21
UK: 32
US: 41

Since this is a Classic-style IPM game, we can translate this pretty easily into units:

33 inf for the USSR, vs.

• 7 inf for WE
• 9 inf, 1 arm for UK
• 12 inf, 1 arm for US
  = 30 ground units for NATO

NATO starts out the game with a sizeable advantage in infantry; even taking into account 10 inf being added in round 0, they’re ahead of the Soviets, 92-70. However, this advantage is largely flattened out through combat on the first round, and by the fact that US and UK are typically going to be producing transports on round 1, rather than landing many units in Eurasia.

Where this starts to tip into imbalance is the fact that the USSR can begin attacking neutrals to increase their economy, right away on round 2. Conversely, it is difficult for NATO to be taking territory away from the USSR by round 2, because they are reliant on transports to do so – in both Siberia and Scandinavia.

I’ll qualify this by saying I haven’t attempted a full-blown Scandinavia focus as NATO in these most recent games (although this is what I’m looking into now.) But with that being said, I’m essentially counting on the aerial retreat rule to tip the balance enough in NATO’s favour, that other house-rules won’t be needed; I’m skeptical that this will be the case.

I think that having some reliability in the round 1 outcomes is important, but it’s becoming clear that maybe the USSR shouldn’t get to win all of the battles. My first instinct is to tinker a bit with the initial setup, but possibly a better starting point is to go back to playing the game without any purchases on round 0, and then slowly start adding a “bid” back in, to see where the numbers fall.

Turkey is probably the hardest nut to crack in the starting setup, and the Soviets using control of the straits to defend their backline has been a cornerstone of the game for the longest time. It’ll be interesting to see if the game still “works,” under a paradigm where the USSR isn’t expected to take Turkey right away. The larger problem is that if every battle on round 1 is a 50/50 proposition between clearing the territory and strafing it, NATO can potentially end up with a lot more air power (i.e. South Korea, Greece, and West Germany) – and that would also throw the balance completely out the window. It might just be time to shake up the status quo.

@tacojohn said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

I think I may eventually try to recreate the E&W Cold War-era scenario on one of the more recent A&A maps - either the Anniversary map or maybe Siredblood’s or one of its offshoots - and work up the starting set ups, territorial control changes, etc.

I’m just looking at the Global 1940 map right now, and I have to ask if maybe doing E&W just using the Europe map would be worthwhile? It sort of begs the wider question of whether a Cold War scenario (particularly with a neutral China) really even lends itself to using a world map.

The Europe side at least already includes a Germany that’s split into east/west/south; the Pacific only has one Korea, and the Dutch islands would be going to waste in an E&W scenario. Really the only intriguing thing (to me) is that you could actually represent Taiwan – which seems like a weird/major oversight from the original E&W. (Particularly when you consider all of the 0-IPC island groups that were included; I have to remind myself that this is likely the result of E&W probably being based directly off of W@W.)

“Floating Bridge” strategy

So I just finished watching this US strategy video for Global 1940, by @GeneralHandGrenade : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHkjC0E42d0

It’s interesting, because I’ve recently been having similar ideas for the UK in E&W – and so the US could probably also do the same type of thing.

First, if you want the UK to be building transports in the Atlantic right out of the gate (and specifically I was thinking of building 2 in Ontario) then you end up with 6 in total. And what I’ve come to realize is that rather than moving your starting transports all across the world, you kind of want to keep them more or less where they are.

The economics are important to consider. If you’re the UK, you can count on a production of 32 IPCs; as I’ve mentioned before, this translates to 9 infantry and 1 armor. You can place 3 of these infantry in India, meaning 6 infantry and 1 armor that potentially need 4 transports to move them from the UK (although you could also place the infantry in Africa.) This leaves you with 2 unused transports out of your 6 (starting with 4, and buying 2 more.)

The reason you want to place 2 transports in Ontario is so that you can be moving all of your units off of Canada and Iceland ideally by rd2. With your ships repositioned to the North Sea or the Barents Sea, the UK can be landing units in Norway every round. If that is not advisable, they can instead land units in France from either the North Sea or the Irish SZ.

If you’re keeping 2 transports in the Mediterranean, this allows you to move units landed in France (from the UK, or Africa) into either Yugoslavia or Greece every round; you can supplement these attacks by putting your bombers into France also. Since WE is likely going to be placing most/all of their infantry in France, they can do a similar move by corralling their 3 transports into the Mediterranean. The US could certainly use this tactic as well, since they can shuck-shuck from Quebec into France quite easily.

If France is well-defended enough by WE’s allies, they can instead place their units in Italy, and go after Turkey; using the WE fighters on the UK carrier is helpful for this. You can also “tag out” WE and UK fighters; if the WE fighters start on the carrier in the Cyprus SZ, they can move 1 space to attack Turkey, and then 3 spaces on non-combat to land in Italy – allowing UK fighters in Italy to attack Turkey and land on the carrier. This is even easier to execute if you’re focusing on Yugoslavia and Greece rather than going for Turkey.

For the UK specifically, the transport you start off with at Italy could easily be moved to the Atlantic (picking up the infantry from Libya and Gibraltar along the way); combined with the transport off Quebec and 2 more purchased in Ontario, this gives you enough transports to fill every round. Alternatively, if you keep this transport in the Mediterranean, that means you would be limited to 3 transports moving units from the UK – but this opens up options on the other side of the map, as I’ll explain below. (Basically, you can place 2 infantry in Singapore, with the remaining 4 infantry and 1 armor placed in UK – enough to fill 3 transports.)

Typically the Australian transport moves 2 inf from NSW to India; it could then be moved towards the Mediterranean. (It’s worth noting that typically WE will transport 2 inf from Indochina to India on rd1 as well, meaning that the WE and UK transports will both be lined up off of India, at the end of rd1 – so they would be moving towards the Mediterranean at the same time.) If you wanted the India transport to be on the same schedule, you can have it pick up the 1 infantry from Singapore and land it in India.

Lately I’ve been considering moving it to Australia instead, so that on rd2 it can pick up the 1 inf from Queensland and the 1 inf from Singapore, to land in Burma. Then, you could place 2 infantry on Singapore every round, and;

• a) move them to India
• b) move them to Korea, then have the transport swing back and land the infantry in Burma on the subsequent turn

However, this assumes you want to be putting more production into the region than just the 3 infantry in India. Even if you don’t keep this transport around Singapore, going down to Australia means it won’t reach the Mediterranean until round 4 at the earliest. This whole play also means that you’re not sending any transports down to pick up units from South Africa (at least not any faster than they can walk their way up to Libya) and you aren’t sending those units to India if/when you do pick them up – they would instead be going to Europe.

More generally, the reason for moving away from an India-centric strategy to more of a Europe focus as the UK is because IMO the new meta is one of the Soviets overrunning all of Scandinavia; a UK with lots of transports in the Atlantic is probably the best counter/deterrence to this. (I should probably mention that this makes it very important early on to decide whether the UK will keep their bombers in Europe, or move them to India – possibly even to Western Canada en route to Japan, to assist in Korea or Siberia.)

This focus also gives more flexibility (doubly so compared with an India IC) since units transported from the UK could land in Komi, Karelia, Norway, West Germany, France, or even Portugal. By contrast, I’ve found that placing in India only serves to create a stalemate, and to “mobility-kill” any units committed there. And the pipeline from South Africa into Pakistan or Iran is a lot less of a sure thing than you would expect.

With a weaker UK presence in India, I think it’s valuable to have the US be able to send more units there – so that’s a topic/tactic I will likely touch on in an upcoming post.

@tacojohn all good, I’ve been pretty swamped myself.
If/when you’re ever ready to get rolling on MapView, just drop me an email.

@imperious-leader said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@the-janus Hey, I am very happy you are so persistent with your fondness for that game, it may take a while but to discuss more on how to access the game so others may participate will facilitate your end and bring this forgotten game to greater light. (I would get a proper file for the map and rules and ask permission of course from whomever). I remember very well all the chatter on IMP games back in the day. Another thing - perhaps you might bring up that space 4X game IMP games made along with the WW1 game and how to get these. I own all three of course, but im lazy to find them in storage. Pictures do alot towards promoting these games as well. Just trying to help!

So, just to recap:

My discussion with Imp Games in the past few years has basically all been 2nd-hand. But, as Mot said earlier in the thread, he was given permission by them to unlock the MapView modules, so that anyone can save games using Imp Games maps, within the MapView application (which Mot programmed/created) without needing to have a serial number/registration code thinger from Imp Games.

What this means:
Currently, the easiest way to play East & West, The Great War, and/or Crucible is through the MapView utility.
The forums won’t allow me to upload the installer (because of its size) so anyone who wants this file should get ahold of me in direct messages, or contact someone else who already has it (i.e. @Motdc or The Good Captain.)

2nd:
Obviously, Mot was given access to a hi-res scan of the E&W map in order to create the MapView module for the game; my understanding is that Mot does not have express permission to distribute (or use for any other purposes) any versions of the E&W map which were given to him by Imp Games, in good faith, for the purpose of creating the MapView module. If I am incorrect on this, hopefully Mot can provide some more context. At the very least, it is my understanding that he is choosing not to make these materials available, at the request of Imp Games.

Furthermore, I do not have express permission to distribute (widely/publicly/freely/etc.) the rules document for E&W. That being said:

1. I cannot play the game if my opponent does not have access to the rules.
2. Imp Games has said implicitly (through their decision allowing people to freely use MapView) that they wish for us to continue being able to play their games – this was the tone and tenor of the communications I have indirectly had with them.

All this is to say, I am willing to distribute an electronic copy of the rules to anyone who expresses an interest to play the game; I do this at my own discretion, on a case-by-case basis, and with no intent/expectation of any monetary or other compensation for myself. I’m doing this only for people to be able to play the game together, and with the understanding that Imp Games also wishes for us to be able to freely play their games together.

At this time, Imp Games is not making the rules commercially available, but this does not explicitly mean they have disclaimed any rights to exclusively distribute or sell the rules – so, I would ask anyone using such materials to take that under advisement.

@motdc said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

I think I have made all the technical changes needed, but feel free to let me know if you hit a glitch: http://www.motcreations.com

P.S. MapView can be downloaded from here ^^^

Tactics: Japan IC vs. Philippines IC

Back in the old days, it was not uncommon to see the US player build an IC in Japan. In one of my games from earlier this year, however, I found myself placing an IC in the Philippines instead. I’ve done some more thinking about it since then, so I’d like to go into some depth about the pros and cons.

The simple geography paints this picture, for the Philippines IC:
Every round, you can “shuck-shuck” units built in the Philippines to either Burma or the Koreas. Since the Philippines is a 2-IPC territory, it would natively be able to produce 2 infantry every round (enough to fill 1 transport.) Adding an IC means you could produce 2 more units of any kind, which gives us a couple of distinct options for what to place there every round:

• 4 inf: costs 12 IPCs, fills 2 transports
• 2 inf, 2 arm: costs 16 IPCs, fills 3 transports
• 2 inf, 1 arm, 1 ftr: costs 23 IPCs, fills 2 transports

(Another thing to consider is that even if we’re only producing 1 arm/ftr/bmb in the Philippines per round, we’re still getting use out of that IC, so it’s adding some value. If it’s primarily supporting the UK in India, we want to build up some tanks for offense, so that we can eventually be in a position to attack.)

Now, let’s delve a little deeper into the economic situation, to figure out which of these options to consider.

It doesn’t make a ton of sense to exclusively build our Pacific units out of the Philippines; without an IC, Japan can produce 6 infantry every round – enough to fill 3 transports, at a cost of 18 IPCs.

I generally work from the assumption that the US will lose South Korea, and the USSR will be able to hold it for a round or so; this means we can expect the US to have a reliable income of 41 IPCs.

6 inf (Japan) = 18 IPCS 
+
2 inf, 1 arm, 1 ftr (Philippines) = 23 IPCs
Total: 41 IPCs

This means that if we plan to produce these units every round as the US, we won’t have anything left to contribute to Europe.

The idea of producing a fighter every turn is that it can be used to defend India, since it has the movement to make it there in one turn. This is obviously not cheap, so let’s replace the fighter with a 2nd armor.

This leaves us with 7 IPCs to commit to Europe, which IMO is kind of the bare minimum; 7 IPCs is enough to fill one transport, using either an armor (say, from the Eastern US going to France) or 2 infantry (such as from Iceland, going to France, or somewhere along the Barents Sea.)

The trickiest part about going with 2 inf + 2 arm for the Philippines build, is that this requires 3 transports in order to move. Generally, the idea is that the US would spend rd1 building new transports, rd2 moving transports around and using them to collect starting infantry/armor, but by rd3 the shuck-shuck pipelines need to be in place.

Since the US starts with 3 transports in the Pacific (which can be filled by Japan all on its own) a strategy where the Philippines also needs 3 transports is going to take an extra round to set up. My general thinking is that you will want to use the Philippines IC to produce a transport on rd2, but otherwise its purpose should be to produce ground(/air) units – not navy.

So, if we’re only using 2 transports for the Philippines, and we’ve ruled out building a fighter, that reduces our options to producing 2 infantry or 1 armor there (plus the 2 inf base) every round – maybe even alternating between the two options. This means we’re spending 11 or 12 IPCs here, leaving 29-30 IPCs; after we factor in Japan’s placement (18 IPCs) we’re left with 11-12 IPCs. What this translates to is 4 infantry or 2 infantry and 1 armor for Europe.

(Another option, if the decision is made to only use 2 transports around the Philippines, is to build 2 armor there every round; this would tend to imply that they would always be sent to Korea, supported by infantry being sent from Japan.)

Chukchi Sea Pipeline

So this is what the geography dictates we could do, without building a new IC (in either Japan or the Philippines.) Essentially, if we want to put armor into the theatre, we can do this by using the shuck-shuck in to either Eastern Siberia or Kamchatka, every round:

• The reason to put an IC in Japan, is to put armor into Eastern Siberia, Kamchatka, or Korea every round
• The reason to put an IC in Philippines, is to put armor into Burma or Korea every round

Using this simple axiom, what becomes clear is that the Philippines IC extends the ranges to which we can project force, in a way that the Japan IC does not.

The other big mark against the Japan IC comes from the economics side of it:

• 12 inf: costs 36 IPCs, fills 6 transports
• 10 inf, 2 arm: costs 40 IPCs, fills 7 transports
• 6 inf, 6 arm: costs 48 IPCs, fills 9 transports

With the first option, we’re left with only 5 IPCs (i.e. 1 armor) to send to Europe.
The second option, we’re spending all of our income (save 1 IPC) cranking out units from Japan. These armor have to be going to Korea in order to make purchasing this IC even worth it – otherwise, we’re better off building armor in Western US. (The other thing to consider is, do we even need a Japan IC if/when we conquer Eastern Siberia?)
The third option, we’ve gone completely over budget trying to maximize production on Japan; keep in mind, as we take territories and gain IPCs, we can actually place infantry directly into those territories, making this new IC even less valuable as the game goes on – not more.

The other thing to consider is that by using the Japan IC, we’re not able to use our 2 infantry production capability from the Philippines; if we were to not put an IC in either territory, we could still fill 4 transports (with 8 infantry = 24 IPCs) every round, plus whatever we’re able to ship in from North America.

Nuclear Deterrence

The other reason to consider the Philippines IC, is in the case of the USSR developing nukes early in the game; with their free tech roll, this outcome is basically an inevitability. As we can see from above, a nuke meant to deter the US Pacific fleet would likely be built in Eastern Siberia, and have an effective range of 3 spaces (launched either from a bomber or by ballistic missile.)

This means that any shuck-shuck from Japan OR from North America is essentially ruined. Your opponent may not want to waste 20 IPCs to clear your fodder and leave you transports intact, but if the first nuke doesn’t get them, the second one will (or an upgraded nuke.)

If you base your entire Asia shuck-shuck around a Philippines IC supported by 3 transports, this means you’re moving 2 inf and 2 arm to Burma every round. Your transports end their turn in the Burma SZ, safely out of the range of most nukes (barring long-range aircraft.)

Countering Soviet Ambitions: Stopping the Domino Effect

Another move to consider is the one depicted here: moving an AA gun from the Philippines, to defend India.
(Yes, this will leave your transport out of position for a turn, but this can be mitigated a bit if you move the US transport from Italy out towards this direction.)

If the Soviets are going for an early India attack (like the one I have outlined in the “Operation: Underbelly” write-up) getting an AA gun to India on rd3 can do a lot to foil this plan, and tip the odds in NATO’s favour – since the attack is reliant on massing the entire Soviet air force.

On rd1, we can place an IC in the Philippines; on rd2, we can use the IC to produce an AA gun, and a transport with which to move it. This spares the UK from having to commit to an India IC build, just for the purposes of getting an AA gun in-theatre.

(As I’ve talked about before, the India IC removes a lot of the flexibility the UK potentially has, since they can easily spend all of their income just in this theatre. However, if the spectre of Soviet nukes in the early game is threatening the Atlantic fleet, the India IC becomes a more attractive pipeline for the UK getting boots on the ground.)

Overmatch Capability

The other thing to consider in this theatre is the production capacity of the USSR; between Kamchatka, Eastern Siberia, and North Korea alone, they can put out 8 infantry per round.

This means that just to maintain parity, the US needs to commit a minimum of 4 transports to the theatre – enough to fill with infantry from Japan and the Philippines, every round. Of their 41 IPC budget, this would leave them another 17 IPCs to spend on units in North America, to send to either Europe or to Asia. This translates to 4 infantry and 1 armor – an additional 3 transport loads.

The case could be convincingly made that the US actually must spend all of their production in this theatre, in order to push back the Soviets.

Conclusions:

There are essentially 3 different ways of getting armor into Asia:

1. North America: into Kamchatka or Eastern Siberia
2. Japan IC: into Korea (or Kamchatka or Eastern Siberia)
3. Philippines IC: into Korea or Burma

Comparing the effective builds (from the previous post) which use the Japan IC (i.e. 12 inf vs. 10 inf, 2 arm) it’s basically a choice between saving 1 transport load to send to Europe vs. spending everything in Asia. Being that the US starts with one transport in the Atlantic, the only reason not to set aside 5-6 IPCs for Europe every round is if you’re going to move that transport through the Panama canal – which seems a bit silly. However, keeping a transport in the Atlantic serves to narrow the effective Japan IC builds down to just the 12 inf option (or more likely, a variation such as 10 inf, 1 arm); the only reason to do this would be to opt for Korea over Kamchatka/Eastern Siberia.

If we build the Philippines IC instead, we can produce two comparable builds by adding Japan’s native production into the equation: 10 inf vs. 8 inf, 2 arm – leaving us 2 or 1 transport loads (respectively) to send to Europe. However, it’s worth noting that the 10 inf option only requires 2 transports by the Philippines, whereas the 8 inf, 2 arm option requires 3 transports to be there.

If the best we can hope for is 2 arm per round being sent into Korea, I think I’d lean towards the Philippines IC; if we’re just looking at raw unit output, Japan is better than North America or Philippines IC strictly for going through Korea. One thing to not discount in this calculation, is that if we are committing 6 or 7 transports to a Japan IC, we can consider sending 1 or 2 of them down to Burma every round – effectively doing the job of the Philippines IC.

(One other minor note with the Japan IC is that it would be in range of Eastern Siberia w/r/t strategic bombing. This means we would want to purchase an AA gun to defend the IC, if the USSR moves their bomber to this side of the map. An IC in the Philippines is just far enough away from Eastern Siberia; it can still be threatened from North Korea, however.)

Cost Comparison
Another thing to consider is the setup costs; money saved on ICs and/or transports for the US should be invested in getting a spy (or possibly on additional tech research.)
Starting with 3 transports in the Pacific means:

• Japan IC requires building 3-4 more transports, allowing for 1 or 0 transports in the Atlantic
• Philippines IC requires building 2-3 more transports, allowing for 2 or 1 transports in the Atlantic

With the Japan IC, we can just always build 3 transports; we might as well bring the transport over from the Atlantic if we want a 4th – since we would not have any cash left in our budget for the Atlantic anyway. (Again, this would take about 3 rounds to get over to Alaska, which probably isn’t worth it. But only adding 3 transports to the Pacific limits what the Japan IC can do.) So the cost of transports + the IC = 39 IPCs
With the Philippines IC, we’re either building 3 transports for the Pacific, or 2 transports for the Pacific and 1 transport for the Atlantic – meaning it costs the exact same as the Japan IC, to properly support.

(Probably worth noting is that with a 41 IPC budget, our most likely overall builds for the US are either 12 inf, 1 arm or 10 inf, 2 arm – 7 transport loads in total. If we budget 6 inf for Japan, that means either 6 inf, 1 arm or 4 inf, 2 arm to be split between the Philippines and North America. An IC in the Philippines supported by only 2 transports has the flexibility to put out either 2 inf, 1 arm or 2 arm or 4 inf. This would leave 2 transport loads for North America each round – one or both of which could be allocated to the Pacific.)

Revisiting the fighter purchase
However, an interesting alternative would be to build the Philippines IC, but commit only 1 transport to it. This means we could spend 41 IPCs on 6 infantry for Japan, plus another 2 inf, 1 arm, 1 ftr (as described previously) but, split these between the Philippines and the Atlantic (i.e. rdX you would place 2 inf, 1 ftr in the Philippines and 1 arm in Eastern US; rdX+1 you could place 1 arm, 1 ftr in the Philippines and 2 inf in Eastern US.)

By not adding a 2nd transport to support the Philippines, we likely have the cash to invest into a spy (if not on rd1 then by rd2.) Again, I think that fighters are primarily helpful for defending India, but they can also fly from the Philippines to attack Korea, and then land on a carrier in the Japan SZ. And if you’re producing 1 or 2 mechanical units out of the Philippines every round, it feels like you’re getting better value out of that IC purchase, if nothing else.

If we’re budgeting 12 IPCs every round for a fighter, we can also tap into this budget to replace our spy, if it gets killed. Probably the biggest drawback to this is that NATO is already in such a crunch to get ground units in play, just to maintain parity with the USSR. I’m not sure of the long-term viability of fighter builds, in the grand scheme of things.

Actual Conclusions (for real this time)
Overall, if I’m going to place an IC as the US, I’m really leaning towards picking the Philippines. I think it just creates way more options than going the Japan route.

Where the Philippines IC starts to pull ahead, is in any of the following scenarios:

1. early nuke tech by the USSR
2. shipping AA to India by rd3 (as opposed to rd4)
3. getting fighters to India
4. if UK is going stronger in Europe (and therefore weaker in India)
5. after Eastern Siberia falls to the US

@the-janus said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

“Floating Bridge” strategy

I came up with an alternate way of setting up the UK’s transport pipelines, and I just wanted to quickly share it here:

Quebec transport:

1. moves 1 arm Quebec to France
2. moves 1 inf Gibraltar to Algeria. (1 inf Libya moves to Algeria)
3. moves 2 inf Algeria to Italy/Yugoslavia/Greece
   

India transport:

1. moves 1 arm India to Tanganyika. (2 inf South Africa move to Mozambique)
2. moves 2 inf Mozambique to Sudan. (1 arm Tanganyika moves to Libya)
3. moves 2 inf Sudan to Italy/Yugoslavia/Greece
   

Italy transport:

1. moves to Red Sea. (1 arm South Africa moves to Tanganyika)
2. moves 1 arm Tanganyika to Italy.
3. moves 1 arm Libya to Italy.

Australia transport:

1. moves 2 inf NSW to India.
2. moves to NSW SZ
3. moves 1 inf Queensland + 1 inf Singapore to Burma

Canada transports (x2)

1. placed in Ontario, end of rd1. (1 inf Western Canada moves to Ontario)
2. moves 3 inf from Canada + 1 inf Iceland to France/Norway/Karelia/Komi
3. moves 1 inf from Iceland + 1 inf, 1 arm from UK to France

By doing this, you’ve moved all ground units from Canada, Iceland, Gibraltar, Africa, and Australia onto the Eurasian continent, by the end of UK3. You’ve also gotten all UK tanks into Europe, and 3 UK transports into the Mediterranean. (If you purchase 2 more transports on UK2, you’ll have a total of 4 in the Atlantic.)

You’ve also got your remaining transport set up right by Singapore; if you place 2 inf there on rd3, they’re ready to be moved to India/Burma/Korea as desired. If you don’t think you’ll want to be using this transport to support India for the rest of the game, move it up to Korea at a later round, and then up to the Chukchi Sea on the following round; make sure you’ve got some infantry from Canada ready to load up, so that you can start sending them into Kamchatka once the Americans hold it.

Basically, you want enough transports up by the UK that you can contest Scandinavia, with the help of your air force. The other thing you can do is land defensive infantry in France, and then use them with your Mediterranean transports (and your armor) to attack Yugoslavia. This lets WE focus on Greece or Turkey, which helps them with their income (whereas UK liberating these territories does not.)

@the-janus said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

Analysis of the Early Game

Since this is a Classic-style IPM game, we can translate this pretty easily into units:

33 inf for the USSR, vs.

• 7 inf for WE
• 9 inf, 1 arm for UK
• 12 inf, 1 arm for US
  = 30 ground units for NATO

I think it’s important to discuss how some of the basic mechanics lead to what I perceive as the stalemating that takes place in E&W.

First of all, the placement rules generally remove the single drawback of infantry (their speed) for the USSR.

With 33 infantry at their disposal, the USSR can easily commit 19 infantry to Europe. (I use this number for easy figuring, as I’ll explain.) In order to match this, NATO needs to spend all of the output for both WE (7 inf) and UK (9 inf, 1 arm) in Europe, plus the unofficial minimum US contribution of 2 infantry (i.e. from Iceland.) This would mean the UK not contributing anything to India, and solely relying on the US to handle all of Asia. It’s just not viable.

The other problem is that WE is the weakest of the 3 allies, but they are the only one who can “trade” territories with the USSR and still gain income. This is where liberating allied territories is a huge weakness for NATO; even if the USSR has to abandon West Germany for a round (in order to push into Switzerland, for example) NATO isn’t able to hold the territory AND collect income from it.

The other big problem contributing to the stalemate is this:
The USSR can’t strafe a multinational force.

Now, literally, as far as rules are concerned they are still allowed to do this. But in practical terms, the biggest advantage the USSR has over NATO is that no single NATO power has enough forces in Europe to overmatch the Soviets. If the Soviets strafe France, what happens is that they will simply peel off infantry from the ally/allies with the fewest infantry in the territory, making the remaining ally stronger and better able to counter-attack.

The other thing is turn order: since WE goes first, that means their attack against the Soviets needs to be the strongest – but they’re the weakest ally economically, and therefore the least able to absorb casualties. And if the NATO followup attacks fail, then WE is basically dead at that point – not to mention, this still produces no added income for NATO, even if they succeed. The obvious solution is to have each NATO power project as much force as possible, into one theatre… but this assumes that NATO can outmatch the USSR’s placement in any of the main theatres – which they can’t. (If anything comes close, it’s probably the UK’s Scandinavia strategy.)

The situation in E&W is effectively NATO having to play as the Axis, needing to be very aggressive right out of the gate in order to not fall behind – while also having the disadvantage of needing to carefully set up their supply pipeline, as the Allies typically do. (Which is very strategically limiting. NATO has little or no wiggle room to “redo” their transport pipeline, and no time to reposition their air forces.)

The USSR does not have either of these problems.

They don’t have the same problem as the Allies, since the USSR is not stuck just placing infantry in Moscow and slowly marching them towards the front lines (because of the placement rules.) There are basically no wrong ways for them to set up their pipeline: just place on the front line (or as near as possible.) If you overcommit to one theatre on one round, it is easily remedied right away on the next round; they also don’t suffer the Axis problem of having to split their income between Asia and Europe, meaning they are always able to respond to what the NATO pipeline ends up being, and more often can dictate to NATO, putting them always on the back foot. Again, they can do all of this while essentially passively supplementing their income by gobbling up neutrals – something which NATO can do nothing about, nor can they mimic.

So overall, if the situation is one where the Soviets can never strafe, but NATO can never attack, then the side with the superior economy is going to win, over time; from turn 1 onward, this describes the USSR. It is piss-easy to set up a Soviet first turn where the US cannot land in Korea or Kamchatka; WE and the UK will have a hard time liberating Norway (and an even harder time holding it.) The only place NATO can really roll back the Soviets on rd1 is in Yugoslavia (and maybe Greece.) This means out of the 33 infantry the Soviets can build on rd2, NATO can only realistically expect to roll this number down by 1 or 2 – meaning the USSR is still overmatching their output by 1 unit, on rd3.

For the US to have any hope of a breakthrough in the east, they basically need to be able to liberate South Korea, capture Kamchatka, and successfully nuke Eastern Siberia (mainly to limit its production capacity) all on rd2. And they still need to be putting all but one transport-load worth of production towards the Pacific, in order to have any hope of overmatching the Soviets in time.

(Another problem with nukes is that the US is at best spending 20 IPCs to destroy 20 IPCs worth of infantry, whereas the USSR taking out 5 transports with a nuke equates to spending 20 IPCs to prevent 30 IPCs of infantry per round from reaching the mainland – and destroying 40 IPCs worth of transports. The former needs the 3rd-tier nuke tech, while the latter only needs the 1st-tier. NATO just does not have a counter to this; the USSR with nukes vs. without are just two completely different games.)

This pipeline predicament also means that the UK likely doesn’t have the time to relocate their main source of offense (bombers) since they need to be constantly attacking, as early as possible. This in turn means they cannot ever have enough offensive units for a breakout from India. Again, this just showcases how few options NATO really has. And if India is being defended by a mix of UK and US units, their chances of ever breaking out are even less – much the same problem NATO faces in France.

@the-janus said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

(Another problem with nukes is that the US is at best spending 20 IPCs to destroy 20 IPCs worth of infantry, whereas the USSR taking out 5 transports with a nuke equates to spending 20 IPCs to prevent 30 IPCs of infantry per round from reaching the mainland – and destroying 40 IPCs worth of transports. The former needs the 3rd-tier nuke tech, while the latter only needs the 1st-tier. NATO just does not have a counter to this; the USSR with nukes vs. without are just two completely different games.)

The Case for Revamping Tech and Spying
I wanted to highlight this bit from the previous post, just for some important context. Once the Soviets get nukes, the game is effectively over for NATO; since the USSR gets a free tech roll every round, this is basically bound to happen every game, sometimes as early as the first turn.

In my opinion, if you want to test strategies (or you want something of a balanced “tournament” rule set) I’d strongly suggest removing technological progression from the game.

Unreliable Intel
I would probably throw spying out with the bathwater, too. NATO can’t really afford spies (if they want to keep up with the IPM game) and the fact that the USSR gets a free attempt to kill one each round, makes it almost not worth the investment. Likewise, if you want the game to run in a more even/predictable fashion, you can’t have Chinese troops being pulled out of North Korea; it’s just too much of a swing in favour of the Americans.

The problem with getting rid of spying, is that diplomacy (i.e. random luck) is NATO’s only counter to Soviet nukes. The difference being that the Soviet’s random luck at getting nuclear technology is free, whereas NATO’s is at a huge cost – and subject to interdiction… which is also free, for the Soviets.

I should probably explain how NATO can use diplomacy to counter Soviet nukes. Basically, it’s by no longer needing transports, and thus nullifying the threat of nukes to the NATO fleet. For example, if the UK places an IC in India, they can basically spend all of their income in the theatre; if the US influences Spain and Thailand, they can put ICs into both. This would allow them to produce a total of 5 infantry and 5 armor on mainland Eurasia, without the need of transports – and at a total cost of 40 IPCs, effectively maxing out their budget.

The problem is, NATO is relying on blind luck in order for this to succeed – “hope is not a strategy” and all that. So I’ve been thinking of some ways to tackle the uncertainty a bit.

The Accelerationist Route
First off, if you’re playing any scenario where technological development is still allowed, you probably need to consider whether the game would be better off just giving Soviets nuclear weapons tech, from the start; as I’ve said before, it’s a very different game, but at least NATO can plan for it from the outset, and not have to worry about trying to “redo” their pipeline. Another option is to start the USSR with just a half-step in the nuclear weapons tree, meaning they gain the tech on a roll of 1 or 2 – still leaving some randomness, but also making it more of a foregone conclusion.

Countering Soviet Nukes
In that case, I think the solution would be to make it easier for NATO to influence neutrals. The first idea that popped into my mind is to make it more like “activating” neutrals, such as in A&A 1914 or 1940. You might have to scale it somehow, based on the IPC value of the territory and/or the amounts of units the neutral territory gets. But with Soviet nukes in play, the US has to be able to reliably get Spain and Thailand on their side in the war, or the game is effectively over.

One possible limitation on this could be that for each neutral in Asia that is activated by NATO, China moves one step towards the USSR. I think you would also have to limit this ability strictly to just the US, rather than allowing any NATO power to do it; maybe allow the UK to activate neutrals in Europe(?)

Countering the Soviet IPM
While I was thinking about that, I was also trying to think of some way to balance the Soviet’s ability to freely invade neutrals. Basically, if the average neutral is worth 2 IPCs, that means they’re worth 1 infantry per round, to the Soviets; if your intent is to even that out, you need to do something which gives NATO 1 infantry per round.

So, looking at the IPC track for the neutral alliances, we see that moving the OAS from +0 to +3 would be worth 1 infantry to NATO. Without carving anything in stone, my basic idea would be that for every neutral the USSR invades, NATO can shift a neutral alliance one step.

You might have to build in some sort of limitations for this to work, possibly including:

• This cannot be used to influence China, if it would cause Chinese troops to be removed from North Korea
• This cannot be used on a neutral alliance more than once
• This cannot be used on a neutral alliance if doing so would increase their contribution to its maximum IPC value

These restrictions could at least leave some room where spying is still useful, if you wanted to keep that as part of the game.

Other House Rule Ideas
With the intention of reducing or limiting the Soviet’s ability to gain nukes, I’ve spitballed a couple different ideas.

1. The USSR can only gain nuclear weapons technology through the use of Espionage. Somewhat historically accurate, this rule essentially requires the USSR to buy a spy if they want to get nukes – much like how NATO has to buy spies, if they want to counter the Soviet nukes. Fair is fair.
2. The USSR cannot use their free tech roll until after the US has used theirs; the US player may opt not to use this roll at all. At a bare minimum, this prevents the USSR from getting nukes on turn 1.

@tacojohn Did you ever consider porting E&W back onto the Classic map? I know it at least crossed my mind.

I really had fun with the version of E&W that I came up with for RISK: Reinvention

Rules Discussion: Neutrals

One of the unclear rules that we came across in playing E&W again earlier this year, is what happens when neutral countries are captured and re-captured, or attacked but not completely conquered.

From the rules text:

If attacked and not completely conquered, neutral countries
will join the opposite side, banding with the power nearest to
them.

Ok, so, how do you define “nearest”? Is it the nearest territory owned or nearest territory controlled? Is it based on territories, or something else (like capitols)? What do you do in the case where two NATO powers’ are determined to be equidistant?

A similar sort of confusion applies in the case of influencing a minor neutral. Say the US influences Iran, then the Soviets occupy it, but after that the UK takes the territory back; does it revert to US control, or does it become British? The rules aren’t particularly clear on this; for neutral alliances it seems (mostly) pretty clear that (probably) the territories would always remain owned by the power they sided with when attacked.

Anyways, this is just a gap in the rules text that I thought was worth mentioning. It may need to be ironed out with your opponent, before starting to play the game together.

One hot-fix I had suggested was to just across the board have all minor neutrals in Asia join the UK if attacked by the USSR, while minor neutrals in Europe or Africa would join with WE. It’s by no means a perfectly solution, but it’s simple and good enough, IMO. (For example, you could probably convincingly argue that Ireland or Ethiopia should join the UK, or that perhaps the Indonesian islands should join the US, given their proximity to the Philippines.)

This also brings up one of the more weird/quirky questions:
Does the UK share a land-border with Ireland?