Cool Axis & Allies (80s Laser edition)

@barnee
Thanks for the feedback. Currently we do not have a printed technology sheet. We just write the name of the technologies on flash cards and place a national control markers and chips to keep track of progress.

As for them being too involved, for a first-time player we disagree. We played with a couple people that had never played Axis and Allies, but after a single game of G40 (keep in mind this already entails 8+ hours of practice) and they were all ready to implement our house rules on the next game.

Our house rules started as a question of how can we re-work the existing research rules to encourage the use of all out of box units.
It was never our goal to have unique technologies/units for each nation. The work done by @The-Captain and company is more complex than what we attempted to do, so kudos to them as it looks like they did a terrific job developing their house rule expansion. We should give their rules a try one day.

@barnee

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything from Der Kuenstler. Here is the piece Gen Manstein was talking about:

https://www.historicalboardgaming.com/Atom-Bomb-3D-Printed-x5_p_3707.html

@CWO:

@Erocco:

@Argothair:

Some early thoughts on your mix of units:

Many of your units are quite similar to each other mechanically, especially on land. E.g., a tank destroyer is C5 A4 D4 M2, whereas a light tank is C5 A5 D4 M2 – do you really need two different units whose statistics are within one point of each other? Another example is Mech. Inf. (C4 A2 D4 M2) vs. Armored Cars (C4 A3 D3 M2). With d12 dice, these small differences will only matter once every 12 rolls. Consider whether your players will want to buy extra minis, carefully squint at the setup, etc., so that they can enjoy the result of these small differences.

I though of this long and hard. I love to have a choice of many different types of units for every situation. I own most of the HBG sculpts so I figured why not.

Just a comment on a possible middle ground between two valid points: your valid point that having special extra units is fun and interesting, and Argothair’s point that having too many special units – some of them having only minor differences between them – complicates things excessively.  A possible way to split the difference is to have a rule saying that, out of the full range of available special extra units, each power is only allowed to buy X types per game (say, for example, 2 types).  This helps to keep things manageable, because each player only needs to remember the specifications for a very limited number of extra types, not for dozens of them.  It doesn’t restrict game-to-game variety because, from game to game, the various players won’t necessarily buy the same special units.

An additional concept to consider would be to have certain types of special units only be available to certain powers, rather than to everyone.  This could result in interesting situations in which the opposing forces can never be precisely matched in composition…and it would also have a historical basis, because in WWII not all powers fielded every type of weapon.

I should start posting some of the work completed to date because that’s exactly what I’ve done. Every Nation has 2 specific units with the exception of Italy which they have one (ideas for a second unit are welcome) and depending on the unit you can only build 1 or 2 per turn. So anything you suggesting CWO Marc has been implemented.

You don’t.

You attack with enough units to hold it.

Sounds like a good idea. I wonder what would happen to try the same on AA42, something like
Russia
Germany
Allies Europe
Japan
Allies Pacific

hmmmm… interesting and worth exploring. thanks for sharing!

I don’t think the US could be charged for passing through the Suez, since they’d have to be at war to get there.

Hi
The link to the wargamer seems to be dead.
Does anyone has a working link for the combination of Europe and Pacific?
Thanks

You make a good point there. Hadn’t really put that much mathematical thought into it.