Broken, Busted, or Both

@thrasher1
I don’t think it’s “hardcoded” as you say it is. Look at other games that start with Japan in their 1941 setup. Both pacifics, global,AA50 41…in each one Japan goes before Britain.
Both A&A1941 and zombies have this awkward situation where japan has a 1941 setup, before pearl harbor, yet…britain goes first? Japan doesn’t have the money islands yet to offset the alpha strikes.

I feel like it would be beneficial to the game to tweak the turn order first and adjust starting setup in response. As even with zombies there has been a feeling that “it takes too long” with some groups I’ve played with(meanwhile many of these same people liked how in D-Day both allied players move and collaborate together.) I like A&A and want it to succeed, but I feel we need to examine some of these “hard coded” aspects that may be outdated.

@Striker

I refered to the standard ‘world map’ Axis and Allies games.
Please play around with it and share your experiences here.

@thrasher1
Yes, and I still think you are comparing apples and oranges, as the standard world map games have japan in their 1942 setup, well after japan has entered the war and already made their economic gains.

@Krieghund, any idea if gameplay of AAZ would drastically change if Zs would follow the regular rules regarding taking control of an area?

I would say it would make zombies more powerful, as players would have less of a chance to react to territories being depleted of normal units.

@taamvan ,

I asked this question specifically here: https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/35212/sacrifice-a-unit-and-trigger-zs-gambit-move-and-the-z-camouflage-card-must-you-play

@thrasher1 Yeah, I think we need to look at this game as a different beast and not through the lens of the core games. While this strategy is crazy and overpowered mitigating hordes of zombies throughout the war campaign is clearly an extra challenge for the Axis (more so than the allies) that can’t be ignored if you want to take and hold territory. If Germany simply wants to take Russia out of the game quickly and take Russian IPCs they are welcome to rush Russia, but yeah, this will become a zombie controlled territory most likely. The end result would still benefit the axis but not at greatly as in an 1942.2 game.

I don’t see this immediately as a flaw, but as a characteristic of the game.
But I really don’t see how the axis have any chance to mitigate zombies properly without zombie technologies.

I understand wanting to limit luck for tournament play but I don’t see this game being a great tournament game at all, although it could be fun to play at a conference with enough beer is flowing.

For tournament or otherwise it feels like there needs to be a reliable way to acquire zombie tech that isn’t based on randomly drawing cards. Creating zombie stacks is obviously a benefit for the defenders, so the attackers should probably be rewarded too for taking on stacks of zombies. Perhaps granting a zombie tech for x number of Zs killed in a single battle either in addition to or instead of the cards.

I’d also like to see the technologies a bit more evenly balanced.
Maybe I’ll post in house rules instead of clouding the discussion here, but I think some community rules could lead to a better second edition for this game.

I think the Z42 variant has much more potential to be fun and needs even more attention/refinement. Larger national budgets should make the game feel a bit less swingy.

I was skeptical but I think is the first bold attempt at creating an A&A game in an alternate universe and it will have to undergo revision to become solid. And by solid I mean a fun romp of a beer and pretzel experience. I will never take a game of this too seriously, but I will laugh more during sessions of AAZ than any other war game and there will be some interesting tactical situations at times. But some refinement is clearly needed.