I played my first game of Axis & Allies Global 1940 House Rule Expansion with the Section 1 rules. I am currently playing a game with the Section 2 rules, and I have to admit: Each time I add another section the game becomes ten times more fun than OOB! My favourite rule is the Extended Pacific Theatre rule, it adds so much depth to the Pacific, and it makes it way more historical than in OOB. The Japanese in my game took Guam, just because it was worth one buck. I have never seen the Japanese take Guam. They also tried to take Midway and Wake, which kind of failed because the Americans took them immediately back.
That aside, I wanted to tell how my Section 1 game went: (no extended pacific theatre though because thats a section 2 rule)
The German player thought that the cheap 5 IPC panzers in this game were overpowered, so he built mostly those only. Because it was the first time he played the game, he did mostly the same moves as in OOB. He destroyed the British fleet in sz 110 and 111, took Paris, Normandy/Bordeaux and Yugoslavia. The Germans tried to overpower the Russians with lots of tanks by building a minor IC in Romania. The Russians were beaten back pretty badly, and in Early 1942, the Germans tried to attack Moscow with a large force. They had an extensive amount of combat factors, more than the Russians had. But after several rounds of combat the Russians came out on top and the Germans had to retreat.
The Eastern Front was very interesting through the rest of the game, with the Germans trying to build up a large force again to destroy the recovering Russian units in Moscow, but they weren’t able to, as the Soviet Union was building a lot of infantry and guards (jeez, these were handy!). The Germans focused their attention on Caucasus and Stalingrad. A lot of back and forth, but finally in 1944, the Russians had a master move. They weren’t able to move their guys to Bryansk, as the Germans had a lot of tanks to counterattack. So they moved all their forces in Samara and Kazakhastan (which were sitting there to take back Stalingrad and the Caucasus if needed) to Stalingrad. The Germans had to attack this stack with everything it had and were able to destroy it with just four tanks left. This was too little to survive the counterattack by the Russian units in Moscow, and the battle of the Eastern Front was won by the Soviet Union
Italy was defeated very early, in 1942 already. They didn’t pay attention to the French destroyer, which was able to destroy an Italian blocker. This way the Americans were able to take not very well defended Rome.
The Japanese Empire was the biggest power on the board. They built factories in Kiangsu(?) and French Indo China, were able to take all over China and Calcutta in 1943. They were able to defeat the American navy, but the Americans had a master move, sacrificed all of their fleets to secure W US (The Japanese took Hawai with three transports and all their fleet. They could take W US if left alone with all the fighters and bombards, but because the Americans reduced it to a small navy they weren’t able to take W US anymore). Only later in the game, the Americans were able to build up a large fleet in the Pacific again.
The Japanese couldn’t do much to win the game, as you need to take an Allied Major Capital. They weren’t in a position to move into Russia, as the British in Calcutta retreated to Persia, and they set up a great defence in Persia. All Japanese tanks and planes were needed for a chance to breach this defence, but they weren’t able to, and in 1945 their forces were even defeated.
The game ended in an Allied Economic Victory. Berlin was turned into a fortress with 50 German Infantry, all their airpower and a lot of tanks, but it would fall inevitably if the game would go on one more round. The Japanese weren’t able to grow much further.
This game was way more interesting than an OOB game. It maybe sounds like a standard OOB game but the extra units added so much depth to the game. Is Germany going to be putting tanks in Berlin, or is it going to place some infantry there in order to turn them into Waffen units? Should I turn this factory into UG now or maybe later? All these questions need to be answered and the side that makes the best decisions wins.
