AA50 on Steroids!

@Witt

Thank you for your comment. I guess we think the same way.

Lowering the tanks‘ attack value for two Axis powers and one of the Allies has already changed a lot, because especially Japan has to rely heavily on tanks when marching though Asia. Attacking with „2“ instead of „3“ takes 33% of their power away. The UK usually is less aggressive and needs less tanks. The US can provide that element while establishing in North Africa, Norway or France.

But the idea is still in my mind to enhance UK’s firepower for the later stages.

Hi @cloud7707 you could try adding an AA Gun to china instead. I know Oztea did it for his Global mods and i thought it worked well fwiw :)

China Factions:

Mao’s Red Guard Take clearly different soldiers from another Axis and Allies game you own. 1 troop may spawn in either Ninxia or Chingai per round.

Chaing’s Nationalists: 1 troop spawn per Chinese coastal territory controlled. Take clearly different soldiers from another Axis and Allies game.
*The rules for Anniversary edition still apply (half of territories rounded down) representing unaligned Chinese units. These may attack with either the Red Guard or Nationalist but not with both. If a Communist force loses to Japanese and retreats, it must attack a Nationalist army if there is one adjacent. This represents the infighting which crippled Chinese forces and suspicion the two factions had against each other during the conflict.

Zhang Xueliang: son of a powerful Manchu warlord Zhang Zuolin who wished for the restoration of Manchu dominance of China. Northeast Chinese forces pledged loyalty to this Independent opiate infused warrior. Who will he align with?
Discuss: If the majority of players decide to engage Zhang in the game, he overcomes his opiate addiction and womanizing ways. His loyalty to either Japan, Chinese Nationalists or Chinese Communists will be determined by the dice. Place an industrial center on Manchuria if not one already, or fully repair one. The IPCs for this region are now worth 4.

1 Zhang politically embraces communism and joins Mao’s forces. Place a tank, and three soldiers on the area.

2-3 “Communism was a cancer while the Japanese represented a superficial wound!” Zhang screams while surging onto the board with five soldiers allied to the Nationalists.

4-5 Zhang allies with the Japanese to restore the Qing Dynasty. Two Japanese soldiers and two artillery pieces placed. An attack on Soviet forces must occur within two rounds or Zhang will ally as a neutral Chinese force.

6 Zhang dies from an overdose

My Manchu grandfather was a destroyer captain for the Chinese Nationalists and passed down stories from this time. Manchuko’s politics were more independent than many realize. Historically Zhang sided with the Nationalists to help key victories and recognized as a hero by all Chinese. The scale of this struggle was as large as any European front, therefore, more infantry should be represented!
Have fun :)

I think you’re asking a lot of the right questions: how to add more variety, how to make the game more truly global in scope, how to create advantages for the Allies without overcorrecting. I’m not sure how well you’ve thought through some of the specific changes that you’re recommending.

Moving the British ships from Gibraltar to east Africa does nice things for a British naval presence in the Indian Ocean, but it makes it way too easy for Germany to win the Battle of the Atlantic – Germany can now routinely take out all of Britain’s ships in the Atlantic on the first turn without taking too many risks. This means that Germany can totally evacuate France on turn 1 and probably also on turn 2, which gives Germany a big advantage against Russia.

The Sea Lion threat is probably exaggerated – sure, if you spend 100% of your economy on ships and planes for India, then London could be in trouble, but it’s pretty easy to build, say, 4 infantry in London and still have enough cash left over to place a variety of units in India. Britain starts with 43 IPCs, and London’s not that hard to garrison.

Meanwhile, Japan’s ability to take India or use it as a base to threaten Russia is almost entirely gone. One of the key threats the Japanese have in OOB Anniversary 1941 is building a factory in Indochina on turn 1, capturing Burma turn 1, and then threatening to build a factory in Burma on turn 2. If Japan pulls this off, then it doesn’t matter if Britain has a factory in India, because Japan is still outproducing Britain 4:3, and Japan will wind up with all 3 factories, which can then churn out infantry and tanks to head for Stalingrad. On the other hand, the only way Britain can prevent Japan from pulling this off is by sacrificing its entire starting force of troops from India and Persia, which is expensive and leaves Egypt vulnerable to the Italians.

In your version, Burma is only worth 1 IPC, so there’s very little point in having Japan build a factory there. Japan can’t take Bengal until at least turn 2, and the UK starts with a factory in India, so even if Japan gets a factory in Indochina right away and an eventual factory in Bengal, that’s very unlikely to be enough to deal with the forces Britain will have been accumulating in India proper. The Indian factory is almost 100% safe against anything short of a massive naval invasion – but that naval invasion is much harder to pull off assuming even a modest USA presence in the Pacific, because Britain now has two extra warships in the Indian Ocean, plus a starting factory there.

I think the dance of attacks and counter-attacks you outline in West Africa is entertaining, but unrealistic in terms of strategy – if you’re playing to win, then nobody cares enough about French West Africa to bother sending a transport there. Allied transports are much better off going to Morocco or Gibraltar, and Axis transports are much better off going to Gibraltar or Egypt.

Finally, I don’t think an Indian factory is likely to have any effect on the war on China – it’s 3 moves away from the nearest Chinese territory, and likely 4 or even 5 moves away from the Chinese front lines by the time forces actually arrive.

What all of these admittedly nitpicky corrections add up to is a sense that your changes won’t actually deliver that much variety. You get a different scenario with your changes, but it will always be the same different scenario: Germany wipes out the British Atlantic fleet and then charges hard for Moscow while Britain easily holds London and India and stalemates Japan. The USA can choose to either knock out a weakened Tokyo (and try to get to Tokyo before Germany gets to Moscow) or rush toward Paris and Rome (to try to set up a stable beachhead on the Western Front before Germany gets to Moscow). Other than the USA’s single choice of whether to go to the Atlantic or the Pacific, nobody has any interesting grand strategy decisions to make. Italy has to fight for Egypt, Germany has to fight for Moscow, Russia has to fight for Moscow, Japan has to fight just to hold onto a decent income, and Britain has to defend London, Egypt, and India. The details will vary from game to game based on tactics and dice, but I predict you’ll see a lot of the same general campaigns over and over again.

You may be interested in this earlier thread about splitting India and splitting the Indian Ocean:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=41826.0

Small change to the rules.

I did my playtesting on TripleA where Afghanistan is adjacent to Chinghai.  I had the opportunity to play a live ftf game last night and noticed that on the real board the Himalayas lie between Afghanistan and Chinghai.  Therefore…Afghanistan is no longer a selectable neutral by China…they may take Mongolia only.

I remember right after AAR came out, almost five years ago, playing a game of AAE with tanks that defend on 3. It was horrible, horrible idea. Germany just got too much out of that one. But reduced prices on fighters and carriers didn’t seem to break the game as much. Germany builds lots of fighters, but so do the UK and US. Nobody builds carriers in AAE unless something unusual has happened anyway.

At any rate for both AAE and AAP besides the reduced price on fighters and carriers to match AAR (and 24 VPs for AAP) my group plays with the rules as is. Transports are any land or one tank, tanks defend on 2, etc.
But now with AA50 there’s a lot of change. The problem with wholesale just changing the unit stats is that setups were designed for the original stats.

So I have a few questions:
Do you think fighters that cost 10 and carriers at 16 ruins or damages gameplay in either AAE or AAP? Especially considering escorts for SBRs it might be a concern.

Any consider going through and tweaking the setups for E and P to make them fair for the new unit stats? It might do good to freshen them up a bit. I think if well done it could further enhance the Pacfic especially. Convoy values, of course, are a concern.

What about tweaking setups to Europe to add Italy? Without Sub-Saharan Africa this might be pointless, but maybe the oil money alone would be enough.

yea i added in planes as attackers but if non transports are in the sea zone, they must attack as normal as per OOB.

well it is KISS.

just have defenders fire first in every round and remove loses then attackers fire.

for more realism…

You can also limit the number of units landing each round limited by the IPC value… so in france you can land 6 units 1st round, 12 second, 18 third.

The attackers cant get all the pieces on the beach in one load.

also cost the attacking player one IPC for each land unit used for this purpose. ( this is not a picnic son)

Another thing is to roll a die for sea conditions. 1-3 you can land, 4-6 you cant. Its not like "hey lets invade today… hows the weather?.. why do you ask?.. isn’t it enough that we just decide we are gonna land 1 million men today with no care in the world?.. To me this is asinine that they don’t have something in the rules to cover this.