Global 1940 & 1943 Expansions Game Reports

@The-Captain You’re absolutely right, but as the Russian player I’ve been glad to see those factories bombed out. Germany has moved the Southern Italy, Berlin, and Paris factories underground as they consider those the main factories they’ll be producing from. The Allies learned this the hard way too the India Industrial Complex took a lot of bombing damage. It’s kind of late but UK may finally put that factory underground.

@barnee said in G40 House Rules Expansion TripleA Games Archive:

@Panther

It’s so we can upvote when we can’t anymore. An upvote is often used simply as a easy way to acknowledge a post without having to type

See my PM, please.

Also @VictoryFirst , please.

Have nations buy units at the end of their turn.

Ships are still repaired at the beginning of the turn, though.

@Franklin_Cain The problem with a 6+5 rule is that the Axis are almost always at or near 11 cities after 6 rounds. Germany with a simple crush Russia assault should have Novgorod (Leningrad), France, Germany, Poland + Italy has Rome = 5 with Volgograd as the relatively easy 6th VC. Japan has Japan, Kiangsu, Kwangtung, Philippines, and with some effort India = 5.

If the Axis don’t have to get those extra cities (8 Europe or 6 Pacific), then they don’t have to extend themselves to get the “last” VC. India is a stretch for Japan, but not terrible if that is all they need. They can afford to lose a few aircraft if they never have to go get Australia or Hawaii. Similarly, the Germans can easily take Volgograd and leave Moscow alone. The Russians don’t have the flexibility to defend both against the Germans so one of them will fall.

Bumping up the number to 7+5 is still putting a lot of pressure on the Allies. The Germans should be able to takedown Moscow by maintaining a good focus in the East. The Allies might be able to defend Egypt and have a sizeable force in the Middle East, but they may not (probably won’t) initially be in a position to takeback Volgograd immediately after the fall of Moscow. So again the Axis “win” without really having to exert themselves. The magic number of 8 was developed after lots of game testing and is a surprisingly good rule.

That all said, changing the VC count is another way (besides the bid) to level the playing field between players of dissimilar abilities. If you wanted to let the newer player take the Axis and lower the VC count, then you could have a competitive game.

Thanks for providing this background information, YG.  I now understand better what you’re aiming to accomplish.  I don’t have a specific solution to recommend that might work for your group, but here are a few questions you and the other people in your group might want to consider.  The answers may provide you with guidance on what kind of point-scoring system might best suit your purpose. Fundamentally, the question to consider is: what kind of accomplishments do you want to reward by awarding points?  Here are a couple of aspects of that question:

First: do you want the rewards to be incremental (round-by-round) throughout the game or do you want them to be based only on the final outcome?  Under the first option, it doesn’t matter so much whether a player controls X at the end of the game; all that matters is how often he controlled it during the game.  Under the second option, the reverse would be the case.  Each option has its upside and its downside.  For example, under a final-outcome-only system, a player who controlled X throughout the game but lost it on the last round would be in the same unhappy position as an investor whose stock portfolio did wonderfully for decade after decade but then crashed in value just before he was planning to sell it to finance his retirement.

Second: Assuming you choose an incremental system, do you want to reward consistency more (or less) than changes?  Example: Let’s say that I’m the Soviet player and that I manage to hold on to Moscow for the whole game.  Objectively, this is a desirable state of affairs (just think of what Stalin would have done to Zhukov if he’d lost Moscow in late 1941), but if the point system only rewards changes (i.e. the achievement of a defined goal), then my success in holding my capital doesn’t give me any points.  Now let’s say that I’m the Soviet player and that, in an 8-round game, I lose Moscow 4 times and regain it 4 times, and let’s say that the point system rewards gains without penalizing losses.  In that scenario, I’d gain 4 points – so I’d be further ahead point-wise than if I’d managed to successfully defend my capital from capture for the whole game.  That would sound bizarre to me.  One partial way to address this problem is by having both debits and credits: giving points for successes and deleting points for failures.  In such a system, losing Moscow 4 times and regaining it 4 times would have the same zero-sum result as simply holding Moscow.  But here we’d face a new question: should two such different situations really translate into the same number of points (in this case zero)?  Or should the point system reflect the view that one of those scenarios demonstrates superior generalship, and hence should be rewarded?  (Personally, I’d argue that the general who holds Moscow for the whole game is doing a better job than the one who keeps losing and recapturing it.)

if people want to know, just look in the back of the AAE40 rule book where it distinguishes all types of units

You forgot to mention the difference in sub mechanics. By the way, we still keep the house rule of not having planes strafe subs without the presence of destroyers in our game of AAR with my group.

This is what I have come up with:

Rommel allows all panzer and infantry divisions in the same province to travel +1 and two divisions gain +1 attack.
Zhukov gains one free infantry division each turn in the province he is in.

Montgomery’s troops gain +1 defense and two or less tank divisions gain +1 attack.

Patton’s advantage is that three or less land units a battle gain +1 attack.

Yamamoto’s fleet can move +1 and airplanes on carries in his fleet can go on kamikaze missions with +1 attack. (In a kamikaze mission, the plane can go its full range and is lost after attacking.)

A general is dead if his unit is killed.