Global 1940 & 1943 Expansions Game Reports

@SuperbattleshipYamato veery well reasoned. As an aside, I always thought 4 Inf was too many for Bulgaria anyway.

@The-Captain yea I’ve noticed that unless you move in strength with them, they are susceptible to soviet counterattacks in tradeable TTys.

Now that they only D2, less chance of taking someone with them when they get slayed.

A cool unit. I’ve been using them more for both the Reich and SSR lately

@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.

@sgt-mclusky I’ve been using those rules with my brother from when it first came out for every game version, up until I got the G40 version back in '17- nowadays I just use the oob rules for destroyers for simplicity purposes!

Thats it right there…a lot of realism is sacrificed for ease of play.
Personally, i think global is complex enough and long enough without this add on. I must admit, it is an interesting and simple mod.

@CWO:

@taamvan:

I am not sure what the British government’s back up plan was anyways if Sea Lion was successful.

The British government may not have had an actual “backup plan”, in terms of something serious and concrete and specific.  My impression is that Britain’s civilian and military leaders were focussed on preventing an invasion in the first place, and on defeating it if it did actually occur, and that they were sufficiently confident that they could accomplish one or the other of those goals that they didn’t need to give any detailed consideration to what to do if Britain ended up facing defeat.  Hitler, similarly, didn’t give serious consideration to invading Britain until he was forced to admit that Britain wasn’t going to come to terms with him after the defeat of France.

It’s quite possible that British government considered the possibility of setting up a government-in-exile in Canada (or elsewhere), but “considering the possibility” isn’t the same thing as preparing a functional contingency plan.  And in fact, there would have been two good reasons NOT to work on such a functional plan.  First, it would have taken up time and resources that could have been better used elsewhere, even if it only amounted to a small number of staff.  More importantly, preparing such a plan – even in secret – would have been politically very dangerous.  Churchill had famously been proclaiming in the House of Commons that “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”  If word had somewhow reached the public that the same Churchill was secretly preparing plans to decamp to Canada, it would have had two very serious negative effects: it would have told the public that Churchill believed that Britain genuinely risked being conquered by Nazi Germany (which would have been very bad for morale) and it would have convinced people that Churchill was hypocritical on a monumental scale (which would have ended his political career).  It would also have destabilized the British government, which was the last thing Britain needed at that time.

No, I completely understand why Churchhill did that, he was a very ballsy man and someone who was needed for UK but you’d still think you want some kind of back up just in case. I am sure his staff and the Royal Family would AT LEAST retreat to Ireland if need be.

@CWO:

Depicting a single regiment would be problematic in terms of game scale.  In general terms, a game on the scale of Global 1940 represents (admittedly in very abstract terms) the actions of units that are mostly the size of army groups and fleets – and, furthermore, of army groups and fleets which have no specific identity other than their nationality.  It would be hard to justify saying that one particular regiment-sized unit, with a specific name, ought to be added to the game; by that rationale, there are hundreds of other regiments that could be added too.

The obvious exception to the above principle is the single fighter which represents the Flying Tiger squadron in China…so it’s not an ironclad rule that units smaller than army groups and fleets are never represented in the game.  It can be argued, however, that the Flying Tigers are a special case because of their high profile, and because in the game China lacks aviation forces of its own.  China doesn’t lack infantry, however, so adding a USMC unit doesn’t bring anything distinctive to China’s forces.

Additionally, Global 1940 has no rules that govern riverine operations – which is understandable, because the game map doesn’t depict any rivers.  Even the Saint Lawrence, which is huge in real life, isn’t depicted: on the map, it looks like a strip of land.  There are a few lakes depicted, plus a few canals and narrow straights, but no rivers.  So a river patrol unit in China would literally have nowhere to go.

If you just using A&A Pacific, 1940 (2nd Edit.) as a “Stand Alone” game only, and using this as a “Special House Rule” scenario it wouldn’t be problematic and would make this interesting for the folllowing reasons - By the rulebook, the U.S. and Japan are not a war yet until Japan attacks first (which would be stupid to do outright) and if this is played in the “House Rules”, Japan may place their all of their units in the Sea and Land zone of Kiangsu Province. HOWEVER, they DO NOT recieve the IPC for it until either ALL American Forces in China (the 4th Marine Regiment and the Yangtze River Patrol at Shanghai) are either evacuated out of China and headed towards either the Philippine Islands (which both actually did do in 1941) or eastward towards Hawaii or one of the outlaying Island outposts before war is declared or Japan decides to “sneak attack” and goes after the American Forces in China and wins, that is when they finally recieve the IPC for the Province. Until then NOTHING, it would be a “Eyeball to Eyeball” scenario in the “Special House Rules” to see who blinks first. And thanks for reminding me about the AVG (the Flying Tigers") in China, i will definitely add them in the “House Rules” as well.

Are you working on a setup for this? I’d be willing to try it out as long as it doesn’t alter the OOB map at all.