Simplified National Objectives v1.0 for G40

I am thinking of adding a third research table to our G40 games. I believe one or more might have been suggested already.

1. Self-Propelled Artillery Artillery can move 2 spaces and can blitz when paired with tanks. Infantry and mechanized infantry paired 1:1 with SPA attack at 2.
2. Super Carrier Aircraft Carriers can transport 3 aircraft (fighters and tactical bombers).
3. High Speed Transport Destroyers can transport 1 or 2 infantry
4. Convoy Escorts Enemy units disrupting convoys ignore roles of 3 or more.
5. Mine Layers Destroyers can lay mines instead of moving, attacking or defending. Anti-Submarine rules are not applicable when laying mines. SZ that is mined do not impact friendly units. Enemy units entering a mined SZ roll 1d for each ship. Each ship that rolls a 6 is hit by a mine. Aircraft on carries that hit a mine can fly to a friendly territory or carrier up to 5 spaces away; if there are no applicable territories or carriers then aircraft are lost. Mined SZ is cleared after enemy contact.
6. Improved Transports Transports can carry 2 infantry plus one additional ground unit

Howdy folks. I’ve got a series of simple house rules that add a little bit of historicity & complexity to the game’s political situation without requiring new pieces, trackers, loads of exceptions & things to remember, etc. They’re intended to each be a module drop-in addition to a set of rules. I’ve playtested these roughly 3-5 times each & am looking for additional feedback. I make no claims to uniqueness or creativity–these were constructed with LOTS of taking from the community & as such, I’m offering them back to the community.

Here’s one of my favorite: Slightly Scarier China:

China may place infantry on any originally Chinese territory which has no enemy land units on it. Only as many units may be placed in a territory as twice the IPC value of that territory. China never purchases Artillery, it is given by a modified Burma Road National Bonus: 3 IPCs & +1 Arty in Szechwan if Burma Road is open. Chinese units may go anywhere in China as well as:
Korea, Burma, Shan State, Siam, French Indochina, and Hong Kong. They may never collect income from these additional territories, even if they control them.

First of all, to clarify for everybody: the Chinese Coast is originally-Chinese! Japan just starts with it; read the rules.

This is just like any of the million Chinese Guerilla rules out there. Japan’s got to keep an infantry on every territory or Chinese dudes pop up behind the lines. In practice, we found that to be actually too powerful for China, and made it impossible for Japan to hold any part of the continent for more than 5 turns if they wanted to adopt a Pacific strategy.

While it was fun with an aggressive Japan, and accurately represented the way you had you throw money into China to make any minor progress (you’d be surprised how much Chinese guerilla placement slows you down after 2-3 turns, if you haven’t played with it yet), it didn’t represent well the other way the pendulum swung–it was too easy for China to seize the initiative & end the forever war.

As a result, we’ve found that forcing China to distribute its builds hampers its ability to form doomstacks. Additionally, forcing offensive units to be shipped from the south really makes it hard for it to press the advantage in the north without Soviet help. We found this feels a lot better.

One note: we typically play with a “Coiled Japan” setup that gives Kiangsi and Kwangsi to China & moves the Japanese units there further north, representing a few months earlier than the OOB setup. This also really slows Japanese progress & makes a J1/J2 closure of the Burma road impossible, ruling a classic Calcutta crush out entirely. If you don’t do this, I’d recommend removing a Japanese infantry from each of the coastal territories (not Manchuria or Korea).

This rule pairs well with:

200th Division (swap a Yunnan Inf for an irreplaceable Chinese tank) Gobi Wasteland (Kansu, Tsinghai, and Sikang have no economic value) Can’t Send Tanks Over the Desert (the border between west China & the USSR may only be traversed by aircraft and infantry)

Overall, this is a big swing in the Allies’ favor, probably about 10-15 IPCs worth of bidding. The Gobi Wasteland rule might be required if the extra rounds of Burma income prove too much for your Japan player to overcome.

I use them in my game but not G40. Have tweaked them over the years. You roll for 2 each country and use whole game. If you want I can post my chart.

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Sorry for not getting back to you sooner, but it’s been a crazy year.

I know that there is evidence of Dutch transports, and I’m not refuting that. I’m simply stating that the addition of a transport makes the new Dutch units too powerful on the game board, and grossly unbalances the game in favor of the Allies, which is a bad thing.

My solution, after play testing, is to give the Axis some units to balance it out, and I’ve edited my original post to reflect this.

@Caesar-Seriona said in G40 Benelux (Belgium/Netherlands/Luxembourg) Setup:

@JustLuthor:

@Herr:

I like the general idea though of course it would have to be carefully balanced. As for the units, I’m not much in favor of the tank in Scotland, for realism’s sake. The Dutch had one small tank at home. The Belgians did have a significant number of tanks but evacuating them to the UK was evidently impossible. Having two Benelux infantry units there is already more than enough compared to the French who were far more numerous.
Dutch New Guinea might have an infantry unit, though. Dutch resistance continued throughout the war there, and the Japanese never completely conquered that territory.

I can’t find it now, but in my research, I came across a Dutch tank unit raised in England after the fall of the Netherlands. For balance’s sake, maybe it should be 1 Artillery to represent Luxembourg’s limited contribution to the allied war effort. And maybe it should be only one infantry in England for both balance, and scale.

I couldn’t find any Dutch 1940 Order of Battle for Dutch New Guinea. I only found references to DNG being reinforced after Japan declared war. This is the best historical argument for a Dutch transport in the Pacific, though I still feel it should be up to ANZAC to ferry Dutch units around for balance’s sake, which is empirically more important than historical accuracy.

Another reason I don’t stress accuracy, is that it’s a slippery slope that eventually leads to completely revamping the game; not just the setup, but the map, and game mechanics as well. I would certainly like to do this for my own amusement, but it’s hard enough to get a game of Global going. I don’t want to compound that problem by creating an even more complicated game with 40-something countries, resources, trade agreements, diplomatic agreements, governments in exile, technology, a dozen new units, prison camps, espionage, sabotage, food rationing on the home front, and the Bretton Woods Conference.

Though I would totally play that game.

From my understanding of Luxembourg war effort against the Wehrmacht was the fact their nation did not have a military and only their capital city had some kind of defense and it was the cities police force that fought and surrendered (if I remember correctly) after a day of fighting. So as far as I know, no military campaign of any sort came from Luxembourg.

The Luxembourg government in exile did field a small artillery troop attached to the 1st Belgian Field Artillery Battery (specifically Troop C). They fought in Northern France, and Belgium.

Addressing the issue of unit size, individual pieces in Axis & Allies typically depict the Corps or Army level, as I understand it. However, there are a few deviations to depict smaller, independent commands, such as the two British infantry in Hong Kong and the French and British infantry scattered in West Africa south of the Sahara.

I understand the desire to be able to build every type of unit, but I think that scarcity places correct emphasis on those troops’ elite status. The mobilization rule would be a quirk: the Legion has periodically fought on the mainland (as during WWI, for example). Its frequent foreign deployments are rather a reflection of the fact that the Legion’s peculiar non-national composition gives French politicians greater latitude to pursue foreign policy that has some blood cost.

I think that Frogmen should get to roll a d6 against every capital ship, hitting on a 2 or less. They should have no independent combat value because they operated as small units, not at the division level.

When it comes to Marine infantry, the question is whether you view naval units of any type as indicative of fleets (e.g., a Destroyer could stand in for a single capital ship), or whether you want them to represent actual unit types, in which case I don’t think a Cruiser or Battleship should be allowed to carry Marines. Historically speaking, Cruiser divisions sometimes fielded Marine and naval landing parties, but these comprised perhaps slightly over 100 men when multiple ships combined their detachments.

Think about whether you want to confer advantage to certain units only for certain rounds of combat. The difficulty of remembering when and how to roll for them can be partially mitigated by player aids.

One additional unit type for which HBG makes a piece is the Armored Car. This is especially good if you want to game out the inter-war period. I have developed rules allowing attackers to re-roll a die when an Armored Car is present in the attacking force. This is a play on their role as reconnaissance elements. Think about Cavalry, also. Perhaps Cavalry strike harder versus infantry when they outnumber defenders.

I’ve used cards to trigger the appearance of special units denoted by markers. They can also be used to grant nation-specific bonuses for a single round of play, etc. This works better on much larger maps with a game that is expected to go on a while, especially because the cards can be used as interrupts, which prevents players getting bored between turns.

@Black_Elk:

I have done a lot of experimenting with the AA50 game board, but trying to use G40 rules on it is not something I have tried. I’m curious what you have in mind?

Do you mean like using G40 with an expanded unit roster? In that case it may be possible to include Tac Bombers or Mech, possibly G40 factories (with their restrictions) but I think the air and naval bases would be out, since the movement advantage would bust the map. Not using Air bases would handle the most problematic aspect of G40 on a AA50 board, since you wouldn’t have to deal with scrambling.

AA50 could probably support 2 hit carriers, though that might bust the opening battles. I suppose if you really wanted to retain the repair aspect on ships, you could just attach it to coastal factories, though that might give Japan a decisive advantage over the US in the pacific.

Beyond this, the Tac Bombers and Mech, I’m not sure what the payoff would be using G40 rules over AA50 OOB.

I think AA50 is a superior game to Global in many respects,  especially in terms of the learning curve and the total playtime to conclusion, so I’d be pretty excited to see it on offer if I showed up at someone’s house to find it set on a table.

I’m just spit balling, might be easier to just play by the AE rules rather than go though the work of making the G40 unit profiles compatible with the AE board. It’s been a long time since I played AE, but maybe it’s time to revisit it.

The Russians can go civil war. Interesting idea about the Germans getting cheaper subs and better fighters I might try to impelment those.

Just play w/o them in first game then play with both tech and NO in second game. Start out slow.