[Global 1940] France Goes First Idea

@barnee
Thanks for the feedback. Currently we do not have a printed technology sheet. We just write the name of the technologies on flash cards and place a national control markers and chips to keep track of progress.

As for them being too involved, for a first-time player we disagree. We played with a couple people that had never played Axis and Allies, but after a single game of G40 (keep in mind this already entails 8+ hours of practice) and they were all ready to implement our house rules on the next game.

Our house rules started as a question of how can we re-work the existing research rules to encourage the use of all out of box units.
It was never our goal to have unique technologies/units for each nation. The work done by @The-Captain and company is more complex than what we attempted to do, so kudos to them as it looks like they did a terrific job developing their house rule expansion. We should give their rules a try one day.

@Krieghund

Oh…

I’ve been playing wrong this entire time???

:disappointed:

Thanks for clarifying though. I’ll take that into my next physical game.

Oil has been a very common house rule discussed. I found Burans oil house rule and that is my favorite one I’ve seen thus far, but there is one thing I don’t entirely like. There seem to be 2 main uses for oil in most of the forums.

A- you turn oil in for money. This one doesn’t totally make sense to me because oil doesn’t necessarily mean lots of money. As I look at it, Russia had a ton of oil in the war, but that didn’t mean they could build a massive air force right away, it just meant they had a lot of oil.

B- you use up X amount of oil to move as many of one branch as you want. Like X oil allows you to move your army, or your navy, or your airforce. This one doesn’t makes less sense to me because ANZAC obviously would need less oil to move it’s 3 boats than Japan would to move the entire IJN, yet with this rule, they both require the same amount of oil.

I assume I’m not alone in thinking this. There are some more specific ones I saw a while back but they were still pretty close to what I said in B. The idea of having a supply line intrigued me, as I got started in this by wanting to reflect the U-boat disruptions against convoys better, but I don’t like that the US fleet could be anywhere in the pacific and still get fuel easily just because of a supply line. Maybe that could work good, it just doesn’t seem totally realistic, however on land it would make more sense to me.

Does anybody have a good rule for how to use oil to fuel units? I’d like to stay close to the numbers involved Burans house rule and be close to historically accurate. Of course, I can’t totally accurate in regards to oil production as Baku in the Caucasus was producing like 10-15 times as much oil as Romania.

Thanks for the input. This is Burans rule is referring to-https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/23944/oil-rule-s

Also slowly working on making my own pieces and designs for my new resin printer. I’m going to open up an online store for new pieces, boards, rules, and other items in the near future.

This rule is part of the Axis & Allies Global 1940 2E, House Rules Expansion

For The Allies to be able - to some degree - to replace the severe losses of ships and transports during the early stages of the War, Landing Crafts are a plausible solution.

Though limited in numbers they still pose a serious threat for example to Axis-occupied Europe.

Landing Crafts are cheap, high value transportation means.

G40 Landing Craft.pdf

Okay so I that title sounds kinda clickbait-y and I apologize for that. To get it said and done, no I don’t think France should be scrapped entirely replaced with Britain or something. I just think that as is, it needs way more to be an actual nation worth having a person play if you have a lot of people while still being balanced. So we all know that 99% of the time, France is gonna fall on the first turn to Germany. Maybe they pull some weird new mega brain ultra plan but that’s pretty unlikely. Paris falls, Germany gets cash money and the French are left playing the most minor and conservative support role known to man.
This really sucks for you when you first pick up the game and think maybe there’s gonna be some interesting new faction with special rules like China but instead you’re just a stepping stone. So here’s what I would suggest:

Instead of having just France it be France and a collection of the other minor allied powers in exile. So France, Dutch, Poland, etc. Change Congo to this new faction and place an infantry down there. Maybe one infantry in Indonesia and one in Indo China, an extra fighter in Britain, and maybe a Transport in either the Atlantic or Med.
But that still isn’t really much of an improvement for the player, so similarly to China I would say that the exiled Allies should get some special way of recruiting units. It’d be very small like at the end of every turn roll a die and if you roll a one you can place one infantry down in any territory of yours worth at least one IPC. While I do want to make it more interesting for the exiled Allies player, I don’t want to make them too powerful to significantly hurt the Axis. To counteract this maybe make a few territories they own worth an extra IPC? They won’t be making money once Paris falls and a few more IPCs I think would add up to a rough equivalence. Territories like Normandy, Indochina, Tunis, etc.

I’m not gonna pretend like I’ve actually tested this yet and I’m also fully admitting that I might be accidentally suggesting some horrible completely unbalanced idea that would throw it to the Allies. But this is just a little idea I thought up to try and help make things slightly more fun for the poor French player. Is this a good idea? Am I a big dumb-dumb? (Those are not mutually exclusive.) I really want to know your guys’ thoughts on this before I actually try it or anything I could do to change or fine tune it so please let me know!

@Charles:

For several years, my team and I have been working on a 1945 setup called “The Game to End All Games.”  It follows what would have happened if Russia remained neutral and Great Britain fell.  China and India are considered to have signed a separate peace   The main Axis power is Germany which controls most of Western Europe (Eastern Europe, Russia, and mainland Asia are out of play), Iceland, French Equatorial Africa, Gibraltar, and Nigeria and Gold Coast.  Italy Controls Egypt and East Africa and is poised to march to South Africa with a German expedition to Free French Cameroon and Vichy (a new minor power) troops supporting.  South America has United and is a new playable ally.  German navies are ready to attack the Americas anywhere.  Meanwhile, Japan is planning to attack Australia and Hawaii and Alaska.

For potential inspiration, you might want to have a look at interesting (but short; it’s only a page long) essay by David Fromkin in the book “What If? : The World’s Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been”.  The essay is called “Triumph of the Dictators”, and it points out that in early June 1941, just before Barbarossa, most of continental Europe and large portions of Asia were under the control of the Axis powers and of either their allies or of powers with which Germany and Japan had non-aggression pacts.  It paint a grim picture of the U.S. and of the surviving democracies as being (if I remember Fromkin’s phrase correctly) isolated in a hostile world.

@AlphaKappa:

 Which Neutral Powers would have the economic equivalent of a “Minor Industrial Complex”?

I think Spain, Turkey and Sweden are the obvious neutral powers that have a large enough industrial base to build their own tanks, planes and ships. Depending on how the sculpts are going to look, I think the Italian burnt orange will fit Spain, and maybe the french dark blue will fit Sweden. Turkey already got their units.

Maybe use the medium green for Brazil, and lime green to supply China.

Maybe even Canada can have own nation specific units ?

The Russian maroon will fit Mongolia I guess