Just moved and looking for a new group of people to play with.

Name: Brandon
Location: Austin, TX
Games: A&A (I brought G40 and Bulge from home, but will play anything)

@Imperious:

Axis and Allies is a light wargame, it’s plays quick easy compared to HOI. The OP was asking if Hearts of Iron was essentially similar in play ( this is how i took it).

He didn’t even mention A&A. He just asked if HoI was good.

Go ahead and advise the OP to waste his money on it thinking it’s like AA.

He said that he already has it, not “should I get it?” It seemed more like you just kinda took a chance to bash it.

@Imperious:

1. It’s not a good game if you don’t have time to invest playing it.

So then by your logic if you’re very busy all the time, then Angry Birds is the best game ever made and every other game is terrible and not worth spending cash on, because if you don’t have time, it’s not good.

4. just spend countless hours just making one move. Got it.

That kinda tells me that you don’t understand how the game works. Left click stack of units, right click target. Move is done. What takes time is PLANNING your moves, and watching them unfold. Anticipating your military needs months before the front actually requires them, trying to force pockets and avoid encirclements, changing your strategies as they go on, etc.

I like you, IL, but you just kinda seemed like you jumped on a chance to bash a game you personally don’t like.

HoI3 actually lets you dumb down the game even further than A&A if you so choose. You could potentially automate every single part of the game and just name an objective for your HQ’s. Then it’s really only as complicated as you want it to be.

In the Pacific board, the USSR and Japan aren’t at war yet. Japan has taken India. Can Soviet tanks move into Persia in the Europe board and block Japanese movement, since the Soviets are at war on the Europe board?

@Ghost:

what pieces do you recommend to use for each country :?

I’ve used Germany for NATO, Japan for Warsaw Pact, Japan for SEATO, US and USSR are normal.

The rest is used for populating the various neutrals, although if we played with China as a nation instead of a neutral, we’d probably use UK for SEATO and Japan for China.

@empireman:

Ok, Has anyone played this game variant yet?

6 turns in with a friend who isn’t available often, so we’ll be picking it back up in another week.

Will Main Battle Tanks be 10 ipc’s too? Heavy Tanks aren’t too bad if the Sloped Armor is reworked like that, but MBT’s are still almost land battleships.

Also, a thought my friend and I had was that neutrals are treated as if you’re building on a minor complex, so 4 units. You could make 4 battleships for 80 ipc’s of influence in one big boost if you want, but you can’t just toss an army in there.

I’m not too fond of making it required to put a land unit there to claim them though. That gives much less reason for the Soviets to influence South America or sub-saharan Africa, as opposed to trying to open a new front, and essentially certain nations that should be easily communist, like Cuba, are instead a waste of money because you can never reap the benefits.

I may be mistaken, but as I understand it, the maximum damage possible on a minor complex is 6, and the maximum on a major is 20.

Since majors are downgraded into minors if captured, if you do the maximum damage in strategic bombing to a major IC, then later conquer it before it can be repaired, then does that 20 damage become 6? Or do you not get free repairs for taking over a complex you destroyed, and it stays at 20 damage?

Started a scenario with my friend, and we’ve taken a break after the 5th Soviet turn. So far, here is what I’ve found about the variant:

Either I found an exploit that you might need to alter the rules to fix, or I missed something in the rules, but basically I built 10 tanks for Colombia, it joined the Soviet bloc, and then with the Main Battle Tanks tech, I was able to blitz into Central US that turn, with East and West US empty because the US player was putting all of his money into diplomacy influencing.

Except if I wanted to, I could have waited a turn, saved my turn 1 cash, and threw like 40 tanks into Colombia, and with the US being only able to put 12 men each in East and West, could capture Washington DC before the war ever really gets too into it, unless the US constantly keeps 30-50 men garrisons in their territories.

Even beyond the area of capturing territory, neutral nations can essentially become military supercomplexes that allow you to rapidly deploy your entire income, if you should so choose, on the other end of the planet.

So either I missed something, or you should probably put in an abortive rule to prevent such a scenario, like a recently acquired neutral is inactive for at least a turn after it’s fully influenced to one side, or a cap on the amount of units you can give to a neutral per turn.

Also, tanks seem a bit overpowered. Maybe their base cost should be raised? A 2-hit land unit for 5 ipc’s (every country has that tech except for PRC at the start) is ridiculous, especially with the incomes that can happen in this variant. The Soviets start off being able to produce 2-hit 4-4-3 units for 5 ipc’s, and is only a step away from giving them 2 dice. Is there really any reason to build any other unit? Sloped armor should be a higher level tech, or the techs should be moved around so that there are less tank boosts.

Having said that, it’s still a very enjoyable variant and it adds a lot of new thinking to the game that makes it fresher, but without making it a complex, entirely new game.

Now that I look, it’s because I’m currently setting it up on ABattleMap because my friend hasn’t had the time to come over recently, and it is Poland on the actual board, but ABattleMap calls it “West Poland (Poland)”

So that explains the confusion.

I thought so, thanks.