Hey guys,
i played my first game of Global War 1936 v.3. We really liked it. There are only some minor problems which can be solved easy. There is only one bigger problem we saw from a gameplay perspective.
Gameplay
The mechanics of the game are great and fun to play. I really like that you have much better land combat in this game. There is the option of blitzing (which is total different to axis and allies). Artillery having first strike is really cool. The better aa gun rules make much more sense and air superiority fights are super fun. Also its really good that amphibous assaults are much more difficult to do than in other games. Subamarine warfare is very interesting and you can make whole strategys which are build on it. The map is awesome and the terrain features are great. There are nice little side plots like spanish civil war and china which gives you at least some action in the first rounds when you play 1936. This game has much more strategic depth which is super fun to play. Also the game balance seems to be good but we did just one test game…
Now i come to my complaints:
Sea Units
I really like the land and air units. I have no problem to distinguish them. The problem with sea units are the cruisers. There are light cruisers, attack cruisers (or battles cruisers i just dont know the name right now) and heavy cruisers. There are a few problems. You cant buy at HBG enough different cruiser types (also they are not discribed as heavy or attack cruisers) on their homepage. I bought many light cruisers for Japan and Germany and its hard to distinguish them. It just slows the gamespeed. We will play our next game with just one cruiser type. Also the WW1 ships are just slowing the game speed and are different to distinguish (coastel subs for example). I ordered the models for the ww 1 ships. But we will replace them with normal WW2 ships to see if it speeds up the game.
I have to say this is just a minor problem.
South Amerika
Well it looks nice on the map but it has no real strategic purpose and is a really boring side plot which is a waste of time. I didnt played the Latin Amerika expansion. I will have a look at it. Perhaps this makes this part of the map more fun. In our next game we will play without South Amerika to save time and speed up the game.
This is also just a minor problem which is not a big deal.
The Comintern
Here lays the biggest problem. You can keep them out of the game very very long. If Germany doesnt go for Barbarossa (whic is a possible strategy in our group). You can keep them at 8 ipp a very very long time. This is not a balance problem but my friend who played the Comintern said that he didnt had fun to play the Nation Rusia because he could not do anything with Russia (except spanish civil war) for a very long time. At 1939 he gets 6 ipp everey round (we play low luck so the income role is always the middle value of 12 so its 6 ipp every round wartime income for a d 12). This means that you have a long time where you only move units around and cant do combat. We all totally understand why this is the case but from a palyer perspective its boring. The axis player and me (i played the allies) had really fun playing the game. Because we had much more stuff to do (battles early in the game and more strategic moves to plan)…
Our solution is that the CCP (the CCP is also palyed by the Comintern player) can choose one chinese warlord which will be influenced at their first round (in other words their first influence role on a warlord on their first turn is always a hit). Also we will test what happens if china is attacked from Japan and all warlords will go to CCP and not to KMT. Through these changes the Cominterm player will have more to do in the early game and it will be more fun for him to play the game because he has more to do in China (Our Cominterm player liked the game in genereal he really liked the idea behind CCP). I hope our idea doesnt break the balance. We will see.
With our changes to speed up the game and the CCP changes this problem should be solved.
Conclusion
This is one of the best if not the best game i ever played. Im really happy that i bought this game. I cant wait to play again. This game is awesome.