Posts made by Squadron Commander

Looks like potential for a great alternate history game here. Any word on release date or info on sculpts, map, rules, etc?

I agree with IL though that if there will be gas attacks there should also be some counter measure to prevent gas attacks from becoming to prevalent (that or make the effects less to start off with.

Could make it another dual technology, where once you have developed “chemical warfare” you get to make gas attacks on opponents, and also reduce (or are immune to) the effects of enemy gas attacks. If you pioneered chemical warfare technology you were also probably on the frontline of figuring out how to make sure it didn’t kill your own troops too.

I will be sure to check it out - thanks!

France also is the most intriguing Allied power to me - They’re actually still a quite powerful force in Europe and actually the narrow focus they have is appealing in a way to me. Basically France (in Europe) has to 1) hold the Western Front until a) The US arrives later to help push back or b) Germany breaks down from fighting a two-front war and France and the UK can push into Germany on their own. Then 2) Help make sure Italy doesn’t lose all of its Northern territories to Austria in turns 2-3. I know it might seem strange to get excited about a power that has mostly a containment role for a while, but maybe it’s just the thrill of trying to stop a potentially unstoppable force that is the Central Powers, before they take all of Western Europe.

Ottoman Empire again for the CP - a new power and basically one/two(if they can get into Africa) theaters of war where they are the sole power who is concentrating ALL of their forces there (Russia, UK, France, even Germany and Italy will obviously all have much more at stake in Europe).

Map looks great, thanks! Still can’t believe Paris is practically in the Atlantic, though.

@Fishmoto37:

You will need the truck units for games like Barbarossa that have logistics involved.

Are you referring to a specific A&A Barbarossa game or just the general German invasion of the Soviet Union?

If the general invasion, I still think that it would be more cost-effective to spend the 4 IPCs for a mech infantry unit rather than 6 IPCs trying to duplicate the mobility by hauling regular infantry units around. If they could transport artillery units as well, that might make some difference - If you already had truck units in place they would be effective for helping move infantry (and artillery if that were the case) over large distances of land, but from there I would only build mech infantry rather than build new truck units.

For anyone with a Twitter account, many of the map pictures that have been re-posted on here are courtesy of Axis and Allies.org on Twitter (follow @axis_and_allies) - though I’m sure they can be found somewhere else too.

Agreed, that’s why I started this post … Official rules or not, Tech research added another level of depth to any of the WWII games I played with it, and I think it makes sense to add tech as a house rule for the same reason:  it adds to the gameplay, as long as the tech’s themselves and the rules for research don’t unbalance the game either with excessive costs/chance and/or too great of an influence on the game. New tech should be a historical “game changer” of sorts - until the other side catches up and replicates the new war tech (which, yes, was pretty common).

@Flashman:

Actually, I would like there to be NO fighters to start with, rather starting aircraft are largely unarmed multi-purpose planes; 1-1 in combat but with a range of 4.

That’s what I was suggesting, that no one starts out with fighters and you have to research even a basic fighter before you can build them. If you used 1/1 unarmed planes though, why 4 range? Would the lack of machine guns and ammo really make that much difference?

One thing that comes to mind for the CP would be to allow the Ottoman Empire to place one free infantry in Egypt, and one in Libya should they be conquered by the Ottomans (however unlikely that may seem in the actual game) - representing Senussi forces.

Yeah not sure how I feel about tank technology actually reducing the cost, might create too much tank-stacking.

Love the idea for Radio Communications though. Thought that was an important tech but couldn’t think of a good way to implement it for my initial list.

Fair point. I suppose it would also leave little room or purpose for bomber units if fighters could get up to 4/4/3 anyway, aside from some type of strategic bombing role.

Also, oztea, If war bonds are included as one of your three proposed economic techs, would there be some way to tie that to a country’s morale level? Like the lower a country’s morale is, the lower the ceiling they have for receiving extra IPC’s from war bonds. Might just be putting more holes in an already sinking ship (since a country’s morale would most commonly from high casualties/loss of territory on the war front), but it wouldn’t make sense to me if for instance Russia at some point of the game being on the verge of revolution is still able to raise more bond money than Germany (who for sake of example is doing quite well by comparison).

I wonder too if it would make sense to start out the first available fighters at 2 movement. There were dramatic improvements in aircraft engines during the war, even comparing a Fokker E.I from 1915-ish it had barely half the horsepower of the later Fokker D.VII and max speed was about 70 km/h less.

Basic fighters (when available): 1/1/2 movement

• • • 2/2/2
• • • 3/3/3/
• • • 4/4/3

Thought I’d try and consolidate all the various tech ideas people have suggested into one topic. If there was a tech tree (tier, whatever you prefer to use) in this game, what would you like to see included? It does make the game feel a bit naked without any “tech” so to speak, especially considering how much warfare changed from 1914-1919, but it’ll be worth waiting to see how gameplay goes once it comes out. In the meantime …

• Make Tanks a researchable tech

• Fighters as well (with gradual upgrading as was suggested i.e. starting out at 1/1 and peaking around 4/4)
    - - Bombers could be a second “tier” air technology - after successfully upgrading fighters to a certain point, you could start to build bomber units

• Gas attacks
    - - Gas masks as a counter-tech? Essentially could just nullify the effects of gas attacks, causing them to fade out similar to in the actual war

• Advanced Artillery - similar to the WWII version - could support 2 infantry instead of just 1

• Rail Guns: Only fire as a pre-emptive strike? Cannot be chosen as casualties but can be captured (essentially like AA guns from WWII)

• “Destroyer”/Sonar tech: allows you build destroyer units with some kind of basic anti-sub abilities. It still seems ridiculous to not have destroyer units in the game considering the role they played in convoys and sub-hunting for the Allies - especially after improvements in passive sonar, etc. Could pillage pieces from WWII games?

@Razor:

@Squadron:

. In my games, we have usually limited all combat to three rounds to add more urgency to attacks so that you cannot hammer away at a defender forever simply because you have enormous numerical superiority.

I think an A&A game that want to be close to the real war, should have specific turns, like a winter turn, a spring turn, a summer turn and an autumn turn, and in the winter turn you could only roll dice for one combat round, leaving a lot of contestet territories, when in the summer turn you could roll dice forever in unlimited rounds until the enemy was gone. And you would have some territories with mountians too, with one combat round only.
Now that would make for some nice rule

A great point, especially since the Russian winter contributed so greatly to Operation Barbarossa stalling out just short of taking Moscow. This seems like it would be easy enough to adapt (especially with Flashman’s map that breaks rounds down into a season of each year). A Winter round would only allow one round of combat as you said, Spring/Fall would maybe have some limits (maybe more like four or five rounds instead of three?) and summer would be unlimited or nearly unlimited attacks.

Exceptions to this could be made depending on territories too - Winter in Leningrad would obviously be a lot harsher than winter in Rome, Greece, or Egypt (North African territories and some Middle East territories could possibly be totally exempt from winter combat limits - this would add a further dimension to the game in that combat focus during the winter would shift to territories around the Mediterranean that would be less affected by the seasons and could continue normal combat).

Thanks for the welcome, Razor. My view on the pursuit of a retreating army was that it would be a rare occurrence (and it has indeed been rare for us), as usually a defender will only try to prevent the attacker from retreating untouched if the first round(s) of the attack went dreadfully wrong for the attacker (to the point that the attacker’s army was now only equal to or weaker than the defending army, assuming the attacker had some sort of numerical advantage when the attack began).

While this is not an impossible scenario, the likelihood of the defender trying to cut off the escape is made increasingly less likely by the fact that on their turn, they might be able to bring in units from multiple territories to counter attack (not to mention nearby air units) that certainly wouldn’t be available to them while defending/pursuing on the opponents turn. I don’t think this constitutes pulling double duty, as it is not necessarily a free shot at the retreating army out of turn, but usually just a continuation of the combat that the enemy had already engaged in. Any casualties suffered by the retreating army would obviously only be taken out of the forces that attacked (not from units that stayed behind), and any units not taken as casualties would be allowed to return to the territory they originated from as normal.

I agree with your point that naval combat and land combat was drastically different for obvious reasons, and “lose touch with” was probably not the best choice of words. As you pointed out though, there would certainly be ways or opportunities for an army to retreat (relatively) untouched, such as laying mines, and I would possibly add certain elements of weather and nightfall to that (not that no one ever fought in the snow/rain or dark, but it would have hindered things to a point).

All things said, all the die rolling for this would only happen if the defender chose to try and engage the retreating army. I do think maybe it could be more fairly balanced to allow the attacker to retreat if they wanted, but should still allow the defender at least a chance to snipe at them while they leave. If they defender gets a “successful” roll allowing it to continue the combat, basically it just represents the case that an attacking force overextends itself and is unable to form an orderly retreat, allowing the defender the continue to engage them while they fall back. Does this seem better?

Roll (if defender wishes to pursue):
1-3: The retreat is successful and you are unable to pursue. Combat ends.
4: Enemy army retreats but tanks and mech. infantry are able to pursue for a short while. May conduct one additional round of combat with only these units (if the defender wishes).
5-6: Enemy army is unable to form orderly retreat: continue all combat for one round (if the defender wishes)

oztea’s suggestion seems like a good start - But I also feel that declaring Unrestricted submarine warfare shouldn’t automatically bring the US into the game either. I’ve seen various tracks proposed on the US entry, and USW should certainly influence that, but not automatically cause the US to declare war, since it was just over two months between Germany declaring USW a second time in February 1917 and the US entry in April (also thanks to The Note). Maybe this could be tweaked slightly so that:

1. Roll of 1 or 2 does IPC damage to UK, roll again for amount:
    a. 1-3: 1 IPC
    b. 4-6: 2 IPCs (could also do 1-2:1 ; 3-4: 2 ; 5-6: 3 IPC, but one sub being responsible for 3 IPCs of damage seems a bit much)

2. Unrestricted submarine warfare: Roll of 1,2, or 3 does IPC damage to UK AND US
    a. 1-3: 1 IPC (same as above)
    b. " (same as above)
    c. US only receives 1 IPC damage per hit, while not at war. Once the US enters the war, roll for IPC damage same as UK

This is quite a late reply but I was just recently searching to see what house rules people had come up with regarding the new pieces.

One of my main concerns is that there is no use for the truck units. At a cost of 3 IPCs, It seems much more cost-effective to simply purchase a mechanized infantry unit that can move 2 on its own (at 4 IPCs), than to spend 6 IPC’s to purchase both a regular infantry and truck to transport it. The only advantage the latter would have would be the extra hit the truck could take as a casualty, but this still doesn’t seem to outweigh the extra cost. If you were building up a mobile support force (for say the Eastern Front, where mobility makes a much greater difference), you could build a sizable force of 6 mechanized infantry (likely over several turns), all capable of moving 2 spaces and being supported by artillery, for 24 IPC’s. For the same value, you would only be able to purchase 4 infantry and you would need 4 trucks to transport them - giving an extra two hits total to take as casualties, but also with two fewer units attacking, which to me seems more important.

Also, the bonus for the commander unit seems to be a bit much. +1 for EVERY land unit, even if only for the first round of combat, seems an overwhelming advantage that is magnified by every additional unit that is involved. It feels like it transforms that army into an unstoppable force rather than giving a tactical advantage as a good General might have done (but this might only be the case for extremely large unit stacks). I am however a fan of the idea of commanders allowing retreats, and even possibly preventing enemy retreats if there is no enemy commander unit present.

I don’t mean to be too critical, the other suggested atk/def/move and cost values seem like great ideas, and these should add more flexibility and diversity to the games. Just had a few concerns with the above two. Have you play-tested any of these ideas?

First post here on the forums - I’ve been following along for a while but it feels good to finally get involved in discussions.

Flashman - Very interesting concept for Naval retreat and pursuit, it seems to follow the Law of KISS everyone has been harping about, while adding a bit more realism to naval combat in the game.

This may be more relevant in a Europe 1940 or Global 1940 thread, but I wonder if this concept could also be applied to the impact of retreating from combat/halting an attack on  land, particularly with the presence of a General/Commander unit that many have used under various house rules. In my games, we have usually limited all combat to three rounds to add more urgency to attacks so that you cannot hammer away at a defender forever simply because you have enormous numerical superiority. Many times an initial round of combat has gone poorly for the attacker and they wish to not press the attack, or “retreat” - One house rule we have used with this is for the defender to roll a die: on a 1 or 2, they may take a free shot at the retreating attackers, at a -1 for normal atk (Tanks hit on a 2, artillery and mech. infantry with artillery support hit on a 1, etc).

This seems to me like a more realistic opportunity to represent the influence of a General/Commander unit; rather than simply adding an atk/def bonus to a few units, the presence of a General would impact an enemy retreat. Adapting from your Naval retreat rules above, it may look something like this:

When deciding to pursue a retreating enemy army, roll a die:

1: You lose touch with the enemy and cannot pursue. The combat ends.

2: Only your tanks and mech. infantry stay in range of the enemy; you may pursue with these units only or call off the pursuit.

3-4: Your army keeps up with the enemy and you reengage the combat.

5: You manage to cut off the enemy retreat (they remain in the territory they attacked). The combat ends with the territory contested.

6: You cut off the enemy retreat AND any tanks/ mech. infantry in your army get a free shot at the enemy (at -1 from normal attack).

I feel that this might help represent the tactical advantage that Generals such as Patton and Rommel brought to the war, by outmaneuvering an enemy and not allowing a retreat, you may allow them to remain in the territory and contest it but position yourself to better counterattack and destroy them on the next turn.

Again I feel this is much more relevant to any of the WWII games since the warfare and tactics then were much more fluid that the static war of attrition in WWI, but thought I should bring it up here since your naval retreat rules inspired the idea. Thoughts?