Europe only '39 game

[m7574]

as long as you can at least threaten to defeat him you will keep him on his toes and keep him interested. 

The biggest "flaw" in this game is how the mechanics of aircraft work in this game.  I like a lot of how aircraft works, but here is what i see as the "flaw":

Air superiority by means of fighters is what dictates the innitiative throughout the game.  Usually the allies can achieve parity by late 1942 or early 1943 in the west.  So what happens is that both sides avoid any air combat that is not at least 50/50.  You can't risk losing fighters.  So its a chess match from begining until the end.

In the west Germany uses their air power to push the Russians to the Urals and the Volga.  If the allies threaten France or the Med, Germany just redeploys appropriate ftr cover to said front.  Allied offensive curbed.   Once the allies have air superiority in the west, Germany sends all aircraft BACK against the Reds to slow down any advances they begin to make. 

It is useless to buy Russian air units.

Japan protects their aircraft as well and its virtually inmpossible to crack that nut as the USA cannot build enough CV's during the coarse of the game to achieve parity anywhere the japs can muster their aircraft in one concentrated airwing.  (we use airbase rules)

I love the airbase rules and we have implemented some house rules to make it playable in the med.  Otherwise the allies would NEVER be able to take on Italy.  EVER.  30 axis ftrs based in Sicily is a strategy that can not be countered.

[m7574]

we require an airbase for every territory bordering the med in our house rules.  The airbase rules work perfectly in the Pacific.  The med needed a little tweaking.

One idea I had been toying around with was making a country be able to 'rebuild' fighter aircraft lost in combat.  That way air superiority could always follow the desired trajectory regaurdless of bad dice.  You still take the loss economically for your bad luck, and it takes 3 turns or more for those aircraft to get back into the game so there still exists a tactical penalty as well.  This would theoretically encourage more air combat.

[m7574]

sorry for hijaking your thread. 

[Yoper]

Yes, we also use the extra airbase rule.  But we go with a bit of a price reduction.  4 PPs for the first level and 3 PPs for the second level.

Also, we have come up a set of rules to mitigate the carnage of the air to air combat.  We use an abort rule for any roll of a (1) .  That unit is out the rest of the battle and can't be used in the mech phase.  In doing this you do limit the overkill of the air to air battles.

Regular fighters still kill 33% of the time but it isn't the 50% of the base rule.  That extra pip does change things enough to help your sanity.

We also have changed to AA fire from fleets that make them more powerful versus an air attack.  Any naval unit targeted by an air unit fires back at that unit with a kill shot.  That is, up to its AA shot amount.  If more air units are attacking than the naval unit has AA shots, then the defender picks which attacking units to target.

Any other naval unit that isn't targeted by an air unit fires abort AA shots.  You total up the amount of extra shots and just roll them as general shots. 

Once the targeted and general AA is fired, then the attacking air units fire at their targets.

All this is done after any air to air combat has been completed.

[m7574]

so aircraft 'abort' an opposing aircraft on a roll of '1'  and kill them on a roll of '2' or'3'?    That would make even more aircraft left as the game moves on.   

With your airbase rules have you found it next to impossible to root the Italians out of the med?  Allies could never build enough airbases, it doesn't matter how cheap you make them.  Can you keep increasing them past a '5'?

We tinkered a little with the AA rules but in the end we settled with the standard rules.  We do give 'abort' shots to Battleships if there are more AA rolls than aircraft attacking. 

We are currently testing out a rule with paratroopers.  Rule is that para units may not attack any territory without being accompanied by attacking ground units.  The one exception is if the para units cross a body of water.  Makes the eastern front actually playable.  Germany still is able force a Russian retreat, but it is slower and has not gotten as deep into russia.  Lenningrad helf for a few more turns and Moscow didn't fall until spring 1943.  And even then the Germans couldn't hold it.  I think I like this one.  If the axis find themselves hurt too much by this rule we may balance it in other areas as its nice to finally have a fair fight in Russia.

[Yoper]

so aircraft 'abort' an opposing aircraft on a roll of '1'  and kill them on a roll of '2' or'3'?    That would make even more aircraft left as the game moves on.

Yes, that is the idea.  It is really designed to allow the guy who is sitting there with less air unit to still use them.  If not for this kind of rule, they will just sit there until they have enough to come close to parity. 

And then they may finally have enough to only have them decimated in one roll of the dice.  The other night I rolled well against the Germans, but some of them were aborts.  It allowed me to kill a bunch of his fighters, but it wasn't a clean sweep since a portion of the rolls were aborts.

Instead of me killing 9 of his 11 fighters, I only got 7 with 2 aborts.  Still a very good showing, but not the total crushing that the base rules allow.  He hit me for like 4 kills and an 1 abort leaving me with 8 fighters after the battle was done.

So in the battle that we had he escorted the Urals bombing raid with 11 ftrs and I responded with 12 ftrs.  The numbers would mathematically be:  Germany kills 3.66 and aborts 1.83 while the USSR kills 4 and aborts 2.  He got around average and I got above average, but the abort rolls helped to minimize the kill factor.

It also addresses your idea of the ftr rebuild.  Why come up with a special rule for bringing back ftr units when the abort roll allows units that are already on the board to last a bit longer?

With your airbase rules have you found it next to impossible to root the Italians out of the med?  Allies could never build enough airbases, it doesn't matter how cheap you make them.  Can you keep increasing them past a '5'?

 

I have seen that the airbase issue has been more of a problem in the Med during this game, but I also know that it can just as easily be attributed to how badly I am getting my ass kicked in the whole game!  The Germans are so powerful that they are just flooding the Med with units (ground and air) that getting enough of my air units there is tough.  Normally, the Axis don't have enough resources to
be that powerful in the Med so the Allies are constrained by the airbase rule.

The main thing about our game right now is that it should have been called long ago based on VPs, but I talked Eric into playing it all the way out just to see how things go.  As such, things like the airbase issue that you are talking about are coming to pass simply because we are out past the "norm" that is usually seen in a game.  In our usual experience (in a game that doesn't skew this far outside the norm), the Axis isn't powerful enough as it concerns the air situation that the airbase rules are a problem for the Allies. 

They eventually are able to slowly roll back the Axis in the Med through patient work in the Western Med and eventually look to tackle the Boot after cleaning up North Africa.   My problems in this game stem from the loss of Cairo, which really come from getting behind in the Egyptian arms race thanks to an unsuccessful defense of the North Atlantic Convoys.  That money drain affected the balance and it cascaded from there.

The part here that helps with the Allies work here is the change in naval AA that we came up with.  We always found it hard to move forward in the Med with Allies when using the base rules since the ftrs just dominated the navies.  It was too much.  That is why we now use our targeted and abort AA.  It give the navies better survivability while also allowing the air units more life too.  They can be sent away to fight another day.  And it causes a bit more drama/decision making before and during a naval battle.

As for the last question, no we don't go past a five airbase.  Allies just need to have carriers to help address any imbalance in airpower that may exist.  While I am getting my ass kicked as badly as I am, I still can't understand how you are getting the amount of air units that you are describing into the game to have 30 ftrs in Sicily?  How you can strip the other theaters of action to have that many in one place? 

Eric probably had around 50 total air units at one point, but he needed to have them spread between Russia, Germany/France, Egypt, and the Central Med.  You seem to be able to ignore other areas of the map and just jam them all in one place.  I don't get how that can realistically happen.

[m7574]

Scott doesn't put much effort into offensives vs the UK or in the med.  Full throttle vs Russia.    The airforce will usually stay in one big hulk.   If it looks like the allies could potentally land in France , he'll send it there.  He'll put appropriate amounts of aircraft in the med when required.   Otherwise he'll put it in Russia.  This works well into 1943 when he loses air superiority.  Then he begins a slow withdraw.   His army is usually so large from 6-8 turns of collecting close to 100 PP's that he can stand his ground in most places.  He'll never try to make a push toward egypt, instead he forts down a bunch of infantry in Tripoli and you can either send a ton of troops to Africa to weed them out or just let Italy fight on into 1944 or 1945. 

[Yoper]

Back to the battle tonight after a couple of weeks off. 

We will see what headway can be made in the face of mounting German pressure.  Had to abandon North Africa with the UK to save the Home Isles.  Right now the Huns are in Wales and were just pushed out of the Midlands.

The US is pushing towards Cairo through the Sudan and the USSR is hiding behind the river line on the edge of the map.

I did eventually have a question for John and Mark as to the line that is edge of the game playing area when playing an Europe-only game.  Since I cut the map into four parts for transport purposes (and placement into poster covers) we are only using the Europe map up to those last three territories that are the Urals and the two directly below it.

But I remember discussing the topic of where the theaters change over for purposes of strategic movement (specifically air) in the Asian land mass and it seemed that we declared it a bit farther east than where we are playing right now.

Now most would say that this is a bit academic since the game will likely be over if this truly comes into play, but it would be good to know just as an aside for later clarification.

[John D.]

Ok - been out of the forum loop for the holidays and play testing new advanced rules. Had our annual Winter War gathering which turned into a nail biter! Ok so I'm not sure that I understand your map question...

[Yoper]

When playing an European theater only game (of the regular/basic game), what is the furthest limit of movement eastward?

The scenario specific rules talk about placement of UK infantry produced off map being placed in the sea zone adjacent to India, which in the case of my map cutting still exists on the map board that we are using.  But there is no mention as to the limits in the USSR as to how far out the game is to be played.

I do realize that this normally wouldn't be an issue since a game is usually over based on VPs by the time such an issue arises, but since we are going beyond that parameter, I would like to know where the edge of the map is.  Preferably, so I can fall off of it!!!

[Mark]

Hi Yoper - sorry for the delay in getting back to you - it has been a busy holiday and now I am back at work in China. . .The Europe map was originally designed all by itself as a 3'x4' map before we added Asia. . .so the boundary is about on the 4' line - pretty much along the Western border of China up East of the Urals if my memory serves ok. . .

cheers,
Mark