The NEW New Boardgames Thread

[frunk]

And I maintain that if your starting point is 3rd of September 1939 i.e. when France and UK joins the war, the outcome is a given.

If you define the outcome as Axis defeat, yes.  The actual course of the war could take many different paths though, and most of them were far from inevitable.

[Berkut]

Is this narrative really that hard to imagine?

Everything goes to history, for the most part.

Germany ships no troops to North Africa however, because...well, who the fuck cares about North Africa? The increased logistical focus and air power in the Eastern Front helps a bit there.

They do a little better in Brabarossa than historical, and in the Fall of 1941 the Soviet government falls and Stalin is deposed and killed as German troops threaten Moscow, or Leningrad, and the STAVKA decides to take matters into their own hands. (This could happen in '42 as well if we assume some different choices made around Case Blue).

Hitler negotiates a cease fire/tenuous peace with the new Soviet government that leaves the Ukraine, Crimea, and large chunks of western Russia and the Baltics in Nazi hands, along with a demilitarized area along the border.

When Pearl harbor happens, Germany is largely at "peace" in that there is an ongoing war with England that is not particularly engaged other than sporadic bombing of France and northern German, the Atlantic war, but no real prospects for land combat...

North Africa is allied, but the prospect of an invasion of Europe against the Wehrmacht NOT engaged in the Eastern Front is considered impossible. Attempts to get the rump USSR to involve themselves fail when Japan starts making moves against Soviet positions in the east - the treaty stipulations and loss of industrial centers in the occupied areas cripple Soviet capability (and more importantly will) to fight.

Is this an Axis "win"? Not really. Japan is still fucked, maybe even more so with the US able to pretty much focus on them exclusively.

In the long run, the US gets nukes I suppose.

But I think this is a reasonable plausible scenario - not likely, but not ridiculous, and it has diverged from history enough that at this point it is really impossible to say how the politics shakes out. Hell, maybe in this scenario, Germany doesn't even DOW the US after PH, and instead just remains an non-committed ally of the Japanese. Maybe the USSR helps Japan in return for concessions in Manchuria? Who knows?

I don't think the historical result of WW2 was at all unlikely - in fact, I think the Axis probably did better than the odds would give them overall. If you re-fought WW2 from the invasion of Poland 100 times, I think the Axis does worse than historical more often than not.

But I don't think the idea of the Axis doing better and getting a result that would amount to a "win" in wargame terms is at all implausible.

[Delirium]

Good points, and I will not disagree. I could start even earlier.

Key moment for me in WW2 is the fall of France. I come down on the side of those who think this is a very unlikely event to occur the way it did (for one thing German generals), for example in Simonitch's France ´40 designer notes. We take a quick collapse for granted with historical inevitability and know what to attribute this to (French inertia, Germans leading from the front etc), but what if it is a fluke and the war takes a year, two years?

There is no Barbarossa in 1941 obviously. Probably not a Japanese Pearl assuming the two theaters are in any way connected. The US is not involved. Stalin keeps expanding. Is this still WW2?

In games, France has to go down the way it did or it fudges up the game (like Brain said I think).

[The Brain]

France is always a problem. The WW1 French problem is what if France does fall in 1914? If the game has any kind of limited/total war mechanic maybe it's just "limited KO" and set up the board again?

[Habbaku]

France is always a problem. The WW1 French problem is what if France does fall in 1914? If the game has any kind of limited/total war mechanic maybe it's just "limited KO" and set up the board again?

All other things being equal, France going down in '14 is the end of the war.  There is no way Russia and Britain fight on without them.

[Tamas]

France is always a problem. The WW1 French problem is what if France does fall in 1914? If the game has any kind of limited/total war mechanic maybe it's just "limited KO" and set up the board again?

In Balance of Powers there is a "collapsed nation" mechanic (as I said, pretty binary), which also happens to France if Paris is lost. They are not out of the war per se, but are reduced to defending until, IIRC, 1918-style warfare kicks in.

[Tamas]

France is always a problem. The WW1 French problem is what if France does fall in 1914? If the game has any kind of limited/total war mechanic maybe it's just "limited KO" and set up the board again?

All other things being equal, France going down in '14 is the end of the war.  There is no way Russia and Britain fight on without them.

Yeah if France bails, I can't see Russia not bailing and then why would Britain fight on?

[Delirium]

But anyways.

I have had a couple of solitaire tests of Balance of Powers but unfortunately no f2f play. It has very clever system, the land combat in particular is very elegant in mixing mobile and trench warfare with a couple of simple points. The only weak point there is the Tactical Innovation (namely that being reckless and getting away with it can land you in post-trench 1918-style fighting as early as 1916) but the latest living rules have an optional rule that I think solves that.

The naval rules are also nice and give period feel, although I don't think it could give me the same feeling of Dreadnought-induced dread like when in a La Grande Guerre PBEM me and my teammate decided to ship the combined Italian and Austro-Hungarian fleet out to the Med, and we risked a National Will nightmare if we bumped into a heavy Entente presence.
But it is a nice system I think.

Overall I also like the diplomacy rules. They don't come close to show you political and diplomatic goals and conditions of the time like the LGG rules but they are also much much simpler than those, and they still get the job done.

What I miss from BoP is LGG's system on political instability. In BoP it feels too binary. In LGG national will, once unstable, is fickle and can be very unpredictable, which makes you think about how to try and manipulate it. Both yours and the enemy's. In BoP it's like an on/off switch really.

Balance of Powers has gotten absolutely no play time or coverage over here (except for talk of colour-blindness) but I have certainly not written it off. I think Herr Dr over at BGG had a good AAR about it which peaked my interest but there is no one around to play it with at this point, except at conventions...

[Tamas]

I tried to get a PBEM off the ground here but everyone is way too lazy.

[Delirium]

Too big for pbem for me now, my attention span is incredibly short these days.

[CountDeMoney]

lol, narrative.

[garbon]

lol, narrative.

Care to make it meta?

[Tamas]

Too big for pbem for me now, my attention span is incredibly short these days.

Fair enough, that's true for me as well

[Habbaku]

On the subject of strategic WWI:



Will probably suck, but at least the map isn't ass.

[CountDeMoney]

Looks like a diner placemat.  With 120 or so hexes that big, is it considered area movement...?