Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: KosMic

That's an interesting suggestion, but probably best saved for a subsequent expansion. I've always thought certain objectives should have greater or lesser values for nations, as opposed to the current system where each one is worth the same to everyone.

quote:

ORIGINAL: brian brian

I can't say I miss those objective groups. As for making different places worth different points, I would not want to see this. An obvious one would be to make Suez or Cairo worth double for Italy. But would you really want that in the game? In a 6 player game, Italy would always be trying to get the Axis to support an Egyptian campaign. Anything that veers from the WWII historical line in WiF could be questioned. Is it 'historical' for Germany to build a lot of ships and dedicate it's war effort to conquering England? We all know Hitler just wasn't likely to have pursued that strategy. But if the possibility of Germany doing this was far less likely because Kiev was worth more victory points than London, WiF would have gotten stale a long time ago.

For Italy going 'all-in' with Germany during Barbarossa, it's not hard to imagine a somewhat different Italy trying this; maybe Italy went through turbulent Communist revolutions in the 20s and Mussolini came to power as a fervent anti-Communist in the Hitler mode. As for the Italian empire, their colonies were actually a drain on the treasury; perhaps Mussonlini encouraged emigration to countries like the USA where his peeps could be sending money back to Italy instead of costing him money trying to colonize Libya.

In general though I think the game works fine as a multi-player game, but is best with Japan and Italy combined, because we all know Italy is the least likely to survive until 1945.

Solving the problem of Italy building nothing but air force to participate in Barbarossa could be better addressed by increasing the action limits on airplanes. The game encourages this as the action limits now stand; the Western Allies can see similar historically strange building programs later in the war. Is it realistic for the proud Free French to build nothing but landing craft and bombers? My idea for this would be to make any hex that is ground struck, port struck, or strategically bombed, cost one air mission, instead of each plane costing one mission. That would be a small easy change that could open up the game some I think.

I would like to see one change to the victory cities; I think two of Truk, Pearl Harbor, Kwajalein, and Rabaul should be moved elsewhere. It strikes me as odd to make the central Pacific worth so much in the post-war world and I think the Rabaul and Kawajalein objectives could be moved to the Asian mainland.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

The imbalance is that Italy does a ton of ground strikes/ground support which doesn't make a lot of sense historically. Or, to put it another way, players exploit a loophole/weakness in the rules to make the Italian air force more formidable than the German air force.

To mitgate the power of the Kitchen Sink approach to Barbaroosa, it would seem to me to be simplest to limit the number of ground strikes/ground support missions Italy can perform, while letting them use all their air missions for other purposes if they so desire. So, while Itlay might have unlimited air missions, in general, never permitting them to have more than 1 or 2 ground strikes/ground support missions per impulse would cut down on some of the craziness.

quote:

ORIGINAL: brian brian

I can't say I miss those objective groups. As for making different places worth different points, I would not want to see this. An obvious one would be to make Suez or Cairo worth double for Italy. But would you really want that in the game? In a 6 player game, Italy would always be trying to get the Axis to support an Egyptian campaign. Anything that veers from the WWII historical line in WiF could be questioned. Is it 'historical' for Germany to build a lot of ships and dedicate it's war effort to conquering England? We all know Hitler just wasn't likely to have pursued that strategy. But if the possibility of Germany doing this was far less likely because Kiev was worth more victory points than London, WiF would have gotten stale a long time ago.

For Italy going 'all-in' with Germany during Barbarossa, it's not hard to imagine a somewhat different Italy trying this; maybe Italy went through turbulent Communist revolutions in the 20s and Mussolini came to power as a fervent anti-Communist in the Hitler mode. As for the Italian empire, their colonies were actually a drain on the treasury; perhaps Mussonlini encouraged emigration to countries like the USA where his peeps could be sending money back to Italy instead of costing him money trying to colonize Libya.

In general though I think the game works fine as a multi-player game, but is best with Japan and Italy combined, because we all know Italy is the least likely to survive until 1945.

Solving the problem of Italy building nothing but air force to participate in Barbarossa could be better addressed by increasing the action limits on airplanes. The game encourages this as the action limits now stand; the Western Allies can see similar historically strange building programs later in the war. Is it realistic for the proud Free French to build nothing but landing craft and bombers? My idea for this would be to make any hex that is ground struck, port struck, or strategically bombed, cost one air mission, instead of each plane costing one mission. That would be a small easy change that could open up the game some I think.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mike Dubost

quote:

ORIGINAL: brian brian

I can't say I miss those objective groups. As for making different places worth different points, I would not want to see this. An obvious one would be to make Suez or Cairo worth double for Italy. But would you really want that in the game? In a 6 player game, Italy would always be trying to get the Axis to support an Egyptian campaign. Anything that veers from the WWII historical line in WiF could be questioned. Is it 'historical' for Germany to build a lot of ships and dedicate it's war effort to conquering England? We all know Hitler just wasn't likely to have pursued that strategy. But if the possibility of Germany doing this was far less likely because Kiev was worth more victory points than London, WiF would have gotten stale a long time ago.

For Italy going 'all-in' with Germany during Barbarossa, it's not hard to imagine a somewhat different Italy trying this; maybe Italy went through turbulent Communist revolutions in the 20s and Mussolini came to power as a fervent anti-Communist in the Hitler mode. As for the Italian empire, their colonies were actually a drain on the treasury; perhaps Mussonlini encouraged emigration to countries like the USA where his peeps could be sending money back to Italy instead of costing him money trying to colonize Libya.

In general though I think the game works fine as a multi-player game, but is best with Japan and Italy combined, because we all know Italy is the least likely to survive until 1945.

Solving the problem of Italy building nothing but air force to participate in Barbarossa could be better addressed by increasing the action limits on airplanes. The game encourages this as the action limits now stand; the Western Allies can see similar historically strange building programs later in the war. Is it realistic for the proud Free French to build nothing but landing craft and bombers? My idea for this would be to make any hex that is ground struck, port struck, or strategically bombed, cost one air mission, instead of each plane costing one mission. That would be a small easy change that could open up the game some I think.

I did not explain myself clearly enough. The "kitchen sink Barbarosa" is merely where the discussion began. I had not intended to require Italy to pick the Med. group. The historical Mussolini did, but a player could choose otherwise. It just sparked the thought that the 2 European Axis powers had "selected different groups". Your hypothetical anti-Bolshevik Mussolini would pick the group containing the USSR, and a naval-minded Hitler would pick the group containing the UK.

The idea would be to allow a choice, independent of what the other powers chose, and giving extra rewards for success in a region of significance. A total alignment of goals would be simulated by choosing the same group, but even closely cooporating allies did not view each "objective" equally. The UK was much more interested in driving Japan out of Burma than the US was, so Churchill weighted the southeast Asian group more heavily than FDR did. A hypothetical FDR who selected southeast Asia as a major objective group would pursue a much different strategy than that pursued by the historical USA, but it would not be wrong, just different.

Anyway, I am glad that the idea has sparked some good discussion.

quote:

ORIGINAL: brian brian
{snip}

For Italy going 'all-in' with Germany during Barbarossa, it's not hard to imagine a somewhat different Italy trying this; maybe Italy went through turbulent Communist revolutions in the 20s and Mussolini came to power as a fervent anti-Communist in the Hitler mode. As for the Italian empire, their colonies were actually a drain on the treasury; perhaps Mussonlini encouraged emigration to countries like the USA where his peeps could be sending money back to Italy instead of costing him money trying to colonize Libya.

quote:


{snip}
Solving the problem of Italy building nothing but air force to participate in Barbarossa could be better addressed by increasing the action limits on airplanes. The game encourages this as the action limits now stand; the Western Allies can see similar historically strange building programs later in the war. Is it realistic for the proud Free French to build nothing but landing craft and bombers? My idea for this would be to make any hex that is ground struck, port struck, or strategically bombed, cost one air mission, instead of each plane costing one mission. That would be a small easy change that could open up the game some I think.
{snip}

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

The imbalance is that Italy does a ton of ground strikes/ground support which doesn't make a lot of sense historically. Or, to put it another way, players exploit a loophole/weakness in the rules to make the Italian air force more formidable than the German air force.

To mitgate the power of the Kitchen Sink approach to Barbaroosa, it would seem to me to be simplest to limit the number of ground strikes/ground support missions Italy can perform, while letting them use all their air missions for other purposes if they so desire. So, while Itlay might have unlimited air missions, in general, never permitting them to have more than 1 or 2 ground strikes/ground support missions per impulse would cut down on some of the craziness.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mike Dubost

In one of the old threads with new posts, I was reading the older posts and saw a discussion of how to simulate that fact that Italy, for example, was unlikely to pull out of North Africa to support a "kitchen sink" Barbarossa in real life. The issue is that as a team player, you want to support the overall Axis goal, while still getting objectives for Italy.

I realize that the victory conditions are fixed for MWiF product 1, but I would like to place an idea before the group for a potential later addition. When I was in high school, my friends and I played a few games of WiF. I no longer recall if it was 3rd edition or 4th (it's been over 20 years). In that edition, the objectives were broken down into groups and assigned a point value. Each side secretly picked one group of objectives per theater in play (Europe and/or Pacific). The values for the objectives in that group were increased for that side. The thought occured to me that we could simulate the different national objectives by having each country pick a group. We could allow them to pick the same group, to indicate complete allignment of goals, or different groups to show the tension between differing goals. The picks would be important for determining individual victory (only).

As I say, this is only food for thought, since the objective of MWiF Product 1 is to match WiF:FE, but this could make an interesting optional rule for added realism in later versions.

quote:

ORIGINAL: peskpesk
If you play with Option 42. Allied combat friction it solves the ground support exploit

Option 42: Subtract 1 from the dice for each attacking major power providing combat factors to the attack except the first (e.g. if Commonwealth land units are attacking with French shore bombardment and US ground support, subtract 2 from the die-roll).

quote:

ORIGINAL: iamspamus


For Italy going 'all-in' with Germany during Barbarossa, it's not hard to imagine a somewhat different Italy trying this; maybe Italy went through turbulent Communist revolutions in the 20s and Mussolini came to power as a fervent anti-Communist in the Hitler mode. As for the Italian empire, their colonies were actually a drain on the treasury; perhaps Mussonlini encouraged emigration to countries like the USA where his peeps could be sending money back to Italy instead of costing him money trying to colonize Libya.

quote:

ORIGINAL: brian brian

quote:

ORIGINAL: iamspamus


For Italy going 'all-in' with Germany during Barbarossa, it's not hard to imagine a somewhat different Italy trying this; maybe Italy went through turbulent Communist revolutions in the 20s and Mussolini came to power as a fervent anti-Communist in the Hitler mode. As for the Italian empire, their colonies were actually a drain on the treasury; perhaps Mussonlini encouraged emigration to countries like the USA where his peeps could be sending money back to Italy instead of costing him money trying to colonize Libya.

For the first part, this is hypothesis. The game starts at a specific point and then becomes alternate history as it unfolds.

quote:

ORIGINAL: morgil

What does the term 'kitchen-sink" mean ?

quote:

ORIGINAL: composer99

The standard metaphor is as Frederyck notes - everything but the kitchen sink.

In the context of the "kitchen-sink" Barbarossa, Neilster has the metaphor down pat - the Germans & Italians (and even the Japanese) go all-out against the USSR, neglecting every other theatre in a single-minded bid for victory.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Neilster
Ah! but Australian kitchen sinks are traditionally flimsy rubbish that one would be happy to remove and fling at something/someone, to be replaced with a high quality one, possibly from Sweden. That's why the expression has a different meaning here. Probably. Of course I could be wrong

Our kitchen sinks now compare with the best in the world! It's the ruthless international competition you see. There was a savage shake-out of the local kitchen sink industry, leaving only the best companies. It's really a fascinating story

p.s. Don't get me started on laundry tubs.

Cheers, Neilster