Option for Barbarossa in 1940 or 1942?

[Argothair]

One of the things I like about some of the monster WW2 board games like World in Flames is that as Germany, you can choose what year you want to start your attack on the Soviet Union. If you want to move troops from Paris to Warsaw immediately after the fall of France and then invade in August 1940, you can do that; if you want to spend a full year going after some combination of London, Gibraltar, and Cairo and wait to invade until, say, May 1942, then you can do that do.

By contrast, in SC WWII: WaW, I really only see one option: you attack in spring of 1941. If you try to attack in 1940, you'll be doing it without Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, Romania, and Bulgaria, meaning that you don't have nearly as much income, units, or frontage for your attack. It's not cost-effective or practical to try to activate any of these countries early with diplomacy; it's way too expensive and way too random. The USSR will be less prepared, but they don't need much preparation to defend along such a narrow front line.

On the other end of the timeline, you *can't* wait to attack until 1942, because the USSR will activate itself and attack you sometime in October or November 1941 even if you do absolutely nothing to provoke them. The USSR can invade Poland and Finland while you quietly let them keep eastern Poland and all of the Baltic States, and they still chug right along to war well before the weather even starts to think about clearing in 1942. Again, it's not worth spending money on diplomacy to try to change this -- the diplomacy chits are very expensive and very random. If you blow your spare cash on ~8 chits and they only hit once or twice then you have basically lost the game, because now Russia will be fighting you anyway and you don't have the tech or units that you could have bought with that cash.

Am I missing something, or is it pretty much mandatory in this game to start Barbarossa in 1941?

[Elessar2]

There was for awhile in human vs. human games to launch 1940 Barbarossas, and it worked so well that it either got house ruled out or there was a tweak in one of the patches. Yes, Germany doesn't have the industrial base yet, but Russia will often prove to be even relatively weaker than in '41.

Thread from 2 years ago, there have been others:

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... a#p4660104

[Argothair]

Thanks, that's interesting. I still don't quite see how the 1940 attack would work; it seems like Germany is earning ~250 MPPs per turn compared to 700 for the Soviet Union. I guess if you seize eastern Poland and the Baltics as Germany using the early game decision events then maybe you start a little closer to Leningrad and Moscow and maybe you can take them before Russia can spend their cash and knock Russian morale down into the toilet? If you have more threads on either 1940 or 1942, please do send them my way; I'll be curious to read them.