Play Balance in China

[Mziln]

There was another game on North Africa (I have fogotten the name). Where you actualy plotted your moves using terain features as reference points. You wrote your moves and your enemy tried move your units using what your wrote.

The instructons said this was because the units actualy had to navagate like ships at sea.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Ballista

ORIGINAL: Mziln

(...)
If I wanted to track every plane, pilot, tank, gun, infantryman, and etc. I would be pushing for a computer version of “Campaigns for North Africa”.
(...)

Heh. I saw that game actually being "played" (if that's what you call it). I came to the conclusion after observing them for awhile that those participating were not quite human..... [:)]

I own a copy of that game. It is infamous for the Italians using more water in the desert than the other countries, because they cook pasta.

I've never played it. We just looked at the rules and shook our heads in disbelief.

[Ballista]

LOL ! I've heard that before about that game.

Campaigns for North Africa is definitely a "curio" game and a conversation piece at best without a doubt. I used to play Drang Nach Osten for awhile. Definitely only for the hard-core groganard wargamer with nothing better to do....
[:)]

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Ballista

LOL ! I've heard that before about that game.

Campaigns for North Africa is definitely a "curio" game and a conversation piece at best without a doubt. I used to play Drang Nach Osten for awhile. Definitely only for the hard-core groganard wargamer with nothing better to do....
[:)]

Ah, then I guess I'm a "hard-core grognard wargamer with nothing better to do" - or was. We played Drang Nach Osten weekly for over a year.

[Ballista]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

ORIGINAL: Ballista

LOL ! I've heard that before about that game.

Campaigns for North Africa is definitely a "curio" game and a conversation piece at best without a doubt. I used to play Drang Nach Osten for awhile. Definitely only for the hard-core groganard wargamer with nothing better to do....
[:)]

Ah, then I guess I'm a "hard-core grognard wargamer with nothing better to do" - or was. We played Drang Nach Osten weekly for over a year.

That's cool. We gave up after 2 months when the owner's cat attacked the map (or so the story went) after the Germans got to Moscow in Nov I 1941 (the owner was one of the Russian players) I've picked up copies of Fire in the East, Scorched Earth, and The Urals). I still sometimes take all the maps out and lay as many of them out as possible (I'm a map-o-phile after all ) It makes you really appreciate just how far the Germans actually got. Now to see it in CWIF (and eventually in MWIF) it also is impressive.....

[YohanTM2]

when the owner's cat attacked the map

It's waz ze damn cat mein fuehrer, otherwise Moscow was ours...

[Mziln]

It's vaz der verdammt cat Mein Fuehrer, otherwise Moscow was tot...

hehehehehehe [:D]

[Manic Inertia]

I once inhaled a smidge of coffee whilst leaning over an ETO map during my poor defence against what was rapidly becoming a horribly successful '40 Sealion. Most of the Kreigmarine, several german corps and every British unit was immediately shifted several hundred kilometres rendered permanently inoperative by coffee. I've never successfully persuaded my opponent it was an accident, even after 14 years..

[Ballista]

ORIGINAL: Manic Inertia

I once inhaled a smidge of coffee whilst leaning over an ETO map during my poor defence against what was rapidly becoming a horribly successful '40 Sealion. Most of the Kreigmarine, several german corps and every British unit was immediately shifted several hundred kilometres rendered permanently inoperative by coffee. I've never successfully persuaded my opponent it was an accident, even after 14 years..

Gott Im Himmel !* Der dretted spild koffee devense ! [:)]

*German speakers please forgive my mangling of your language and 40's Hollywood Nazi character dialog.....

[Caranorn]

I believe all of us have those spilled coffee stories (in my case it's usually spilled Pepsi or a beer, the Pepsi is of course worse as everything gets sticky...). With Fire in the East, Scorched Earth and Urals my problem was always table space, today I couldn't even set that trio up anymore as I lost one of my big tables. sad really it's a wonderful game (though I don't even have all the Scorched Earth counters cut out as I never managed to play into 1942 (FiE is entirely punched but that's because I bought that game a month or two before I got SE and Urals)).

P.S.: Only last month I had to reprint and remount a number of counters for a game of my own I was testing, the spilled Pepsi after washing away half a civil war army had also soaked into several of my counters which started to disintegrate the following day, luckily that doesn't happen to pofessionally printed counters.

[Erictpaladin]

Hi there. Watch the forum about this game for a while now and decide to post a question about the china supply situation. All my Wif is in the addict but did it not include in the rule that if a unit could trace movement to a road once it hit the road or railway it could trace unlimited number of hexes to a city for supply? If I rember correclty bewteen that rule and the hq rule for supply only a few areas where actully dangerous to be cut off in. Am I miss rembering the rule? I admit it could come from Fire in the east or another game but I thought this one belong to WIF.

[DavidFaust]

Regarding space problems.....

My partner wanted a nice new tables and chairs.
I wanted a nice BIG table to play war games on (mainly WIF)
She would look at different styles and colors
I would set out my WIF maps on the tables and talked sizes.
She found a table she liked, I found the sizes I needed.
I got a large draw made under the table that could store all maps.
Playing WIF is much more enjoyable and knowing your game is out of harms way is a great piece of mind.

[Mziln]

ORIGINAL: Erictpaladin

If I rember correclty bewteen that rule and the hq rule for supply only a few areas where actully dangerous to be cut off in. Am I miss rembering the rule?

You have a number of movement points to trace supply from the unit to:

(1) A HQ.
(2) A secondary supply source.
(3) A primary supply source.
(4) A convoy route to a primary supply source.

From a HQ or secondary supply source you also have a number of movement points to trace supply to:

(1) A primary supply source.
(2) A convoy route to a primary supply source.

Both sets of movement points are effected by weather.

Rail hexes and convoy routes don't count aginst the movement points from the HQ or secondary supply source to the primary supply source.

[Zorachus99]

[&o]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
Ah, then I guess I'm a "hard-core grognard wargamer with nothing better to do" - or was. We played Drang Nach Osten weekly for over a year.

[&o]


I have Almost every Europa ADG in print. Fire in the East was by far the most mentally disabling boardgame ever! Our game was going slower than the actual war - 8 hrs x 2 weekends a month.

It gives me a hankering to pull out Narvik or one of the other board games to pore over

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99

I have Almost every Europa ADG in print. Fire in the East was by far the most mentally disabling boardgame ever! Our game was going slower than the actual war - 8 hrs x 2 weekends a month.

It gives me a hankering to pull out Narvik or one of the other board games to pore over

I have an excellent little book on Narvik that describes the "battle" in a modest amount of detail. What sticks in my mind was the submarine commander remaining completely hidden and firing a series of torpedoes right on target but they all ran under the targets because of a defect in the torpedo design. The targets never even knew they were under attack. That book is now in one of the 8 large boxes that contain most of ny military history books - just not enough shelf space in this condo.

[trees trees]

Unfortunately I don't have time to re-read this entire thread right now but I will soon. I don't think I've seen it since page 2 or so.

But the latest discussion in the map thread has led me to a few basic questions. Some people feel that the Chinese and Japanese need more units to make this a workable theater. Personally I disagree, as other folks including Steve have pointed out this has ripple effects throughout the game. But at the same time it seems that the cWiF system of unlimited Divisions is coming to MWiF as well. So that is in direct conflict with the thought of not expanding the units.

My question is: is unlimited Div breakdown cast in stone, as the change to a unified map scale is? Or will it be a new option that can be toggled on and off?

If I had unlimited Divisions I would bid a bit higher to play the Japanese, that's for sure. (With SCS tranport they could rule everything from the Arabian Sea to beyond the Coral Sea) If I did, on the first turn I think I would build three INF. I can't recall if they have that many left in their at-start force pool but I think so. If not, then two and the MTN corps, or maybe an ATR instead. In J/F I would ship these in to China on one impulse, rail them forward on the next two impulses, and break them down just behind the front line. Maybe one of the at-start INF as well. Then in M/A 6 or 8 divisions commence the ooze offensive around the Nationalist lines. The 1-4 Inf Division is the best unit in the Japanese OOB, I take a MIL as a loss against China before that one currently. If playing without Chinese Attack Weakness, the Chinese can swat these as they come in, somewhat, but in mountains backed up by Japanese air this isn't so simple. (And without Chinese Attack Weakness the Japanese are pushed back to Korea by 1944 anyways). The Chinese are soon threatened everywhere. They can break down one CAV and a few INF, but then their front lines weaken even more, and their irreplaceable MIL from cities behind enemy lines get more vulnerable.

So, I would play without this. I think a solution to China is to have less units, not more.

[Froonp]

My question is: is unlimited Div breakdown cast in stone, as the change to a unified map scale is? Or will it be a new option that can be toggled on and off?

For your information trees trees, the "unlimited" DIV breakdown will not be unlimited, as Steve is about to code it.
It will be unlimited in theory, but the Corps used to obtain both divisions won't be rebuildable, unless both DIV are destroyed or reformed.
So it will be limited in reality.

You will be able to play without Divisions & ART I believe, but I don't know if "unlimited" breakdown will be an option you will be able to toggle on / off.

[trees trees]

(and yes, I figured out how to get my browser to work here, the login button was several screens off to the right. I put a post in the help forum about it, hopefully that might help somebody else).

I re-read this whole thread. Even before I've been re-hashing the ideas about China lately, it is clear that some of these discussions are circular. I guess I'll just have to wait to see how the play-testing turns out like everyone else.

I well understand that you have to have corps to make these new divisions. My point is that Japan has these available moreso than China. (I think I would also build both of Japan's C-47's as well with unlimited div). Japan has an excellent mix of sturdy and replaceable MIL to use. Many of China's are not replaceable. China does have 5 INF, but they need these to man the lines while the fragile MIL hold the safer areas.

I've been thinking more about the idea that Japan can concentrate in an area and gain an easy advantage. I think this is less true on the bigger map. If Japan sets up too heavily to drive on Chang-Sha, the Communists will soon be in Tai-Yuan. If Japan goes heavily for Si-An, it's lines of communication with Shanghai may soon be threatened. I think Sun Tzu would enjoy this new game.

Divisions is itself an option. I hope the change to increased Divisions is an option. I hope some testers try this theater without Divisions at all and see what this does. It could be that is what creates more balance. ?

Another thought - everyone seems to agree on more WarLord units, including in Manchuria. I thought the Manchurian TERRitorial units nicely represent those already.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

I just pinned a thread about optional rules to the top of the forum. It contains a link to the whole thread on same and identifies the post which gives the current list of 80.

[composer99]

I don't recall having said much on play balance in China except for a few comments in the map thread, but I think I shall mention my own CWiF and WiF:FE experiences playing in the China.

Having had the benefit of living in the same town as (the apparently dreaded) Andrew Rader I've played a fair bit of WiF:FE in just the four years I've been playing it. I also went to WiFCon in Michigan last summer. I think, if one includes DoD games, that I've played almost 10 games of WiF (and another one on the way in a concentrated, week-long burst of playing this July here in Ottawa when Rader is back in town for a spell taking a break from being at MIT).

Excluding the times in DoD when Japan did not attack China (twice, once when I was Japan), if I recall correctly, twice in WiF:FE Japan conquered China or had otherwise crippled it. Once (at WiFCon), China got so strong, and Japan lost so many units to bad attacks, that it was able to mount a counter-offensive in '43-'44 to throw Japan out and even go into Manchuria (which I know is unrealistic from a historical point of view, but there is a lot about WiF that can be argued to be unrealistic to some extent or another), and the rest of the time a sort of stalemate set in, with Japan making some gains in the early game and China making some (but not as much) gains in the late game.

This actually corresponds roughly with the CWiF games I played (all solo): the Japanese got the combat results and the weather they needed to knock China out of the war (once via conquest, once just a crippling blow) twice, they got poor combat results and weather once which allowed the Chinese to start hammering at them, and the rest of the time the Japanese would make some modest gains (Si-An, Kwei-Yang, sometimes Kunming) but not have the good attack results or weather to really take it to China.

I will grant that these recollections are neither a statistically significant number of samples, nor are they clear enough (except from the WiFCon game) that they could be considered conclusive. But I just thought I'd mention it. The larger map relative to the number of units may make it seem like a real war of manouevre can be waged, but since the units' movement rates do not change the new scale makes it take longer for them to get around, which means that it is not easy for either Japan or China to muster the power they need in any one location to launch major attacks.