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January - 1939

Lots of small activity on this turn, the most notable being that Nanning fell to the Japanese. USSR also invaded Finland and British spies report that the construction of Germany's Tirpitz Battleship was cancelled.

German raiders at Capetown

China launches a successful counter offensive from Chengchow

ORIGINAL: FOARP

Gotta love the scale variation on the WAW map:

Real life straight-line distances v. In-game distance (counting the originating hex)

Delhi-Kathmandu: 500 miles, 4 hexes (125 miles/hex)
NYC-Washington DC: 230 miles, 2 hexes (115 miles/hex)
St. Johns-Port-aux-Basques: 300 miles, 4 hexes (75 miles/hex)
Tangier-Fez: 130 miles, 2 hexes (65 miles/hex)
Lisbon-Lagos (Portugal): 115 miles, 2 hexes (58 miles/hex)
Chengdu-Chongqing (Chungking): 170 miles, 4 hexes (43 miles/hex)
Beijing (Peking)-Tianjin (Tientsin): 73 miles, 2 hexes (37 miles/hex)
Hamburg-Bremen: 60 miles, 2 hexes (30 miles/hex)
Luxembourg-Amsterdam: 184 miles, 6 hexes (30 miles/hex)

I mean I know why they do this (i.e., for game-play purposes), but just eyeballing it you wouldn't know it varies so much even in some cases within the same continent (e.g., India seems to be on a diferent scale to China, the Low Countries and northern France seem to be on a different scale to Iberia).

As I found out to my chagrin trying to precisely locate certain places on my 20k map, the use of hexes means that the resulting hex grid distorts distances-any distances along the diagonal axis will appear longer than they would along the short axis (perpendicular distance), even if in the game the effective distances in hexes traveled will be the same.

In addition because of the use of the mercator projection here, E-W distances will be longer the farther north or south of the equator you go.

Jan 1939 - Western Europe

February 1940

Germany dishonors the sale of naval assets to USSR as agreed in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which slightly edges up Soviet mobilization.

France and Britain agree to send an expedition to Finland to assist in defending against the Soviets. With the increased Soviet mobilization I am willing to roll the dice and accept the mobilization penalty if Finland can make peace.

ORIGINAL: crispy131313

Jan 1939 - Western Europe

Interesting France setup. May I ask why you left those 2 hexes SW of Luxemburg? Good defensive terrain. Plus that army S of Strasbourg, probably won't see a lot of action.

Did you agree not to attack France at once, or does your mod punishes early gung-ho somewhat?
Good AAR, thank you.

ORIGINAL: Marcinos1985
Interesting France setup. May I ask why you left those 2 hexes SW of Luxemburg? Good defensive terrain. Plus that army S of Strasbourg, probably won't see a lot of action.

Did you agree not to attack France at once, or does your mod punishes early gung-ho somewhat?
Good AAR, thank you.

Yes I agree I should have made better use of the terrain near Luxembourg and I did end up moving a Corps into the forest the next turn when I realized that, initially I hoped funnel the Germans in effort to counter attack their salient and perhaps even destroy a unit or two. However with Germany spending minimal on research to date I then assumed that a number of additional Tank/Mech units will likely be facing me and I would be better served simply slowing the advance.

I've only played 2 match vs the AI before (one each side) and no PBEM so I'm not quite seasoned on what the optimal defense could be yet.

I left the Army S of Strasbourg in case Germany tried to break through the weak spot in the Maginot line which is Strasbourg itself. It either will let me swap in a fresh unit if the Strasbourg Army takes a beating and has low morale when I go to reinforce or could allow me to counter attack a unit that tries to breakthrough.

We did not set any house rules. There are some MPP restraints for Germany in the early game which are present in the mod (decisions etc.), which could have played a factor into not wanting to operate units for an early offensive, if that is what you meant.

February 1940 - The Chinese Breakout from Chengchow

March 1940 - The end of Sitzkrieg

ORIGINAL: Elessar2

ORIGINAL: FOARP

Gotta love the scale variation on the WAW map:

Real life straight-line distances v. In-game distance (counting the originating hex)

Delhi-Kathmandu: 500 miles, 4 hexes (125 miles/hex)
NYC-Washington DC: 230 miles, 2 hexes (115 miles/hex)
St. Johns-Port-aux-Basques: 300 miles, 4 hexes (75 miles/hex)
Tangier-Fez: 130 miles, 2 hexes (65 miles/hex)
Lisbon-Lagos (Portugal): 115 miles, 2 hexes (58 miles/hex)
Chengdu-Chongqing (Chungking): 170 miles, 4 hexes (43 miles/hex)
Beijing (Peking)-Tianjin (Tientsin): 73 miles, 2 hexes (37 miles/hex)
Hamburg-Bremen: 60 miles, 2 hexes (30 miles/hex)
Luxembourg-Amsterdam: 184 miles, 6 hexes (30 miles/hex)

I mean I know why they do this (i.e., for game-play purposes), but just eyeballing it you wouldn't know it varies so much even in some cases within the same continent (e.g., India seems to be on a diferent scale to China, the Low Countries and northern France seem to be on a different scale to Iberia).

As I found out to my chagrin trying to precisely locate certain places on my 20k map, the use of hexes means that the resulting hex grid distorts distances-any distances along the diagonal axis will appear longer than they would along the short axis (perpendicular distance), even if in the game the effective distances in hexes traveled will be the same.

In addition because of the use of the mercator projection here, E-W distances will be longer the farther north or south of the equator you go.

Yup. Until a war game simply goes and implements an actual globe (which I understand is mathematically impossible to do only with equally-sized, equilateral hexes BTW, though there are implementations where the globe is a multi-sided 3D polygon with pentagons put in on the corners) it's impossible to accurately model all of this. And likely no wargame ever will do that because it's way more effort than it's likely to be worth in terms of improved gameplay, and in the case of the 20-sided polygon map in the above link, is likely to cause weird problems with 1) pentagons having to be accounted for somehow amongst the hexes and 2) big long fold-lines right across the map making everything look weird.

However the scale-switches along similar lattitudes are a choice of the designers - an entirely fair one given they want to model fighting more in some areas than in others.

For my map, I gave up on trying to scale distances super-accurately along the map early for the same reasons you give. Instead I focus entirely on getting co-ordinates and relative locations (i.e., is a town north/south/west/east of its neighbours?) more or less correct, keeping in mind that often towns etc. sprawl between two or more hexes and so you can choose where to put them.

EDIT: ..and bringing us back round to the original point - the player can't easily work out that scales are changing just by eyeballing things so if you do have changing scales across the map it won't be too jarring for the player.

March 1940 - China

March 1940 - Finland repels the USSR

With Allied assistance Finland has forced the Soviets to abandon their incursion into Finnish territory. Despite the drop in USSR mobilization this is welcome news. The Soviets are making enemies and Finland at this point in time is not expected to go back to war in the future. Finnish mobilization is now 18% Allies.

March 1940

The Allies once again are successful in swaying Spain away from the Axis. This is curious as I thought for certain my opponent would have invested in Spain considering Spanish mobilization was 51% in the opening turns.

Late March 1940 - Chinese forces are defeated at the battle of Tsinan.

Late March 1940 - German forces break through the Maginot Line

April 1940 - Germany invades Norway, Belgium and Netherlands

April 1940 - Fall Gelb

April 1940

As the battle of France continues in Germany's favor, the British have made the controversial decision to activate the entire British Empire to aid in their war effort!