How does it play?

[wodin]

Ive never played WiF so can someone fill me in on the mechanics of the game?

Whats involved in a turn?

What are your strategic options during a turn or during the game?

Is resource involved?

Are there different types of attack you can launch i.e like AGW?

How are air units used?

Really Im after a description of the game and its major points.

Thanks

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here is the opening page from my AI Opponent design document. It provides a broad outline of WIF. I am sure that other forum members can/will give you more details vis-a-vis movement and combat.

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I. Background
1.1 MWIF Objectives
World in Flames is a game of conquest where the winner is determined based on victory hexes held at the end of the game. Indeed, the game ends early if one side controls a sufficient number of victory hexes. Since control of a hex is only achieved by having land units either traverse the hex or occupy the country’s capital, land units determine who wins.

1.2 Land Units
There are dozens of types of land units and they can be corps or division size. In order for land units to attack outside of their home country, they need to be able to trace a supply line back to a supply source, either in their home country or an occupied country. To do that, they need to be near a headquarters unit which can trace supply back to a primary or secondary supply source using rail lines. Because the only way to take enemy held victory cities and enemy capitals is by attacking in foreign lands, these lines of communication are crucial for making any progress.

1.3 Naval Units
If the enemy is overseas, then supply/communication lines need to extend overseas. This is done by having convoys in contiguous sea areas stretching from the overseas location to the home supply source. To keep overseas units in supply, there must be at least one convoy per sea area, thereby forming a convoy pipeline. The convoys are extremely vulnerable to attack, so naval units are used to defend friendly and attack enemy convoy pipelines. If all supply lines could be land based, then the naval units would have very little value. This is why historically Germany and the USSR could fight such a prolonged and bloody conflict with virtually no naval units involved.

1.4 Air Units
Air units enable a player to provide additional striking power at the point of attack. This can be done when attacking or defending and on land and at sea. Air units also have a limited ability to transport land units and supply. One unique role they perform is to attack enemy production through strategic bombing. In general though, air units are augmentations to land and naval forces, which respectively perform the primary tasks of taking territory and providing supply.

1.5 Transportation Lines
In addition to the rail lines and convoy pipelines providing supply, these same 2 transportation lines are used to transport resources to factories and reinforcements to the frontlines. The mechanism is so similar to those for maintaining supply, that for most purposes they can be thought of as the same. What has to be kept in mind is that the importance of the rail lines and convoy pipelines is multiple: (1) to provide supply, (2) to send reinforcements to the frontlines, and (3) to send resources to factories.

1.6 Production
Once resources have been delivered to a factory, a currency known as production points are produced. Depending on the intensity of the war effort, these production points are converted into a number of build points. Build points can then be used to create new land, naval, and air units. They can also be used for repairing naval units, generating supply depots, and creating new factories. Being unable to generate a substantial number of build points each turn means that a country is unable to replace losses to its army, navy, air force, and merchant marine and eventually it is doomed to defeat.

[Cheesehead]

Steve gave you the short answer as he is busy developing the computer version of this game. I wanted to add a few things.

First of all, the naval component to this game is brilliant. It allows for chance encounters...ie. two sides occupying the same sea zone, sometimes they find each other, sometimes they don't...sometimes one side pulls a "Midway" and catches the enemy totally unawares and uses the opportunity to pulverize the opposing fleet. In this way a smaller fleet may have the opportunity to crush a larger, more powerful fleet.

The air component is IMO perfectly balanced so that air power plays a very important role in overall game play, but it's not overly dominant like in some games I've played.

WiF has also managed to bring the excitement of specific airplane models and named ships into a strategic level game. For example, it's exciting when the USA get's to build P-38s and P-51s, and see their historic advantages come into play...or for the British player to try and hunt down the Bismarck as it rolls off the dock in Kiel and breaks into the Atlantic hunting convoys...

This game is a work of art in that it fits many disparate components together seemlessly. This is not a game that bogs down. Throughout the course of a game there are numerous climactic dice rolls in which the tide of the war seems to hang...and just when you think your side is finished because of one roll that went awry, something else happens to pull your feet out of the fire, the weather turns bad, your subs score a knockout blow on your enemy convoys just before the turn ends, your German opponent (drunk with success in conquering France) decides to invade Spain and Russia during the same year!...yes this just hapened to me [:)]

If you like WWII grand strategy games, look no further.

[JimMerson]

I have read the rules but never played. I have played the Barbarossa Scenario on CWiF when that was around but really am waiting for MWiF!!!

Sounds like a blast!

Jim

[Mziln]

This is the game outline for a single turn.

From the RAW FE (Rules As Written Final Edition)

3.1 Sequence of play The sequence of play in a turn is:

A. REINFORCEMENT STAGE
B. LENDING RESOURCES STAGE
C. INITIATIVE STAGE

D. ACTION STAGE Repeat D1 through D3 until the action stage ends.
D1 Determine weather
D2 First side’s impulse
Every major power on the first side performs these steps:
D2.1 Declare war
D2.2 Choose action Choose either a pass, a naval, an air, a land or a combined action.
D2.3 Perform actions The major powers that didn’t pass perform these steps in this order (their action choice will limit what they can do ~ see action limits table):
(a) Port attacks
(b) Naval air missions
(c) Naval movement
(d) Your naval combat
(e) Opponent’s naval combat
(f) Strategic bombardment
(g) Carpet bombing (option 32)
(h) Ground strike missions
(i) Rail movement
(j) Land movement
(k) Air transport
(l) Debark land units at sea
(m) Invasions
(n) Paradrops
(o) Land combat
(p) Air rebases
(q) Reorganisation

D2.4 End of action
Roll to end the action stage. If it doesn’t end, advance the impulse marker the number of spaces shown on the weather chart for the current weather roll. If it ends, move on to stage E - the end of turn.

D3 Second side’s impulse
If the action stage didn’t end, repeat the steps in D2 for the second side. If the action stage doesn’t end after the second side’s impulse, go back to D1.

E. END OF TURN STAGE Both sides perform these steps in this order:
E1 Partisans
E2 US entry
E3 Return to base
E4 Final reorganisation
E5 Production
E6 Intelligence (option 63)
E7 Peace
E7.1 Conquest
E7.2 Allied minor support
E7.3 Mutual peace
E7.4 Vichy declaration
E7.5 Liberation
E7.6 Surrender
E8 Victory check (& option 30: factory destruction)

[Froonp]

Having the sequence of play available easily ingame, who would also show you clearly where you are within that sequence of play during actual play, and maybe also providing a sentence or two of explanations of what is done whithin each step would be very important and highly usefull for players of MWiF.

[wodin]

Are the rules up for download anywhere?

[JanSorensen]

ADG homepage On that page select downloads and then find the World in Flames Rules Aug 2004