Yes yes, Lions and Tigers and Bears.

Now, about the ruleset?

Someone needs to kick Wonderbread out of here. People are actually having a nice discussion about alternative rules and one guy always has to screw it up. Warflail I think your rules are great, I'll have to submit a copy to my BM for a future Unrestricted event.


P.S. Wonderbread's a NARC

Warflail, the ruleset you use is very good. I like the negations to tankdrop and artillery, and the "fix" to HtH weapon.

Just one question, though. A 4-inch min. range tank can fire at a unit in based contact, but what if the unit is three inches away? Does this mean it cannot be fired upon?

But it appears that Wonderbread has bought himself a shield of immunity, Men Shen. He's a Diamond Donor of this forum since a short time. I'm wondering if that also means that you don't have to worry about warning points anymore.

But I digress. The alternative rules as posted by Warflail and the suggestions made in many of the reactions certainly are inspirational. This is why I consider this thread to be very relevant. If you don't like the official rules, make your own! Mind you, you must be willing to play (and think!) outside the official tournament box thingie.

[quote]Originally posted by Warflail
+1 defense for units on elevated terrain: Being on a hill doesnt help you save yourself from raining splodies.

+1 defense for cruising VTOLs: How does being nimble in the air help you when flak shells explode flinging shrapnel around in a large area?[quote]

The answer to both questions:

it's called "a ballistic arc". Having actually fired a weapon, I can tell you that combatting those who have an elevation advantage factors in heavily. Energy weapons wouldn't be affected by gravity, but changing the rules for one and not the other would be unbalancing.

There you have it. Grade school level science answering a high-tech dilemna.

Panzerfaust

I'm doing more than whining. I'm offering suggestions on how to make it better. Do you even PLAY the game, or are you just this robot BM who sits around reading Heavy Metal and occasionally settling disputes when the shouting gets too loud?
The point, sir, is that WK released a majorly broken piece that prompted two rules changes and nerfed the ability of 22 other pieces to "fix" this one mistake. Stellar decision making. And I'll ignore the barb...
Reasonable expectations are that I buy a booster or three and am able to build a moderately competitive army with those pieces. Unless I pull artillery or infiltrators my chances of winning are a snowball in hades.

Let's look at the percentage of "shelf guard" units in CA:
125 units in CA, including uniques. (but not tourney prize uniques obviously)

Anat APC (4) - marginally better than Giggins, pass over for Maxim or Garrot.
Behemoth (4) - slow, 4" minimum. may see play in faction pure tank drop.
JES II Missile Carrier (4) - same as behemoth.
Calvary VTOL (4) - wow, a vtol with a 6" range!
Combat Engineers (4) - 3-4 clicks of life, ranges from 0/0(!) to 0/4. wheee.
Garrot VTOLs (4) - Maxim clones for everyone! And they can be shot down easier!
Infiltrator Mk I BA (4) - Infiltrators that are notoriously bad at.. infiltrating?
Pegasus Hovertank (4) - Redundant, Fulcrums have same stats at same cost. Filler...
Raider MK II (4) - The battlemech that behaves like an ICE mech.
Shoden Assault Vehicle (4) - nice vehicle, but unless you pull a Garrot, you're SOL. Pass!
Special Forces Team (4) - The special ability being.. quick death? 4 clicks life..

That's... 44 units out of 125, or 35% of pieces that are unplayable gaming-wise. And this list is by no means conclusive or exhaustive...That's also not taking into account the rarity factor, which would push the number to well over 50%.

I bought 12 boxes the day CA came out. I got zippo for usable units. Not a single unique, no ATV trikes, one piece of artillery. I ended up giving most of it away and buying what I wanted from online sites.

Now personally I don't care, but the argument that set retirement will take the fear out of new players joining the game falls flat on its backside. A competitive army shouldn't require a more-than-significant amount of money. At present it does. A SS Arrow IV went for $56 on eBay yesterday. Another closed 30 mins later for $35. I can't afford that, and because I can't I will lose. Not because of a lack of skill. Or bad dice rolls. Because certain units, played with a minimum of skill, dramatically tip the scales in the owner's favor.

You can go on and on about how terrain and unit placement are important, how anything is beatable given skill and luck, then after your ever-so-careful placement the guy across the table yawns and lays pogs.


google "shuck-shuck axis allies game" for more info. Dice don't even enter into the equation. Originally developed by MIT's A&A gaming club, if I recall correctly...

And you might be interested to know that Hasbro/Avalon Hill is releasing an UPDATED VERSION of Axis and Allies with significant rules and units changes. And a new map. If even Hasbro can see the need to address gameplay issues, what is the matter with a "hardcore gaming company" that is "passionate about their games" doing the same?

Details:

http://www.avalonhill.com/default.as...en/aapreview01


@Warflail: how about splash damage to tanks? I seem to remember LRM's having a minimum range to arm, or could be fired hot-loaded but which did backsplash damage to the mech. Ditto for energy, which are using PPC's I presume.

Infantry dumb enough to stand in front of a gun barrel receive full damage, however 1 click is dealt to the tank. Armor doesn't prevent this damage (use mech ammo explosion rules). No defensive bonuses or damage limits when firing on units within minimum range.

@ arcjr...

Correct, a unit 3.9" away from a tank with 4" minimum is safe from it. But basing it, the tank can gently apply machineguns, A-Pods, run the bastards over, whatever.

@ Max...

I'm no expert on CBT, but I want to say you could fire LRMs and such inside minimum range, but each hex gave the target +1 defense.

Warflail: You might be able to simplify the "wording" of the rule by allowing vehicles to make a Close Combat attack with the same restriction you've mentioned. I think everything falls into place from there.

"A vehicle may make a ranged combat attack against a target inside its minimum range with a +3 modifier to the targets defence."

Something along those lines?

I like what you did WarFlail, I hope you don't mind if I take this and modify it for another rule set? ;)

Hey Max... I am more a lurker now since I got the kabosh. I have a feeling though....

Not much time to rebutt some of the whiners, like Nanhold who is whining about me becoming a diamond donor (guess what, you can show your appreciation to the good folks here at mwrealms.com by donating a few bucks and putting your money where your mouth is) and Men Shen who thinks I'm a narc. ~lol~ I know what my responsiblities are and if reporting abuse of the approved play system is what it takes to stop the abuse, I'll narc out you, your mom and the pope in a heartbeat.

Now as far as Max Steiner goes:
1. Top 50 in the world. ~shrug~ Feel free to knock on the rating system now.

2. People were more worried about the SW J37 than the SM1 destroyer. The SM1 destroyer was a one shot wonder and there are posts here about how people totally took SM1 armies to town.

3. If you expect to buy a booster or three and field a moderately competitive army, I suggest, again, that you play another game. That's a ridiculous expectation and no ccg or cmg out there lets you do that. You're asking for two much.

4. You're a little hard on the little cavalry choppers and the Raider MkII isn't all bad.

5. ~shrug~ So you aren't a collector. Maybe you should have bought some singles to begin with and saved yourself the trouble. How is that Wizkids fault again?

6. How is this argument any different from the cost of power decks in magic? Power decks in any game? Powerful units/cards will cost more because you can win with them. If anything, these things go for so much because the market will support it. I'd say $56 is pretty good for a "dying" game.

7. Why aren't you laying pogs? Is it his fault he panned out the cash to buy good pieces?

8. I'll have to look that up. I might be losing my one dollar on this.

9. The minimum range to arm was in advanced rules but was done quite well in type 1&2 rules by simply making the shot +1 more difficult for each hex under 5.

Max, I'm not flaming you, but I think you are having way too much of an expectation when you open a booster. All games out there have a low treasure to trash ratio. You're going to have to put down a chunk of money before you get those great pieces. It's an ugly truth and it's a universal truth (except maybe in crimson skies....)

Wait a minute. You work at the Diamond Mall in Anchorage, don't you?

Warflail

Like the ruleset, very interesting changes that look like they clean a lot of issues up. I'll definitely try them out. Giving ECM the ability to negate IT is an interesting touch, I hadn't even thought of that. I'd also like to throw in my support for the arty changes: they keep all their SE if they can just hit whatever's in the blast radius. I've seen a lot of speculation on whether this keeps arty units to powerful or makes them too weak, but from the sound of it, it turns an artillery unit into a light tank with super long range...which is right about where their point cost places them anyway (GASP). Kudos to you.

There's still a few things my brain bubbles about. I know someone posted before saying that it's simpler just restricting a unit unloading from a transport's ability to be given an order, and you didn't want to do this because it makes infantry dropping useless, which I agree with. The part that I stumble over is all the other restrictions placed on vehicles being towed. From the changes, I see absolutely no reason to tow a vehicle unless it's an artillery piece...which really makes sense to me anyway, but if there are uses for towed vehicles under these rules that I've missed, please let me know. If not, why not just limit a transport to only moving infantry or "towed" units, and no vehicles at all?

Giving a HtH weapon the ability to ignore agility is interesting to me, as it puts a check on agility, which is probably a good thing because it's a fairly powerful SE (okay maybe I'm biased b/c my faction only has one agility equipped unit). I'm curious if you've tampered with melee attacks and armor/charge and armor. I know from my experiences that the FAQ change has certainly helped control charging a little, sothere may be nothing needing change there. I've been looking for a small change that would make certain SE pierce armor in melee attacks, but not the rest. HtH weapon sounds like a natural for this, but making a HtH weapon ignore agility and armor is a bit much for one SE. I'd like a charge to not pierce armor unless you have a certain SE, but with the units that have HtH weapons sometimes it's hard to balance. I'm just curious if you've toyed with the notion. If not...great ruleset anyway.

:grin:

Actually, that makes sense... think about it. The closer to the tank you got, teh larger its blind spots would be, combined with the max speed its turret could rotate and the agility of the hoverbike.

Can you give me a website that details exactly and precisely the 'shuck shuck' strategy is that's guaranteed to win?

After checking a dozen or so pages, none of them could really give it, other than one saying the phrase referred to moving units via transport from one front to another.

I've long known that A&A favored the Allies (80/20 or so, IMO), but I've never seen an exact strategy that's guaranteed to win...I'd love to try a few rounds solitaire to see exactly why it's so high probability.

And, don't put too much effort or worry into zombies...much like folks with brown hair, some people are just LIKE that, there's just nothing for it.

Take care,

Rick