Axis and Allies Custom Map - Operation Sealion

Last year a friend of mine gave me a free copy of A&A 1941 after I said it looked like an interesting game. So me and some college buddies had been playing it consistently for about a semester when we decided we wanted to take it to the next level. We purchased A&A 1940 Pacific and Europe and ever since we've been hooked on the franchise.

A&A can sometimes take many hours to play and isn't usually fun when you only have 2 or 3 people playing. So I proposed to my friends that we look into the smaller games like D-Day, Bulge, or Guadalcanal. I watched a few people play it and they didn't look too bad but seemed like they were definitely for beginners but what we wanted was a smaller game that could fit 2 players and take only 2-3 hours while not surrendering game play toughness and strategy. I also didn't feel like paying $70+ for a game. So I began looking into building my own custom map.

Beginning setup

Close up of the channel 

Note the railroad system in England

The English can make an easy jump from Kent to Calais

The latter end of the game where Germany slowly pushes it's way in from the West

I took several old game boards, covered the old game background with black paper and then blank white paper. A scenario I thought would be cool was Operation Sealion, the proposed German invasion of England in 1940. I looked at several maps of England and France and decided the map could accommodate Northern France and southern England. I traced out regions in both countries to the best of my abilities and tried to give both nations approximately the same amount of territory while still being historically accurate. Instead of coloring them in fully I just bolded the borders with each nation's respective color (Green for Germans - Red for British). I also colored in the channel and boxed off seazones. The only 2 regions in mainland Europe that aren't controlled by the Germans are Luxembourg and Switzerland. However, they are both pro-allied neutrals.

Scenario and Rules: The objective of the game is for the Germans to capture London or for the British to capture German Occupied Paris. The rules are basically the same as the rest of the A&A games with a few new perks added. To make the game go faster and to make it more historically accurate I introduced railroad networks. For example, a rail system goes from the Rhineland, through Paris, and up to Lower Normandy. The advantage of this is that any unit that is moving from a territory with a railroad and is going into another territory with a railroad gets +1 movement for either combat or non-combat moves. So an infantry unit moving from Dover to London can move 2 spaces instead of the usual 1 as long as it stays on the railroad path. Now, the railroads are permanent, can't be destroyed, and nor can you build new ones. I also thought it would be appropriate to add pillboxes to make coastal defense stronger. Pillboxes can only defend and they can't be moved. They have a defense of 2 and a cost of 3 but can only be built on coastal territories. In a sense they are actually worse than infantry in terms of strategic value and economics but add a nice element to a game that in centered around coastal defense and amphibious assault. However, most players probably won't buy more pillboxes once they are destroyed. Also, the Germans get to call in 3 paratrooper drops throughout each game. One drop is one paratrooper that can land on any coastal territory. More paratroopers cannot be purchased. The advantage is that paratroopers have 2 attack instead of the usual 1 and obviously do not require a transport to move. Lastly, the purchasing scheme is the same as all the other game with the addition of pillboxes.

Balance: Germany starts out ready for the offensive with more infantry, bombers, and transports but less economic power. England has a larger Navy and more fighters. England also has 5 factories while Germany only has 3 and most are away from the coast (factories can't be moved, built, or destroyed). In the game their are also naval ports and airports which allow those units to move +1 spaces. Also, if Britain keeps all of it's original territory they get 5 bonus production points at the collection stage of their turn. I call it the Lend-Lease National Objective. Germany's national objective is called the Clear Channel. If all British naval units are gone from the game then Germany naval units can move +1 spaces and an extra infantry unit in Normandy (not exclusive to one turn). I ran several simulations to make sure the fighting and economics were equal but had to factor in geography and unit placement.

Starting production:
Germany - 29
Britain - 32

Germany:
seazone 2 - 2 submarines
seazone 4 - 1 transport
seazone 9 - 1 transport
seazone 11 - 2 destroyers
seazone 10 - 2 transports
seazone 23 - transport & battleship
Upper Normandy - 4 bombers/1 infantry
Lower Normandy - 4 infantry/1 tank/ 1 fighter
Reven - 2 fighters/1 infantry/3 tanks
Rhineland - 1 infantry/1 tank
Calais - 1 bomber/1 fighter/2 infantry
Ilse of France - 6 infantry/1 fighter/1 tank

Britiain:
seazone 7 - 1 submarine/1 aircraft carrier
seazone 13 - 1 submarine/1 transport/1 battleship
seazone 18 - 1 destroyer/1 submarine
seazone 26 - 1 battleship/2 transports/1 destroyer
Cheshire - 1 infantry
Dorset - 1 tank/2 infantry/2 fighters
Hampshire - 2 fighters/1 infantry
Surrey - 2 tanks/1 fighter/1 infantry
Kent - 4 infantry
Essex - 1 tank
Suffolk - 1 bomber/1 infantry/2 tanks

Testing: So far I have played one game and I plan on playing many more once this college semester starts. I played as Germany and my cousin played as Britain. Since I'm the much more experienced player I played on the harder side. I wanted the game to be setup so Germany was on the offensive and Britain on the defensive but Britain did actually take Calais for atleast 2 turns. I'm guessing I will have to tweak the amount of starting units in order to make it more balanced. What I have noticed is that at the beginning of the game both sides try and destroy each others navy before attempting any amphibious assaults. Both sides start with several transports (Germany more) but they are vulnerable to air attacks which is why air units play another important role. Germany tries to invade around Dorset or Devon which starts out with almost no defenses but from there it a long way to London. We started at midnight and ended around 3 am with Germany winning but it wasn't easy.

Conclusion: Really excited to play this game but still needs to be tested. I want to make other ones too including Stalingrad, the Siege of Bastogne, and maybe an alternative scenario where Germany invades Washington, D.C. Any suggestions will help!

Swiss K31 Gun Review

Here is my gun review of the Swiss K31 Rifle. Check it out!

Understanding the Greek Debt Crisis

First off, most people don't realize that Greece is not a first world country. While one of the founding civilizations of the world and the birth place of the West, Greece has almost no middle class, a fairly corrupt government, and a bloated public sector economy. According to the Index of Economic Freedom, with a freedom score of 54, Greece's economic health is on par with Russia, India, Egypt, Brazil, and most African countries. The only other European countries that ranked lower overall than Greece was Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (who's really surprised there?). Greece scored surprisingly high on trade freedom but that's about it. The country scored extremely poor on property rights, freedom from corruption, and financial freedom. For the world average Greece is fairly typical but for a European country this is extremely below the standard. 

Reality Check: So for all of you kids out there screaming that unchecked capitalism is destroying Greece, it is actually fairly socialist for a European country which isn't saying much. 

So Greece entered into EU in 2001 and adopted the Euro as it's currency and subsequently obtained access to really inexpensive loans, which mainly came from Germany. Because it now had access to the European Central Bank and the IMF it symbolically became a first world country without actually being one in anyway. Sort of like lipstick on a pig. The other problem, which isn't necessarily unique to Greece, is that it's a social democratic country with high volume social welfare programs, an extremely early retirement age, and bloated pension programs. Most people hope to retire at the age of 50 on a good government pension but with a low population growth rate way below the replacement rate there is no way it could even be sustainable. In addition, they have generous retirement pensions but no one to replace the people putting into the system. Even in developed countries that have similar retirement pensions programs with high birth and replacement rates, retirement at the age of 65 is even unrealistic, let alone 50. Even in the US with SS, medicare, medicaid, and other safety net programs many people still work well into their 70's.

In fact, this is what happens with pay-as-you go pension systems. They are essentially Ponzi Schemes where the government takes your money and gives it to someone else right away that is collecting retirement and you hope that 50 years down the road that the government doesn't run out of other people's money to pay for your retirement. Well that is what is happening with Greece's pension program (Italy is soon to follow). Even if you support some sort of government run pension program, the pension programs in Greece wouldn't even make normal sense to most people but that is the nature of the welfare state. So again, starting in 2001 Greece gets access to billions of dollars in interest free loans. You get good pensions, retire early, and simply put, the government couldn't sustain it.

Now, why would the EU let Greece come in, in the first place? European countries have vast differing economies, levels of growth, languages, cultures, and then suddenly the post-war European community wants to become a single monetary unit without a single government over them. It's doomed to fail but it's this belief in European unity and how could they do this without the symbolic ancient seat of democracy that is Greece. Letting them enter was more fantasy then anything else. Completely disregard fiscal sanity.

Now the economic idea behind letting them join the EU was to jump start their economy with huge low-interest loans. This would create artificial demand sort of like a Marshall Plan that was applied to Greece. Isn't this how Germany and others countries recovered after WWII? As the narrative goes, giant loans and resources pumped into the heart of European countries devastated by half a decade of total war would create artificial demand and temporary jobs that would get the continent back on it's pre-war knees. This is the soul of Keynesianism and the economic strategy employed in many developed countries. However, we tend to forget that Germany had many of good economic institutions already in place that helped them recover such as strong banks, a huge industrial base, and many trade opportunities. Also, we forget that Germany was also loaded with something called Germans who are an industrious people who historically have strong work ethic. Greece is a different culture that maybe doesn't have that historically strong working populace and industrious fervor. Does that mean Greeks are lazy? Of course not, but they need to change their state of mind if they want to get out of their current mess.

The other question is, do the Greeks deserve the blame or do others? Did they create this problem and are they on the hook for it? Mostly yes but not all the way. If you think about it on the micro-level then imagine that someone lends you money and you agree to the terms then you have an obligation to pay it back. However, if the lender knows you can't pay it back and won't then the lender is also on the hook for making a more than poor calculated risk. When you loan money you determine an interest rate depending on how risky the loan is and these massive deals with Greece were at almost zero percent interest with a high probability of not being able to pay them back. Now I suppose European lenders knew this but decided that maybe the Greek economy would magically jumpstart or it would delay the inevitable. Or maybe they live in this collective delusion that if they keep bailing out Greece that it will prevent their economy from collapsing. Delay the inevitable but it is not avoidable.

Personally, I would hold the EU responsible for letting Greece in the EU in the first place but at the same time Greece needs to change it's behavior and drastically "de-socialize" their economy. In the end someone is going to have to lose and dramatic changes will have to be made.

Sources:

http://www.heritage.org/index/heatmap
The Eric Metaxas Show - Jay Richards and the Debt Crisis, July 4, 2015
Coffee and Markets Podcast - Desperate Times in Greece After No Vote On Bailout Terms - July 6, 2015