Greetings, first of all my congratulations for the game. I think I can say without hesitation that it has become my favorite of the genre.
Our group has been developing some homebrew rules, we are lucky enough to play assiduously, and I wanted to post them here in case anyone finds them of interest. First, I want to share some alternative victory conditions for the Global and Europe scenarios that we have been using in our games.
Global Scenario
The Allies must control Germany (End of the Reich) and Japan (Surrender of the tennÅ) to win.
The Axis wins if two of the enemy powers agree to surrender. To surrender, the Axis must control the territories indicated for the condition at the end of a turn.
Russian Surrender
-Moscow (Lebensraum)
American Surrender
One of the following
-Eastern US (Dissolve the Union)
-Central US (Occupy the Heartland)
-Western US (Japanese America)
-Alaska and Hawaii (Pacific Empire)
British Surrender
One of the following
-Great Britain (Edward VIII)
-Four of the following: Italy, Eastern Canada, Egypt, South Africa, India or Eastern Australia (Broken empire).
Europe Scenario
The Allies win if they occupy Germany at the end of a turn (End of the Reich).
The Axis wins if it meets the following conditions:
1- It controls Italy and France
2- It also controls at least one of the following:
-Eastern USA (Dissolve the Union)
-Central USA (Occupy the Heartland)
-Moscow (Lebensraum)
-Great Britain (Edward VIII)
-Egypt, Middle East and South Africa (Cut the Indian trade route)
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Explanation:
I understand that the point of the War Room rules is to keep things simple as possible and the standard victory conditions comply with this. However, in our games in the global scenario we observed that these conditions meant that the Pacific front was largely ignored, Japan contributes with great difficulty to Axis victory and even a hypothetical conquest of California does not trigger American surrender. Accustomed to the various fronts and the A&A victory city system, we wanted to spice up the Axis victory conditions but without modifying the essential principle (that two Allied powers accept surrender).
The Soviet Union retains only its original condition, we thought but discarded the idea of adding Leningrad + Stalingrad as alternative for being too easy and close to Moscow.
America happens to surrender with any of its three continental territories, which are really difficult for the Axis to take, and we add an additional condition for simultaneous Alaska and Hawaii. This addition encourages the Japanese to focus on the Pacific campaign rather than break the pact with the soviets.
The case of the British Empire is the most elaborate. In addition to its condition with Great Britain, we have added the most "complex" condition in the list. The axis can now achieve British surrender by controlling 4 key territories for British trade, which represent the dismantling of their colonial empire and gives an alternative to having to execute an operation "sea lion".
The idea of the breakup of the empire is to be difficult, harder than the original condition, but to allow the Italian (in Africa) and Japanese (in India and Australia) players to collaborate for the British defeat.
The inclusion of Italy in the victory condition territories represents the role of the Italian empire as an obstacle to the use of the Mediterranean route by British trade. Under normal conditions (Italy unconquered), the Axis would only have to occupy 3 key British territories to fulfill the condition. The conquest of Italy by the Allies would give a respite to the British routes which is represented by the extra territory required for their surrender.
These conditions together shift the global scenario from focusing on the Eastern and Atlantic fronts to expanding to the entire map.
In the case of the Europe scenario, we played with the first edition rules and found it tremendously difficult for the axis (due to its obligation to perform the Sea Lion) so we started by adding the alternative British surrender condition. With the edition change, we welcomed the change to requiring a single allied territory, but in this case it seemed to us to be unbalanced in the opposite direction. After thinking about it, I liked the idea of a single territory but to compensate for the difficulty, and the fact of having more options, we decided to add the condition that the Axis had to keep France and Italy (after all, it is strange that they are considered to have won by taking Moscow when the Allies have invaded the heart of Europe).
As a final detail, I decided to add some "thematic" names to the victory conditions, irrelevant but adding flavor.
We hope you enjoy them.