Victory Conditions Suggestions?

[Vanman]

What are people doing in terms of a 2 player Global War campaign and victory conditions? I am not too keen with just
using the objectives cities route, since if the war goes as it did historically, playing the Axis in 44' and 45' would be
without hope and a depressing exercise in futility (many would quit).

I had the thought that when both players bid, if one states as the Allies they would achieve automatic victory by July/August
1945, while the other says September/October 1945, the former becomes the allied player and must win by that time based on
the following:

Allied Major Victory - Achieve Automatic Victory as per the rules.
Allied Minor Victory - Achieve all Automatic Victory cities except 1 (eg: all except Tokyo)
Axis Major Victory - Achieve Automatic Victory as per the rules.
Axis Minor Victory - Hold on to at least 2 Cities (eg: Berlin and Tokyo)by the end of the applicable above turn.

Just throwing around ideas. What house rule victory conditions have you made in terms of a two player Global War scenario?

Thanks.

[paulderynck]

I have played a lot of two player games. They can be pretty balanced but if they aren't then you can examine which options you use and make adjustments.

What we did was to take the base numbers for bidding from the beginning of the scenario book and use that to judge victory. FREX "This table shows the expected totals of objectives for each major power at the end of Jul/Aug 1945:"



So at the end of JA45, if the Axis has 15 objectives it's a tie, less than that, an Allied win, or more would be an Axis win. A lot more or less either way makes the victory all the more decisive. If the US aligns both Brazil and Mexico then the magic number is 14. If you look at the Global War scenario, it states historically the JP had 9 and Ge/It had zero, but allowing for different strategies for the Allies as to which theater to prioritize you could do the same as above and make the magic number 9 (or 8 if US aligns both Brazil and Mexico).

Truthfully, the objectives really weren't considered much until we'd get to JF45, the fun really was in playing the game. "Half the journey is getting there."

Frankly we were never much on bidding, seems a little pointless with only two players, although that is another balancing tool - adjust the magic number dependent on past experience when repeating who played who.

[Courtenay]

The victory system has always been my least favorite part of WiF. Certainly, the US was not playing by WiF's victory conditions.

I have never worried overly about the victory conditions. None of the games I have played has ever been close -- both sides knew who won. If we did have a close game, then we would have worried about it, but we never did.

[Numdydar]

War in the Pacific has the same issue. For these games it is more how much better/worse you did than history than a game's VCs. This was total war. Its not like one side was going to say 'Oh you still have factories let' so we are going to stop attacking you.' [:D]