World In Flames solo odyssey

 In this end of Turn phase as Vichy hasn't been crreated yet there is only Entry chit to be drawn and one is chosen for Japan. No US Entry option is available to be chosen.  Vichy France was declared after Germany decided to seek a temporary peace in the West to deal with Soviet aggression.  The US took a dim view and two Entry chits were drawn. The important rolls to decide whether parts of the French Empire stayed loyal to Vichy France or defected to Free France were made. They went largely according to probability - North Africa and IndoChina for example stayed Vichy and French Equatorial Africa defected to De Gaulle. The two major surprises were Madagascar went Free France (causing Japanese curses as they can acquire this very handy Indian Ocean base from Vichy France) and the Pacific possessions went Vichy. Japan will likely acquire IndoChina from Vichy and outflank China from the South. The French Fleet of non capital ships and a Transport in Equatorial Africa and t...

 The Axis won initiative again and rolled for wather achieving fine weather except in the north monsoon zone which overs South China. The Italians chose a no cost combined impulse and moved an infantry division to Cyprus. The air transport rebased to Albania. The Germans moved units to the East but could not get good enough combat odds to launch an attack. In France they counterattacked the French armour and forced it to retreat and created a corridor for the stranded Western panzer force. In the East of France the Germans crushed two more infantry corps and came closer to Paris but knew that lots of hastily raised militia were advancing to the capital. They declined a low chance of success offesnsive with their only available armoured units. The Germans flew a Stuka to Italy and gave it to Italy - a welcome Lend Lease gift.  In China the Japanese moved troops around the north of the Chinese comnunist and outlfanked it. The French and Commonwealth both took a no-cost combined ...

 Second part of the mammoth May/ June 1940 Turn. The good weather continues. The Japanese shuffle units around in China building up for an attack on the Communist north of China. The Italians slowly advance in the desert but will soon outrun their supply lines. The Germans blitz weak points in the French line and send two pincers into the resultant gaps to threaten Paris and encirclement of the main French front. This also has a double threat in that the French will probably have to counter attack at poor odds and risk being disorganised by their own attacks and thus becoming easier to destroy in the next Axis impulse. Note that the UK mechanised unit should not be flipped - that was a mistake on my part. Now France had to attack - the armoured and mechanised corps with infantry joining in attacked the von Leeb HQ and 88AA protecting the western panzer thrust supply lines and drove back the HQ and destroyed the 88s with the French armoured / mechanised corps advancing to cut off th...

The strategic earthquake was the rapid fall of France to the blitzkrieg in 1940. Will there be a similar strategic  earthquake this Turn? Read on... The first big Summer of the war and a long Turn is likely after the prematurely short Turn of March/ April. The Germans have u-boats, stukas and pamzers. The UK/ Commonwealth (CW) has 4 engined heavy bombers to bomb the hell out of the Axis. The first of them rolls out of the factores- the Stirling. There's also a long range flying boat Sunderland which will be sent to Canada to patrol the North Atlantic. The pilots of the Whitley medium bomber switch to a Wellington which has ground attack and slightly longer range. The Germans meanwhile are producing two u-boats to continue the u-boat offensive. Guderian Panzer HQ and armoured and mechanised corps were placed in central Germany to go either west to France or east if Stalin attacks Germany's back door. Italy produces a Parachute division and 10 offensive points.  The weather is F...

 Starting with the mistakes quite a few were noticed. Germany should have a free SS unit arrving in November/ December turn for occuppying Vienna and one in 2 turns for capturing Amsterdam. The Austrian SS unit was placed in Amsterdam with the rationale that it would have been moved there as a garrisoning unit. Italy not being able to have an AMPHIBious landing ship within the time I thought i allowed to move this ship back to the force pool and allow the Italians to put towards offensive points. CW (CommonWealth) should have put 4 CLs from its construction pool in the first turn as they are free to build from there and so have been placed to arrive in next 3 turns as they would have been if chosen straight away. Also their Indian units a the start could have been placed anywhere in Asia so the Garrison corps is going to Singapore and the Garrison division to Ceylon and infantry corps is going to Aden. The CW also acquired a Dutch transport ship which from last turn should have bee...

 I made several mistakes last turn including - Germany can't lend build points to Italy whilst its neutral Nobody can rush build a unit's completion by more than one turn in a turn so Italy decides not to rush build the amphibious lander and instead start building a paratrooper division (to build into a paratrooper corps later with a motorised division).  Denmark couldn't field its reserve corps until the Allied impulse so Germany just marches into Denmark unopposed Soviets can't build Militia units as they are not at war yet so will a regular Infantry army instead I forgot to Occupy Greenland and Iceland by the US so will count that as having been done The Soviets need to get quadruple the number of units on the the border with Germany to break the Nazi Soviet pact in 1940 - I'm going to ignore that and just use the double threshold.   After all that Germany declared war on the Netherlands and used a combined impulse to pull their navy out of the North Sea to prepa...

 The Axis won initiative. Snow weather was rolled for Europe but Fine for South China. The Italian bombers moved to Rhodes closer to potential targets in the East Mediterranean. The Germans toyed with the idea of a naval move and moving their navy into the North Sea to sweep the mines that will deny them the Swedish resources but were intimidated by the size of the Home Fleet and will wait for worse weather. Instead they used a land move and  declared on Denmark who were surprised that an aggressive militaristic regime acted aggressively. Fast moving infantry units to overrun Danish ports whilst artillery and a mountain corps (that avoids the penality for attacking in the snow) took Copenhagen. A navy vessel and some convoys and tankers escaped to Newcastle. The Japanese took advantage of the good weather to destroy a Chinese nationalist unit.  The   United States was disturbed by this naked aggresion and an entry chit added to The Germany/ Italy Entry pool. I f...

 "This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany." Neville Chamberlain, 1939 China had already been fighting the Japanese since 1937 but most people focus on the German invasion of Poland as the starting point of the Second World War. Germany declared war on Poland and its planes launched ground strikes flipping over the defenders in Lodz and Warsaw then its ground trooops shattered the defenders in Western Poland with no losses. The US Entry penalty for such actions turned out to be 3.  The Italians moved their sub into the Red Sea. Japan moved the Tokyo militia and China from Japan and its Manchurian-based HQ towards N China. Japan launched a ...

 \ For the background on this game see https://worldinflamessolooddysey.blogspot.com/2022/04/world-in-flames-solo-odyssey-ive-always.html?m=1 Set up is ahead of schedule  Its very complicated and i might have got it wrong but as I'm playing myself it shouldn't matter too much The biggest problem i had was with Japan's set up but someone on the FaceBook group directed me to the latest setup guidelines The biggest variation was giving the Soviet Union extra units (including an extra fighter to the east of Soviet Union to counter Japan)  to closer match the historical size of the Red Army that invaded Poland. Here's a screenshot of Nazi Germany about to stab Poland in the face   Here's a screenshot of the big Red Army about to stab Poland in the back  

  World In Flames solo odyssey I've always been a history buff and an interest in wargames "World in Flames" is a famous "monster" game of thousands of pieces of great complexity. For an introduction to this game this website is detailed and helpful  https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3692085&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1   Does seem to be using a slightly older version of the rules The latest rules and scenarios can be found here  https://www.a-d-g.com.au/pages/downloads I bought a module for Vassal from the company that makes World in Flames Vassal is a computer program that allows you to play many boardgames especially wargames on your computer and can be found here https://vassalengine.org/ I am going to use some additional rules of my own which i think makes it a better simulation rather than balances game play eg  minor boosts to Commonwealth and French production to 0.75 from 1939  air and artillery ground units ...