Designers Notes

As you probably already know, Axis Empires: Totaler Krieg! is a third-generation game, following on the heels of Krieg! (1996) and Totaler Krieg! (1999). Both of those games were successful, popular titles in their own rights, so the natural question on your mind is likely to be “Why?” What is there in this new edition to be done better or different than before?

Well, the decision to go “once more into the breach, dear friends” originally started with a whole ’nuther game. TK sold well enough to make us realize there was considerable demand for a linkable Pacific counterpart. So we set about pursuing that dream – and with the publication of Dai Senso, you’ll see the results.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Tokyo. As we went along, we discovered that we had to change enough things in TK to warrant a new edition of the original. Some of those changes were those required to ensure proper mating with DS. But many changes were also responses to things we discovered were “broken” in the original design … things discovered only long after the game’s publication. (It’s funny how a decade of play by thousands of people helps you really learn all about a design’s strengths and weaknesses.)

All the while we tried to stay true to the original design tenets we loved in Krieg! Among those were these dictums: The game should portray an unpredictable world “spinning off its axis.” Our perspective was “from the smoke-filled room down, not the smoke-filled trenches up.” And design simplicity is always a very good thing.

If you’ve never had a chance to read the original design notes for Krieg, I highly recommend it. (I think Alan still has them posted on his website.) They’re still fascinating, even after all this time. But rather than restate what’s been said before, for the balance of these notes lets focus on what’s new and different (and why) with this edition.

Made in Japan

We discuss the larger design philosophy behind Dai Senso in that game. Here, we’ll only touch on DS developments that impacted this edition of TK.

Support Your Local Support Unit

Although we stayed committed to Krieg’s original concept of abstract support units, we knew going into DS that everyone would expect more detail around air-naval interaction. Our task was to provide that detail without bogging down our strategic-level game under the weight of operational (and even tactical!) minutiae.

We think we accomplished what we set out to do here. There’s no doubt that the new support unit system can be a little opaque for new players to grasp – what with the multiple unit and marker types, underlined glossary terms, two different Delay Boxes and all. We hope you’ll use the tools we’ve given you (especially the Support Unit & Convoy Marker Aid Card) and, if we’ve done our job, the light will come on. If you still have questions, please ask us.

Despite the rules density though, we’re happy with the way the support units keep players focused on the “big picture.” The rules we added put more emphasis on basing and unit types. So you’ll be asking yourself “Where are the bases to support this drive?” and “What assets do I have?” rather than “How many cruisers do I need to provide flak coverage for this carrier task force?” (Of course, for those who want that level of detail, you might see something you like in the Expansion Kit.)

The supremacy of air units over naval units was something we wrestled with before settling on the “Deep Six” mechanic and the Naval Warfare Delay Box. We chose this approach over others (involving DRM matrixes and multiple boxes) because we liked its simplicity and inherent drama. I know some people don’t like the mechanic, complaining that it’s too luck-dependent – but I would maintain that luck was all-important at sea. Ask Nagumo if he felt unlucky after Midway.

Happy New Year(s)

One of the early design decisions made with DS was that it should start with the China Incident in 1937 – starting at that point was the only way to tell Imperial Japan’s story the same way we set out to tell Nazi Germany’s story in Krieg!

To keep the games linkable then, we had to come up with a playable Pre-War system for the extra two years being created at the front of TK. (Oh, I suppose we could have stuck with a scenario generator like the Random Campaign Game, but we felt players would want to be able to make real decisions.) This led to the creation of the Pre-War cards and all that entailed in terms of modeling the Spanish Civil War and Germany’s territorial demands… not to mention expanding the range of possible Allied responses.

Since this portion of the game is not at all “the main event,” we wanted these turns to play very quickly – with just a die roll here and there and a piece or two to move.

We also thought it vitally important that players cannot win or lose the game outright in Pre-War. Mind you, this is a design decision, not an assessment of history. It’s easy to theorize that the Allies could have stopped Hitler earlier if they’d shown the proper backbone, or that a coup would likely have deposed him had the Munich Incident backfired. But we think a game that fizzles out before it gets started just isn’t much fun to play.

The Pre-War period is all prelude to the main event, which will go off more or less on schedule. Our yardstick was that players should end the Pre-War period close to the historical starting point, with the possibility of ending up no more than a little ahead or behind.

One unhappy outcome of the new Pre-War system was that it made us realize we should table (for now) the Random Campaign Game that was in the last edition of TK. There just weren’t enough cards and counters left over for us to do that right, plus any development time spent on keeping this somewhat-redundant feature in the box would have led to further delays in a game that has already been 10 years in the making. We know how popular the RCG is, and we promise it will be in the Expansion Kit.

Half a World Away

The last impact DS had on TK was that it made us feel we should find some way to represent the Pacific even when players were focused solely on Europe. So, for the standalone game, we added the Pacific Limited War and Pacific Total War markers and a couple of events that we hoped would tell a better “story” than the random “Pacific Commitment” lightning bolt of the previous edition.

Our first attempt at these Pacific mechanics were very involved and cumbersome, with too much of a “game within a game” going on. Units could also transfer between theaters too freely, which would end up breaking DS when the combined game was being played. Eventually, we settled on using simple – but limited – card choices for the Allies while stripping out all the extra junk. Again, we want players to focus on the “big picture,” which in European terms is simply a question of “Can I have all of this stuff, or do I have to send some of it to fight Japan?”

We assume in TK that the Western Allies are committed to a Germany First strategy because Europe is the main theater – allowing the West to relegate it to a sideshow wouldn’t be very much fun for the Western player, nor would it be fair to the Axis and Soviet players who are locked in a life-or-death struggle.

Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger

So that’s what DS meant to this edition of TK. But what of the lessons we learned from the original edition itself? As the design progressed, we heard from many of you – TK veterans and World War II history buffs alike – about what could be improved in the next edition. Here are some of the design decisions that came out of those discussions.

East First Things First

High on our list of things to fix was how the Axis Limited War with Russia strategy worked. In the years that have come and gone since the last TK was published, the one thing everyone agrees upon is that the old “East First” model was broken – it was too easy for the Axis to put a serious beatdown on the Soviets (picking up an extra Strategic Hex while doing so), and then use the old Soviet Ultimatum card later in the game to knock them down all over again.

Beyond that though, the way East First played also just plain felt wrong. The players received so many of their powerful units early on (through the old Lebensraum card) that there was little to distinguish this “Limited War” conflict from Total War.

So we went back to the drawing board, trying several different marker, card, and track systems to figure out how to tell the story we wanted to tell. Eventually, we looked west at the historical surrender of France and came to adopt that as a model of what should happen in East First – a “Vichy Russia,” if you will.

(One of our oft-stated design goals for TK is that, while the Axis faction has the choice to go East First or West First, by 1942 the board would look pretty much the same. Keeping the openings symmetrical fits in nicely with that goal.)

We also decided to chuck the old Ultimatum cards that were used (and abused) to force a Major Country to capitulate. We decided that, during Total War, there would be no such limited capitulation – this is a war without mercy, and “unconditional surrender” is each faction’s ultimate goal.

Closed Ranks and Open Cities

Spending so much time on the Eastern Front also allowed us to consider the strengths and weaknesses of TK’s combat mechanics. The overall design simplicity of our system was considered a strength. The series of design choices we’d made that overly favored the strategic attacker was determined to be a big weakness.

The original design had led experienced players to conclude that the strategic defender was simply outmatched. Because the attacker was so overwhelmingly favored, the defender’s strategic choices usually amounted to “run away entirely” or “run away a little, leaving speed bumps in important cities.” Where the front line did stabilize, it often did so around urban hubs. That was even more true when we experimented with 4/7 stacking for a while – campaigns often felt like an 18th century “Battle of Posts.”

To address this, we tried a series of initiatives to aid the defender. One that seemed promising for a while was a “Line Shift” CRT column shift if the defending hex had friends around, but eventually we rejected that as being too clunky.

Eventually, the concept of Blitz markers came to us. Because they eliminate the attacker’s map-wide blitzing capability, they serve as a natural throttle on the strategic tempo. The Blitz markers initially started as a DS concept, where they were a way to show a smaller offensive operation within a much larger area without having silliness like Blitzing Chinese armies.

The concept worked so well there that we ported it over – with the added wrinkle of the new “Open City” rule. The “Open City” rule seemed like an elegant way to slightly lessen the death-grip hold players placed on City hexes. An Open City won’t help you when you’re facing a line backed with HQs, but on balance it should restore a little more fluidity to the front lines.

The New and Improved Combat Results Table

The CRT was another thing that has been tweaked since the last game. It was widely agreed that the old TK CRT favored the attacker. Part of this was by design: we wanted a game that encouraged both sides to attack, and we think it’s more interesting (and better history) if the strategic defender has to meet the attacker’s blows with some counterpunches of his own.

The problem with the old CRT though was that it just didn’t create any real opportunities for the defender to make those counterpunches. At the higher end of the old CRT, the attacker’s gains were fairly predictable and constant. Even if you took the occasional hit, the CRT was set up so that the defender was hurt even more, which left the balance of forces at a status quo. We needed something that would create the possibility for a “back-hand blow” at an overstretched attacker.

After doing some “zen” on what’s going on within a hex during combat, we decided that kind of this-hurts-you-more-than-it-hurts-me exchange was all wrong. So we moved the results around at the high end of the matrix. Now the defender’s losses compared to yours go down when yours go up.

This change creates the possibility for a real operational reversal – especially if you blow a series of die rolls in short order. It didn’t take long in playtesting for the value of this rethunk CRT to show itself.

What’s Next?

Hopefully you’re already playing and enjoying Dai Senso. Up next, we’re working on an Axis Empires Expansion Kit. As of this writing, that kit is still taking shape but it will definitely include an updated Random Campaign Game for both Europe and the Pacific.

We also remain committed to supporting this game until we drop. If you have questions about anything TK-related, please ask. The TK design team is very active on the Consimworld forum (talk.consimworld.com) – that’s always a good place to find us. Alan also maintains a TK and DS website at alanemrich.com – look under the Games Archive tab.

Design Credits

Many, many people have helped shape this edition of TK over the last 10 years. But because of the passage of time and my spotty memory, this section cannot possibly name all of you who were involved. (I have too many brain cells devoted to game design and not enough to remembering even simple things like where I put the car keys last night – you can ask my wife).

So I’m sure what follows will contain an unintended oversight or two. I’m especially afraid I may have forgotten someone within the super- awesome playtest group we gathered at Consimworld. If so, please accept my apologies in advance and know that you guys were instrumental in creating this game. Thank you for all of your help, care and faith.

Design and Development: Alan Emrich, Thomas Prowell, and Sal Vasta

Map: Joe Youst

Counters: Alan Emrich, Davide Gallorini, Larry Hoffman, and Thomas Prowell

Cards: Larry Hoffman

Box Design and Rules Layout: Callie Cummins

Playtest MVP: Darren Kilfara

Additional Playtesters: Mark Dey, Mick Essex, Ken Keller, Richard Larkin, Paul McGuane, Jim Moir, Jay Muchnij, Tony Zbaraschuk, and many others

–Thomas Prowell