Banned Units

Our group had the moto something like "if it didn't float it's not a boat" that precluded most but not all fantasy units (because some floated lol).  Not because fantasy units are necessarily broken or uber powerful (but some were the best bang for your buck) but to encourage the use of the popular historical units.

But even then in tournament's fantasy was allowed to the weaker nations to help and encourage play of France italy and Russia against the other stronger nations.  And we had played probably plenty of outside our moto games where fantasy saw play.

Realize that whatever a local club does, is perfectly legit to do. They do not set a standard for anyone else. That's the beauty of this game.

If a local club wants more history, then limit fantasy units.
If a local club wants more diversity, then get tighter class limits.
etc.

I suggest if you want to know what weeds did locally, contact him by pm. He's trustworthy that way.
Also, you avoid a huge (stupid) discussion about who is right and who is wrong. (Stupid because all are wrong who engage in it, trying to set rules for us all.)

Yup. Send me a PM.

I notice that the Forumini tournaments also start out be creating a "black list" of units the participants don't want to play with. There is nothing wrong with that IMO. No collectible game like this is going to hit the bulls eye with every card. Usually our local club can avoid the "bad actors" with the scenario rules we come up with for each of our tournaments. But the "Sorry six" in Deck D were deemed universally broken and too much trouble to work around with scenario rules. We will be banning one unit in Deck E as well. Shouldn't be hard to guess which one.

We are not against "what if" units or minor nation units or neutrals. We go out of our way to create scenarios that will utilize them. The "what if" units are usually not a problem since they are generally pretty good, but the minor nation generally require specially constructed scenarios to get them into play.

I really don't like the term "fantasy" used relative to this game because that implies we can go all the way to units that were never even considered in WWII (Furashita's fleet, etc.) all the way to Space Battleship Yamato. "Fantasy" is an intentionally derogatory term in this context. I think "what if" (Alnavco uses "never were") is a more fair term for the units included in this game that were actually considered and made it to some level of actual design effort or prototype (aircraft).

I admit I have fought hard to keep out what I would call "true fantasy" units that could not have been completed during the war because either the technology and resources didn't exist, or they couldn't have been completed by September 1945 even if they tried. We haven't had too many of those pressed too hard for inclusion thankfully, but they are nearly always game breaking in concept. But I like the "what if" units that were actually pre-war or early war designs that just didn't get completed because of other priorities or because the factories kept getting bombed. These designs (Graf Zeppelin, "Sam", Aquila, Lion, etc) are technologically and stat-wise within the envelope of the games stat boundaries and so are totally okay with me.

It's all about maintaining game balance and not breaking the game for me. There are real units (like jets and Cap 5 carriers) that break the game too and I would rather not have been put in the game. They theoretically could have been done without breaking the game, but the fans of "uber weapons" won't let them either be costed high enough to essentially push them out of competitive game play or tone down the stats "ahistorically" to keep them within a reasonable power boundary for the game.

It's not about creating all the cards for all the units for everything my uncle's served on in WWII for me. It is about maintaining a simple, fast and balanced game that works in a tournament environment (the litmus test of compatibility) without requiring a bunch of errata and/or a black list. That just says the game is broken to me, and those problems also create huge barriers to entry for attracting new players.

My opinion anyway.