Noob questions.

[Goodgulf]

Hey all, trying to learn this game by playing solo and reading the rulebook. Right off the bat, I don't understand. I am playing the full campaign, Axis turn. I want to declare war on Poland. According to rulebook, I should be able to do this and Poland will randomly join a faction. Or, it gives the example of declaring War on USSR and then Poland and Poland joins Soviet faction.

I cannot do either. My choices are to declare war on Western, or Soviet, or no one. I have tried declaring war on Soviets, and then it doesn't give me the option to then declare war on Poland.

How do I declare war/invade Poland as Germany in Sep 39?

Edit: checked the playbook to see if it was a scenario specific rule, and I see this further statement which leads me to believe I should be able to declare war on Poland:

"Wide-Open: The Axis faction does not have to declare war on
the first (or any) turn. If/when it does declare war; it may choose
to do so against any faction or country. "

2nd Edit: OK, I see now that I didn't notice the giant pop-up that lets me declare war on any country *after* I declare war on Soviets. But what if I just want to declare war on Poland and let them randomly pick a faction? Is this a bug that this option is not available?

[Goodgulf]

OK, next noob question.

Germany got a political success and put a pro-Axis faction marker on Italy.
Then the Western countries got a political failure, so Germany again put a pro-Axis faction marker on Italy.

At this point, Italy.... did nothing. Why did it not activate and join the Axis per 14.11:

"If the selected neutral country… has a friendly Pro-[Faction] marker in it, that neutral country
activates (13.1) and joins the non-phasing faction. Perform
Country Setup (13.1.2) for the activated country."

[MarkDey]

Welcome to the game! The BGA implementation of the game uses the latest version of the rules. You may want to check that the version you’re referencing is the 2025 version. That can be found here: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/614 ... rope/files

For declaring war on Poland, you must first declare war on a faction.

For Italy, the latest rule set requires three successes to activate Italy, Spain, and Turkey.

[Goodgulf]

Thanks for the replies!

Yes, I see now, I thought I had the Living Rules from the designer on BGG, but I instead had 2nd printing of an older version. Looking at the living rules now, my options under 10.1 do seem correct (and tons of blue text highlighting updates).

Thanks so much!