If there's one thing that considerable experience in DoA's main arena has taught, it's that the 3-country setup is a huge pain in the rear. And there are others who feel a heck of a lot more strongly about it than I do.
It wouldn't be feasible to have *only* historical arenas, alas, but my thought would be to have two countries in the Main: Axis and Allies. You could, if desired, give the Axis a heavy buff like B-17, B-24 or Lancaster, enabled at one or two fields to give them a more even shot at the strategic missions.
Another option would be to set up the arena as above with two "countries" (really alliances, more or less, although that's not exactly the word either), but plane selection restricted to fields geographically analogous to RW choices. In other words, you'd find British planes at fields in the northwest part of the arena (Home Islands), the south central (the Med),
and east...um, central? (CBI). Americans would be found in "England" and the southeast and east central areas (the Pacific, maybe CBI). Germans would be east of England and north of the "Med", as well as in the Med. Italy, Russia, Finland* and Japan would be located in the appropriate locations relative to one another and to the others. French and Polish pilots would fly from England until or unless their indigenous aircraft were modeled; then they get fields where they "should" be. Romanians can fly LW iron from the southeast corner of "Greater Germany", next to the Russians.
*(irony filter on) The Finnish get special treatment because they flew from their own territory throughout the war, and because the Internet is practically a suburb of Helsinki anyway
(irony filter off, tin hat on, running for the bunker, please don't hurt my family
BTW, is anything happening--for those in the know--with Laika and the Cosmonauts? I don't think they've been in the US since 1995, not in Cleveland anyway
).
I'm not sure this explanation is quite clear, but do you get what I'm driving at? It would make the MA a quasi-HA, while still allowing a comprehensive plane selection in order to be as inclusive as possible.
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