New guy checking in

Welcome to AAA !!!

Welcome aboard the A&A.org site and welcome to the hobby!  This site is a good place to get answers to questions: the A&A hobby has many different facets to it, but just about every one of those facets has got one or more enthusiastic experts here who are usually glad to provide their insights.

Welcome to the website. Like CWO Marc was talking about, there are all kinds of editions of the game.

There is the beginning level game, which is the 1941 game, the 1942 version is your base game, the 1940 games are your advanced games, which can become your global games, and then Historical Board Gaming, specializes in advancing your games with new units and has a Global Maps as well.

The New Global 1936 Map will come out this year, and will have special sets that advance the game with new units, rules and other interesting features. Go to the Historical Board Gaming website, if you want to add cool things to your games.

Just go the home page to find out what is right for you. :-)

John

We do have larger map files for 1942 and 1942.2, which do you need?

@Speed_Adict:

I’m going to assume that 1942.2 is “2nd edition”?

I’m not entirely sure :)

My rule book has “AH games”, “WotC” and “Hasbro” branding on the back cover and is copyright in 2004, 2008 and 2009…

So I’m going to assume it’s 1942.2?

If it is second edition, it will say it on the box, beside 1942, and yes, 1942.2 is second edition. If not, then it will be first edition. :-)

The front of the box should say 2nd edition. does it?

@Speed_Adict:

Will double check the box when I get home, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t…

How bad is my newbieness shining through? LD

I’m still fairly new to the game. We all have to start somewhere. I wouldn’t worry about it. The players on this site are very helpful at answering any questions you may have. :-)

@Speed_Adict:

Google image search fixed me up…

Mine is the Spring 1942 (green box) version…

Not the 1942 second ed (red box) one…

Now I’ve clarified that, is the “G40” map compatible? There’s the same number of territories and sea zones etc?

I figure that (providing it’s ok) if I print out the G40 map, I can use that for my games and give us more room etc :)

You can use all of your pieces, but you will need to buy mechs and tactical bombers for each country and download the rules for the G40 game.

Maybe someone will be kind enough to provide you the links to the rules. That is not my expertise. I hope this helps! :-)

John

@Speed_Adict:

Thanks John, but that wasn’t quite my question… I don’t want to play “G40” - just use it’s (bigger) map to play '42 on… Is this possible?

This option wood mean I can, at a later stage, expand out and purchase both Europe and Pacific editions, and then play G40 once my knowledge base, experience and tactics/strategy have improved :)

I better let someone else answer that question, because I haven’t played 1942, yet, so I don’t what the map looks like vs the 1940 map and how the starting setup would be affected.

Sorry! :-)

@Speed_Adict:

Thanks John, but that wasn’t quite my question… I don’t want to play “G40” - just use it’s (bigger) map to play '42 on… Is this possible?

The Global 1940 map…

http://www.axisandallies.org/p/axis_allies_europe_1940_preview_4_the_global_rules/
http://www.axisandallies.org/wp-content/uploads/aag-huge.jpg

…is more that just a larger-sized version of the 1942 map.  It has a lot more territories, more sea zones, more IPC values, and more victory cities.  My guess is that if you try to play with the 1942 rules (which are calibrated for the number of spaces and victory cities on the 1942 board) on the 1940 map, you may run into some distortions that would affect the playability of the game.  The distortions would probably be even greater if you used the 1940 map in conjunction with the 1941 rules, which are calibrated for a map that has even fewer territories on it.  To give just one example: the 1941 game has been criticized for not having enough sculpts to be practical for the 1941 game’s map, so the number of sculpts it has would be hopelessly inadequate for the 1940 map, with the result that several territories would be left completely empty due to lack of available pieces.  The problem wouldn’t be quite as bad in a 1942 rules/pieces + 1940 map situation, but it would still be a problem.  A 1942 rules + 1940 pieces/map would solve part of the problem, but you’d have some units types among the sculpts (tac bomber and mech infantry) that have no countrerpart in the rules – meaning you’d have to leave them out entirely.

One aspect of the 1942 rules that might be particularly problematic is the victory conditions.  The 1942 rules assume that there are 12 victory cities on the map.  The Global 1940 map has 19 of them.  The biggest questions raised by this difference are: What do you do with the extra cities in the initial set-up?  Do you leave them unoccupied?  Or do you allocate them to particular players?  If so, to whom?  Do the 1942 victory conditions still apply?  If so, does allocating all the cities in the initial set-up create a situation in which one side is already way ahead of the other towards winning the game before it even starts?

@John:

Maybe someone will be kind enough to provide you the links to the rules.

The rulebooks for the current A&A games (and a few older ones) are downloadable here:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/downloads

@Speed_Adict:

Tidys it up very nicely, thanks Marc :)

Glad to have helped.  Another potential problem that I should have thought of sooner has to do with the general setup instructions in the 1942 rules, which tell you how many units of which type need to be put into each territory before the game starts.  These instructions would not be compatible with the 1940 map because some of the 1942 territories don’t have the same name on the 1940 map and/or don’t cover exactly the same geographical extent, and because the 1940 map includes named territories that don’t exist on the 1942 map.  So you’d have to do a lot of unofficial interpretation to work out a correspondence table between the territories on the two maps, and it would leave you with several blanks to fill when you’re applying the 1942 setup instructions to the 1940 map.  Also, note that the setups which are correctly balanced for the 1942 map (“territory X, which has an IPC value of Y, initially gets Z infantry units”) might be unbalanced for the 1940 map, where the (roughly) equivalent territories may not necessarily have the same IPC value.