Saturday, Larry Harris announced the next Axis & Allies game will be 1914 World War I. Earlier today, Larry Harris, creator of the Axis & Allies games, revealed a few more details about the new Axis & Allies 1914 World War I game. He revealed the units included in the game, the number of powers, the approximate release date and more.
Axis & Allies 1914 will be released in March or April of 2013. Larry also revealed that the game will include 8 major powers with individual infantry sculpts for each and the game will be slightly less complex than Axis & Allies 1942. The map will be about the size of Europe 1940 spanning from Calcutta to New York and Norway to South Africa.
Read the complete Axis & Allies 1914 Q&A on Harris Game Design. For your convenience, I’ve reformatted and reproduced the Q&A below.
Q. What units are included?
A. Infantry, artillery, tanks, fighters, submarines, battleships, cruisers, transports.
Q. D6 or D12?
A. D6, but lots of them
Q. I suspect the usual suspects in the game: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottomans, Russians, UK, France, Italy, USA
A. Yes, and many minor powers
Q. Map size?
A. I think it’s the same size as Europe 40
Q. Are the sculpts all the same except infantry, or you got two sets of sculpts one for allies and one for central powers?
A. Each major power (eight of them) have their own infantry sculpts. Other sculpts are either allied or Central Power’s artillery, tanks or fight aircraft… and of course the naval lineup.
Q. Special rules for Russian Revolution and American entry?
A. There are special Russian Revolution rules, as well as special American entry rules.
Q. Convoy zones?
A. Not exactly… but there is an unrestricted submarine warfare moment during the Collect Income phase.
Q. Tech tree with at least 12 choices?
A. No tech tree…
Q. Will it be to AA42, AA41 or AA40 scale and complexity?
A. If I understand this question correctly I’d say it’s just left (meaning easier than) of AA42.
Q. How many players will it be for and how many nations will be playable?
A. This can be a 2 or 8 player game or any number in between.
Q. How will the Western Front be simulated in the game?
A. I don’t want to get too deep into this. I will say, that there is only one round of combat dice rolling per turn per battle. The game, IMHO, feels very Western Front as you play it. It’s very cool and interesting how this system works and plays out. I like how it feels.
Q. And since this starts in 1914, I wonder how the nations that opted to stay neutral in the beginning will be played.
A. Many minor powers are neutral initially, including the US, which if not attacked by the Central Powers will enter the war on turn 4.
Q. I also wonder what the nation colors will be. Particularly Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.
A. I think you will like the colors. Some of them are your standard colors and others are brand new. Germany will be grey.
Q. What’s the release date?
March or April 2013
Q. The Map, will it be fully global or 2/3 global covering from Eastern US into the Middle East or maybe India. Will Anzac and India be represented as UK units entering the war through Egypt, or will there be a commonwealth unit? Will the map stretch to E US (US needs transports etc.), or will American units just enter through England, or embattled territories in Western Europe.
A. The map will range from Calcutta to NYC and from the top of Norway to South Africa
Q. Having Turkey (Ottoman Empire) as one of the Central powers and not neutral is going to be very different, looking forward to that.
A. Yeah.. it’s a fun power to manage, but then again… they all are! Of course, as usual, its’ hard to resist the desire to play an aggressive Germany!
Image from the Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/00652374/
