Infantry Pieces and Numeration/Nomenclature

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    This is why games come in a box.  Yes, we know you want Panther AND Tiger tanks, we know you want P-38 AND Thunderbolts.  We know.

    When it first comes over you–hey how could it hurt to mix this stuff together, look at your lego collection.  Yours is a pile of bricks in a tote and mine is every assembled castle, army, train, truck, and car, fully stickered, that I or my son has ever owned since 1985.

  • '17 '16 '15

    Hi Patch

    You can’t post pics until you hit 10 posts or something i think. Good Luck with your project.


  • @barney:

    Hi Patch

    You can’t post pics until you hit 10 posts or something i think. Good Luck with your project.

    Well, here’s my 9th post and one more shall make it ten.


  • @Patchman123:

    @barney:

    Hi Patch

    You can’t post pics until you hit 10 posts or something i think. Good Luck with your project.

    Well, here’s my 9th post and one more shall make it ten.

    The other catch with posting is you may need to find hosting for your picture(s) before you can post them. I dunno if the forums here store pictures for posts.

    -Midnight_Reaper


  • @Midnight_Reaper said in Infantry Pieces and Numeration/Nomenclature:

    @Patchman123:

    @barney:

    Hi Patch

    You can’t post pics until you hit 10 posts or something i think. Good Luck with your project.

    Well, here’s my 9th post and one more shall make it ten.

    The other catch with posting is you may need to find hosting for your picture(s) before you can post them. I dunno if the forums here store pictures for posts.

    -Midnight_Reaper

    PHTO0673.JPG

    I’m talking about this. The number “17” with the words “MADE IN CHINA” and the abbreviation “AM.”


  • @Patchman123 said in Infantry Pieces and Numeration/Nomenclature:
    ? I am having trouble sorting out the pieces for all of them and I have EVERY single Axis & Allies game ever made, from the 1984 edition to the latest reprint of Axis & Allies Anniversary Edition.

    I am using these numbers to sort out many thousands of pieces

    Your collection of A&A games sounds similar to mine, and I can relate to what you’ve said about the challenge of sorting out thousands of sculpts. It depends, however, on what you mean by sorting. If you’re talking about unscrambling a bunch of mixed-together sculpts and figuring out precisely which game each one came from, the basic answer is: it’s easy for the game-unique sculpts (like the blockhouses from D-Day), but anywhere from difficult to impossible for everything else because many sculpts have been re-used identically in several games. And by “identically” I mean identically down to the finest details, as opposed to sculpts which have undergone subtle (or not-so-subtle, or even flagrant) changes of design at some point or another. An example of a flagrant change is the Japanese artillery piece, whose towing struts were closed in the original version and are open in the current one. An example of a not-so-subtle change is the “refreshment” of the design of the five main power infantry units which occurred at some point; compare, for instance, the helmet shapes of the older and newer US and USSR infantrymen. An example of a subtle change is the American destroyer, which gained (or lost?) a notch in the funnel area of its superstructure, or the British Spitfire fighter, whose wings went from upturned to flat.

    On top of all that, there’s the added complication of changes which may be intentional design changes or may just be manufacturing inconsitencies. The American Sherman tank, for instance, has many kinds of turret shapes and many types of semicircular hatch covers on top of the turret. An an extreme example: one of the German strategic bombers I own has a decidedly odd variant shape, even though it’s clearly the same plane (a Junkers JU-88) as all the other ones in my collection, and I can only conclude that it’s some sort of factory error caused by, perhaps, the injected plastic cooling in an abnormal way. (I jokingly designate it as the Fuhrer’s private airplane, even though his transport of choice was a three-engined aircraft).

    All of this applies to colours and shades too. Some colour uses have a single possible source (e.g. the cherry-red Japanese units, which are from the first printing of the original Pacific game), while others are found all over the place. And shading differences which are evidently manufacturing inconsistencies further complicate the picture: I have some Europe 1940 / Pacific 1940 sculpts (some units are unique to those games, and some are even specific to either the first or second editions) in two different shades for the US and for Germany, even though the basic colours are the same.

    The way I deal with all this, personally, is to keep identical sculpts together (sorted in plastic tackle boxes) without bothering about which game they come from. Just distinguishing between identical and non-identical ones already provides ample differentiation for me, given all the factors that have to be judged to decide whether two give sculpts are or aren’t exactly the same.

    Incidentally, I’ve sometimes wondered about those infantry base numbers too and I’d be interested in hearing an authoritative answer from anyone who happens to know it. I don’t think the numbers are game-specific; my impression is that in any given game, each infantry sculpt from a given country has its own number. But that theory may not be correct…and it still doesn’t explain what purpose (if any) the numbers serve. Maybe they just have some sort of manufacturing-related function.


  • @CWO-Marc said in Infantry Pieces and Numeration/Nomenclature:

    @Patchman123 said in Infantry Pieces and Numeration/Nomenclature:
    ? I am having trouble sorting out the pieces for all of them and I have EVERY single Axis & Allies game ever made, from the 1984 edition to the latest reprint of Axis & Allies Anniversary Edition.

    I am using these numbers to sort out many thousands of pieces

    Your collection of A&A games sounds similar to mine, and I can relate to what you’ve said about the challenge of sorting out thousands of sculpts. It depends, however, on what you mean by sorting. If you’re talking about unscrambling a bunch of mixed-together sculpts and figuring out precisely which game each one came from, the basic answer is: it’s easy for the game-unique sculpts (like the blockhouses from D-Day), but anywhere from difficult to impossible for everything else because many sculpts have been re-used identically in several games. And by “identically” I mean identically down to the finest details, as opposed to sculpts which have undergone subtle (or not-so-subtle, or even flagrant) changes of design at some point or another. An example of a flagrant change is the Japanese artillery piece, whose towing struts were closed in the original version and are open in the current one. An example of a not-so-subtle change is the “refreshment” of the design of the five main power infantry units which occurred at some point; compare, for instance, the helmet shapes of the older and newer US and USSR infantrymen. An example of a subtle change is the American destroyer, which gained (or lost?) a notch in the funnel area of its superstructure, or the British Spitfire fighter, whose wings went from upturned to flat.

    On top of all that, there’s the added complication of changes which may be intentional design changes or may just be manufacturing inconsitencies. The American Sherman tank, for instance, has many kinds of turret shapes and many types of semicircular hatch covers on top of the turret. An an extreme example: one of the German strategic bombers I own has a decidedly odd variant shape, even though it’s clearly the same plane (a Junkers JU-88) as all the other ones in my collection, and I can only conclude that it’s some sort of factory error caused by, perhaps, the injected plastic cooling in an abnormal way. (I jokingly designate it as the Fuhrer’s private airplane, even though his transport of choice was a three-engined aircraft).

    All of this applies to colours and shades too. Some colour uses have a single possible source (e.g. the cherry-red Japanese units, which are from the first printing of the original Pacific game), while others are found all over the place. And shading differences which are evidently manufacturing inconsistencies further complicate the picture: I have some Europe 1940 / Pacific 1940 sculpts (some units are unique to those games, and some are even specific to either the first or second editions) in two different shades for the US and for Germany, even though the basic colours are the same.

    The way I deal with all this, personally, is to keep identical sculpts together (sorted in plastic tackle boxes) without bothering about which game they come from. Just distinguishing between identical and non-identical ones already provides ample differentiation for me, given all the factors that have to be judged to decide whether two give sculpts are or aren’t exactly the same.

    Incidentally, I’ve sometimes wondered about those infantry base numbers too and I’d be interested in hearing an authoritative answer from anyone who happens to know it. I don’t think the numbers are game-specific; my impression is that in any given game, each infantry sculpt from a given country has its own number. But that theory may not be correct…and it still doesn’t explain what purpose (if any) the numbers serve. Maybe they just have some sort of manufacturing-related function.

    alt text

    alt text

    What do the black and white colors on the back of the A&A Facilities (A&A G40), such as Major Industrial Complexes and Minor Industrial Complexes? Also for AA guns?

    What’s the difference between the two? The whites ones and the black ones?


  • @Patchman123 said in Infantry Pieces and Numeration/Nomenclature:

    What do the black and white colors on the back of the A&A Facilities (A&A G40), such as Major Industrial Complexes and Minor Industrial Complexes? Also for AA guns?

    What’s the difference between the two? The whites ones and the black ones?

    I think they come from different editions of the game (white =1st ed, black =2nd ed, if I’m not mistaken. Note also the front of the chips in your first picture are slightly different shades of gray.


  • @CWO-Marc said in Infantry Pieces and Numeration/Nomenclature:

    @Patchman123 said in Infantry Pieces and Numeration/Nomenclature:

    What do the black and white colors on the back of the A&A Facilities (A&A G40), such as Major Industrial Complexes and Minor Industrial Complexes? Also for AA guns?

    What’s the difference between the two? The whites ones and the black ones?

    I think they come from different editions of the game (white =1st ed, black =2nd ed, if I’m not mistaken. Note also the front of the chips in your first picture are slightly different shades of gray.

    Second Edition does not really use those AA gun pieces, it uses a nation-specific plastic sculpt for the AAA guns, what the Sec. Ed manuals call “Anti-Aircraft Artillery” (or AAA).

    I mean these.

    alt text

    And here are the backs of said AA guns markers (the separate piece for A&A Europe & Pacific 1940 First Ed.).

    alt text

    Is one color for Europe 1940 and the other color for Pacific 1940?


  • @Patchman123 said in Infantry Pieces and Numeration/Nomenclature:

    Is one color for Europe 1940 and the other color for Pacific 1940?

    I have no idea beyond the guess I previously made, which evidently was wrong. My primary interest is the A&A sculpts, so I’ve never paid close attention to the cardboard chips; somewone more knowledgable about A&A game history than me will have to provide an answer to your question.


  • @CWO-Marc said in Infantry Pieces and Numeration/Nomenclature:

    @Patchman123 said in Infantry Pieces and Numeration/Nomenclature:

    Is one color for Europe 1940 and the other color for Pacific 1940?

    I have no idea beyond the guess I previously made, which evidently was wrong. My primary interest is the A&A sculpts, so I’ve never paid close attention to the cardboard chips; somewone more knowledgable about A&A game history than me will have to provide an answer to your question.

    Who would that be?

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