HBG - Axis & Allies Parts/Accessories and Custom Piece Sets Store!

  • Customizer

    @CWO:

    I have a question about this item from HBG Newsletter #38 (July 2015), which arrived in my mailbox this morning:

    “The boxed game we’ve been working on is finally coming together! Plastic is in from China (round 2) and we are quality checking and assembling games over the next month. These will soon be going out to the great Kickstarter backers that have endured a long journey beside us to finish this up. Once all of our backers’ items have been shipped, we can focus on getting this game to more of you. Here are a few pics from the QC process. That’s a lot of grey plastic!”

    All the pieces shown in the pictures are indeed grey.  Is this because we’re only seeing German units?  The HBG page for the Amerika game shows the German pieces are planned to be grey but the American pieces are planned to be green and the Japanese pieces are planned to be orange.

    In one of the Kickstarter updates they said that they were doing the German pieces first because they were the largest set.
    For the game itself, each faction (Allies, Germany, Japan) has 8 different unique sculpts to QC and package up for the games. The Allies have a slightly higher quantity of pieces, 80 as opposed to 60 each for the Axis powers, but I don’t know if that would really make much difference in QC and package time.
    It’s the expansion pieces where you really see the difference. HBG has authorized 20 different sculpts as expansion pieces, of which Germany gets 9, Japan gets 6 and Allies get 5.
    So, all totaled the Germans will have 17 unique sculpts to check, Japan will have 14 and the Allies will have 13.

    Each game will have 200 total units. Each expansion set will have 100 total units. I believe Doug told me that the plastic order was enough to fill 750 games so even without expansion pieces that is a total of 150,000 pieces to QC and bag. If yo0 add just 1 expansion set per game, that brings it up to 225,000 pieces. Man, having to count and look over that many little plastic pieces could make you stir crazy.

    By the way, for those of you not fully familiar with the game, the expansion pieces I mentioned are for later on when you have played the basic game a few times and want to add something new. Most of them are technological advancements that could give an edge to the Allied or Axis players. Some have potential to be added to Global games as well.
    Actually, I guess you could add the expansion pieces right away if you wanted. Personally, I want to try out the basic game itself a few times to get familiar with the rules and unit characteristics before adding new pieces. I think HBG will be providing rules for the expansion pieces either with the games or as a download from the HBG site.

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    Any updates on the US/UK/German sets? Been a while and I haven’t seen any news on their status. At this point I am going to have to go back through my emails to remember what I have ordered.

    Like anyone else, I am happy to see work on the one-off novelty pieces like Axis/Ally superweapons, but it seems like the focus is all on these (and other small games) right now and not on continuing the A&A Expansion/Supplemental sets.

    Those are the real bread and butter of HBG for me and what gets me far more excited than anything else.

    Here’s hoping…


  • An update on Amerika would be appreciated too.  It was announced at the end of July that the plastic components had arrived and that the games would be QC’d and assembled “over the next month” for shipping.

  • '12

    I think there is something wrong with the Chinese factory. We did the preordering, as a community project and I think we are entitled to any new information that becomes available, good or bad.

  • Customizer

    They got all the plastic pieces qc’d (both for the basic game and the expansions) and are putting games together now. Order shipping will begin October 1 and carry on throughout the month of October (there were a lot of backers for this game).
    All the work on getting this game together and coming up with the new rules for the expansion units was just too intensive for a couple of guys who also have regular lives/jobs/families on top of all they do for HBG. In spite of all the advances they have made in the past couple of years, HBG is still a relatively small company with only 2 or 3 guys doing all this work. So further supplement/expansion sets and games simply had to be put on hold for a bit while they nurtured this very demanding new “baby” into health.
    Once the games are shipped during October, I’m sure other projects will get back into gear. The US Expansion sets already have the 3-D models made with the first sample sculpts in the HBG webpage photo. So at least that set isn’t starting from scratch.
    I’m a little impatient too. I’ve had money sitting in my Paypal account just waiting to pay for the pre-order on Germany 3 sets. Too bad Paypal accounts don’t give you interest.

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    Thanks for the update KNP.

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer


  • @LHoffman:

    @LHoffman:

    Oh ����…

    Check out what I found.

    http://www.historicalboardgaming.com/Proposed-Games_c_550.html

    Am I behind the times here?

    http://www.historicalboardgaming.com/Proposed-Games_c_550.html

    Interesting discovery.  The phrasing is rather ambiguous. Some parts (like the notes “A new game in the works. Please put yourself on the waiting list so we gauge it’s popularity.”) suggest that HBG is simply polling its customers to assess their interest, without any commitment being required.  Other parts (specifically, the 0-50-150-250-300 categories) imply that money is being either collected (as in pre-orders) or pledged (sort of like Kickstarter) in order to make the project actually move forward.  Some entries have prices and some don’t.  So I don’t know what to make of any of this.  Without more information, I won’t be clicking on any of the buttons.

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    Good catch Marc. I didn’t even see that.

    Discussion started on a different thread because supposedly there is voting going on, but I haven’t really seen any. Here at least.

  • '12

    What I personally see is, they are working on everything else than finishing the set we already put our money a year and a half ago. I won’t preordering anything until I receive the stuff that I already preorder. Also it conflicts with the info above that they already work on too many projects that why there is a delay on the current preorders. I remember a couple years ago, they told us, there isn’t going to be a preorder option till the set is 2-3 months away from being released. You can throw that out of the window.

  • '12

    The newsletter that was released from HBG says that the us set will start shipping sometime in early November , let’s hope they are no more delays.

  • Sponsor '17 '13 '11 '10

    @georgemak1:

    What I personally see is, they are working on everything else than finishing the set we already put our money a year and a half ago. I won’t preordering anything until I receive the stuff that I already preorder. Also it conflicts with the info above that they already work on too many projects that why there is a delay on the current preorders. I remember a couple years ago, they told us, there isn’t going to be a preorder option till the set is 2-3 months away from being released. You can throw that out of the window.

    We are working on items that we can, we have NO control of the Chinese factory so instead of doing nothing, we choose to develop other items in the meantime. As you have noticed, we have not asked for pre-order on other items until “Amerika” and U.S. sets start shipping.

  • Customizer

    @coachofmany:

    We are working on items that we can, we have NO control of the Chinese factory so instead of doing nothing, we choose to develop other items in the meantime. As you have noticed, we have not asked for pre-order on other items until “Amerika” and U.S. sets start shipping.

    ––Doug,…I continue my support of you and HBG in your efforts to bring more FUN to us A&A gamers. I’m even more understanding because I realize that ALL of the delays have been by the Chinese factories and out of your control. I can only hope that the A&A gamers would develope a more mature attitude towards these real life international business transactions. I can see that you are doing everything in your power to keep production going and I also think it’s very smart of you to not accept pre-orders of items until you know they are definately “in the pipieline” in order to minimize having anyone claiming “sour grapes”. I stand behind y’all and I’m ready to receive my Amerika game & American sets whenever they are ready.

    Tall Paul

  • '12

    By calling someone immature cause he wants to find out what happened to his hard working money while getting conflicting info is immature of his own. If you notice I posted right under my post when I saw the newsletter. That was good enough for me. I saw ppl asking him on fb and here without getting a reply. I never said I won’t support him, Doug can probably pull my order info out,  I spent a lot of money there, and I still will, I just feel Doug didn’t communicate properly regarding this set. I’m not here to argue but I hope I got my point across

  • Customizer

    @georgemak1:

    By calling someone immature cause he wants to find out what happened to his hard working money while getting conflicting info is immature of his own. If you notice I posted right under my post when I saw the newsletter. That was good enough for me. I saw ppl asking him on fb and here without getting a reply. I never said I won’t support him, Doug can probably pull my order info out,  I spent a lot of money there, and I still will, I just feel Doug didn’t communicate properly regarding this set. I’m not here to argue but I hope I got my point across

    ––Sir,…I didn’t call anyone “immature”,…I only wanted EVERYONE to understand the real world situaion(s) and the reasons behind them NOT being of HBG’s doing or in it’s control. I wasn’t directing my comments specifically towards you, but ALL of the A&A gamers. I hope we are “good”.

    Tall Paul

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    After examining the new Global War map a little more closely last night, I became more and more comfortable with it. I already liked the style a lot (big improvement over the 1st Ed.) but the map made more sense after zooming in and looking at it for a while. I wish China and the Asia-Pacific coast were larger, but I can only assume HBG has reason for making it relatively small.

    I am really looking forward to more information coming out about it; especially the rules. I am particularly interested in the difficult terrain aspect and the new convoy system. It appears that there are convoy routes drawn around the map.

    Might have to ask for this for Christmas…  :roll:

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    HBG Newsletter from Sept. 30 for those interested…

    http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=a9d6c9feeb404498732dab770&id=5adafb82dc

    Since I am not on Facebook, I only periodically check the HBG site there and there is a lot of cool stuff going on. Somehow I missed this newsletter in my email… I usually get them, so I don’t know what happened. Not sure if anyone else was in that boat, so here it is. New pics for GW 1936 look amazing.

  • Sponsor '17 '13 '11 '10

    Sadly a lot of the newsletters we send out end up in Spam.
    We are trying to do a better job getting the news out. We will be on AAA.org more also.

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    @coachofmany:

    Sadly a lot of the newsletters we send out end up in Spam.
    We are trying to do a better job getting the new out. We will be on AAA.org more also.

    I try to keep up on things, but I like a pleasant surprise every now and then. Past email Newsletters have gone to my inbox, so I usually see them. I will have to check and see if it got to spam this time.

    As for being on A&A.org more… I know it would help me a lot, since I am not on Facebook and get most of my product news here, but that is totally up to you guys. I don’t know what the better advertising route is. I spend the vast majority of my social media time here, so I get a little A&A-centric thinking that most of your customers are A&A.org members. Either way, keep up the good work and I always look forward to hearing about the latest toys from HBG.

  • Customizer

    LHoffman,
    Whenever I check my e-mail, I always take a look at what is in my SPAM folder just to make sure nothing that should have went to my Inbox went to Spam instead. Most of the time it’s all fine but occasionally something slips through.
    Also, I understand why you might have an aversion to getting on Facebook, but you might reconsider. HBG has some pretty cool pics of stuff they are developing there. Like pics of the first prototype sculpts for the new German set. I’m especially anxious for those.

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