I just want to say, “I bloody called it!”
What we are seeing now are the massive historical inaccuracies that are going to be endemic to game that was made by (self professed) and for World War 2 buffs on World War 1. What we have is “Axis&Allies, Infantry and Artillery edition” not a World War 1 game and I really hate saying this and I get no satisfaction in pointing that out. Now don’t get me wrong, I know these games can’t be 100% historically accurate all the time, but other Axis&Allies games have gotten much closer then this one and it seems like they didn’t really even try. I hate to say this but this game really feels like a quick cash in on the part of the developers.
There are so many things that are just plain wrong with this game, like the Russian capitol being Moscow for instance. If you read anything on the Russian Empire during WW1, you can’t go five minuets without hearing about the capitol being in St. Petersburg, or better yet Petrograd which is what the war caused the city’s name being changed to for sounding “too German”. There is no reason to get that wrong! Mr. Harris’s excuse that Petrograd is “too close to Germany to be safe” is a terrible reason to justify these actions. This is flimsy as best and a tacit admission that Mr. Harris just dosn’t care about his source material at worst. Also, given the new rule that a nations new builds must be placed in their capital, moving the Russian capital to Moscow makes even less sense, as wouldn’t this make things more difficult for the Russian player rather than less?
I want to make this clear, I don’t hate this game, and I will be buying a copy of it when it does come out. I refuse to condemn this game without playing it and giving it a fair chance to suprise me. For all I know maybe it is a wonderful and fun game. What I take issue with is the game being sold as a “World War 1” game, because it is showing every indication to the contrary.
The Great War is a conflict that is rapidly being lost from human memory. Already we have a generation that is growing up in a world where there are no more living veterans of this war. Our task is to preserve this history for these new generations, ourselves, and the sake of human history, to prevent the sad history of this war repeating itself.
Lest we forget.