Initial impressions

Bought a copy of '41 yesterday and played through a solo game; that is I’m in game turn 4 now. Here are my initial impressions:

First of all, although it’s been said before, the game really does seem to be heavily Axis favored: If there’s a way to possibly hold Moscow against a truly focussed Axis effort; I don’t see it. Germany should be more than capable of taking Moscow on its own, but Japan can just forego attacking any of the Islands in the Pacific and Australia as they’re not really worth anything anyway and since there’s no NO’s in this game, why not focus on Russia (and India)?

Secondly; It’s really hard to build up an Allied fleet off the coast of Britain. the Luftwaffe and navy are pretty styrong and unlike in many other A&A games, should Germany decider to buy one or two extra subs, they won’t be in trouble on the Eastern front because of it as very early on in the game Russia will only be able to afford 1 INF per turn anyway.Hardly anything to be afraid of.

Thirdly, Africa can be completely ignored by both sides, if they so choose, It’s only worth 2 IPC. the only strategic importance is Egypt as in offers a shortcut to Caucasus or rather a different route into Caucusus so it can be threatened from two sides.

Germany seems awfully strong compared to the other nations.

The pieces look fine. there are too few of some of them, though, notably destrpyers.

There aren’t enough cardboard pieces even to complete set-up. That way you get a strange mix between the use of cardboard chips and the actual pieces. I suppose it’s not a big thing, but it doesnannoy me somewhat.

So far, in conclusion, I’m a bit disappointed. I had high hopes after reading some reviews, but I think it’s a little too simple for me and worst of all, yet again it seems to be unbalanced, so we’ll just have to wait for an Aplha 1,2 and three again, or resort to bidding or what have you.

What I do like, BTW, are the pre-printed factories and the fact that you can’t build new ones. They save space this way and it also seems pretty historical to me: besides the ones already printed on the map there were no large production centres at the time of WW2 and it somewhat shows that e.g. Japan indeed had to transport all its troops (and supplies) from Japan and couldn’t just “build another factory” in Manchuria and/or the east Indies (which of course is hardly needed in’A&A 1941 even if it were possible, but might work very well in e.g. AA50!

Then again, in the larger A&A games, it can ofcourse be argued that a newly built IC could (also) represent restored and/or improved logistics facilities, so your troops can be moved around faster (railroads, rail capacity, roads, extra supplies; so not necessarily more troops, but better supplied troops which can only be shown, given the limitations of the A&A system, by placing more troops there. They could even partially represent strategic moves in an abstract way, given the scale and time-frame of each turn.

@UrJohn:

@Koningstiger:

They could even partially represent strategic moves in an abstract way, given the scale and time-frame of each turn.

I consider some of those factories to at least partially represent forward deployment centers. Is that what you’re getting at?

Exactly.