Hello everyone,
Many years ago a member named Ambilzi began the tortured task of scanning all the A&A G40 game boards in order to create a printable one piece map file which would provide a better G40 gaming experience. He didn’t know it at the time, but what Ambilzi did was revolutionized the way we play Axis & Allies, and also provided an essential customization for any custom game table. I was fortunate to work with Ambilzi simply because I reached out made some design suggestions which he was very open to, and the list of those first modifications really tell the story. I shared some ideas that made the map more efficient during games, but Ambilzi was the true pioneer when it come to the history of this file because of the effort he undertook to scan and stitch all those images together. We don’t here from him anymore, he doesn’t, won’t, or can’t return our messages… but his efforts should never be forgotten.
Since then there have been many of us that use his scanned image file to modify, tweak, and reinvent how it looks, and how we think the map should function. Whether we print this map for our own gaming pleasure, or to modify it and share our ideas with the community, we all owe Ambilzi a great deal of gratitude. Today we can enjoy even better works and map files by those that dedicate their time and skills to improve upon the original scan. Customizers like Cyanight who created many versions mostly dedicated to options for the roundels, Ithaut with his creative ocean layer, and intrepid who cleaned up many imperfections that only his professional eye can detect. In the coming months we await the works of new customizers like Siredblood, and Tjoek… they may use the base scan or create their own map files from scratch, but one thing is for sure… the Axis & Allies community thanks all of them for their efforts.