Mixed feelings on this game

Ok thank you for the reply Marc. That is a bummer but maybe they will change the pattern and reprint the Bulge and Guadalcanal.

those articles arent necessary …the rules have been on PDF since article 5.

@c82rcn said in Movement question: does the Front Line Marker affect movement?:

@Whackamatt

Love Battle of the Bulge it was my first induction into axis and allies, moving into 1942 and 1940 - Shame it gets such a slating.

I love this game. I think the reasons for the slating are two fold.

It is radically different than the other A&A games, so if you’ve been playing them for awhile, it takes a LOT of time to “unlearn” how pieces move and act from all the prior games. Even strategic tendencies as the Allies have to be unlearned.

The rules were difficult to comprehend. Perhaps it was this way for me back when I first learned A&A 30+ years ago, but each variation of A&A since is only the addition of a couple of new pieces and a few new rules, so they were easier to unbox and play. That and some of the critical rules aren’t repeated where I feel they should be, such as the movement rule I had to discover about towns…it wasn’t mentioned again under the movement section where you think it should be.

I think those two combined have led to me playing the game incorrectly at least 5 times. I’ve only played it once where I think I played it correctly.

i still love to play it, I just hope I’ll reach a point where I remember all the rules. It certainly sucks to spend several hours setting up and playing the game only to find you’ve been doing it all wrong about truck movements, zone of control, blitzing, or movement stopping incorrectly, to name several of the "Oh, @#$%! We’ve been doing it wrong the whole game!"
moments.

they did, only the tank in the south even survived, –in the north, a couple infantry, an ART and the tank.  Allies should have dumped more into Bastogne and surrounding area i guess. 
  And since nothing else survived, the tank was cut off from supplies and allies didn’t bring any more up to allow it to even move.

Well said. This has become a very enjoyable game in my house. It’s fun to trade off sides every other game since the strategies employed by both sides are so different.

@calvinhobbesliker:

It seems that the US only gets 20 infantry pieces, but the setup and reinforcement charts have a total of 22 American infantry. In addition, all the countries seem to have lots of extra artillery pieces that will never come into play. Am I missing something in the rules, or are these artillery pieces just extra? I understand the extra German infantry and tanks and extra American tanks since stacks with chips may split up, but the American and German artillery and the British tanks and artillery are all separate in the setup/reinforcement charts and so would not need extras.

You have a “normal” set. The pieces supplied do not exactly match the charts and setup. As noted you’ll have two infantry removed from the board well before you get to their spot on the chart.

We’ve been fielding this question for quite some time: https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=8366.0

I use them as mech infantry about 2-3 years before Mech infantry actually existed in AA. I didn’t like the table tactic pieces . they are horrible quality