• Hey,
    I’ve played the original version many times but I just recently ordered online the new, revised version.  My question is, can only two people play this version??  and how would it work?  I’ve been told that with this new version, you pick a country to play whereas the old game you played either the axis or allies… Can someome please explain?  i want to be able to play with my son.

    thanks.


  • I know it sounds really lame but you just play 3 different allies and your son plays both Germany and japan. It sounds alot like playing risk with 2 players which is totally boring or Monopoly with 2 players but people actually do this. The game is really a game for 4-5 players and a social game, but this was lost under the weight of so many who compile long strategic essays and  play from home study taking the game too far out of the fun zone into something their egos future rests on if they lose.

    just have fun.


  • @kfgolfer:

    Hey,
    I’ve played the original version many times but I just recently ordered online the new, revised version.  My question is, can only two people play this version??  and how would it work?   I’ve been told that with this new version, you pick a country to play whereas the old game you played either the axis or allies… Can someome please explain?  i want to be able to play with my son.

    thanks.

    well, you may play in two, no problem

    one player comands the axis and the other the allied powers.

    i suggest you play the axis and the son the allies

    so, the son plays his turn(USSR) then you play(Ger), then son(UK), you (Jap) and then son(USA, USSR) , you(Ger)…

  • Official Q&A

    Just as with the old version, the new version accomodates from two to five players.  If there are less than five players, one or more players control multiple countries.


  • @Imperious:

    I know it sounds really lame but you just play 3 different allies and your son plays both Germany and japan. It sounds alot like playing risk with 2 players which is totally boring or Monopoly with 2 players but people actually do this. The game is really a game for 4-5 players and a social game, but this was lost under the weight of so many who compile long strategic essays and  play from home study taking the game too far out of the fun zone into something their egos future rests on if they lose.

    just have fun.

    What is this “fun” you speak of?

    Sounds heretical . . . I don’t want any part of it . . .


  • fun does not = spending all day calculating odds using various dice rollers and writing down statistical results under various move sequences and calculating everything with perfect coordination like your playing one country when your playing three.

    The game is for 5 players or the intent is to have 2 teams of players each with different ideas competing to create the same result. Thats why i like the game.

    Do you like playing risk with 2 players? monopoly? Third Reich?

    Why should this game be any different?


  • @Imperious:

    spending all day calculating odds using various dice rollers and writing down statistical results under various move sequences and calculating everything with perfect coordination like your playing one country when your playing three.

    :-o :-o :-o Someone does this?  :-o :-o :-o I agree, IL, this is not fun. I like moving the chips and the little soldiers. I like fighthing my teammate about who did the worst move  :lol: This dice sims stuff and battle calculators … scary me  :|


  • I personally think that Agent Smith spent way too much time doing that over the years, thus his view on LL and his refusal to every play an off-the-wall player like me.


  • Agent Smith?

    You must mean Nuno. Thats his current name these days. :mrgreen:


  • Or Sexual Harassment Panda, or any of his other various iterations…


  • LOL! yes quite right forgot about SHP.


  • @Imperious:

    The game is for 5 players or the intent is to have 2 teams of players each with different ideas competing to create the same result. Thats why i like the game.

    Who said that ?  :-o

    I’ve been playing One on One for over a year !, and it’s immense fun coming up with new plans and ideas, If you ask me playing with more players swings the game heavily in favour of the axis… since Japan and Germany don’t have to co operate half as much as the allies do… and the people I know have egos that won’t let them take a back seat , so if three of them are playing the allies they will be arguing over a course of action, or all doing their own thing…

    A game for five players ?  I don’t think so…!  :-P


  • Part of the original intent of the game was to portray the crucial issues of allied cooperation, where you are constantly debating who is doing what and the prudent stewardship of the teams efforts are constantly on the ropes.

    This is what the war was historically with Stalin constantly being suspicious of UK and USA trying to win the war paid for  on Soviet blood by the denial of opening the second front, while UK is suspicious of the eastern European territories falling to communism, and the American player trying to play peacemaker with both UK and the Soviets and get them to play on a team.

    Its also the reason behind the political decision for Market Garden, The Bulge Campaign, Lake Balaton, Bagration, Kursk, and D-day.

    All this is totally lost by perfect coordination of three colors of armies… you might as well say two of the allies were under the command of buck privates.

    The two axis player also coordinating and having for example Japanese ships in the Mediterranean, or German planes landing on Japanese carriers and all that rubbish only happens in those 2 player games.

    If your not on a team of people with different ideas on how to pursue victory and have to fight all these types of other considerations “if you land in france, ill attack and get back Persia” type of events, then you lost the most crucial part of the game. The real part of the game is to become the leader and convince the team that you have the best solution to winning… kinda like what they do on the apprentice show… And your able to win over the team and play as a team. If the team has divergent ideas on how to win they will lose and thats exactly what the wars experience was on a geo-political level.

    What you advocate is a form of military leadership based not on respect for experience and results, but some faulty notion that AA is some game only of static math formula following all sorts of statistics of results and arguing over LL all various contrived solutions by people who want to reduce the game to science and no psychology. I think like the AH game Diplomacy this game offers many interpersonal skills that are directly linked to winning or losing based on the result of negotiations with your partners and how you do it.


  • I guess that rather than spend my time trying to convince one or two other people that ‘my plan is the best’ I would rather spend my time trying to outwit a single opponent in a game of tactics and skill, something that is lost when you are arguing with the ‘rabble’ over whether to attack germany or reinforce russia.

    For me, whether it is an accurate reprsentation of WWII or not, I get more fun out of the game in a one on one situation, rather than ordering or being ordered about .

    Maybe it’s because my main opponent and I are pretty evenly matched, and taking on another player is a handicap that neither of us would look forward to, Among the gamers I know , any game with three people playing the Allies would be an automatic Axis victory, perhaps it’s different if you have opponents who are happy to co-operate with one another… but if that is the case, it’s like playing against one opponent anyway ! :wink:


  • Yes but the great value of winning the victory is to convince others that your plan is best, If your not able to coordinate other people and get them to do as you see best, the task becomes an exercise in statistics which is not really outwitting but using the “math” in the game more effectively than your adversary. Strategy is not achieved because it becomes less flexible and prone to standard openings. The victory is a sour one because you only proved you have played enough games that you understand the math behind the game… and its not really “outwitting” anybody, but rather just playing more games and learning what works and what does not.

    I see the success on more levels which is also to prove by playing well independently and communicating your own plan to others as a huge “diplomatic” aspect of the game thats lost by playing 3 players positions.

    The strategy become more dynamic if you got somebody playing  differently so you must adjust your plan to accommodate various situations and become flexible and dynamic to problems outside your control—with the aspect of psychology and communication as your aid to enrich the strategy by adaptation.

    So like playing 1 on 1 basketball, You take the place of post player, outside shooter, key defender, rebounder…except you got nobody to pass the ball to. You also lost the aspect of reaction to different things getting thrown at you that are beyond the 'math" of the game but a crucial part of what being a good strategist is.

    would you not like to outwit your team members and the opposition to the point where they are following the outlined plan?

    To be a leader you got to take command and force the issue and the best strategist should know how to do this on both an individual and interpersonal level.

    Then i guess by extrapolation in the business world advisor’s and partners working together for a common goal is not as effective as one man rule. AS far as i can tell its more enriching to have the concept:

    “The team united is greater than the sum of its parts”-


  • @Imperious:

    The game is for 5 players or the intent is to have 2 teams of players each with different ideas competing to create the same result. Thats why i like the game.

    Do you like playing risk with 2 players? monopoly? Third Reich?

    Why should this game be any different?

    But the beauty of Axis and Allies is more complex and unpredictable than risk or monopoly (never played 3rd Reich), thus it can perfectly allow for fun and challenging 2 player games.

    I completely agree that a 5 player game is much more dynamic and unpredictable than a 2 player one. But the key issue to me is time.
    A 5 player game takes hours and hours, which is something that most people don’t have the luxury to spend. All the bickering and negotiating and so on take a lot of time. Meanwhile the guy who just finishes his turn waits and waits and waits until he can play again.

    Plus since you can’t have that much games (because of the hours they take) the players don’t have much opportunities to advance their skills (I’m not talking tournaments here, just friends gathering together to have a game since it can be difficult to find players with the same engagement on the game). Thus, you can end up with 1 guy on either/both sides who is the expert (because he’s more engaged and takes the time to read forums like this one) and all the other players will follow his lead/advice. Is that much different from a 1v1?

    And btw, I’ve stopped playing LL games exactly because I got tired of endless calculations and preset plans. I also agree with IL’s point that those take out the fun, but I respect those who prefer for the game to be more like chess. However, that does not mean that everyone who plays 1v1 is a LL fanatic.


  • Well then to sum up the situation:

    1. 2 players is viable if you pressed for time

    2. To gain the full measure of playing AA and the dynamic of “dealing” with partners fighting a common enemy and the adaptation required to alter and revise strategy according to shifting occurrences allows a much greater measure of the art of strategy. Without it the game falls victim to countless calculations that are akin to saying " My Schlieffen Plan is better than yours!". This is not at all what a true test of strategy should become. Otherwise you got a finite game with finite plans that can work. I would much rather have somebody make mistakes and you have to recover with a counter move to throw off the disadvantage, then the other side commits an error…The only way to win is to force mistakes and i feel that two players aren’t always playing with creativity, but rather with some preconceived notion in their head of what they MUST do to win demonstrated by home study. That results in caution in play and longer games. When you have variables and different minds working on the same problem you have multiple efforts to the same goal, resulting in quicker play results (granted once diplomacy/debate has subsided).

    If you got one guy playing one side he can concentrate only on his part as offering a solution to the puzzle of how to force victory. This offers greater insight and better long range plans on his part and also removes those gaffs during the game where you forgot to leave a man in west USA and Japan just got paid. Thats also a terrible way to lose/win but it occurs much more often when doing 2 v 2. I think it has turned into this only from the internet standpoint ( AAA), but OTB its largely remains a team effort.


  • I prefer to play 1 on 1.  I think 1 on 1 is perfectly viable, in spite of what IL says.

    As far as “strategy” goes, whatever.  If you’re playing as one of three Allied players, both your Axis opponents are veterans, and your allies are noobs, you are gonna go down, especially if your noob allies think they have some Klever Plan and won’t listen to you.  Think you got some strategy that’s gonna overcome two stubborn noobs on your team?  Pah.  You can talk about the “art of strategy” until you’re blue in the face, but your pretty words won’t win you the game!


  • Then your not a good strategist because Axis and Allies has different nations to play allowing for different point of view requiring coordination of more than pieces, but interpersonal skills in leading your team to victory by the weight of psychological factors which prove your military leadership more adept. It is entirely possible to pull a “hells kitchen” and Gordon Ramsey the team to produce that which they cannot do alone, and in turn make you a truly great skill in the art of leadership.

    Take a valueless, unproven group of noobs and win against veterans is by far a greater victory than to sort out your LL notes and dice rolling calculations and stuff you printed off from AA.org and sit alone in the room plotting out everything and knowing the results of all these battles ahead of time… you are basically playing a boring mental edifice. I suppose its fun from a bean counting point of view, but if your measuring who exactly is the best strategist you probably should look at the kind of game where its more dynamic. Now luck factor offers this only partially because if the result is not good you need to adapt, but to have a players on both sides who are full of creative ideas bring something more to a game. You may even be the noob on your team and learn something, which is more important experience in developing skills.

    I know this is not convincing you but i offer it only to consider the other point of view.


  • IMO, More than 2 players is a beer and pretzel game, not to be taken too seriously.
    If you want to prove your skills, then you should take on just one opponent at a time. Once you show that you can beat everybody consistently, then they must concede that you are the best player.
      But, for the fun factor, a multiplayer game is what you want, as long as everyone agrees that the game is just for fun, and nobody should get their feelings hurt by getting razed for making a dumb more, as it is just all a part of a multiplayer game.

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