Played Our First Game Tonight

@plumsmugler:

While I’ve only played the game once I’ve noticed several flaws:

• Why doesn’t the US declare war it’s first turn to get it’s massive bonus income?  This seems to be the most logical thing for them since Japan will probably initiate its attack on it’s second turn anyway.  Might as well allow America to get another extra 40 IPCs.

• This is an admittedly petty and minuscule complaint but the Japanese tactical bombers are incredibly difficult to set on the aircraft carriers correctly because of their little landing gear on the bottom of the piece.  Maybe I have OCD but I have to have the planes sitting on the carriers correctly before I can do anything else.  I spent a lot of time doing this.

The reason the US can’t declare war until fired upon to reflect the isolationist mindset of pre WW2 US.  We didn’t want to be involved in another war after WW1 (heck, we didn’t even join the league of nations), so we let the rest of the world sort itself out.  Until Japan poked us.  If Japan hadn’t attacked Pearl it’s possible even if Japan had hassled the UK in the east Indies we still may not have gone to war.  Doubtful, but possible.

The Vals have landing gear?  Oh maaaan, now I may actually need to get the game.  Just after my friend who actually enjoys A&A moved and I no longer have a truely interested party to play against.  sigh.

@kcdzim:

The reason the US can’t declare war until fired upon to reflect the isolationist mindset of pre WW2 US.  We didn’t want to be involved in another war after WW1 (heck, we didn’t even join the league of nations), so we let the rest of the world sort itself out.  Until Japan poked us.  If Japan hadn’t attacked Pearl it’s possible even if Japan had hassled the UK in the east Indies we still may not have gone to war.  Doubtful, but possible.

Ok I reread the rules and it appears they can’t declare war until attacked or by the end of the 3rd turn.  The rules are written a little confusingly so I thought the US could declare war at any time.

Way to take one for the team and play one by yourself plum. +1 to you.

I agree with a few of the smaller things you mentionned. Tac-Bombers forsure (maybe I will paint soe of my extra fighters). They could have easily left the income chart right out if they weren’t going to do a good job on it. Used the extra material to divide the boxes or something.

Oh well, if the gameplay is good (and it seems like it is) then the game will be more than worth the $111 Canadian I shelled out.

I didnt buy it for the plastic pieces anyway…

I do like the map, but the 2 separate pieces thing annoys me as does the huge crease in the lower half.  Also, the territories and convoy zone markers are too small.  Much better than the aa42 map though, much much better.  Any chance someone is going to make a killer PDF of this map, eh eh?

@bigopfer:

You are totally right Plum, the game is not worth the money they charged. The map IS amazing, the gameplay IS really fun. But you nailed it with the boxes, paper money, IPC chart, cardboard pieces, lack of tac bombers. I mean, I paid basically the same money for this game as I paid for my copy of AA50 and this AA40 Pacific is missing lots of the quality that AA50 had.

Exactly!  I was totally content with how they presented AA50.  Everything was high quality and all aspects of the game and its components were top notch.  Totally worth the money I spent on it.

While this game certainly has some high quality aspects about it, (especially the game play, which is all that really counts in the end) there are so many small blunders it’s really frustrating.  The income chart is what gets me the most.  It seems like the day before they shipped the game out somebody realized “Oh crap!  We forgot income charts!” and then threw together the first thing they thought of and tossed it in the box.  I’m surprised they weren’t scribbled on a piece of notebook paper.