ps. That one was keyed off a scenario more late colonial era/early 1900s for Europe, but found it pretty easy to adjust for different eras once I knew where those spots were relative to each. Usually just needs a couple tweaks to make it recognizably 1940s after collapsing stuff down into larger regional tiles.

I think its easier to key in all the sz tiles first before adjusting the ocean color for tripleA use, but its pretty easy to switch after you have the divisions in place. Here the Atlantic ocean is compressed quite a bit since you didn’t need a ton of space there for AA50 scale, but is also pretty simple to extend, or move the wrap line if you need to add in more sz space.

That last one is about as dark as I can go before I can’t see the black pixels anymore, but you can make sz boundaries white after with a mapskin which seems to work pretty well for a more revised style look.

The A&A world map is pretty crazy, but I was fairly happy with how that projection turned out. I try to keep this one in mind when thinking overmuch on the relative scale, but I feel you can get away with a lot and have a world map that looks pretty familiar while still being playable for stuff like unit crowding…

https://goo.gl/images/4E3LH9

I like those ideas for a more advanced board. I think you could get some fun production values and choke points using something like that.

Here’s a baseline with a bunch of tiles if anyone wants to play around. You can erase borders or redraw the geometry. I had the ocean pretty light from a while back, and don’t have any sea zones drawn on this one, but those are easy to add. The islands are probably overkill for a smaller board, but they’re simple to delete or round out into larger groups. There is a little clipping at the top with Norway since it was an older draft, but still pretty easy to carve up or extend if anyone likes to play around with ideas. This was off the AA50 projection I did, but it warps pretty well if people like to re-scale it. I tried to put in a lot of smaller political boundaries so that they could stretch relative to each other, before knocking em out to form larger divisions. Europe is pretty large here relative to the rest of the globe (I had it pulling off at Gibraltar in this draft for a larger med) but I think you might be able to stretch even larger there if desired just by tweaking the aspect, and still feel pretty recognizable. To get AA50 I just compressed Spain and expanded UK a bit. Usually some liberties are taken when drafting the eastern front or central Russia to match the A&A distortions, but tried to have Asia/China a bit easier to work with and Europe/Med scaled up as much as possible without smashing Africa too much. Scandinavia can also be compressed or tilted even more than I did here and I think it still works if people like a taller Europe or need more room for sz, but this was kinda where I settled for something similar to a classic projection but with less blobbing and some recognizable 20th century political boundaries to draw from.

here’s a darker one more like revised if you like something deeper for the briny blue.

ps. for the sitzkrieg round in G40, if you did the skip phase thing for playing digitally you’d be one round closer to round 4 for the political game before combat begins in earnest, so sort of speeding things up on the timeline a little. I wonder if there’s any interesting production or base builds, or any major battle breakers that could throw things for a loop?

Secret purchase might be fun on the table top, I can see some nail bitters that way haha. Digitally its a little harder to time a simultaneous reveal which is why I figured following the regular turn sequence would probably be easiest to implement there.

In the AA50 1942 scenario it can get pretty wild, since Japan has enough for 4 transports or the option to drop a factory and 2 transports, or pair of bombers and another transport, or probably a lot of other builds. But the Allies also have a few ways to bolster the Russian and British openers, and to get the USA ready to move out a bit sooner. In the AA50 1941 scenario I see Germany and Russia could stack up quite a few tanks against each other, or maybe try to tango with air depending on what G does. Japan has less money to throw around, but they’re all set to stomp anyway in 41, so least it gives the Allies a chance put a few more hitpoints in China and for the Americans to prep for a response. Saving up some of their loot for a major purchase in round 2 is also a possibility for UK/USA if they want to keep the Axis side guessing, or stack drop fleets all at once for a stronger defense, since Axis have so many starting aircraft.

In 1942.2/1942.3 I think 1 fighter 2 art 2 inf might be a nice conservative build for Russia. You could put the ground in Caucasus to ice Ukraine and have the 3rd fighter in Karelia for Sea Lion coverage just in case, but without giving up too much of the defensive edge, since you’d still have those boots on the ground down south. A little more punch each round coming from the extra fighter if it goes more traditional ground war like it probably would, and let the other Allies pick up the slack. For a more aggressive Russian opener you could put two more hitpoints into Karelia to try and snake Baltic states or Belo without it being quite so dicey, and still have enough juice to deal with the Ukraine situation. Or you could try to do like fleet killer stuff in the skies with a Red Dawn bomber play. I think it could be pretty cool.

Hehe for sure, least it has the benefit of being simple to explain whatever the ultimate shake down on balance. If nothing else bound to be interesting for a switch up I’d think.

Seems like something that’s been proposed before, but haven’t actually seen it in operation for the more recent boards. Might be fun in a tournament just to throw everyone a curve ball

In 1942 Russia could build another pair of fighters or a pair of strategic bombers. Wondering if that might be enough to back down an all out Sea Lion play by Germany (where they try to max transports to take England on G2)? If a Russian air build can deter an easy Sea Lion and at least make it too dicey, then I think you might have an interesting game there, since G would have to consider surface ships to cover vs a Soviet R1 air strike rather going all transport crazy which might be fun. If UK can afford to build a couple ships in the zero round and stack up with their remainder, and if the USA can save their Atlantic transports that’s pretty major for team Allies. Potential for KJF if Russia uses air to the Pacific?

Axis still get a build too though, so wondering how they might play it with an extra preliminary purchase?

In AA50 and especially in G40 there is a lot more going on. But still wondering how those might play too? Especially if zero round production or naval buys might be interesting for flipping the opening combat dynamic during round two on its head.

So the idea is pretty simple, each player nation has a round of purchasing using the regular turn sequence and starting income before the game begins in earnest. Or put another way basically nothing moves till round 2.

On the table top this could be seen as a zero round, digitally you could think of it as a ghost round, where everyone skips past all phases except purchase/placement by player agreement.

What sort of play pattern/balance do you think this would yield?

I’m thinking maybe this could be a simple way to rebalance the games, or maybe invert them to Allied advantage.

What would you buy?

For 1942? Global? AA50? Or any of the Axis advantage boards?

Right now I was thinking the only thing that might prevent it from working as an alternative scenario would be like exploits from mass transport/air builds, but maybe it works. Any thoughts?

@Argothair said in Grand Plans, 3rd Edition?:

Honestly, I think the best starting map to promote with A&A software would be the version of Pact of Steel that includes Italy and China. If we have to go with an officially published map, I’d pick AA50. If we have to go with an officially published map with no bid, I’d pick Revised.

Haha memory lane. Yeah the pact of steel variant we made is a cool example of what could be accomplished if an editor includes things like an option to add a new player nation. To do that you need custom art assets, but people have a lot of enthusiasm for stuff like that if there is a standardized format for it.

The ability to create actual maps is pretty involved, but that’s like the goose that lays the golden egg if we had tools for that. This is one area where A&Aonline could really pull ahead of what is available within TripleA, since there are real limits to what you can do especially with scaling when you still need that raster graphics baseline map to build off. If A&AOnline gets to the point where they can open things up on that end, with ways to actually draw new maps or adjust the geometry of the tiles, it would be totally killer. But I think that’s probably more for the master wishlist of where it could go in the end.

For a basic editor on the map level, you can really do a lot with the 5 man game just with an option to adjust territory production values or adding in new Victory Cities. At the scenario level would be nice to adjust income totals and starting units position. For anyone who doesn’t know what it is, Pact of Steel was a 6 man mod of Revised that included Italy, which came out before AA50. Pact of Steel 2 which Veq modded includes other features introduce with AA50 like objectives and China rules, as well as some stuff from other A&A games like sz convoys and various new units. But anyhow those games just show what can be created depending on what kind of tools there are to mod in more complexity once you have a core map/scenario like Revised or AA50.

I think the most basic thing to make 42 serviceable is a way to adjust starting incomes, since a lot of complex balance issues can be solved that way, even if its not the most refined tool. Given enough money to the Soviets or the Anglo-Americans, you could get a scenario that handles any disparity in player skill or any perceived advantage between team Axis and team Allies. There’s still stuff in the overall play pattern that can’t be really dealt with that way, but least it gives you a tool to work with on the most basic level. Otherwise like I say, the only thing I can think of right now is skipping movement in the first round, but I’m not sure if that would work cause I’ve never really tried it. You’d get some of the features of the Zero Turn for USA that we tried (where you shift the turn order back one turn), but I don’t know how everything holds up if everyone got a purchase round. I guess it would come down to Sea Lion/India Crush, if UK purchase and Russian first combat move could cover an Axis mass transport buy.

ps. adjusting starting income is also probably the only way to make the AI truly competitive once the player gets to a certain level of familiarity. Its really hard for example to teach skynet how to manage the airblitz or stuff like multi-nation attack/defense. But with starting income you can handicap in a solo game vs the machine just like you would in PvP, with more cash up front to even things out.

Even if 1942.2 isn’t my favorite map ever, I still feel obliged to hop onto this one, since I really want to see the digital model succeed for A&A and I think this is probably the best opportunity we’ve had yet for something official. Just having access to a potentially much larger playerbase via steam is pretty exciting. GTO doesn’t exist anymore, and in any case it reminded me more of a parlor game free for all, having A&A bundled up with like backgammon or whatever. TripleA, while I love it and have put years into the thing, is still limited in who it can reach. Its great for people who already know Axis and Allies and are willing to tool around, but not as much for attracting new players. I think there are a lot of new people who might across Axis and Allies online via promotion on steam or from the publishers at Wizards and such, and the fact that beamdog will have tutorials and a single player mode for learning the ropes is definitely a good thing. I’m just hoping it has enough staying power out the gate to keep veteran players engaged, which is where a toolset/editor is really key.

Clearly people here would probably rather have seen AA50 and the 1940 games on offer within the same kind of framework, but I can see why that might have been a tall order. The challenge of developing a Single Player mode for either of those maps (AA50 or G40) is much more complex, because of the rules overhead. Then again having a Single Player mode wouldn’t really be necessary for either of those as long as you had a basic pvp multi-player option for the larger boards. Keeping 1942 for introductions and SP mode vs the AI, which is I think what they’re going for, but then having the more complex boards available for when people really want to sink their teeth into the thing.

Still I agree, to drum up immediate excitement 1942.2 was a bit of an odd choice, but if there is a way to mod it, or the promise of other boards to come, then I’m an easy sell hehe.

Still trying to figure out how to quote from the last page using my phone. Guess the formatting is a little different now. The mysteries of the new forums hehe. But yeah, super Nova explosions

One thing I wanted to add about having a toolset editor is that maybe it would allow for one or two of the major tournaments like GenCon to simulcast digitally, maybe with online participation too, or at least have the finals archived digitally, so people could see the round by round for those, with the key stuff summarized. Like one dude on the sidelines with a laptop editing/recording the broad strokes at the close of each round into an A&Aonline game file to preserve the action for posterity. Or better yet a big online tournament to coincide with the big physical one, where everyone uses the same tourney set up world wide for one day, or one week or whatever, so the experience is more shared and accessible for people in remote locations that can’t make the drive. Technically can be done already, but I think something like that might get more traction when the online product is all official-like.