Best posts made by CentralCommando

Hello, I am CentralCommando, and I am a Axis and Allies fanatic.
My top three A&A games are:
Europe 1940 2nd Edition (1)
Axis and Allies Revised 2004 (2, don’t judge me.)
Axis and Allies Classic 1982 (3)

I hope this forum has a great future!

@Narvik said in Axis & Allies .org 2026 Support Drive:

The decline in love of A&A is sad. 10 years ago there were like 100+ patrons, now only 20.

I think a major reason why interest has mostly died out is that there hasn’t been a “broad appeal” A&A game since 2012 (which looking through the forums history, seemed to be one of the most popular times of its life). As much fun as having specific theater games and super large maps, they only really appeal to a select group of people (mostly long time A&A players). While there definitely was world map bloat in the late 2000s/early 2010s, I feel they kind of need one now as these titles will only continue to fade from the public eye.

While it may feel redundant to longtime players, a World/Europe map at the same or lower complexity as AA42 Second Edition would be the best choice. Of course the rules could be different, like having D12 battles, different Tank weights, etc. but it should still be digestible to the general masses. However, the most important thing they need to do is ADVERTISE. Besides sharing in already existing A&A communities, Renegade has not been advertising their games at all. YouTube ads, banner ads, maybe even sponsors or just something to get the word out. They NEED to advertise this game, as we really need a new generation of A&A players to expand the community, and THEN we can do more theater and complex games.

A new generation of players means a larger community, who will then play more advanced titles as they get more into the game franchise. I hope the series ultimately makes a comeback, but without a massive campaign like this, I’m not so sure it will.

Sorry if I went on a bit of a rant here, but this is just my opinion on the matter.

@Darth-Vahl The latter part of the description threw me for a loop, but no he cannot play this move, as the ship isn’t in a friendly seazone (at least, during a battle). Hope this helped!

(I had a bit of trouble deciding what category to put this in, so if you believe this is in the wrong category mods, please let me know. This is also my first dedicated topic!)

Axis & Allies is my favorite board game franchise of all time, and have been playing since I was seven (A&A 2004 was my first game). I know I’m not the only one who grew up with A&A, and I feel that the great amount of titles released for this game built an entire generation of players, and led to the game fostering a large community, much of which is found on these forums.

However, I feel like there hasn’t been many new players recently. Sure, you have the occasional new account here and there, but they almost always have been long time players, which brings me to this conclusion: there really isn’t a new generation of Axis & Allies strategists. There is a good reason behind this, that being the fact there hasn’t been a “wide appeal” A&A since 2012. Fourteen years ago. Since then, we only really got theater games or heavy-mechanical games, which are great don’t get me wrong, but they were specifically targeted to already existing fans of the series. That’s why in a previous thread, I went on a mini-tirade about this very topic, which I’ll link here: https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/42216/axis-allies-org-2026-support-drive/28

As suggested by @Narvik , I decided to make this a dedicated forum topic to here everyone’s thoughts on my main question: How would you make an A&A game that would appeal to a new generation? I personally would make the scale global and complexity roughly around AA42 Second EDITION, Maybe add a distinction for light & heavy tanks and remove cruisers, along with fixing the balancing of units such as AAA guns. For a starting date, I’d personally make it 1941 (Barbarossa or Pearl Harbor time is fine). Perhaps you could add Italy if you wanted a 3v3, but otherwise just use the traditional five powers. The style could swing either way, but I’d prefer if we got the classic landscaping and more vivid colors. But, what are your thoughts on this? Let me know!

@SeaYa said in 👋 Introduce or Re-Introduce Yourself (Current):

A wealth of knowledgable folks, a volume of information, and a wonderful community of fellow players awaits!

I have never seen such a perfect introduction to the forums quite like this one. Get an upvote, you!

@djensen These fricking bots, man!

I’ve won many games of out-of-box 1914 as the CP against far less experienced opponents. That’s why in the most recent video, I removed that as a factor and assume both sides are being played by ‘grandmasters’.

@The_Good_Captain Hence is why the best way (imo) to test out a game’s balance is soloplay. It helps to eliminate experience curves as there’s no better opponent than yourself. You’ll make a similar amount of genius moves and mistakes no matter the side, which allows you to figure out the general imbalancing and how to improve.

Using A&A 1914 and a relevant YouTuber as an example, The Hilltop Pillbox has a long series of solo play games of A&A 1914 (as well as others), and yet nine out of ten times the Entente win. Main point is, no matter your skill, you are the greatest (and worst) person playing.

Despite the hiccup with the title, great & informative video! Content like yours almost makes me want to make my own A&A videos!

@Commando-Brado Greetings, fellow commando!

@dazedwit I’d say those are good additions to the game! However, Diego Garcia was a part of the British colony of Mauritius since the Napoleonic Wars, just economically the island was administered by a private company. Personally I like to move the 1 IPC from Southern Australia to Solomon Islands, as it would be a nod to Guadalcanal and various battles that took place there. Neat ideas though.

@Charles-Fontaine Egypt and Union of South Africa were British Dominions, Tunisia was a French protectorate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Egypt_under_the_British
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_protectorate_of_Tunisia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_South_Africa

Dang, the map is larger than 8GB and a 91-page rulebook? Holy smokes that’s massive! Thanks for the rulebook.

@vodot Sir, this is brilliant! I always though the Dutch East Indies looked ugly on that map. So with these overlays, not only does it look so much better, there’s more territories for more strategies! Also, this fixes my biggest problem with 50th: Italy. Italy originally only had three territories, and was overall irrelevant to the game as a whole. But here, There’s more territories for them, and a new pair of frontlines with IEA. Australia is improved too, which is a welcome quality-of-life addition.

@The_Good_Captain I understand your perspective, but as you said in your video (and this topic), It mostly comes down to a skill difference. Soloplay is good when testing balance as you are in the same headspace as your opponent, which means you’ll be fighting at the same skill level. Games “seeming the same” is actually a good tell on how balanced a game is. For example, if the Axis win more often than not, even if you change up your strategies, then the game is Axis-biased. Get rid of/move a couple Axis units or add Allied ones and see if it changes the outcome. You keep doing this until either the Allies win roughly half of time or if they greatly surpass the Axis. If the latter is true, reverse the trend. Also, make sure to ever so slightly change your strategy every playthrough, and then have games where you measure the impact of responding to that strategy or not as the enemy.

I mostly only do Solo play if I’m playtesting/balancing a game, or if I’m lonely. It’s almost always better to play with other people when you can, but for solely balance purposes Solo play is the way to go in my book. Also, no offense taken!

@barnee :O

@vodot Well, I look forward to seeing your solution to those problems. Perhaps you could make a Google Doc/Sheet table where you outline the changes to the setup depending on what division(s) you add? Just a suggestion, as having custom setup images for each combination would be an unnecessary amount of work.

(Also, I hit my daily upvote limit from your posts lol.)

@Titus The image already looks pretty good, but if you want to show the full quality of an image, There’s only a few options that I know of.

You could make a zoomed in shot. If your goal is to simply show a high-quality area on your map instead of the full thing, simply take a screenshot of that zoomed in shot and upload it the way you usually do.

You may be able to divide your file through a sectioner. You can upload your file onto a site such as PineTool or ImageSplitter and then divide your map into different parts. Then, you can download & then upload multiple crops of that image together in one post.

If you want to show the entire map in its high quality though, you’re likely going to need to upload your map through a 3rd-party file uploader. Some options include Zappfiles, Mediafire, and Dropbox. You can then link your exported image in your post.

If there’s a better method out there, please let me know, But these are probably the easiest options.

Also, good looking map!

@barnee

Perhaps I haven’t got the update yet, but it is still next to the notification bell and user icon on the top right of the screen.

Hope this helped!

@Nuts Welcome, fellow newer players! I hope everyone is having a good time here.

@HansMohr68 Well, let me know when you do more progress on it. (Map Fixes, Battle Board, etc.)

@Titus Ah, Okay. Neat setup though!

@barnee Wow, that’s certainly different! Some ideas I have is clicking the user icon or the menu icon. I don’t have it yet, so I cant help too much yet.

(Also, this new menu in the screenshot looks weird)