A few months ago I read a book about the US naval activity in the Atlantic prior to Dec 7, and my takeaway was that Roosevelt felt compelled to fight against Germany very early on in WWII, and from 1939-1941 he was pushing every boundary he could in the Atlantic theater to get closer to that goal, without directly coming out and declaring war. He understood the political realities and that the country wasn’t yet in favor of war, so he essentially fought a secret war in the western and middle Atlantic, that only the navy and administration knew about in 1940-1941. Lend-lease and helping the British were part of this push. As was the US occupation of Iceland, which had to be done by one of our two Marines Corps divisions, because the law at the time prohibited overseas deployment of the Army in peacetime (or something like that); both this and lend-lease give an idea of the sort of playing with the rules that Roosevelt was doing.

The book was “Mr. Roosevelt’s Navy – The Private War of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, 1939-1942” by Patrick Abbazia. Written in 1975 but republished in 2016 by Naval Institute Press and available on Amazon. I didn’t notice any factual errors, despite the book being so old. Very interesting insight into the orders given to the US Atlantic Fleet, our “neutrality” patrol, and Roosevelt’s strategic intentions. I highly recommend the book if this topic is of interest to you.

EBard

I’d be interested in seeing what rules you’ve come up with. I too feel air power is not well represented in the game and have been working on a bunch of new approaches to try to fix it. All untested at this point but I’m pretty excited about some of the ideas I’ve come up with.

I was writing up a long post with details and then hit the wrong button and lost it, but I will try again later to write it up and share.

I’m currently painting my set, once done I plan to take photos of all the pieces and then create some little booklets (maybe index card sized?) for players to reference. Each page of the booklet will include small pictures of each nation’s copy of the unit plus its stats. I’m hoping to theme the booklets to look like those Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) recognition manuals.

This is the final set for the time being. Depending on how much demand there is for these pieces, I’m open to making one or two more sets, maybe in the late Fall or next year sometime. Right now I want to take a break for a bit and then work on some other projects (I have a long list of requested ships that I want to work on next).

If I do make more sets, one would probably be a “Capitals of Europe” to fill in some of the missing cities like Madrid, Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, and Prague. Then the second set might contain non-european capitals that are in high demand. Definitely let me know if you have suggestions for cities or buildings that can be used and I’ll write them all down and consider them.

Leatherneckinlv, you have the large set.

Also for future reference, here is the original thread (link) where we discussed which pieces should be in this set.

And another picture better showing the sizes…

Hi all,

The rest of my victory cities are now available for purchase on Shapeways. Here is the list of pieces in each set:

Set 2A: Europe
Central Railway Station (Helsinki, Finland)
St. Mark’s Church (Belgrade, Yugoslavia)
Saint Sophia Cathedral (Kiev, Russia)
The Marble Arch (Libya)

Set 2B: Asia
Temple of Heaven (Peking, China)
The Raffles Hotel (Singapore)
Trans-Siberian Rail Station (Vladivostok, Russia)
Railway Station (Novosibirsk, Russia)

Set 2C: Africa
Basilica of Algiers (Algeria)
Cape Town City Hall (South Africa)
Stockholm City Hall (Sweden)
Hagia Sofia (Istanbul, Turkey)

Set 2D: Americas
Christ the Redeemer statue (Rio de Janeiro)
Empire State Building (New York City)
Kavanagh Building (Buenos Aires)
Navy Pier (Chicago)

Renders of the larger set are attached to this post, next to pieces from my first set that came out last fall - to give an idea of the size of the pieces.

They are available in both the smaller or larger sizes to match my earlier sets, and can be found here: Link to Shapeways Store

I have not test printed any of the pieces, but they all pass automated Shapeways checks and should be fine. Please contact me here or on Shapeways if you encounter any problems with the pieces.

Enjoy!
EBard

@Trenacker:

I look forward to buying some cruisers and battleships from you in the next month or so. What is the appropriate scale to match up with OOB pieces?

On the left-side of my shop homepage there is a list of categories. Anything in the “Axis & Allies” categories is sized to exactly match the OOB pieces. Avoid the 1/1800, 1/2400, and 1/4800 scales. Also all of my models should have their dimensions listed in their descriptions, so you can verify the size if you’re interested.

Hi all,

I’ve got some new planes available on my Shapeways store: P-51 Mustang, Soviet MiG-15, and the German Horten Ho 229 flying wing. Also a nuclear plant that can be used as a major factory or research center.

The MiG makes a great jet fighter and flavor piece for the Soviets, albeit a few years ahead of its time. The Horten looks very cool, but because it lacks a fuselage and tail it can hard to pick up and hold; I’d recommend putting it on a flight stand. The P-51 is intentionally sized up, because I plan to use it as an advanced long-range fighter with special rules and wanted it to stand out from the other fighters, and look a bit more imposing on the board.

Also, I haven’t forgotten about the additional victory cities, they are coming. Most are already done and I’m really hoping to get the last few done this month.

EBard

Thanks for sharing the video! That’s great to be able to see the two sets side by side…

… But something doesn’t add up with the sizes of the buildings. Manilla, San Fran, and Calcutta temple are NOT the same between the two sets. They are 5-7 mm different. I just went back and double checked all of my measurements and verified that I uploaded the correct sizes to the larger and smaller sets and everything looks correct. I wonder if Shapeways made a mistake and sent you two copies of the large pieces for those three sculpts? They were printing a bunch of copies of the sets at the same time, maybe a large and a small set got mixed up during the printing process and their staff put the wrong pieces into your’s and someone else’s order… I’m just speculating but that’s the only thing that I can think of to explain why your pieces don’t seem to be the right size.

Manilla should be 21mm and 26mm lengthwise. San Fran should be 29mm and 37mm long. Calcutta should be 14mm and 18mm wide. Queen’s building should be 12mm and 15mm wide across the middle.

I’ll also clarify again: Cairo, Leningrad, and Ottawa are identical between the two sets. And Aloha Tower happens to be nearly identical (1mm difference after my last-minute tweaks… didn’t realize it ended up so close).