^^^ might just go with that!
:-D
^^^ might just go with that!
:-D
yer probably right about the infantry numbers, just checked wikipedia about barbarossa.
yet the highest organizational unit i can find is division, then army, then army group.
so perhaps it would be better to call an infantry piece and army, and a stack an army group.
the naval units is whats hardest to pin down i think
Often when introducing new players to axis and allies they have a mental disconnect between the actual playing pieces, their stats and abilities, and what everything is meant to represent.
It often causes them to suggest rule changes that would make sense if the playing pieces represented what they intuitively appear to be.
For this reason, I’ve tried to articulate what the representative scale of things is, so that they can more easily understand things and why the rules by default are what they are (and in some cases there are OOB contradictions if this scale concept is considered valid)
For example, what is a single infantry piece? We’ve always considered it an infantry division or brigade. This would have been between 5000-10,000 men I think, along with trucks and mortar sections and such, maybe even limited air support assigned to it like a couple fighter squadrons.
What about a single tank piece? An armor division or brigade, roughly 2000 or so tanks and supporting infantry and halftracks and trucks and maybe limited air support.
An artillery piece? Maybe 200 heavy guns, their crewman, supporting infantry and trucks etc.
this would perhaps sound right, I mean I was reading wikipedia the other night and some big battles that would be a fight for a single territory in this game on teh eastern front involved things like 4 panzer divions and 37 infantry battalions if i recall correctly. (loose memory, i blame the party liquor)
But these are easy, what does a single fighter or bomber represent?
wings of aircraft or air combat groups I’d say, and it makes sense for the land based……but carrier based fighters are of a lesser number. Many new players chaffe at bombers defending on a 1, saying that as many guns as they have they should defend higher…but alas, they are speaking of its attack score, when its airborne, loaded down, and headed for a german ball bearing factory yes then it attacks on a 4 against any poor 109 pilots having to try and intercept it…but if its sitting on a RAF field when german tanks make landfall, getting it into the air loaded and headed in the right direction is unlikely, ergo defend on a 1.
What then do the naval pieces represent? (and here is where naval bombardment and 2 hit battleships begin to make less sense to me)
In keeping with the same scale, I’d always assumed each naval piece reflected a fleet of some kind…a transport represents a transport fleet of 6-12 liberty ships with 2-4 destroyer escorts for example.
A sub piece represents a picket fleet of 4-8 subs, a couple destroyers or cruisers maybe (yet subs cant hit aircraft, so maybe just subs and their tenders, oilers for example)
a destroyer piece represents a strike fleet of cruisers destroyers subs, maybe a small flattop with some fighters…
a carrier represents a carrier battlegroup, 4 or so carriers and their aircraft, with some subs or cruisers to screen it maybe…
and a battleship represents an line fleet (or other suitable term maybe) which contains a few battleships, cruisers, destroyers, subs, an escort carrier or two etc…
Basically I’d always assumed that the higher a naval attack and defend value the more numerous the type of ships in the fleet.
If this scale is correct, then a single roll of the dice in combat could represent days or weeks of fighting.
And also loss of a unit may not represent the total destruction of a fleet, only most of its main ships.
If this scale idea is valid, then things like naval bombardment are sort of twisted…a fleet bombarding a shore doesnt wipe out a defending infantry division so much as cost it a few companies and force it to take shelter against the bombardment, thus allowing amphibious assault troops to storm the beach relatively unopposed.
What are all your thoughts on the scale of representation of individual axis and allies units, and what are the combat sequence implications of such (naval bombardment, submerging, opening fire etc)
it honestly never occured to me to check out lite. Think i’ll do that.
But I assume you’ve played a lot of historical, so maybe you can tell me, does the russia, then axis, then allies, then axis & allies ad nauseum turn structure alter the gameplay in anyway, does it effect balance negatively?
I mean one of the major components of OOB A&A revised that is integral to strategy it seems is that something can be done on one powers turn that cannot be undone until anothers, or that something is pointless to do because it will be undone on the next powers turn, etc.
If say germany and japan go at once, does it open possibilities for unbalanced moves that are hard to counter?
Or conversely, on the allied turn, russia/india can be reinforced it seems to a greater extent before otherwise “normal” axis gains can be made (for example normally germany and japan will get to make a little progess before the US or UK can field units to help defend russia)
I will say again, that the revised historical map is superior in one vital way, to me, that other maps are not, and that is the ipc values for nuetrals and the increased number of victory cities, just having this on the map opens many new rules possibilities that can help break the monotonous mold of most games were the same moves are made over and over and the dice are largely the grand determiners of success.
Sure there are a great many more “gorgeous” maps out there, in terms of the color scheme, layout, addition of convoy zones and such, but most seem to lack the expanded IPC listings, the numerous victory cities, and yet still closely match the revised map enough for my tastes.
anywho, thank you again for a wonderful map and the numerous ideas.
a dull lamination would no doubt be better.
but with my only other options at this time being the handmade version or the tiny board that came in the box, i’m overjoyed to have this 2x3 board. Expediency is important to me, and I was able to get this done in one day. Otherwise i’d like to have had a board such as displayed on page one of this thread, assuming it has the multiple numerous victory cities.The additional numerous victory cities are vital to me, since I wanted a “infantry spawn at victory cities” rule. If only shipping anywhere in the world could be done overnight!
i would say though that when its on a table rather then being on the floor with you looking down that there is considerably less glare, in fact until i was looking down from on high with my crappy camera i hadn’t noticed any such glare.
my enlarged laminated “revised historical” map does please me, greatly in fact. but I’m not gonna pretend that its superior to the other enlarged maps shown in this and other threads, the one on page one here is more elegant and beautiful by far. If it had the number of victory cities that the revised historical does, and could be in my hands within 3 days of paying for it I would have went with it.
I recently have had the worst luck with shipping. I ordered a monitor just before christmas and still haven’t gotten it, its lost somewhere in the postal service warehouses in louisville, I ordered ammo for an argentine mauser and it took nearly 2 weeks when it only should have taken 5 days at best from Texas, and I ordered a recurveyouth bow for my son last sunday which still hasn’t arrived. If I was waiting on such a treasure as an enlarged gorgeous map to arrive everyday would be torture until i could hold it and proceed with confidence to make my custom rulesset.
this first pic is what i had been using, i manually printed things out in one page sections via “print selection” command and pieced them all together, and laminated them with clear packing tape. Ultimately it proved to be a little larger than the default gameboard like I wanted, but still sloppy looking and with some bumps here and there which complicated unit placement due to tipping or sliding:
it was larger enough than the default board that things in europe didn’t seem so crowded anymore, but shoddy looking still, and that can wear on the nerves.
So I finally said enough is enough, and took the map pdf file on a jump drive down to minuteman press in London Kentucky and had them blow it up and laminate it….it costed $118 IPCs U.S. Dollars.
Its 2 foot by 3 foot, and gives us plenty of room for stacks. I got tired of kenny’s fat fingers knocking over my german stacks and scattering them across europe…he says my money was wasted because “those damn germans were going across europe anyway I just helped you out is all”.
but here it is:
hi all, been a while.
this first pic is what i had been using, i manually printed things out in one page sections via “print selection” command and pieced them all together, and laminated them with clear packing tape. Ultimately it proved to be a little larger than the default gameboard like I wanted, but still sloppy looking and with some bumps here and there which complicated unit placement due to tipping or sliding:
it was larger enough than the default board that things in europe didn’t seem so crowded anymore, but shoddy looking still, and that can wear on the nerves.
So I finally said enough is enough, and took the map pdf file on a jump drive down to minuteman press in London Kentucky and had them blow it up and laminate it….it costed $118 IPCs U.S. Dollars.
Its 2 foot by 3 foot, and gives us plenty of room for stacks. I got tired of kenny’s fat fingers knocking over my german stacks and scattering them across europe…he says my money was wasted because “those damn germans were going across europe anyway I just helped you out is all”.
but here it is:
Now its a matter of using felt covered plywood and trim or lever/arms to mount it to a stable and portable surface to a have a gorgeous large size dedicated axis & allies gaming board. since the revised historical map is the best version I’ve ever seen, i’d like to thank those who made it.
Truly, thank you.
Yet my players can’t appreciate the depth and complexity of revised historical, so I’m making a new rules set in MS word just for our group which I’ll call “Axis & Allies, revised historical Redneck Edition”.
It will essentially be a cross between OOB rules that came with revised, and the best parts of Historical and the anniversary edition (I like how SBR’ing is done in anniversary for example)
So for the next while, I’ll be trying to put this together and hope i achieve balance without having to playtest and revise endlessly (i have tripleA with the revised module for most testing, such as alternate set up effects)
The one thing i wanted to do, but im not sure how it will effect flow or balance, is take the revised turn structure and order of play from historical and use it…but I cant really test its effects in tripleA. Anyone familiar with how that changes things, please chime in with details about such.
Things like anniversary SBR, air superiority and victory city infantry spawn from historical, and house rules like CAP and air intercept etc are what I’m looking to incorporate. I have a left over d10 with funky symbols from a star trek game used for target locks that i’m going to possibly incorporate for naval bombardment and antiaircraft guns (rather than inflict casualties by default, this dice will tell you whether your efforts have no effect (proceed as normal), or lend a bonus to attack or defense of landing troops/AA guns)
anyway, I’ve been prowling through the forums here the last week or so getting houserule ideas for our custom version. If ya’ll like when i get it done I’ll lay it out for ya.
hi all, been a while.
this first pic is what i had been using, i manually printed things out in one page sections via “print selection” command and pieced them all together, and laminated them with clear packing tape. Ultimately it proved to be a little larger than the default gameboard like I wanted, but still sloppy looking and with some bumps here and there which complicated unit placement due to tipping or sliding:
it was larger enough than the default board that things in europe didn’t seem so crowded anymore, but shoddy looking still, and that can wear on the nerves.
So I finally said enough is enough, and took the map pdf file on a jump drive down to minuteman press in London Kentucky and had them blow it up and laminate it….it costed $118 IPCs U.S. Dollars.
Its 2 foot by 3 foot, and gives us plenty of room for stacks. I got tired of kenny’s fat fingers knocking over my german stacks and scattering them across europe…he says my money was wasted because “those damn germans were going across europe anyway I just helped you out is all”.
but here it is:
Now its a matter of using felt covered plywood and trim or lever/arms to mount it to a stable and portable surface to a have a gorgeous large size dedicated axis & allies gaming board. since the revised historical map is the best version I’ve ever seen, i’d like to thank those who made it.
Truly, thank you.
Yet my players can’t appreciate the depth and complexity of revised historical, so I’m making a new rules set in MS word just for our group which I’ll call “Axis & Allies, revised historical Redneck Edition”.
It will essentially be a cross between OOB rules that came with revised, and the best parts of Historical and the anniversary edition (I like how SBR’ing is done in anniversary for example)
So for the next while, I’ll be trying to put this together and hope i achieve balance without having to playtest and revise endlessly (i have tripleA with the revised module for most testing, such as alternate set up effects)
The one thing i wanted to do, but im not sure how it will effect flow or balance, is take the revised turn structure and order of play from historical and use it…but I cant really test its effects in tripleA. Anyone familiar with how that changes things, please chime in with details about such.
Things like anniversary SBR, air superiority and victory city infantry spawn from historical, and house rules like CAP and air intercept etc are what I’m looking to incorporate. I have a left over d10 with funky symbols from a star trek game used for target locks that i’m going to possibly incorporate for naval bombardment and antiaircraft guns (rather than inflict casualties by default, this dice will tell you whether your efforts have no effect (proceed as normal), or lend a bonus to attack or defense of landing troops/AA guns)
anyway, I’ve been prowling through the forums here the last week or so getting houserule ideas for our custom version. If ya’ll like when i get it done I’ll lay it out for ya.
Basically what I want to do is print out the historical map with all its extra victory cities at roughly the same size as the origonal board, maybe a tad bigger, and then piece the pages togethr so that I can take it down to the advocate and have them laminate it in a sort of scroll format (hey its dry-eraseable at that point!)
Im having no luck so far though ive wasted ink on five tries. Any tips? Do I just zoom into the approximate right size and print the current view and try to piece them together or what? Any advice? How do most people make use of this pdf?
Thanks so much to everyone, I’m pretty much outta questions for the time…save this:
In a typical 9 VC game, which VC are most often the Axis targets and in what order?
When planes retreat or win a battle and have to land, do they all have to do so together or can they split up and land in different places withing range? Thusfar we have played that the planes have to stick together when retreating/landing.
As for printing that historical map and cards……wouldnt that have to be printed in sections and taped together, some resizing required etc?
PDF is the bane of my existence, I’ve always relied on MS word lol.
Thanks for the input. The stuff that came in my box list minor vic as 8 cities, major as 10 and total as 12.
9 victory cities is a tourney rule right?
Also we are confused about plane movement over water, I know that an island based plane takes 1 move to enter the sea, another to go over a zone and attack, another to return to home sea zone and yet one more to land on the island, but non-island territories next to a sea zone have me perplexed.
Say the japs have a bomber on midway. 1 move to enter the surrounding sea, 2 to enter west US seazone, 3 to enter west US and attack, 4 back into west US seazone, 5 back to midway seazone, and 6 to land on midway? Or am I screwing that up somehow.
As for germany needing those planes, I agree that if it goes more than one more round they will need those fighters not bunched together post-attack, but if in that same turn (on minor victory 8 cities) the axis take and hold calcutta it isnt going to matter. I’m thinking that its just maybe that the allied players thusfar have done a poor job at blocking the axis from vital cities at the start, it seems feasible after scouring this site and these forums that preventitive measure can surely be taken.
The thing with going for 9 cities is that it irks me on some level that the game designers would allow for one sidedness in minor and toal victory resolution. 9 cities makes me feel like i’m correcting someone elses errors rather than adding to an awesome game.
One more thing, A&A historical looks sweet, can that be bought anywhere or is there a way to purchase updated historical map and reference cards? And the air unit first aspect of its combat, do many people (or in tourneys for example) use that as an additional/house rule?
Sorry to be a pain in everyones butt, until “my” players fall in love with the game too I must have some sort of consensus to give them an air of officiality to changes or adjudications or they will lynch me.
Hey im reading the tourney rules and I think we’ve been abusing tank blitz, help me with this if ya could.
We’ve been allowing tanks to blitz through occupied friendly spaces and unoccupied enemy spaces in BOTH the com and non-com phases……this is woefully incorrect isnt it, and partially explains why it seems germany is guaranteed lenningrad…Under what conditions exactly can tanks blitz?
Have we been allowing germany to throw more tanks than is legal against russia in the first turn?
And what about planes…unless im wrong it seems most of germanys planes can hit lenningrad on the first turn, like 3 or 5 of them…have we been screwing that up to?
Thanks in advance.
In the games we had played the british player who was new btw, had hurled what they did have defending london against lenningrad in a failed liberation bid, and at that point it looked to me like i could get a couple transports and invade across the channel eliminating what remained next turn or so but it didnt go that far because calcutta was also taken on the japs turn.
The economic victory from classic was not included in this version it appears, but maybe that could be the victory condition used for shortgame. But wouldn’t that drag things out the same as if you played for major or total victory?
How feasible for a 2-3 hour game would capturing one capital be, both in terms of balance and difficulty/time required? Would players just adapt to squatting on their capitals with infantry stacks?
Thanks for all the help! My friends are now considering all suggestions, 2 of them are leaning toward victory conditions being made into “capture 2 enemy capitals”. Moscow and London could possibly be gotten in up to 4 turns or so, but I’d say beyond the sixth it would be impossible. I’m sure there is a flaw with this that I am not seeing.
Part of what they are not seeming to get as you all have pointed out is that out of the box, the allies absolutely must play as a team to protect each others assets, for the axis, not so much.
So far I have yet to play the allies, everyone wants to play either the U.S. or Germany, that is until they get to play the U.S., then after that they never ever want to play them again LoL!
As for moving the victory cities, they are painted on the board and at some point I’m sure we’d forget we unofficially moved them. The last poster mentioned oob rules, what are those?
I’m leaning toward removing victory cities from victory conditions and instead contriving some other “balanced” victory conditions while coming up with a use for those now defunct victory cities, like freed tech rolls or maybe bonus infantry.
Thanks so much for the swift help, that is not at all a bad idea, sounds better than having to capture 2 enemy capitals which is what a friend suggested doing along with making victory cities spawn 1d6 free infantry in the mobilize phase of any turn where said city didn’t already have infantry.
One idea we’ve been toying with is allowing bombers to drop paratroopers, treating them like airborne transports limited to 2 infantry only each and not allowing them to attack when dropping, being subject to AA fire and defending fighters. Anyone tried this? Does it work or is it unbalanced?
Also I’m wondering about if anyone has done alternate starting setups and how that would work, does it ruin the game or does it add fun playable dynamic? What restrictions would there be on placing what where and what system could be used to fairly allocate what units to each player?
Thanks again.
Just got the revised box, haven’t played in years, played 3 games so far.
My friends dont have the patience to play for more than minor victory and it seems a guaranteed axis win unless the axis players are dumb.
3 games, one first turn axis win, one second turn axis win, and one sixth turn axis win.
What can be done about this lopsidedness without playing for more than 2-3 hours?
Suggestions please?
It seems lenningrad/moscow/calcutta are too easy to get early by the axis, and the allies can only get paris with comparable ease early on?
Help?