Posts made by toblerone77

I’m at work right now but love your post DK and I just had to drop something quick on this topic. I still love A&A but recently I have been expanding my games collection rapidly. I will expound on that in a further post (s).

This may not be all that relevant to the OT but, I recently played a game of spring 1942 with a new player. The inevitable sub and transport problems came up and began slowing down the game. After the first two Turn we simply agreed to make subs just like any other unit. This sped the game up tremendously. He as the Axis enjoyed the fact that Transport could be destroyed easily without escort until I destroyed a few Japanese and German Transports via aircraft.

Axis won on the standard victory conditions.

Now I am still developing HRs for all of my games/variants. However this was a FTF lesson in at how crappy OOB rules are and the fact that for more casual FTF players the standard strategies and tactics of “power gamers” don’t necessarily apply. Many of the newer OOB rules since revised in fact do not help the game for the more casual player and stretch the game out to the point where; if you can actually find a gamer willing to give it a go, you must use HRs in many cases to get them even close to playing the game again.

In conclusion, my potential A&A recruit said that he had enjoyed playing the Hasbro version whilst attending college, but he would probably not buy a new copy of the A&A series as it would be collecting dust on his games’ shelf due to lack of people who would play.

Before you assume this gentleman is a newbie gamer. I must state that this guy has hundreds of games in various genres and is an avid Risk/Strategy gamer.
His conclusion and many of my potential recruits is…Too many bad OOB rules and too long to play with a mildly satisfying (Axis) win.

@ Coach any new news on American sets as well as Amerika the board game?

Midnight Express,

Thanks for posting the stats. I have not play tested this idea as of yet. I got a new A&A player whom is mostly a “general gamer” I played spring '42 with him, and while he enjoyed the session winning as the Axis powers, I’m not sure he’s “all-in” as an A&A player or even (likes Risk!) a war-gamer.

I poised the question of whether or not he would purchase a game like A&A provided he would have ample opportunity to play it. His response, " This game would most likely sit on my shelf collecting dust." I was planning to offer him a copy of 1942SE un-opened FREE OF CHARGE as I have more than one, if he were inclined to make it a regular habit to play. Un-success…. no regular players.

If anyone decides to play this HR and post a report please do. I think this is a great idea with potential. I simply cannot get any form of regular group to dedicate any amount time beyond a very occasional game of A&A to participate.

Anyways thanks for the input folks.

Edit: I know several gamers that regularly play games of all stripes. The guy I mention in this post is a regular gamer with a large collection of games and a very nice person. However of the several gamers I know, every one of them enjoyed playing Axis & Allies but would not be interested in regular, scheduled gaming sessions of A&A.

@DTROY:

Thank you guys for the positive comments and thanks Young Grasshopper for inviting me back to the site. I have not been that active but I do frequent the site quite often. I do so in order to get ideas from the  many of you who do great work and who have inspired me to try and be as good. I first painted my first set of miniatures about 5 years ago but quickly stopped when I realized how painfully slow and labor intensive it was to paint. Then about a year and a half ago I picked up the brush again and have not stopped since. I am basically self taught , however I have picked up tips here and their from you tube videos and on this site as well. Some I just learnt on my own. I have to admit that some of my miniatures are not that good but some others are ok.  As I painted I realized that very few people had made any you tube videos involving axis and allies miniatures that’s when I decided to start making and posting videos on you tube. I figured it would be a fun thing to do and that maybe a few people would be interested in watching them. Anyway, probably wrote more than I should I sometimes tend to that, lol.

I watched your videos a few times. Especially the ones on your UK vessels.  I really love those! There aren’t that many Axis & Allies painters on YouTube. So it’s really cool to see guys like you and others putting these videos out.

DK If you come up with something please post. I honestly haven’t had a whole lot of time to work on this. I really appreciate your contributions. If I can find some stats I will post them,  as of late my WWII encyclopedias and other books are in storage which happens to be out of town, but that’s another story.

Now that I think of it I think I will be buying a D-Day game that will remain in the “sealed games wing” of my man-cave/office. LOL!

Love the minis from 1941. As for me 1941 was basically an “Expansion pack” I have one copy I leaved sealed in the plastic and one for everyday use as well as extra OOB minis from HBG. I call 1941 a flop because it along with 1914 has received some reviews in the gaming world that were not favorable. 1941 is go for teaching people to play BUT I think Classic or Revised does just as well or better. Additionally when I’ve used 41 to teach I had real chips and paper or poker chips for money.

Now I don’t think this was a terrible game but it’s at a price point where for a few dollars more you could just buy 42SE. When it first came out you could buy surplus Spring 42 for around $20 and with either purchase receive a much value per dollar.

None of that mattered I own two to five copies of each A&A Edition except D-Day, AA50 and Bulge which I only have one each. Never had AAE40.1 or AAGC.

I’m not trying to be harsh I just think A&A is about to go on hiatus for a bit and I think D-Day is one of those classics we won’t see again as a second edition.

Well I’m not Hasbro or WoTC, Here’s my two cents.

We just had a whole bunch of new releases for A&A currently. Larry Harris is looking at other projects beyond A&A, Hasbro which owns WOTC, which owns Avalon (WOTC) doesn’t care about A&A. Card games are cheap and a milk cow which is WOTC’s cash cow which is Hasbro the toy company’s cash cow.

Not to be negative, and as an A&A fan from the beginning, A&A is done for a while or altogether unless someone else picks up the A&A franchise and takes it in a new direction.

D-Day as new edition IMO will NEVER Happen.

At best expect WWII Risk!. 1941 is a flop!  If you think I’m being negative look at the You tube reviews of the latest reviews of A&A games in current production. Better yet ask your local brick and mortar game store about A&A.

I love this game but dark DAYS ARE AHEAD.

Spitfire,

I really have to applaud you hand painting your markings. Doing research from other games that use larger scales of miniatures I found that at the tabletop level (i.e. small miniatures from 2-4 feet away) hand painting while not as precise looks even better than a close-up look at that table top level. I also thing that hand painting markings makes them that much more unique and amazing.

Either way I love what you’ve done.

Like a lot of his stuff, some I don’t like ( He’s a better painter than me I just don’t care for some of his paint schemes). As a collector I had a hard time with some inaccurate information on which pieces come from where. He references a few OOB pieces as being HBG.

That said he has some fantastic paint jobs on most of his pieces.

He is also a multifaceted war-gamer that goes beyond Axis & Allies. While I don’t care for metal miniatures he did a great job on them and I really applaud his efforts.

Last I think he did post his Youtube link on this site.

@knp7765:

@Yavid:

Coach,
I was looking at the newest US set to pre-order and I was wondering. There’s 4 aircraft listed in the set but when you look at the pic of the units there’s 5 aircraft. So the question is what’s the 5th aircraft?

Yavid, I can answer this. The 5th plane is the F6F Hellcat. Those were a very limited extra unit only available for pre-orders up to October 31st. Pre-orders after Oct 31 do not get the Hellcats, but they still get an extra 2 Sherman tanks.
Remember with the UK sets, Pre-Orders could get the 2 Sexton self-propelled artillery pieces but they would not be available after the pre-orders?
Well, this is not official but rather my own supposition, but I think the F6F fighters are in the same category as the Sextons. They were limited available for the pre-orders up to 10/31 and after that they would not be available again.
Just another reason I try to jump on the pre-orders as soon as they come up. I like getting those extra special limited units. The only problem is then it seems like such a loooong wait.

Haha Yeah I was in the “Hellcat TD camp. Not F6F Hellcat”. To find out I was wrong was an awesome surprise.

@Cmdr:

@General:

Did you mean 0.8 billion for China? And 0.5 billion for India? Those numbers would make more sense.

Could be a difference in reporting.  If the websites listed it as 0.X of a billion instead of a million I would have missed it.

I should note, I couldn’t find a website with ALL nations listed, I did have to go to multiple sites.

Toblerone - I was listing overall population, not service members.  Or I was trying too.

The reason I was looking for numbers of service personnel is because for the most part that is where you would find the most relevant historical combatant numbers excluding undocumented cases of partisan and unofficial combatants. not everyone in an entire population would necessarily be a combatant.

Nonetheless if you could find the numbers of combatants per country you could use that as a baseline to figure out what each player/power’s infantry threshold would be.

Anyway I will work on this some more. Anyone who has any twists or ideas to this feel free to post.

What about an Afrika Korps HR? similar to the lend lease rule in AAE99? Allow the German player to purchase and transfer units to Italy upon agreement of both players if the unit is delivered to original Italian TTs in North Africa.

I bought 11 UK sets in three colors after the pre order. I usually by 5-10 in each color each time a set comes out. The main reason I’ve held back a bit on this UK set is because I bought tons of the US supplemental sets in celery, tan and Aussie gray to beef up thier units.

It’s going to cost me about $210 to get my new UK/Commonwealth forces to where I want them to be.

As for your idea knp that is a good one. However I like my OOB pieces and they will also work for other WWII games I have.

Lastly I just bought a ton of acrylic markers for my custom rules and variants.

@Yavid. Yes I know what you mean about the finances. Mine are way better now but during the Amerika and new UK preorders it was during a time when I really needed to “tighten my belt” so to speak and didn’t have a lot of disposable income. Hope things get better for you soon.

I’m looking forward to that one as well Yavid. Lately I’ve been “investing” heavily in other games like M44 and war/fantasy/sci-fi games for my budding games group or club if you will.

Some of the local Axis & Allies clubs locally are playing Tide of Iron, Memoir’44, Ikusa and Risk variants. There’s even a few members getting together for airsoft!

I personally need to beef up my UK forces with the new sets but it will need to wait. I missed those pre orders and bought a few sets after the first restock. I didn’t make that same mistake with the new US pieces and can’t wait until those come.

Yavid, I can’t speak for HBG but my understanding is the new US set is next then Germany along with Amerika to be available to purchase. Then I believe France and Island Campaign sets.

I think this is a great idea YG. I’ve recently been trying to get a regular gaming club together and my initial focus was on Axis & Allies. However some of my potential recruits are more diversified in their gaming tastes but still focusing on war/fantasy/sci-fi games. With that in mind if I ever get this “project” off the ground I too would have a more era-neutral but war game themed logo.

You can still find D-Day for a reasonable price online. As for a second edition I don’t see that happening.

@Young:

Good job Tobler, might work as a fun alternative game because it changes everything so much… might be fun to try.

Thanks YG!