I like it!
I’d like to add some comments to this discussion. I agree with DrLarsen that the more compatible your pieces will be with the existing set of A&A sculpts, the more appeal they will have among A&A players.
I got to appreciate just how tricky the issue of compatibilty is earlier this year, as I was impatiently waiting for Europe 1940 to come out so that France would finally get a sculpt set. As a little exercise until August 2010 finally arrived, I went through my large collection of non-A&A sculpts and tried to assemble a set of pieces which could temporarily serve as France. Even though I have lots of sculpts from all sorts of games (both current and out of print ones, and including supplementary pieces like the full line of Table Tactics sculpts which were released prior to the newest ones), I wasn’t able to settle on anything which was fully to my satisfaction when used with the A&A sculps. Here are some examples of the compatibility problems I ran into:
The A&A sculpts are detailed and are made from hard plastic. This material gives the pieces a solid look, and it can be sculpted at a fine level. The vast majority of the non-A&A sculpts I have are made of soft plastic, which in most cases has a glossy sheen (or in some cases a translucent appearance) which makes the sculpts look less solid. Most of them are also sculpted with much less detail, though I don’t know if this is a limitation inherent to the material used or if it’s just due to less effort being put into the sculpting itself. A good yardstick to compare the level of detail is the face of infantry pieces: in some of my non-A&A sculpts, the face is quite rudimentary. Of all the infantry pieces I have, the only ones which are made of hard plastic and which have the same level of detail as the A&A ones are the troops from The War Game: World War Two…but they’re the wrong size (a point I’ll return to later).
The A&A sculpts depict Second World War units. That eliminates a large percentage of my non-A&A sculpt collection (which includes pieces going all the way back to antiquity), though there’s some wiggle room at the margins. For example, the “War : Age of Imperialism” game from Eagle Games, which is set in the late Victorian era, includes some troop pieces whose costumes would make them acceptable as colonial infantry. They’re made of soft plastic, however, and the detail isn’t as sharp as I’d like, and they’re not quite the same height as the A&A troops, and they’re the wrong colour: they’re more of a dark indigo than medium blue. Another example: Table Tactics has produced some nice World War I “rhomboid” tanks and modern Abrams tanks, which both look great and which are exactly the same size as A&A tanks; because they’re from different time periods, however, they look too antiquated or too futuristic when used alongside A&A tanks.
Also related to the issue of what the units represent is the question of nationality. I already mentioned that the infantry pieces from TWG, although they are very well detailed, are too tall compared to A&A infantry, but there’s the additional problem that they all represent German infantrymen (regardless of their national colour-coding). This contrasts with the long-standing distinctiveness of infantry in A&A. The A&A games published after the Milton Bradley edition have included mixtures of nationally-distinct sculpts and of sculpts shared by more than one country…but even going as far back as the Milton Bradley game, all the A&A games have had distinct country-specific infantry sculpts (the two marginal exceptions being the use of Russian pieces as Chinese infantry in the original Pacific game, and the use of British infantry as ANZAC troops in the new Pacific game).
Colour-matching is tricky. The original Milton Bradley A&A pieces (of which I own quite a lot) had colours which were for the most part incompatible with the current A&A colour schemes. Furthermore, the shades used in MB for a nation’s infantry pieces didn’t even necessarily match the shades of the same nation’s equipment pieces (for example, Japan’s troop pieces were amber and its equipment pieces were butterscotch). And most of the MB colours were, in my opinion, rather dull and sometimes even nondescript: the U.S. pieces, for example, were a kind of brownish green that I find unattractive. TT did a good job of replicating these colours in its original expansion sets, but this means that those pieces share the same colour incompatibility with current A&A pieces as the MB pieces do. The “More Colors” TT release, on the other hand, matched well the sculpt colours in A&A Revised (although, ironically, the British lime green pieces were never used by A&A again), so the “More Colors” release achieved the prefect combination of providing correctly-sized sculpts depicting World War II era equipment at a good level of detail and in colours matching some of the current A&A colours.
Differences in size can look awkward with equipment, but can be acceptable as long as the contrast isn’t too great. Note for instance that some A&A equipment sculpts of the same general type – bombers for example – do show some small size differences, but still manage to look fine next to each other. This works because, in real life, units are built in different models having somewhat different sizes, while still falling within a general size range. (For instance, fighters come in different sizes, but all are way smaller than bombers.) Even minor size differences in troop pieces, however, can be fatal because, at that tiny scale, only tiny differences in height (such as those found among the A&A troop sculpts) look believable, meaning that they look as if they’re just caused by a difference in posture or by one soldier being a taller man than another. My sculpt collection includes many types of WWII infantry pieces, but few of them come close to being the right size and many are quite different (including some which are about half size). Some also have a more “stocky” build than the A&A ones, so even if the height and level of detail matched, they’d still look incorrectly proportioned.
So, to end where I began, I’d like to concur with the board members who’ve been expressing a preference for supplementary pieces (both from TT and FMG) which are as compatible as possible with the A&A ones. Sculpts which vary considerably from the established A&A sculpt set (in the various categories I’ve described) could have great appeal to other board gamer (for instance people who play Tide of Iron have been mentioned a few times) – but for the A&A market, a high degree of A&A compatibility would be the preferable way to go.
That would be a 9 country set with land, sea & air units. In the scales and units requested.
Yes thats great BEFORE and DURING each point in this process, get input from us so you avoid making mistakes. This is what FMG did and they will do very well from it.
WE are like a live studio audience providing feedback. Use us and you will prosper.
Lets us know which types of units you want and we can do research on sculpts to get good candidates, You can make polls of the choices and see the results really quickly.
Just go step by step unit be unit nation by nation.
What he said :-D
One thing I know for sure is that Jack has incredible plastic quality - his is as good or better than WotC.
Judging by his color matching of the 1984 set, he will be able to produce quality sets that match existing colors and can augment our forces.
Where do I send my money for a pre-order? :-D
I got my order of jacks tanks…
American have some tanks that are usable, which are 4 in each pack. The others i had to toss out
German pieces are a bit simple, but good. I got a yield of 12 tanks each set. The elephant looks really nice but it makes the smaller American tanks look like rats next to elephants
Its almost like these pieces are for 3 different games, Memoir 44, Axis and allies, and god knows what. They are not even compatible with each other.
Please by all thats holy, look at what FMG is doing and just commit to a similar line of pieces, perhaps drawing from alternative models of tanks so that the maximum number of pieces are produced.
Exactly! Let’s go for as big a range of units as possible!
Any chance the TT tanks are big enough for Tide of Iron?
The U.K. tanks from TT are close to the U.K. tanks in ToI. The other TT tanks are slightly smaller than ToI but the ToI tanks are far from uniform scale themselves.
I think they should work. Especially using the larger tanks.
CWO Marc-
Sounds like the two of us have the same pieces and thus share the same views and opinions about “the unit scale debate”, I agree word for word and thought for thought with your entire post! I could not have said it any better.
Thanks for a very well thought and worded post!
Thoes426 :evil:
Continuing what CWO said, I would argue against Table Tactics making infantry pieces. FMG has two different infantry units for each nation, and I think any more will be overkill.
I would focus more on actual vehicles/tanks/planes/extra unit classes. Some ideas:
Self-propelled artillery – Katyushas, M7 Priest, Wespe, etc. A good idea in the A&A universe, and a logical development to artillery.
Recon unit – Smaller tank/armored car (Hotchkiss, for example)
Escort Carrier – Smaller carrier than fullsize
My main recommendation? Focus on filling out 1939-1941 units. Your French set, by definition, will be in that period, so it would be worthwhile to have the other sets have at least 1 tank from that period (I.e., a PzII/T-26/M3). That way, you have a unit set that can be used for any 1939 scenarios or even Spanish Civil War scenarios.
I use original MB carriers as escort carriers 8-)
I use original MB carriers as escort carriers 8-)
OUCH! :?
OK, serious question;
Does anybody think that by having different classes of tanks, artillery, infantry , planes ,etc. opens up the inevitable fact that the combat system would have to be expanded to a 12d system to accommidate all these units. the 6d system seems stretched to the max to me. what do you think?
In answer to the “Isn’t the d6-based system already maxed out?” question, I have 2 comments:
1. If it does get to the point where there’s too many variations for a d6-based system, I say, fine; I’ve got plenty of d12’s that I could use. And then one could even go hog-wild and start introducing d4, d8, and d10 units… Why not? They already do it in TWG and in A&A Battle of the Bulge… MB’s Gamemaster series already did it in Shogun and in Fortress America… and I’d already started doing it in my own A&A-inspired creations even before I’d had the opportunity to fully explore all of those systems.
2. Nevertheless, I think there’s still room left in the d6 world for more possibilities than currently exist in A&A40. For instance, here’s how I would do a system that adds a couple of units without going to d12’s. This also doesn’t include other unit types whose key advantages consist chiefly in special abilities rather than these sort of pure fighting stats listed below. For instance, there could be:
Unit Attack Defense Move Cost
Infantry 1 2 1 3
Elite Infantry* 2 2 1 4
Armored Infantry 2 2 2 4
Artillery 2 3 1 5
Armor 3 2 2 5
Heavy Armor 3 3 2 6
Fighter 3 4 4 12
Tac Bomber 4 2 4 12
Bomber 2 (x2) 1 6 15
Submarine 2 1 2 8
Destroyer 2 2 3 12
Cruiser 3 3 3 18
Battleship 4 4 2 24
Superbattleship 5 5 2 30
*Elite Infantry lacks the built-in mobility of armored infantry, but would have other specialized advantages, like a bonus for amphibious landings for marines or an ability to attack by air for airborne troops.
OOps… I keep trying to get these table things to line up, but they never do. Hopefully, you can interpret the mess above and get my point.
Continuing what CWO said, I would argue against Table Tactics making infantry pieces. FMG has two different infantry units for each nation, and I think any more will be overkill.
I would focus more on actual vehicles/tanks/planes/extra unit classes. Some ideas:
Self-propelled artillery – Katyushas, M7 Priest, Wespe, etc. A good idea in the A&A universe, and a logical development to artillery.
Recon unit – Smaller tank/armored car (Hotchkiss, for example)
Escort Carrier – Smaller carrier than fullsize
My main recommendation? Focus on filling out 1939-1941 units. Your French set, by definition, will be in that period, so it would be worthwhile to have the other sets have at least 1 tank from that period (I.e., a PzII/T-26/M3). That way, you have a unit set that can be used for any 1939 scenarios or even Spanish Civil War scenarios.
I disagree on the Infantry: FMG’s two Italian Infantry are practically identical except for weapons. I’d like to see:
For Dr. Larsen:
| Unit
Infantry
Elite Infantry*
Armored Infantry
Artillery
Armor
Heavy Armor
Fighter
Tac Bomber
Bomber
Submarine
Destroyer
Cruiser
Battleship
Superbattleship | Attack
1
2
2
2
3
3
3
4
2(x2)
2
2
3
4
5 |
Defense
2
2
2
3
2
3
4
2
1
1
2
3
4
5
| Move
1
1
2
1
2
2
4
4
5
2
3
3
2
2 | Cost
3
4
4
5
5
6
12
12
15
8
12
18
24
30 |
