"Tall Paul's" A&A INFRASTRUCTURE units detailed and painted by "WARMACHINE Team"

My group has taken the ultimate step that many on this and other sites are loathe to do. We have unified turns, 1:Axis 2:Allies. We mainly play a modded AA50 with slightly (5-10) more territories. This greatly increases the speed and playability for several reasons.

Positives
Firstly, the vast majority of the engagements can be done simultaneously without any real issues.

Everyone can purchase simultaneously, and if you are not particularly a-retentive some people can finish their purchasing while others are moving forward with their attack declaring, but please make sure all attacks are declared before any attacks begin, to easy to start conflict there with meant-to/didn’t-do.

The most important factor in time improvement is not the actual simultaneity of the turn but that every turn, every round, attack and defense, involves every player. No one is bored (US/USSR) for turn after turn of waiting to do anything. This engagement greatly increases the camaraderie (heh) and the pressure of the turn. Everyone’s attention is focused. We REGULARLY complete our AA50 to a satisfying surrender in about 3 hours. In fact most of us have young kiddos so we don’t really have a choice.

Another useful point is that if someone brings an uninterested significant other or newbie, Italy makes a great and dynamic option when coordinating with an expert playing Germany. I find that scheduling is one of the hardest issues with getting a group together and perhaps one of the main reasons you would want a shorter game.

Counter points/Solutions
No 1/2 punches with Italy/Germany or UK/US. This might be a bigger problem on Global but I do not feel that it is an issue in AA50. To correct this we use some special rules including a reserved 2nd attack round for unused armies that want to attempt a blitz through/drop past a recently conquered territory or Sea Zone.

Massed Allied navies, especially in Europe. Haven’t really figured this one out, but it is historically accurate and axis can usually get the allies to a surrender point without Operation Sealion anyway. Massed navies is one of the reasons we support the 7/0 Transport rule in the recent editions over the 8/1 of the old editions.

Starting positions for UK and USSR. Since Axis will move collectively ahead of them, USSR and UK might need a little tweaking in the setup. I usually move some of UK’s Pacific/Indian navies one space further from J1. Additionally we give a territory or two to USSR to absorb the assault of G1.

Conclusion
I feel like if you really want to make A&A work for you, it can. It just might take a little more willpower in working through and agreeing to some compromises on OOB rules.

P.S. It always helps if the scheduling problem is with other people, you be the one to set up ahead of time. I always end up falling on that sword.

Part 4: Starting the ships, adding decals to the tanks, skin tones on the soldiers

Today spent some time adding paint to the sprayed ships, including painting the water jettisons on the subs black (this was very tricky and ended up looking a little sloppy). Advice for painting the jettisons: toothpicks are not small enough! If you do use toothpicks, you’ll have to dab a dot of black for each tiny jettison.

The battleships were a bit easier, and painting the decks, bridge, and smoke stacks were all done in silver. I plan on adding the final grey coat last after the deck and stacks/bridge dry. I experimented with how to add the national emblem, and will probably opt for a white background with a red dot on the bow of the ship. In the future I may do that with the rear end of the ship.

I painted the tranny smoke stacks silver and added a white background for the emblem on the destroyers. All in all, the Japanese navy is coming along nicely.

The armor is pretty much done. I added a white flag to the front side of the armor and will be adding the red dots later. For the aircraft, I’ll be adding a red band around the rear part of the plane. I was debating between sky blue and red and may alternate just for some variety.

The soldiers got some skin! And I just want to say that adding the paint alone brings out the contours of their facial features in an excellent manner on their own. I may add a touch of black to certain areas of the face but that will be a last step. The next step will be panting their uniforms, rifles, and helmets.

After all this is done, I will be spray painting the japanese bombers white, the aircraft carrier black, and then will add the details to those. The Japanese are about 55% done all in all and I’m pleased with the results so far even if they do look a bit amateurish. Stay tuned.

IMG_6405.JPG IMG_6404.JPG IMG_6403.JPG IMG_6402.JPG

@Mr_Tricorder:

Serulf, I replied to your PM, but I don’t see my message in the outbox. Did you get my reply?

PM’s don’t auto-save… if you just PM someone and hit send, there’s no trace of it on your end… it went out, but it ONLY saves in your outbox if you check the “plz save this to my outbox” option in your send message screen.

Lol…

Ya, if you read my previous thread, then you know I’ve basically abandoned about 95% of the HBG custom units I’ve ordered. I had a goal of doubling or tripling my available force pool of units (if I had 10 tanks from the base game, I wanted 20 to 30 in my bins for example). I had at first ordered a little of everything… some additional OOB units, some custom HBG units, etc… after receiving several waves of additional units, I came to the conclusion that the only thing really working for me was mostly the planes (HBG planes blended well with OOB planes). For the most part, the tanks and ships suffered with scaling issues next to the OOB units (as we’ve discussed).

So, in the end, I kept almost all my custom HBG planes, and found a new home for the ships and tanks (another forum member scooped them up)… I then refilled what I wanted with OOB units… once again, this was more about conformity and ease of identity for the new players I was teaching than anything else… I think the HBG units are well done otherwise.

As for my final order of that German Expansion Set 3… we’ll see… they will all get used… one way or another… either i’ll like them and integrate them… or i’ll find a new home for them… don’t want to see them go to waste. I really WANT Panzer-IV’s in my game… if they’re at least close to OOB size, they’ll stay put… if I got to break out tweezers again to move them around, i’ll rehome them.

Thanks Spitfire38, for your kind words and encouragement, as well. Yes, looking forward to meeting you someday as well, whether painting or playing.

Thanks buddy! :-D

Cheers!

John

Oops. We’re playing a game tonight. My son noticed there’s no number 50.  :-o
LOL -I know what I’m fixing when this game is done. Guess I just didn’t want my age on the score chart.  :roll:

Pretty ingenious, definitely food for thought since it gives us options for future modifications. Nice job.