Preview Copies of 1940 Second Edition Arrived

@Krieghund Thank you!

@tchenao

Gotcha.

Most players consider the game to be quite unbalanced in favor of the Axis. So the two sides will bid (in terms of IPCs) before the game and the lowest bid team will play the Allies. The bid can be used to place additional units before the game starts.

Sea Lion is definitely a much riskier strategy than just going straight for Moscow. Most people only go through with it if London is not well protected after the first round. A failed Sea Lion is pretty much a game ender.

I would really like to here the communities take on this subject. Praises and criticisms. I realize I’m late to the ball, but here I am and I’ excited about getting into this game.
Here is my take.

This board and map are great.

I love the hugeness of it; this thing is just massive.

The geography and how that effects play was very well thought out. Africa is squashed down abut as much as possible and there is more room available in Europe as one could have reasonably made without completely distorting the world map. The point being , the map still looks like the world while still being able to provide effective space for game play- that is a tough balance to achieve.

The idea of making the Himalayas and Sahara impassible was inspired. Of course they are impassible to large armies. If the Axis want to do damage to the British Empire in Sub Saharan Africa, they need to either turn the corner at Alexandria or win the Atlantic or Indian Oceans.

The neutral spaces are very well done. More on that when I review the Neutral Countries.

But the main thing the map gets right is what it’s supposed to get right, it provides the right geometry to promote good game play. Their are major regions and regions within those regions and each set has its own keys to being manipulated for offense and defense. That makes for interesting game play.

Even better, I haven’t found any rinky dink ways of manipulating the geography in ways that don’t feel true to the intent of the game/WW2. The space in the Pacific is an obstacle. The Space of Russia is an obstacle. As they both should be. The benefit from gaining Scandinavia is big, but its not a game changer. The Far East or the Black Sea can’t be used as some unanticipated flanking move. One doesn’t want to be tied down to replaying WW2 as accurately as possible, but one doesn’t want to completely break with reality either.

Every game I play I learn new things about this board. I’ve played 4 intensive games with myself and am still feel like I am a long long ways from mastering the geography of this board. That is a good thing.

Certainly there are things I could quibble about.
The names for the Chinese Provinces could be better. In that , as someone who lives in China, I would prefer the proper current Pinyin names for them, A westerner defiantly made this game. But I understand they are trying to keep with the Pre 1949 feel for the region and using the terms the west used back then; so ok.

Having Kazakistan so far south is a bit weird.

There are times where I wish certain spaces were larger; I’m looking at you Bessarabia and SZ110. But most of my spatial problems stem from my style of game play which is still rooted in monolithic stacks of enormous proportions which worked well in the Axis and Allies of old.

Which brings me to my biggest opinion about this board. This board is infinitely superior to the previous incarnations of Axis and Allies.

This is a very good and interesting game and it starts with the map.

What are your thoughts?

Hi ltparrot73

In the customizations forum are heaps of community made files.

For instance see https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=39696.0

I picked up another copy of 2nd edition from Amazons boxing day sale for &30 CDN.
You might keep an eye out for sales on major holidays like Memorial Day/the 4th of July/Thanksgiving/…

Thrift stores are also good places for deals as are local conventions.

I view the essays as para-historical entertainment from someone who contemplates the board waiting to find an opponent.

Welcome to the forum and try the game online. It’s much more interesting than writing and speculating about the game. :wink:

@CWO:

@Whitshadw:

Again I love the idea but the way they set it up looks like a 8 year old picked the colors and the map needs a incredible update.

I have a copy of Superpowers, and frankly the only thing about it that I really like are the little white missile sculpts, which I use as A&A atomic bombs.  (I put them horizontally in small plastic stands that I pulled from a different game.)  There are just eight of them, and considering that they came as part of a whole game with lots of other sculpts (none of which I use), this reflects nicely the rarity and high cost of WWII atomic weapons.

Back around the 1980s or so, there was a WWIII-themed global game called Supremacy.  It had some cool features, but it eventually faded from the scene, apparently because of two flaws: a simplistic economic model that could easily be manipulated, and a tendency to “go nuclear” that would end the game (the same kind of problem mentioned by rjpeters).

Funny. I too pretty much bought the game for parts originally and I thought of using the map for my own game idea.

Are there any Victory City charts for G40 2nd ed.?