Question about map accuracy

https://avalonhill.wizards.com/rules

Note there are rules AND errata. And yes, the rulebook is poorly written.

Yes. Russia can attack West Russia using forces from Russia, Karelia, and Caucasus. Further, units from one territory may attack multiple territories. E.g. Russia may attack West Russia AND Caucasus on its first turn, using its tank from Russia to hit Ukraine, and its other units from Russia to hit West Russia.

No and yes. The question implies attackers come from a single territory / sea zone. The actual rule is land or sea units retreat to an eligible adjacent territory / sea zone that one of the attackers came from. Also the question implies an attacker decides to withdraw “because the combat isn’t going well” but attacking with intent to retreat is commonly done to preserve units against an opponent counter.

Suppose Germany controlled West Russia but had no German units there, that Germany had a stack of units on Ukraine, USSR had a stack of infantry on Caucasus. USSR tanks on Russia could blitz through West Russia to hit Ukraine along with the Caucasus infantry, then USSR forces could all withdraw to West Russia OR all withdraw to Caucasus. They must all withdraw to a single territory.

Sometimes retreat is not possible e.g. if sea units all start in a contested sea zone and don’t move (sometimes they can’t) out then in again. Then there’s no adjacent sea zone that any sea unit came from, so there’s no eligible retreat zone.

Loading onto a transport does not “consume the unit’s non-combat move for the turn”. That is not how it works at all. A transport can load a unit AND unload it the same turn. Reference page 31 of the rulebook.

Reference page 15 of the rulebook. You cannot retreat seaborne units. You can retreat other units. Yes, you can declare a retreat; in that case the seaborne units fight on.

Yes, infinite defending transports are automatically destroyed by a single attacking unit.

No, flying across a sea zone with a named island doesn’t count as 2 movements at all. Taking off from an aircraft carrier . . . . look. An island is a territory, a sea zone is a sea zone. If a fighter starts on an island, it’s on the territory; if the fighter wants to move from the island into the sea zone around the island that requires 1 movement.

If a fighter starts on a carrier, it’s on the sea zone; moving to an ADJACENT sea zone requires 1 movement.

If a fighter is flying across a sea zone with an island, it uses 1 movement to move into the sea zone, and another movement to fly into the next sea zone, the same as any sea zone without an island. If a fighter’s not landing or taking off from an island, the island does nothing.

Already answered

You can get units of opposing powers in a single sea zone when a power builds sea/air units in a sea zone that already has enemy units in it. Sea units may ignore enemy submarines / transports (with some limitations, like if unloading their own transports). Your question is “these are the only instances when they can exist in the same sea zone” - was that a reference to a retreat (which could also happen) or what was it? Literally don’t understand.

There’s an OPTIONAL RULE that allows fighters to defend against industrial bombing, I think. I don’t use it so I forget. AAA does nothing against industrial bombing. Industrial COMPLEXES have built-in antiaircraft defenses; those are the only thing that defend against industrial bombing.

I suppose you’re trying to use some optional rule with the 4 or lower thing, but I’m just going to ignore that. If bomber survives - NOT THE ANTIAIRCRAFT ARTILLERY BECAUSE THOSE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT - but the industrial complex’s antiaircraft fire - then it rolls a dice, and whatever the result is is recorded as damage against that industrial complex, up to twice the value of the territory the IC is on. So if you bomb Karelia and roll a 6 for damage, you can only apply 4 damage as Karelia’s worth 2, and double 2 is 4. Excess damage is lost.

Each damage on an IC prevents it from mobilizing a unit on that territory. So if you have a Karelia IC with 4 damage on it, you can’t mobilize anything there; same if it has 3 damage or 2 damage. If you had 1 damage on, you could mobilize 1 unit there.

No. If there’s a battle in the sea zone, there’s no bombardment, period. Doesn’t matter if enemy transports were there and you wanted to destroy them with a fighter, if there’s any battle in the sea zone, no bombardment, period.

I know the rulebook is poorly written, but try going through it a few times.

@Panther tanks

thanks guys i appreciate it. cant believe ive been playin the wrong way for a while now. i had units counting one to get on and one to get off in NCM. so only tanks were able to. woops lol

Do I paint over the plastic pieces that come with the game?

You can but the small, soft plastic miniatures aren’t ideal for taking paint.  The ones like the boats with flat surfaces should do fine.  You can prime them first, but its hard to do detail at this scale unless you’re really good.  Another consideration is that you will have to mass produce quite a few minis in order to have full sets for most of your games, otherwise you’ll end  up mixing painted and unpainted stuff which is kind of confusing to the eye.

-What if I mess up? Do I just wash the paint off and start over?

Not after things dry.  You can use the technique of wiping wet paint (I use cotton gun cleaning rag) away from unintended areas, this works like an eraser.  If you recoat/re-dip a small mini like these all your detail will be lost in layers of paint.

-What is the purpose of buying the expansion miniatures?

for fun.  FMG sells a lot of cool sculpts but they are not universally used in AXA, primarily in other similar games (eg Global
War)

-Are expansion miniatures already painted?

No, unless you buy them that way eg Axis and Allies Miniatures Game

-Can expansion miniatures be used to play my 1942 2nd ed?

Yes, but they are only variant sculpts (eg different halftracks, different tank models) or house rules.

Game questions:

-Is it difficult to learn?

Yes, though not for a wargame.  Rules are fairly simple though subject to much interpretation if not read carefully.  Should take 3-5 games to get good then 3-5 years to get awesome.

-How long does a came last on average?

42.2; About 4 hours to surrender, a bit longer until victory conditions.  G40/G42 take more like 10 hours-14 hours.  WW1 5-7 hours.

-How does A&A compare to say, the hexagonal war games of the 70s and 80s?

It is much less complex than a chit game.  Logistics and “rock-paper-scissors” unit balance aren’t in AxA.  Combat and movement are dramatically simplified.    Where chit games (aka Avalon Hill) games are a detailed, complex and abstract slog, axis and allies is a lighter, more “army men” sort of game with the depth coming from repeat play and learning from mistakes.  The quality of the pieces and the layout of the map are a huge draw in comparison to large paper maps, hundreds of similar, boring pieces and rules that are incomprehensible outside the context of each game.    Games like Memoir 44 and AxA try to capture strategy, tactics in a more playable and engaging format than a realistic, unit by unit, “order of battle” style game, but try to be much more in depth than games like Risk where there are no unit types and every team is essentially the same.

Hello, Baron Munchhausen. Nice to hear from you!

You raise many interesting points, and I’ll try to respond to two of them. First, can a Southern Pacific strategy work for Japan even without assigning thematically ridiculous IPC values to tiny island chains? I think so. I agree that it would be off-putting to play a game where, e.g., the Solomon Islands plus the Caroline Islands were treated as more economically valuable than France. There are limits to how much you can edit the map without breaking the suspension of disbelief and ruining the theme.

That said, I don’t think the 1942.2 map would take all that much tweaking. On the 1942.2 board, players will occasionally send a transport to take Australia even though it’s not worth much, and there’s little or nothing to use as an encore. If you valued Australia at 4 IPCs, New Zealand at 2 IPCs, the Solomons and Carolines at 1 IPC each, and Hawaii at 2 IPCs, that’s 10 IPCs right there. It’s not hard to find another 8 IPCs in South America: 2 IPCs in Chile/Peru/Bolivia, 2 IPCs in Argentina, 3 IPCs in Brazil, and 1 IPC in Colombia/Venezuela. All together you’ve got 18 IPCs, which I think is very respectable.

You could compare that total to a Western Pacific strategy (India, Persia, Burma, Italian East Africa, Egypt, Transjordan, Kazakh, Yunnan, and Szechuan add up to only 13 IPCs) or to a Northern Asia strategy (Soviet Far East, Buryatia, Sinkiang, etc. all the way west to Archangelsk, Vologda, and Novosibirsk is worth about 13 IPCs). Either strategy plus Moscow is still only 21 IPCs. So the Southern Pacific strategy doesn’t strike me as hopelessly inefficient from an economic point of view.

Second, is a Southern Pacific campaign inherently too slow to be fun? I’ll readily admit that it’s less direct; if you head off toward southern Argentina, you are obviously not heading for the global epicenter of military power. You can’t force a British surrender by crushing Buenos Aires; that’s just not how that works. On the other hand, if the Axis controlled the entire southern hemisphere, with a sphere of influence stretching from Tokyo through Singapore, Basra, Addis Ababa, Capetown, Buenos Aires, and Sydney, isn’t that a kind of win for the Axis? I understand there used to be an “economic win condition” for the Axis where they could win by controlling 100 IPCs or so worth of territory, and although the victory city mechanic has never been well-executed, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be improved to the point where people actually prefer using a victory city win condition.

I think the whole “race to the capital” mechanic is unrealistic and less-than-fun anyway; if you sack one capital without wrecking the empire it rules, the people who live in the capital will just relocate the capital and keep ruling their empire. You’ll get some bragging rights and a few million barrels of oil, but nobody surrenders an intact superpower just because you squeeze into their capital – look at Napoleon in Moscow, or Robert Ross in Washington, or for that matter the British in World War II, who laid down supplies and trained secret army units in Worcester to protect Parliament, the royal family, and the BBC, with plans to continue retreating to Liverpool and then Canada if necessary.

So, yeah, if Japan just blitzes straight for San Francisco, then that’s foolish and the Axis will lose. Similarly, if the designers allow you to drive tanks straight over the Himalayas with no movement penalty, and you pass up that opportunity, then that’s foolish, and you deserve to lose. But if the designers tweak the map so that the trackless Himalayan Mountains and barren Gobi Desert and frozen Siberian tundra are harder to cross than the balmy, oil-rich South Pacific ocean – and if the Axis seize that opportunity to invade South America – then I think you’d get a really interesting game, where the players had to make gut-wrenching choices about what resources to invest in what theaters.

@Sean.C:

Isn’t the Spring 1942 map basically identical to Revised?  I looked at the two and didn’t see any major differences.

Ah oh ye of having too little time or a life outside of games! There’s a HUGE difference! Just look at the connectivity of Central United States!!!

Yes, twice the IPC value is correct. The other sentence is trying to say although an IC can’t be destroyed, it can be rendered useless by taking as many hits or more as the IPC value or the territory.