High res photo of AnA classic (if you want to make a new board)

@the-captain

It looks great!

Hi! I just figured that there already seem to be pretty good summaries of LHTR vs. the original Revised rulebook. LHTR seemed like the best comparison point since those transport rules seemed to revert largely back to the timing in Classic.

@ampdrive Awesome, thanks a lot!

You don’t beat your kids? :P

I continue to play classic as it is used in a summer historical gaming program that I teach in.  The 6th through 10th graders pick up the rules pretty quickly, and generally we can play enough in the time alloted to determine a probable winner.  We have just purchased the 2004 edition, and after my initial review of the game, we might work some aspects, mainly the destroyer into the Classic game rules.

I am not a fan of the new board, as it looks depressing, and the though of staring at it for several hours over a 5 day period is even more depressing.  The use of victory cities makes the game much more complicated for a beginning gamer, while the classic game of focusing on the capital simplifies the game greatly and clarifies what each players objectives are.  I am not a fan of the National Advantages either, especially as some of them are incorrect historically, and it one case, totally wrong.

All of the weapons development focuses on increasing attack capabilities, nothing increases the defense capabilitiesl.  By the end of the war, with the development of the Hedgehog and Squid antisubmarine projectiles, and use of larger depth charge patterns, the Allies were killing over half of the subs attacked, and aircraft were using sonobuoys, homing torpedoes, and Magnetic Anamoly Detection gear to locate and attack submerged subs.

There is no consideration of the proximity fuze used by the US and UK from 1943 on, which drastically increased the effectiveness of anti-aircraft fire, to the degree that between intercepting fighters and anti-aircraft fire, the Japanese were taking losses of 90% of their aircraft in conventional attacks.  Also, the British and the US shared all information relating to radar with each other during the war, so if the British get to use radar for their antiaircraft, so should the US.  Also, radar allowed for far better positioning of intercepting fighters, so in theory, your fighters should be able to defend at 5 with radar, rather than 4.

Japanese tanks were not exactly potent, to say the least, yet Japanese tanks have the same attack as the Sherman, T34, or Panther.  The Allies loved to see a Banzai charge, as the normal casualty exchange ratio started at 10 to 1 and at times hit 700 to 0 (Merrill’s Marauders in Burma).

The Germans did attempt to use the Stuka in the Battle of Britain as a strategic bomber.  After one week, it was withdrawn because of heavy losses.  When they tried again with fighters later, the British had a field day shooting them down, and German fighters never had the range to really attack anything significant in Britain.

Overall, I do not regard the Revised Edition of the game as an improvement over the Classic edition.  We will likely incorporate the destroyer into the classic rules, most likely using the destroyer rules from Axis and Allies Pacific.  The units will also prove useful in expanding the Axis and Allies Europe game to five players, and for my expansion of the Pacific game, as we will now be able to distinguish between Indian and Australian units, or use the odd color of the UK units for the Dutch.

You can play online go to www.axisandalliesworldclub.com you can play with no CD patch our new patch out in 4.1. This patch fixes bugs and creates a better AutoSave and some more. The name of out club is aawc and we have 2v2 play with leagues and 1v1 play with leagues and tournaments. The name of our 2v2 is Squadron(Squad) and Mercenary(Merc). Anyone and everyone signed up to aawc can play in Merc. In Squad you must be on a team to play. You can join a team or create 1 but you have to have people to create one with or you must have a captain agree to let you join. The name of our server is WarZone, which has 5 different servers on it with A&A, Outlaws, Panzer General 2, Risk2, and total Annihilation.    Hope to see you on the zone.

how about requiring heavy bombers to deliver the bombs with them

I think www.AAMC.net has them