It´s here! The Enlarged Gameboard for use with Revised Edition 2004

Look up the AARHE map files… they are revised configuration

@Krieghund:

It’s true that SBRs are nearly a break-even proposition.  However, if they weren’t, they’d dominate the game.

The whole point of SBRs is inflicting damage that the enemy can’t afford.  The US is the only country that can really afford an SBR campaign, simply because it can afford the losses, while Germany can’t.  The US sacrifices its own income to suppress Germany’s so that the UK and USSR can take advantage of its weakened state.  This is not really pointless.

If SBRs were a money-making proposition, there’s no way that the Axis could survive, since they start off economically inferior to the Allies.  The Allies could simply build a few bombers to SBR with, then devote the rest of their income to defense.  Eventually, the combined toll of the bombings would render the Axis powers bankrupt, then the Allies could move in for the kill.  Doesn’t sound like a very fun game, does it?

The strategy you’re describing sounds perfectly viable to me.

Even then, it’s not really all that beneficial if you ask me.

It does work to get the Bomber back out of Egypt though.  Attack Egypt, land in Trans-Jordan and use Mid-East Oil to get 6 more movement out of the bomber for next round.

Kreighund covered the rules questions.

Re:  Artillery, I use them mostly for Russia and Germany.

Japan, UK and US have to build transports, and tanks offer more bang for the transport buck than artillery.

Russia has 2 fighters to trade territories with, and a few artillery are useful in trading territories.

Germany needs some offensive punch to crack Moscow (or at least THREATEN to crack Moscow).

To put things into perspective I am in NY that’s GT -5.  I used to live in California and that’s GT -8.

LT

Well if the play with three people is a  must D-Day and BOTB and Guadalcanal are out. D-Day as US and Brits and Axis but the Brits and US each move as the Allies. BOTB and Guadalcanal are straight up two player games.

I really like BOTB.

I have not played Guadalcanal yet but it seems like fun. D-day and BOTB have reinforcement charts but G’canal allows you to determine your own reinforcements more like the global or entire theatre games.

Frankly it is really apples and oranges s to me but I don’t think I could go back to Classic after Revised.

If you look to the articles or strategies sections from the main page you will find Saburo Sakai’s Pacific essays. Read those and if you are still leaning to Pacific or it seems like it might be boring quickly you will no whether to go with it or research one of the other games.

D-Day is fast. BOTB is a little longer but has combat and movement like none of the other games and the aspect of supply management is great. Too soon to be informative on G’Canal but it seems like logistics will be important if not more so than picking the right fights. These games are best as two player though.

Europe is, I think, closest to Revised and probably best for a three player game. Pacific is cool because of the Victory points and spending 70 or so IPCs every turn with the US and is also three player.

I don’t think you can go wrong with either Europe or Pacific if three player is important to you. Just my $0.02.  :-)

Wow, what a thread!

I must say, I take NCS’s position on this one for several reasons, the most pertinant of them being that

a) While the Axis certainly CAN win without a bid, when you have players of equal skill and who are equally skilled at playing both Axis AND Allies (not just one or the other side), a bid can certainly make the difference in the early round(s) and many times it’s what happens the first 2 rounds that can help decide the game.

b) figuring out statistics is something that can only be done over thousands and thousands of games. I mean, you can flip a coin 100 times and get 90 heads. Does that mean the odds of getting tails are skewed? No, because if you were to flip that coin 10,000 times or 100,000 times the odds are it would be very close to 50/50 and 1,000,000 times or more and likely the difference would be so negligible as to allow us to say it was 50/50. While we cannot play 1,000,000 AAR games, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that a bid helps even out the game.

You know, just as many of the issues of AA Classic were worked out in AAR, I think probably in the next iteration (or version) that many of the issues we’ve seen here will be worked out as well. Maybe an extra unit here or another territory there… whatever it takes to balance the game.