Posts made by Azimuth

This post will be dedicated to present the project I am working on for several months and that I humbly decided to name Ironclad, after the the allied operation to capture Madagascar in May 1942.

This name reflects the addition of Vichy France and the Commonwealth, as well as the emphasis on amphibious assaults I tried to put in this variant of the 1942 scenario of the Anniversary version of the game.

It is played on a modified circular map (azimuthal equidistant projection about the North Pole) that I initially presented and discussed here:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/39054/custom-map-for-aa50

It is played without technologies and national objectives, but with a few additional house rules and with 3 optional new powers : France, the Commonwealth and Neutrals (each of them coming with a set of specific rules). The idea is that players can choose to play with or without (one or all of) them, depending on the kind of game they want to have.

I created a (still unperfect) mod on TripleA to test these ideas, and I’ll be glad to share a beta-version if anyone is interested.

@Bigwatcher Volgograd is the new name given to Stalingrad in 1961, as part of Khrushchev destalinisation policy. It has never been known under this name before the sixties (the city was Tsaritsyn before revolution). “Volga” (like the river) is probably the best name for a territory surrounding Stalingrad.

Please share the rules once you finalize them! :)

Very nice job, congratulations!

I would question some details (why Paraguay? Volgograd is very anachronic, etc.) but it doesn’t really matter in terms of gameplay.

Many of your changes are similar to the ones I am testing on my map (including things like having East Coast one sz further from UK/Morocco), so I’d be very interested to know more about the rules you play this map with.

Hi, folks.

I initially started to mod the ww2v3 game in TripleA to test some of the house rules I wanted to play with my map. Like, to make sure I wouldn’t print it with game-breaking mistakes.

At first, I was using a roughly modified version of the game map. But after a while, I thought “why not use my own map”… and that became a new project in itself!

Here is a (purposedly blurry) glimpse of what it looks like so far :

I am testing several variants:

• OOB rules (1942 scenario) with just the modified map (including new straits rules), additional territories and adapted setup.
• Same but with a fully reviewed unit roster (including Tacs and Mechs)

Both variants have optional additional players (can be individually disabled before starting the game), with their own rulesets :

• French
• Commonwealth
• Neutrals

Not sure I’ll ever publish it… but I’m having a lot of fun ;)

@Argothair, thank you, very valid points and philosophy. I fully agree.

• Gold Coast makes an allied territory bordering SZ 17 in case FWA is Vichy (and plays the role Bathurst (in Gambia) played in the Battle of the Atlantic)
• Syria can be given back to free France without cutting UK from the Mediterranean (if Egypt is lost)
• Thailand can work as the “initially controlled by Japanese” territory for NO, when FIC and Malaya obviously don’t

But these are very weak arguments, and probably off the scope of this post (which was proposing minor enhancements to the original map).

This will definitely fuel my thoughts, thanks !

@Argothair, thank you for the feedback, very appreciated !

I made several print tests and corrected the design to ensure there was enough space in the small territories. Some place are really crowded (Baltic Sea…) but it fits - and it is not worse than on other OOB maps.

Agree that the polar projection is not the most rational, but I chose it on purpose. I’m lucky that the table is huge - plenty of empty oceans then where to place the trays and boards ;)

I note your remark on Soviet territories. Siberia seemed to me the best name for the “urban” oblasts of Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo and Krasnoyarsk (let’s say the “heart” of Siberia, as opposed to the autonomous ethnic “empty” districts). K-M covers the Khanty-Mantsi AOK, Yamalo-Nenetski AOK and Komi ASSR, but I don’t remember why I chose that name instead of another one. I’ll check for a better option.

Agree as well about IPC values, but those are OOB. I was planning to switch at least the 1 IPC “lost” by UK in Madagascar to Iran. Again this question “how deep do I want to change the original game”

Very interesting post, thank you for sharing.

I was independently “brainstorming” on some of those changes for my own map (https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/39054/custom-map-for-aa50) with the same questionning (@vodot “how many map changes can happen to AA50 before it becomes a totally different game?”).

For info, here are the changes I already incorporated from your list:

• Australia split West 1 - East 2 (not sure yet about IPC values)
• Italian East Africa
• Malaya split off from FICT
• Cairo and Singapore added as VCs (like them to be 20 in total)
• Turkish border extended north of Bosporus
• Greece (1) split off from Balkans (2)
• Morocco (1) split off from Morocco Algeria (1)
• Caspian SZ ;)

Now additional changes I am considering (feedbacks are welcome):

• Danemark (1) split off from Northwestern Europe (Belgium/Netherlands 2) and Danish Straits rule
• Irak (1) and Syria (1) split off from Transjordan (1) --> Stop blitzing into India from Sinai !
• Thailand (1) split off from FICT
• Nigeria (1) and Gold Coast (0) split off from French West Africa
• Korea split off from Manchuria
• Guianas (0) as a (mostly useless) British territory in South America

Some of those are also thought to accommodate the option to play with Vichy/Free France HR (hence the need of having Syria/FIC/West Africa as separate territories).

Thank you guys ;)

I am still working on this map (which looks already quite different than the version posted above).

I’ll keep you updated once I finally print it !

Hello ;)

I’ve been seeking around since a while and couldn’t find anything to answer my (basic) question : is there a (balanced) way to use the new units (or at least, their sculpts : tactical bombers and mechanized infantry) in the Anniversary edition?

Thanks!

@goekawar, OK, that’s your choice. Everybody is bilingual in the Netherlands, you don’t translate movies neither, I guess that’s your culture. 😉

@goekawar, I got your point. But I’m sure that if you were playing, let’s say, a German game, and decided to customize the map, you’d have translated it in your language ;)

Do you guys have an opinion on sz 26? Is it really needed?

@goekawar, well, yes. But I suppose you can identify most of the names, can’t you?

Hi ! First of all, I am new here, so apologies if I do anything wrong ;)

I wanted to share (a draft - low resolution) of my custom map for the anniversary edition (that I never saw or played). The original is a 155 cm diameter vector file - which is the size of my round table. I am planning to print it soon on neoprene, but wanted to check for eventual feedbacks before ;)

Despite Europe being already slightly oversized, the territories there are still quite small. Not smaller than the original though, so I guess it could do the job. I wanted to do it as historically accurate I could (with a focus on spring 1942, but the 1941 scenario can still be played in principle), so some territories are further splitted with dot lines - for cosmetic purposes only. Oh yeah, and it is labelled in French, apologies for that.

I wanted to keep it as close as possible to the original game, not to hamper the balance. Nevertheless, I made some changes that I hope don’t change much. In a nutshell :

• Changed names of many territories, just for fun (and/or accuracy)
• East Poland became Ukraine and Ukraine became Crimea, so I switched the IPC value between them to keep 2 IPC in Ukraine.
• Eastern Ukraine got an access to Azov sea. Planning to set a Kerch Straight rule with the need to own Caucasus to enter Azov sea (making this access pretty useless).
• Sea zones 15 and 16 are not connected (which should be irrelevant with Dardanelles rule).
• Panama is not connected to East Coast (no way to do that on a real map !) - but I don’t see how it would really impact the game.
• Himalaya and Sahara are not territories anymore, but replaced by a black line forbidding access (which should give exactly the same result) - added also Alps to restrict access between Italy and Germany without cheating with Switzerland’s size.
• Added a couple of additionnal neutrals (again without any in-game effects).
• Added Guianas as extra UK territory (but a 0 IPC territory on that corner of the map should really change anything)
  All the rest is purely cosmetic OR room for optional house rules (not yet fully decided - can discuss them separately if anyone is interested) - but can be ignored to play the genuine game. For example Free French territories are by default administered by UK.

One last thing I am wondering about is SZ 26 (very ugly) - is it really used ? Can it really make any changes ? Otherwise I’d like to get rid of it.

Glad to read any kind of feedbacks if it inspires anyone ;)