Posts made by Black_Elk

I can’t seem to see the shot of the battleboard. Not sure why…
Maybe the file got moved or something?

I’d like to check this out though. If you get a chance would email the package to me?

jasonwclark@gmail.com

I always love the WW1 stuff :)

I’m just making a general suggestion Imp. I don’t plan on doing anything with this map, and I’m not judging anything about AA50 yet.

:)

I’m just asking about your opinion on the basic idea of an expanded definition for IPCs. I only used the AA50 map I made to represent what it might be like if such a change was made. Not in the AA50 game per se, but perhaps in some future game based on the AA50 model. Like a Delux, or whatever the one is that was mentioned on Larry’s boards.

Would you ever go for it? The underlying idea I mean?

I feel like instead of introducing new rules or cards or victory conditions, to enforce the kind of game play we want to see, what if we just addressed it directly via a slight modification to the ipc values in the hot spot areas? I threw out Industrial Production ‘Commitment’ as an idea so that the acronym could remain IPC, just with a slightly broader definition.

I’m toying around with the idea of Industrial Production ‘Commitment’ as possible way to interpret the IPC acronym.

The gist is that, while certain territories might not have had a particularly high industrial output, their strategic value meant that the fruits of industry were ‘commited’ there, thus justifying a slight increase in value. Anyway the explanation is not really the important thing; what do you think about the distribution? In gameplay terms I mean. And would you be willing to accept an expanded definition of IPCs to achieve something like this?

http://img508.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mapexampleqr0.gif

My thinking is that the starting factories would act like anchors and encourage players to defend certain key areas. By slightly increasing the overall totals for each player, we can have more territories at a value of 2 or 3 which I think will help encourage the kind of conflict patterns we want to see.

Any thoughts?
Would you go along with it?
Burn me at the stake?

:)

I wish we’d just pony up and give the Brits a starting IC in India already.

The game always works better that way, but no serious Revised player is going to buy one unless the Allies are going all out against Japan. Even then its usually just for a few rounds until the the tanks have to be backed out to Caucasus to save Russia from impending doom.

I don’t know how its going to play out here, but in Revised the southern route to Caucasus via India is how most people get the job done, though a good player will also take China and the Soviet Far east at the same time, without missing a beat. I don’t expect much to change from the old pattern, except that now the Japs will have more money to throw at the Russians. I think the problem stems from the fact that we keep building China as a place to just get totally stepped on by the Japs. During the real war the fighting in mainland China was intense and constant. All told almost 5 million people died in this theater of the War, closer to 20 if you include civilians.

The Japanese never penetrated the interior of China, even if they did manage to cut it off from the West for a time, but in the game this happens as a matter of course. I feel the same way about operation Impala; its just way to easy to pull off. Unless the Russians give away the whole allied game plan, and start sending troops to back the Brits immediatly, its almost impossible to hold an India factory in Revised. Even if you do, then there’s always the question of whether it was even worth it, since the UK has to keep filling the IC with tanks in order to make the buy effective. A starting factory would at least give the allies a stake in south asia, so they don’t just abandon it in favor of an all out KGF.

I never thought I’d move in this direction, but now that we have Italy as a full faction (something I never expected to see in A&A) I think we should make China a full faction too.

Then we could have Chungking as a VC and the seventh capital, and maybe start to fix this seemingly intractable problem with the Japs/Russians.

I’m just not sure about the real benefit of this change to the transport rules. I feel like its going to introduce a lot of confusion into the naval game, but at this point I don’t see the upside.

I understand the argument that the nerfed transports are supposed to force the purchase of more capital ships (destroyers, carriers etc.) but I’m concerned that people are just going to buy ton of subs and bombers, and be totally conservative with all their other naval units.

It all comes down to whether or not the players are going to take a 13 VC win seriously.
We already know that Moscow will be needed for 15, and definitely needed for 18, (though honestly at 18 I don’t think people are paying much attention to anything but the Capitals anyway.) I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what sort of patterns emerge.

One thing is for certain though, if the listed values are correct, this game is going to be all about bombers. Without transports as fodder, the new unit roster will still favor aircraft over capital ships (even with the new rules for subs, and naval air strikes). And with bombers so cheap, we’re bound to see more of them purchased, which is likely to make any naval defense more challenging to coordinate. I’m a little spooked by the cheap bombers, because I’m used to playing in games where bombers are carefully controlled, and the purchase of new ones is rare. The higher cost of AA guns, combined with cheaper bombers, would seem to favor strat bombing games, which are inherently unpredictable. Will be interesting to see how it pans out.

The other thing I keep thinking about with the National Bonuses, is that they might be easier to take away from the enemy, than they are to achieve for yourself; just on account of the way the territories are grouped together. So it could be that we’re overestimating their impact on the gameplay for everyone. We’ll have to check out the starting units and round one purchase options, then see how these can be used to their greatest effect, before we understand which National Objectives are really in play.

Man, I used to know a guy who had a great link to some stock topography graphics. I don’t remember if they had anything for forests, but there were definitely things for mountains, tundra, desert etc.

I just tried to search for is on the tripleA boards, but I can’t seem to find anything over there since we switched Geeklog. I’ll dig around though and see if I come up with anything. I know way back when, logan wrote a simple Photoshop tutorial on how to do mountains and rivers with relief layers, but again I can’t find it with the search function. I’ll try to send an email to Felix to see if he remembers where the link is, or if he can figure what’s up with the search.

Don’t sweat it dude  :-D
Its a big tent, with room for all.

I just want to say also, that I love the players guide, even if there is a hiccup or two on the errata part. Just having all that stuff written down on the board makes it twice as valuable as a educational resource. That’s one of the main reasons I love A&A, I think its a great tool to teach history as well as geography. With the players aid, people will actually understand what I’m talking about when I start tossing around words like Kriegsmarine, or Regia Marina hehe. I dig it completely.

As for the color selection, I think that’s always going to be an issue. I know one of the first things we asked Sean to do with tripleA, was to allow individual users to modify their color options. I think between all the various different aesthetic preferences, and the color blind contingent, its almost impossible to find a happy medium. I know when I was first making Pact of Steel (which was always a little gimmicky in my view) I really wanted my Fascists to be Black, for Mussolini’s black shirts. Everyone else voted me down though, in favor of Blue Italians. I yielded eventually, but on my computer the units and territory colors are different than the standard default ones. Unfortunatly, with cardboard and plastic that’s a little harder to do, but I think on the board the colors are probably a little less essential anyway, because we have flag markers and detailed units that are easier to tell apart. On the comp colors seem to be a little more important to people.

Usually when I do these quick color drafts on my maps, I try to preserve a Classic style color scheme for the big 5, since I think that one has been the most consistantly popular. Green for US, Brown for UK, Red for USSR, Grey for Germany, Yellow for Japan. I also prefer a green China for aesthetic balance in Asia, but I know others like purple, or dark orange, or probably a million other colors too. I think as long as you like the color scheme for your own design, that’s probably the most important thing, because someone else is always bound to have an issue. That’s been my experience anyway. Sometimes I think its best to just stick to your guns, and resist the democratic impulse.  8-)

Oh also, if you want a cheap alternative to Photoshop, you might like GIMP
http://www.gimp.org/

Thanks man  :-D

I went ahead and drafted out a quick 1941 style color chart for the new baseline. I left the labels empty though, in case someone with more skills than me wants to take a crack at it. The flag markers that I used for the capitals are part of a set that I made, I have them in medium and tiny sizes too, if anyone else would like to make use of them. Just shoot me an email and I can send you the zip package.

AA50 1941

Baseline

Decided to switch the colors for USA and China on a recommendation :)

Ok here’s the tweaked Baseline. I added some meat to Hungary and the Dutch coastline. Fixed the Poland issue, the Sahara, and the territory divisions in the Soviet east. I tried to catch any hanging pixels or breaks in the lines, but another day to double check it never hurts I guess. :)

Also I love the new Players Aid and BattleMaps for AA50. The tiny labels are awesome, nice work guys!
Those are going to be a huge help. If anyone else wants to use this projection when I’m finished for projects like that, feel free to have at it. Here’s a link to the AA50 players aid for those who haven’t seen it yet. Not done by me, though I’d love to get together with the madman behind all that glorious detailing work. :)

Will be back for more tomorrow. Take care all

The colors on the map right now reflect a 1942 set up. When I rework the baseline I’ll recolor everything for 41. Basically I was just lazy on the map key the other night and didn’t want to re-enter all the territory names onto a new 41 map.

Also, I just heard from Dave that Poland is off (the way it borders Hungary Czech). I couldn’t quite make it out from the screenshot, and all the political maps seemed to suggest that Eastern Poland would be the more appropriate choice. The board has Western Poland though, so I’ll fix it to expand the border lines in the appropriate directions. This is one of the rough models I was trying to follow in the original set up. The gameboard is rather different though

And here are some shots of the divisions according to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

I would have much preferred it if China followed the same rules that all the other factions use.
Having a sub-player like this, that uses different purchasing and movement conventions, is unnecessarily confusing.

OK all how does this feel? I forgot to switch the Northern Ukraine to Eastern Ukraine, but extend it up to Russia. Also switched out the names in China and added some SZ numbers for reference.

I didn’t really tweak out the other territories yet, except to fix the situation with Poland, but I’ll try to see if I can squeeze some more space out of the smaller ones. I will correct the baseline tomorrow, if anyone has some suggestions.

Thanks again for helping me out all. I really appreciate it :)

Looks pretty cool. :)

Anybody know who did the design for it?

It’s nice to be able to win the game WITHOUT having to take a capital.  If you have the same target every time (i.e. Moscow), it becomes the same game over and over… can you say boring?!

I agree.

I was only 4 in 1985, but from the time that I started playing A&A a few years later, I’ve been agonizing over the same things you have. In fact, I’m willing to bet that if we sat down and hashed it out face to face, we would agree on all the major points.

I think the only difference is in how we are approaching the underlying issues (i.e. Moscow centric, repetative gameplay, with scripted attack patterns that depart from the history… Jap tank drives etc.) Its my view that most of what we want to achieve, could be accomplished with adjustments to the Map/Game board, and by ditching the Capital/Cash dynamic in favor a one that is more heavily focused on VCs. I don’t think we really need things like National Advantages, National Objectives, or specific rules that only apply to a narrow set of situations. They’re cool to have as options, and for experts like us, but the more I see them getting built into the core game, the more I feel like the learning curve is getting away from us.

I was introduced to A&A in the late 80s early 90s, when I was still pretty young, but the only reason I know how to play it was because I had older friends who taught me. I can remember puzzling over the rules for a long time. Concepts that seem simple to me now, like ‘fodder’ or ‘dead zones’, were all a total mystery when I first started playing this game. A&A is not like Risk, or Monopoly. You don’t just pick it up in one night. Of all the board games you can buy at Target, I think it is probably the most difficult to explain to newcomers. I’ve tried a number of times, even with game savvy friends, and its virtually impossible to do in one sitting. It’s like you need at least 2 people who already know what they’re doing, who can then just show the third guy by example. I understand that’s somewhat typical for all games, but in this case especially, introductions tend to be slow on the uptake.

I don’t know. Maybe you guys have had a different experience than I have, so I won’t keep beating a dead horse. I still believe that we could achieve a dynamic two front War without sacrificing the ease of use though.

Perhaps because you have not played a Revised game in which you CAN win without taking a capital (Like the Enhanced rules).  Let me tell you, I have played over 100 of these games, and Syndey or Hawaii or France can be VERY important, WITHOUT any additional increases in their value or other bonuses.  In Enhanced, you CAN win without taking Moscow…. and that’s <part of=“”>the beauty of it.</part>

I fully support Joe’s Enhanced Ruleset. I even made those cardboard cut outs in Photoshop for Sydney, Honolulu and Stalingrad, way back when Revised first came out. I also can’t tell you how many times I argued the case about including even some elements of the Enhanced ruleset for TripleA. It was sidelined in favor of LHTR though, and since I do maps and not java, that’s as far as I was able to push the issue. Believe me though, I will be a very happy man if we ever get Subs doing proper economic damage and all the new NAs included. Some of them can actually be handled in the current engine, with the assistance of the edit mode, but its sometimes hard to persuade new players to try a House Rules variant that requires heavy editing.

Like I said before though, I think the concept of VCs is great and I understand how they are meant to function. I also think bonuses are a brilliant idea. I just wish the two were integrated in a more 1:1 fashion. Also, and I don’t mean any offense to Enhanced, or the other House Rulesets floating around, but the longer it takes to explain a new rule, the harder it is to persuade people to adopt it. In general I favor a re-balancing and simplification of the existing rules over the addition of new ones. A highly nuanced house ruleset might be fun for experts, but I worry about the accessibility for new players. I always try remain optimistic, but I think others share similar concerns too, which I why I think its something worth discussing. :)

I’ll let some other people weigh in though, since I’ve been talking a lot. I should really be doing laundry right now anyway hehe

These maps really are an excellent cartographic projection. But this is the one thing I’m not sure about. The VC graphic I did is 35x36 and it looks kinda big in places. The actual gameboards have the territories hideously out of proportion. But there’s a reason for it. Territories will have up to 7 different units occupying the space. And that’s before any attacking units are added. ~ZP

Which territories do you think are too small? Perhaps I can beef them up a bit, since this map is already departing from the original design concept in many areas. I could for example blow out Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and the Coastline of Northwestern Europe to fit more units. I could also tweak Mongolia north and shift lake Baikal, if you think the China spaces are going to be an issue. Let me know what you think, and I can retouch the baseline a bit later tonight.

If I was designing a real game board, I would likely expand some of the territories and sea zones to accommodate the much larger plastic units. For now I’m focusing mainly on tripleA, which I’m sure this map will be able to handle, but I do see what you mean. When it comes down to it though, on the game board, all you really need is for the Sea Zones to be large enough to accommodate all the naval units. They are by far the largest, probably even larger than they need to be, but if you can cover them, everything else is pretty simple. The priorities are a little different though depending on the format. On the game board you want big units with all the glorious details (playing army men basically), but on the computer you want a reasonably sized map that can be viewed at a glance, with the size of the units being less critical.

For the current map I’ve privileged the computer format, both because its my preferred method of play, and because I think its the real future of the franchise. I really do believe that a computer/console translation of A&A is the only way we’re ever going to attract a sizable number of young blood players. For the real deal in cardboard though, I would definitely explore some more abstractions, to ensure that all the units fit comfortably, for sure. :)

I also agree about the Afghans. Better to correct the mistake, even if it did make it through the first round of printing.

Well players may decide to call the game early, and I see that happen all the time, but its still a decision made with reference to one of the Capitals.

The Allies might decide to give up the ghost, because Moscow is hopeless, and they can see that its only a matter of time before the Panzers prevail, but they’re still calculating their chances of victory/recovery in terms of the Capital dynamic. Personally I think its bad form to concede prematurely, especially with standard dice, but I don’t hold everyone else to that. For me the endgame is often the most interesting, and anything can happen with a lucky roll, so even if I’m getting ruthlessly spanked I still try to play it out until the outcome is clear. Others might prefer quicker games and that’s cool, but even the people who quit in the first round are still probably thinking about the Capitals when they do so.

When one side gives up early, its almost always because of some logistics issue pertaining to a capital. For example, say the Axis player realizes that he won’t have a shot on Moscow for at least 5 rounds, and he knows that by then it will be totally impregnable. Even though there is no immediate danger of losing Berlin, the Axis may throw in the towel anyway, because even though they haven’t necessarily lost, they also can’t really win.

I think that’s a perfectly understandable decision for the Axis player to make, but it has everything to do with Capital’s falling. We call the game, because one side can’t take their target capital, or because their own capital is indefensible long term.

What I would like to see is a situation more like what Romulus is suggesting, with bonuses or penalties for individual VCs. Turning VCs into mini-capitals, of a sort. They are already indicated on the map, and it would be much easier to explain to the newbie, than many of these National Objectives. Something basic and easy to understand, like a bonus of +3 or +5 ipcs taken from the enemy’s cash reserves, if you take a VC from him. The specifics are of course debatable, but its the principle of giving the VCs some real in game consequences and associations. Otherwise, I really don’t think players will use them to determine Victory. Instead I think they’ll just fall back on the more familiar method of determining Victory based something more tangeable, like how much money you have in the war chest, or the number of units you have bearing down on an enemy capital.

Ok lets explore the issue from the other direction. That is, if you guys are cool with me playing devil’s advocate a bit longer :)

Why does taking a capital usually mean victory?
We know that this is not always the case, because 2 capitals can (and often do) fall in the same round. For the most part though, the game ends when a capital is captured…

But Why?

It’s not because of some explicit statement in the rules, that you win when you take Moscow or Berlin, rather it’s because of what actually happens when you take a capital:  namely, you get all the other guy’s money and neuter his ability to place more units on the board.

People concede defeat when a capital falls, not because of some unspoken rule, but because it becomes clear that recovery after such a defeat is no longer possible. If, somehow, a real recovery is possible, then players will continue to play until it’s clearly decided one way or the other.

With Capitals it’s easy, because you can see how taking a capital effects the basic gameplay mechanics (e.g. you get a lot of money, and the other guy is left holding the bag.) A win by VCs doesn’t have a component like that. That’s why I say it’s a ‘nominal’ victory, because it doesn’t work unless both players agree to abide by it.

I think a Revised player would probably get laughed out of the room right now, if he tried to claim Major Victory based on the number of VCs he controls, because frankly, no body cares about Victory Cities in Revised. LHTR may be a different story, but it was by all accounts late on scene, and I’m still not sure most people pay attention to VCs even in the tourney rules. I also don’t think its an issue of mis-informed players. Player habits develop organically, and the habit of ignoring VCs was one of the first that I noticed. Granted this was before LHTR, but I don’t feel that the tournament rules addressed the core problems with VCs. I guess you could say that a VC victory might sometimes accelerate the overall process, but honestly I don’t know many people who are looking for quick games like that. Especially when you’re talking about a face to face match on the actual game board. I mean hell, it already takes like half an hour just to set the pieces up. Does anyone really want it to end that quickly? :)

Yes, but none of that has to do with the VCs. It has to do with the cash bonuses.
You see what I’m saying…

Its the money that’s going to make the difference here, which is why I wish the bonuses were related directly to the VCs. Then players would actually take Victory Cities seriously, because they would have a noticeable impact on the gameplay.

Sorry for the constant editing. I have a tendency to post and then spellcheck, instead of the other way around :)