Posts made by Bluestroke

Depending on which setup we use.  I like UK in 1941, and Japan in 1942.  Plenty of broad strategy options, require logistics with Naval and Air power, very broad options for both countries IMAO.

Ok, hair is down, MB version 1984 in college.  I was, lets see,  29.  The board went across the dorm everynight, some where in play. five player games, great fun.  Still have the original board.  The playing pc we use are so brittle, we break some each time we play.  We used them to augment the AA50 sets.

@Imperious:

hes not talking about mine.

’
Ok, thanks,  I had down loaded your map when it was called phase 1.  I was wondering, if you had renamed your new map PlayersAid-LOL.  to pick up where mine had left off.

Reguardless, your map is brilliant, with high tech photos in the back ground, textured colors, and clean vector lines,
( I think, they are called vector, please correct if I am wrong.)
  You also have the proper projection from the new game board. 
Do you scan this or draw this for a base vector file?
These are things I can not create, yet-LOL.
J2004823, may be talking about both my old PlayersAid bit maps, and your new vector maps or hell,
you do much for the game, possibly it was a general thanks for all your work and enthusiasm.
anyway, wish I had the skill to produce at your level and you have my thanks.

One thought, as I am playing on the new AA50 board. 
My group still needs a bigger, six foot board to play on. 
I know Larry Harris and AH did not agree.  Many had argued for a bigger, mat type map to roll up or one with several panels, I believe you were in that crowd.

We created a cheap $6, 56" x 30 "greyscale map from my old PlayersAid bit map to play our next series of AA50 games.  We were thinking, old bit maps would not scale,
to our surprise it came out fine, maybe not the high quality of your map, but good. 
We were on a budget, with the Boeing strike just ending.
It worked, twenty minutes at Staples-Bam game time.  I may not recommend this setup, except for those of you who have no choice and need room to play. 
The big color map is the way to go, if you have the funds, we were told about $8 a square foot, Seattle area.  Is this a competive rate?

@Black_Elk:

Here are some extra roundel designs that I made a while back, in case anyone wants to use them.  :-D

For my WW2 Italians I used the triple Fasces with a red and green band around it. There is also a WW1 style Italian roundel in there, for fans of Victor Emmanuel ;)

Just what I needed, for my next map,
thanks kindly Black Elk.
Well first, May I use these Rondels on my map,
of course credit would be given for your work.
I am still learning, using Gimp2, so the next map is going to be basic bit map, which I am co working to a higher quality vector model, attempting to see what I can afford in the vector world. 
I am still way behind you an IL on the skill and quality chart,
but having fun bumbling along the learning path.
'quick question if you or IL have the time, which file format is best for doing print work?

@Rakeman:

@Richter:

The Italian markers (I assume they should represent Italy) use the IRANIAN Air Force Roundel.

the Italian used a triple fasces - symbol and the Italian (true) roundel has the red outside and green innermost, not as depicted in this game ;)

Well the flag of the Italian Social Republic was a tricolor with green and red on the outside, with out without a fascist eagle (that denoted a war flag).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_RSI.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Social_Republic

So while the roundel they used was not the best choice, it isn’t exactly inappropriate either.

Rakeman,

One small point, when I was doing the PlayersAid maps, I discounted this symbol because it did not become effective until after the game starts 1941, (1943-1945 for the german puppet Italian state.)  So, I added the Royal Seal and later the Fascist three Fasces symbol.  The military split loyality to the king, and Il Duce.  I have read Regia Marina preference to the King, stonewalling Il Duce’s orders, which were frequently misunderstood-LOL.  Somebody, who is better read, please jump in here and provide some additional light.

We, have switched our 4 player games to AA50 and are planning at least 3 games in Dec, one down already, Dec 6th AA50-1942 setup- Allies won.  Now onto AA50-1941 Dec 20th.  Then the Holidays, we will not know which game unitl after the 20th game.

Dry fox holes, clear skies and calm seas, for everyone,

enjoy.

@J2004823:

Imperious Leader,

Your map is brilliant. Many thanks for your hard work.

I was wondering if you will allow me to post your “AA50PlayersAid.PNG” on another forum?
http://www.cndkc.net/bbs/forum-35-1.html
I translated AA50 rulebook into simplified chinese, and a map will be very helpful to local AA fans.

If your answer is yes, then how would you like me to state the original author? Something like “Imperious Leader from AxisAndAiiles.org”?

Best wishes,

IL, have you named your new map AA50PlayersAid? Or was this my old map?
Or is he talking about two maps?

Sweet, thanks Krieghund,

We gain a New tactic, blitzing tank can open a paradrop route further inland, by changing a hostile zone into a friendly zone, nice.  Whom ever attempted this, hats off, I love hidden moves, surpise.

@Imperious:

If you combine this with my other concept of performing the turns together ( axis/allies) you then make something that is very quick… like 2-3 hours.

But of course other house rules come into effect to stop all the immediate things running in peoples minds about how it wont work or cant work. It does work.

All Axis/all Allies, this how we play all our 4 player games.
Who wants to wait almost an hour in between move/turns.

The problem unfolding, a new abstraction is required for capturing a territory.  Operational tempo gain, not production, how do we translate this into, something tangible?  Extra logistic–free moves to resupply?  Extra placements?  Extra combat move next turn? any or all of these could replace IPC for taken territories.  Deploy a tactical tempo attribute for captured territories, a territory which may have a mere 1 or 2 ipc value, for its tactical position on the map, but the real gain is operational tempo and extra move next turn or what, any ideas?

TG Moses VI,

suggestion, modify first post of this thread.  Data track totals;

Qty of Games/ Axis Wins / Allies Wins / Major Strategy
or something to this effect, if you wouldn’t mind.

Title:  Sea Lion Reboot 1941.
Date:  11/29/08. 
Special Rules: OOB, except-all Axis move/all Allies move turns-
-we play face to face and hate waiting for turns. 
Tech development-no tech buys, used National Objectives.
Victor:  Consentual Draw, time Limit expired 4 hours.
Victory Cities -Allies 10 and Axis 8…
Game Length:  4 Hours/9 Rounds
Bias:  Going into the game, I played Allies and
had the higher skill level.  Thought less experienced players, should play Axis in 1941, Axis have greater mobility and unit strength, should help them recover from mistakes.
Description:  I used Balanced strategy for Allies, included UK Indian IC an divided UK/US IPC’s BTWN Pacific and Europe.
Early game, Axis moved typical, maxium extention of force-
Japan-Pearl attk/takes Hawaii J1. Germany-gobbles Eastern Europe. 
Italy-hammers Africa.  Axis removed most of Allied shipping.
Allies counter early game, build forces UK/India and US CV Fleets fitted out for both theatres. USSR slow/steady INF/RTL stacks advance out of Moscow, w acquired 2-ARM ea  rd- stacked North flank /center group/ Southern  flank.USSR mass reabsorbs, all of Eastern Europe. German Sea Lion rips London. UK/US Torch ops retake Africa. 
UK IC breaks Jap wave with US/China sapping Zeros.  Final round, Germany with 93 IPC to spend, facing 3 stacks of USSR mass.  Allied Air/Naval counter and sink everything Axis have in water.  UK/US and Japan begin rebuilding fleets.   
Observations/Recommendations:  We were surprised by the amount of IPC flow from NO’s.  To my chagrin, how could the Germans get into London-LOL
another concept learned, chinese, not strong, weaken japanese Air.

@axis_roll:

@Admiral:

The Japanese player had to invest in his naval power, because after my first round purchase (aircraft carrier and a cruiser), I bought primarily fighters and submarines. I sent the submarines every which way, while my surface fleet (supported by lots of fighters) slowly but surely made its way to the islands. The Japanese were severely overwhelmed with submarines threatening both their main fleet and their transports from all parts of the ocean. They had to purchase lots of destroyers and disperse them throughout the Pacific to counter this submarine threat, which if left unchecked, would have spelt doom for the primary Japanese fleet in a combined American submarine/surface fleet/ air attack. I hope this makes sense axis_roll.

Yes it does.  In fact, that would’ve been my USA pacific strategy as well (once we get around to playing the game)

Ok, same result in our 1941 game.  A balanced Allied strategy works. 
Our game ended in a time limit draw, just as US killed all 3 Japanese Carriers in the Pacific and US retook UK and UK fleet killed the German Fleet. 
USSR was of course on Germany"s doorstep, with Allies having retaken Africa.
Italy then killed the remaining UK fleet and relaunched into Africa.
The whole game at this point looked like it was rebooting, to start again. 
I was surprised at how effective the Chinese were at soaking up Japanese hardware. 
The japanese killed China every round, but lost valuable ftrs in these attacks.
Note: The Germans were getting ready to add 93 IPC’s of hardware, (having gained UK’s IPC’s from previous turn.)
Wow, do the NO’s make a difference, many more IPC’s flowing into many units.
comment, yes, Subs and Air power, nice combo. 
Why do people believe a destroyer will stop subs.  They are only another surface vessel in the path of the wolf pack, out to devour, the other pricey surface vessels.  Especially when teamed with airpower-Bam.

@TG:

After careful consideration and thought, I have decided to step up to the plate and order my copy of A&A:50.  :mrgreen:

So for those of you who have already been bitten by the Wizard’s marketing bug, where did you purchase your copy of A&A:50 from and for how much?  I know the MSRP is $100, but I think I can do better than that.

Like many we ordered our copies from Cool stuff, online $69.00 US.  We ordered two copies for our group and got the free shipping.

@Admiral:

I have good news, and I have bad news.

Bad news first. My cat urinated a on my new copy of AA50, right in the German box in fact. Kudos to him for recognizing the Nazis and showing his opinion of them… but seriously, that smell is hard to get rid of.

Good news. After cleaning all of the German pieces and and the box, I played my third '41 game with my A&A friends. Desperately wanting to see the first Allied victory, I took the Americans. After having seen both KIGF and KJF strategies fail miserably in previous games, I split my money between Pacific (about 40%) and Europe (about 60%). It seemed to work out really well. The Japanese were distracted enough to decrease spending on the mainland, and the Italians had no hope for defending against both the UK and the USA. Once Italy was rendered impotent, I shifted my focus  to the piss stained Germans, who were only beaten down in the games very tense and exciting conclusion.

Thoughts? It would seem that those boring ‘Kill x First’ strategies are no longer real options for the Allied players. A more balanced approach seems to be the way to go, which really makes things much more fun. Everyone sees some action, everyone is involved, and both sides seem to have a very real chance at victory.  Also, the ending of the game becomes much more profound rather than the game devolving into a prolonged war of attrition.

OMG, this is funny.  I am still laughing.
It is good to hear a more balanced play strategy was rewarded.

@Imperious:

Larry has stated many times that the units don’t generally fit standard military models for classic formations (divisions, corps, army) and in some cases these are corps and others they are armies. They are not the same in every case, allowing for the corps in Africa to be symbolized as perhaps 2-3 units, while in the Soviet union one infantry may represent an army ( 3-5 corps).

Yes, IL thanks,
I have been reading those old posts.  I note he (Larry Harris) stated the Naval units abstraction was a greater dilution of unit strength, or a direct correlation to vessel numbers from standard representation of Classic fleet/squadron/Battle groups.  I am thinking more in chess terms, where tempo or position is sometimes of more value then individual pieces.

Bierwagen,
Beautiful setup, I am jealous already verrry nice indeed.

Do you mean to tell me, you actually opened a box and played with pieces-LOL!!
Ok, I could be reading a lot into this.  Nice report on the perils of ignoring ITALY.
Agree, Africa bread basket for Italy.  Then power projection, very nice. 
I believe, Italy makes the Axis stronger, not weaker-Love Regia Marina setup.
What was the UK player and US doing, to ignore Italy, KJF?

@Imperious:

Pretty well agree. Give it TIME.

One hour after playing 1941….“damm game is slanted to the axis…damm it!” :roll:

My point, I still do not believe this is a bad thing.  We know the 1942 setup has been a problem for Axis players in the past.  Now, we have a possible counter setup for the Allies in the 1941 setup.  Again I state, this a good model of the problem the Allies faced in 1941, do yo agree?  The Axis were in the field with units, advancing with operational tempo.  This is a great modeling of that advantage.  The situation in 1941 was not balanced.  Why would you model a game for the Allies, that was balanced, at its start up-this would be wrong.  The Allied challenge, overcome the Axis operational tempo, the Axis were deployed and moving.  It is like a monster chess game, One color Axis, is seven moves into the game, when Allies are just begining to move. The answer for the Allies should be tough to find, because it was.  I do not yet, see it as impossible for the Allies, only tougher to find the Allied win.  would the game be worthy, if we strolled in, did our best 1942 kGF and, yawn, victory-NO!!  We need many more games, to research the answer.
Possibly, we could start a thread, tracking each players games as research data: 
Setups used 1941-1942/Who won Allies-Axis/ Number of players 2-6/ Techs used yes-no/, NO’s used yes-no.  We could quickly gather data from everone’s play.

@timerover51:

If you allow for the scaling factor in the game, i.e. each tank and infantry unit represents several divisions, the limited port facitilies in Italian North Africa, Tripoli (the primary port), Benghazi and Tobruk (when available and subject to enemy attack and the need to rebuild them a couple of times) could support 1 German Tank and 1 German infantry unit and 1 Italian Tank and 2 Italian infantry units in an attack on Egypt.  Anything beyond that represents units that players use in the game, but could not have been supplied in actuality.

Then you still have to deal with the extreme lack of internal communications in Africa, even today.  Africa is also much smaller on the map board in relation to Europe than it should be, which distorts what can be done in the game verses in reality.

Agreed, since I have drawn the AA50 PlayersAid map several times, I am well versed in the projection’s distortion of Europe vs Africa.  I also understand unit scale and logistics.  This does not deflect, the game strategy of taking Egypt as the Axis Italian/German player.  The invasion of Egypt is a must move IMHO.  Now in AA50, Italy is making this invasion, where as in the past it was Germany.  The surrounded Italian forces could be relieved in our games, in historical context, I appreciate, it wasn’t going to happen.

@italiansarecoming:

I can see africa an amazing nice front which italians do not need an ipc but the british need 1 (exception of libya)

close your eyes and see africa in a war to get madagascar to sea land in north africa to try to get sudan italian units reforcing islands for japan because they can or italians sendign men to middle east from east africa  think of it all africa will b a bunch of wars and africa willb huge fighting ground like the pacific in ww2 and the russian front in ww2 against germany

Yep, this was the intent, a new battleground.  I think the Italians may have been surrounded in east Africa, but what if Rommel had been given reinforcements, like many of us do when we land additional forces to hit Egypt.  Then the Italian East Aftrica campaign has linking possiblities and strategic consequences.  Maybe I gave up to early with this point.