Posts made by CWO Marc

Here’s a fascinating bit of pre-WWII history: the network of concrete “sound mirrors” projected to be set up in Britian to detect the noise of incoming aircraft. The concept was rendered obsolete by the development of radar, but apparently these experiments did provide the British with useful experience which ultimately helped them to establish the Chain Home network of radar stations which proved crucial in winning the Battle of Britian.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-46348917

@Midnight_Reaper said in A List of "Games" that are Axis & Allies Expansions in Disguise:

Engage

• American Units
• German Units
• Japanese Units
• Russian Units

-Midnight_Reaper

This is to expand on your entry for Engage, which lists four unit groups: American Units, German Units, Japanese Units, and Russian Units. There are actually six groups, the two others being the British and Italian ones. I bought one of each of these sets when they were published in 2010 by Table Tactics. They were originally intended to serve as supplementary pieces for A&A, but more sophisticated and realistic than TT’s earlier A&A-based products; later, they were repackaged as the Engage game you mention.

Regarding those earlier TT products, which are listed in one of your other threads on this topic (Axis and Allies Accessories, Axis and Allies Central Powers, Axis and Allies New Edition Color, and Axis and Allies New World Order), TT also produced a couple of related games (Cromwell 2026 and Risk 2042) which used some of those A&A units (the ones from New World Order, if I remember correctly).

I’ve likewise added a gold badge for 2019, along with an expression of my appreciation for this great A&A community resource.

@CWO-Marc said in Balanced Mod [Anniversary 41]:

@axis_roll said in Balanced Mod [Anniversary 41]:

what (if any) is the difference between a warship and a ship? There’s several references to both in these.

I don’t know if Axis Roll’s list makes the following distinction or not, […] whose primary “payload” consists of surface-to-air and air-to-air weapons, meaning bombers and fighters).

Actually, I meant to say air-to-surface, not surface-to-air, and I think it’s actually Argothair’s list rather than Axis Roll’s. I couldn’t figure out how to edit my original post.

@axis_roll said in Balanced Mod [Anniversary 41]:

what (if any) is the difference between a warship and a ship? There’s several references to both in these.

I don’t know if Axis Roll’s list makes the following distinction or not, but in my mind “ship” is the overall term meaning all ships of all types. This overall designation can then be broken down into two broad groups: combat vessels (i.e warships, meaning vessels whose primary mission is to fight and whose primary “payload” are their weapons) and non-combat vessels. In A&A terms, there’s only one type of non-combat vessel: the naval transport. Everything else is a combat vessel, i.e. a warship. These warships can be further divided, if required, into three categories: surface-combat vessels (battleships, cruisers and destroyers), submarines (whose defining ability is their ability to operate under the surface, and which therefore are underwater weapon platforms), and aircraft carriers (whose defining ability is to deploy and recover aircraft, and therefore whose primary “payload” consists of surface-to-air and air-to-air weapons, meaning bombers and fighters).

Thanks for the supplementary info GHG. I didn’t really know very much about the context of the thread, since GW1936-1945 is a game with which I don’t have much familiarity, so I hadn’t realized that the sculpt choice was a deliberate one which was made for the reasons you described.

By the way, as an amusing historical footnote: during the long design process for the German “H-class” battleships which were supposed to come after the Bismarck class (but which ultimately were never built), Hitler at one point suggested arming the class with 800mm (31.5-inch) guns, the same caliber as Germany’s Gustav and Dora railway guns. In a rare example of common sense prevailing over Hitler’s propensity for gigantism (the Maus tank being a case in point), a German admiral talked him out of the idea by telling him just how big a battleship would have to be to carry such an arsenal and by pointing out that no German port in existence could handle a ship that enormous. By contrast, the Super Yamato class would have looked modest.

@GeneralHandGrenade said in Global War 1936-1945 3rd Edition:

Yamato;
https://www.shapeways.com/product/U28L5CCS2/a-150-super-yamato-japan-gw1936-scale?optionId=64692643

I noticed that the link under the “Yamato” header includes “Super Yamato” as part of the URL. This phrase is a reference not to the 9 x 18.1-inch gunned Yamato class which was actually built, but to a projected 6 x 20-inch gunned class of larger ships which never got off the drawing board (though one of the guns did reach the production stage). I checked the link, and the sculpt is indeed of this larger class, as can be seen by the two-gun (rather than three-gun) turrets.

This game doesn’t fit your main parameters for time-frame (modern) or for location (Earth), but it’s the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a space-warfare version of Axis & Allies: Twilight Imperium (currently in its 4th edition for the main game; the 3rd edition consists of the main game and 2 expansion sets) by Fantasy Flight games. Lots of neat sculpts.

@Midnight_Reaper said in A List of "Games" that are Axis & Allies Expansions in Disguise:

Yup, Rick Medved’s Superpowers and Supremacy, either the old one or the Supremacy 2020 reprint, would be welcome on this list.

-Midnight_Reaper

You might want to include Fortress America, and its Xeno Games clone (the Sushi-Jalapeno War).

By the way, on the subject of both the Sushi-Jalapeno War and the above-mentioned Superpowers game, they provided me with two-thirds of what I call the most expensive unit in my A&A collection (the remaining third being provided by Risk Metal Gear Solid). The Superpowers game includes eight small white plastic missiles (the only component of the game that I really like), which look approximately modeled on the V2. As missiles I don’t care for them (they’re too short, too thick, and have oversized fins), but if you position them horizontally rather than vertically they make a great-looking atomic bomb. The one defect, of course, is that the fins put the sculpt into an awkward nose-down position when you set it down on the table. The solution unexpectedly came from Risk Metal Gear Solid, which I had bought because I wanted its various sculpts: it includes little black plastic card-holders (exactly eight of them, in fact) with a slot running across the top. A Superpower missile fits neatly across the slot, with one fin projecting down into the slot, which keeps it horizontal rather than tipped over. Getting just eight atomic bombs (8 missile and 8 holders) out of two whole games makes those eight bombs a bit pricey, but that actually fits with the expense and rarity of WWII atomic weapons. The third component I added to create a complete weapon system came from the Sushi-Jalapeno War, which includes some nice-looking little black atomic mushroom clouds (here again, a case of that being the only component I liked). So basically I needed to cannibalize three separate games to create this small nuclear arsenal – but that sort of thing is part of the fun of being a game collector, i.e. it can create opportunities to make unorthodox use of what you have.

Yes, those are exactly the connector strips I was thinking about. I’m glad you already have them on file, since I’m not sure whether I had kept a copy when I first encountered them.

I agree with SS Gen’s point about the proposed nuke rule being too strong, though for different reasons. Under the proposed rule, a nuke has both an immediate effect and a persistent effect – the immediate effect being to destroy everything in a territory (every unit, including ICs), and the persistent effect being to render the territory sterile and unbuildable and impassible (even to aircraft) for three rounds. Considering that in A&A a territory can be something as big as an entire country (in Anniversary, for example, the United Kingdom is a single territory), both of these effects strike me as being disproportionate. Remember that WWII-era atomic weapons – crude first-generation fission bombs – were low-yield weapons (15 to 21 kilotons) which today would fall within the performance range of tactical nuclear weapons rather than strategic thermonuclear ones, i.e. fusion bombs yielding tens of megatons. Even today, a single thermonuclear bomb could not destroy everything in a country as large as the UK (though it could probably do so in a city-sized country like Monaco). The persistent effects described in the proposed rule likewise seem excessive even by the standards of today’s nuclear weapons, since they seem to describe the kind of lifeless irradiated environment that might be created by a global full-scale nuclear war rather than by the dropping of a single bomb (and particularly the dropping of a single WWII-era atomic bomb).

To give a concrete example of the relatively modest effects of weapons in that yield range: in the 1950s, the US Army conducted a test (it was called Task Force Razor, as I recall) in Nevada that involved detonating an A-bomb on the position of an imaginary enemy-held line, to create a “breach” which would then be exploited by a US armoured force. The armoured force in question (tanks, APCs and so forth) watched the explosion from a few miles away, waited a few minutes, then drove forward and went through the imaginary breach in the imaginary line. The point to take from this anecdote is that even when you’re deliberately aiming a WWII-era atomic bomb at something as specific and small as a military force (say, an armoured division), your aim needs to be quite accurate to get a useful hit, since missing by just a few miles is enough to waste the weapon; just aiming at a whole country (or even just aiming at a whole state, like Nevada) isn’t accurate enough. So as far as the effects of an A&A nuke are concerned, I’d suggest giving the player two options: aiming at a city that appears on the map (to destroy its ICs and AAA guns) or aiming at the military units in a territory and coming up with a formula to determine how many units (and which ones) are destroyed, but without wiping out all of them. And I’d leave out the persistent effects altogether.

On another technical point, the delivery mechanism needs to be considered. Realistically, the target should be in range of an A&A strategic bombing run from the launch point. The attacker should own at least one strategic bomber, and should use it for the nuclear attack. Alternately, a ballistic missle technology (i.e. the V2) could be developed first. Its range should be no more than that of a SBR, and maybe even less (when you consider how far some WWII bombers like the B-29 could fly).

@Midnight_Reaper said in A List of Expansions for Avalon Hill-era Axis & Allies:

Linked Game Rules (combined AA:E & AA:P games)

I’ll check my files at home this evening to see if I have any documentation on it (which I may not), but I recall that I once saw a “connector strip” which supposedly could be used to link the old A&A Europe and A&A Pacific games into a sort-of-global game. Is this what the item “Linked Game Rules (combined AA:E & AA:P games)” in you list refers to?

I’ve just had a look at your three threads about A&A expansions (Milton Bradley era, Avalon Hill era, Expanions in disguise), which are very interesting and useful lists. I’ll post something shortly in the Avalon Hill thread, since the post will be specific to that era, but first here’s a question that fits better in the Expanions in disguise thread.

I own some of the games listed here (and in the two other threads), and I’m wondering about the scope of what you mean by “expansion”. I initially thought that this referred simply to “add-ons” which could be plugged into the official A&A games – two good examples of this being Enemy on the Horizon (which added three new unit types to the Milton Bradley game, in the same colours) and the Table Tactics supplementary pieces. However, the list also includes (and in fact mostly consists of) games which aren’t “expansions” in this narrow sense. Xeno Games, for instance, did have some products which were sort of expansions, but it also had a complete game which was essentially a freestanding clone of A&A rather than an add-on. The War Game: World War II is in a similar vein, through with better sculpts that aren’t low-grade copies of the Milton Bradley A&A ones. And some games on the list are what could be called “A&A-style games” rather than expansions or clones; East and West is an example of one that resembles A&A rather closely, and World in War: Combined Arms 1939-1945 is an example of one that looks significantly different.

The reason I’m asking is that the concept of “A&A-style games” opens up a lot of territory for additions to your list. Some examples would be the Superpowers game (essentially a WWIII-type game between some fictitious future coalitions of countries), and the old Supremacy game.

Here are a few thoughts on this concept. I’ve had a look at this thread, and at the linked one where the idea was first developed, and if I understand correctly the concept involves replacing the Allied bid by letting the Allies pick one of their territories and give it a three-element enhancement (1 IC, 1 AAA and a +1 IPC boost) which would disappear if the territory is ever captured.

The concept in itself sounds basically okay, but I’m wondering if it might benefit from being tweaked to deal with a few points. The points have to do with the questions “What does this concept represent in real-life terms and how is this reflected by the terminology being use to represent it?”

Seen in isolation, the phrase “colonial outpost” evokes (at least in my mind) the image of an isolated and fairly small military garrison established by a colonial power in one of its relatively undeveloped colonies. The concept being described, on the other hand, more closely resembles the idea of what could be called a “fortified concession” (though I’m not really suggesting that this phrase be used instead), i.e. an economically-developed and militarily-defended zone that a foreign power has set up on someone else’s territory…roughly what Shanghai was prior to the Second Sino-Japanese War.

A related point has to do with the fact that, as I understand it, any Allied power can alter any one Allied-controlled territory in this manner. This raises the question of whether the “colonial” part of the phrase applies, depending on what territory is being altered by whom. Britain altering a territory in India would be classically colonial, because India was a British possession at the time, but things could get murky in certain other situations – in no small part because of political optics. For example, the self-governing Dominions at the time (Canada, Newfoundland, Eire, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand) would have been outraged at the notion of Britain setting up a “colonial” outpost (or a colonial anything else) on their territory. The United States, while it did indeed have a number of overseas possessions (like the Philippines) which it controlled to various degrees, didn’t (as far as I know) refer to itself as a “colonial” power, a term which I think the Americans tended to despise as being too closely associated with the European great powers. And there’s also the question (whose answer I can’t discern from the discussion threads, though I may just be missing it) of whether Allied Power X could give this kind of upgrade to a territory controlled by Allied Power Y; if yes, this too raises the question of whether “colonial” would be the right term. (Example: the American base built at Argentia in Newfoundland under Lend-Lease was not regarded as a “colonial outpost”. I think it was seen more as an American enclave on Commonwealth territory. As a case in point, I read that within the Argentia base vehicles drove on the right side of the road, as per American practice, while outside the base they drove on the left, as per the British practice being followed in Newfoundland at the time.)

In one sense, this is all just a picky point of terminology, so it can easily be discounted. But I’m wondering if a two-birds-with-one-stone solution might be to tweak the concept slightly – maybe by specifying in more detail which power can make this change to which territories, and maybe even by splitting the concept into slight variants with slightly different names, depending on which of the scenario types I’ve described above are (and are not) being envisioned.

@taamvan said in Pearl Harbour Attack:

Love it. While chess isn’t my personal favorite, it is a model for wargaming. Its amazing that with such a limited set of starting options and pieces, that the game has a tremendous following and has, in all its variants, for centuries.

Some people believe that the sides in chess are equal. This is a misconception; the players start with symmetrical forces, but the White player has + one more unit of initiative, and the Black player has + one more piece of information (what White did). This is a good analogy to our favorite game, and is the starting point for all “asymmetrical” wargames, where the players share common units types and resources, but are each different and unique.

I once heard about a Russian chess grandmaster (I forget who, so I’ll call him So-and-So) who was asked whether he prefers to play the white or black pieces. He answered: “It makes no difference to me. When I play white, I win because I play first. When I play black, I win because I am So-and-So.”

@taamvan said in Pearl Harbour Attack:

Well said Argo, that’s what a “gambit” or “stratagem” is— we will be taking a large risk in order to reap large gains. However, a more flexible, reactive and conservative strategy outlines only general goals, assumes the game will take the full 12-15 turns, and hopes that by refusing to take big risks that solid play will prevail and your opponent will hopefully give up before being constricted to death.

Dave has a bit different philosophy; “go bold”. He focuses his air and naval attacks in a “schwerpunkt” fashion–maximum force applied at the critical place. I think that’s why we make a good team, I take the more general and conservative approach, and start the game with few assumptions or plans.

Here’s an equivalent, from the world of chess, of these two contrasting philosophies:

Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian was a Soviet Armenian Grandmaster, and World Chess Champion from 1963 to 1969. He was nicknamed “Iron Tigran” due to his almost impenetrable defensive playing style, which emphasised safety above all else. […] Petrosian was a conservative, cautious, and highly defensive chess player who was strongly influenced by Aron Nimzowitsch’s idea of prophylaxis. He made more effort to prevent his opponent’s offensive capabilities than he did to make use of his own. He very rarely went on the offensive unless he felt his position was completely secure. He usually won by playing consistently until his aggressive opponent made a mistake, securing the win by capitalizing upon this mistake without revealing any weaknesses of his own. This style of play often led to draws, especially against other players who preferred to counterattack. Nonetheless, his patience and mastery of defence made him extremely difficult to beat. He was undefeated at the 1952 and 1955 Interzonals, and in 1962 he did not lose a single tournament game. Petrosian’s consistent ability to avoid defeat earned him the nickname “Iron Tigran”. He was considered to be the hardest player to beat in the history of chess by the authors of a 2004 book.

Jorgen Bent Larsen was a Danish chess grandmaster and author. Known for his imaginative and unorthodox style of play, he was the first Western player to pose a serious challenge to the Soviet Union’s dominance in chess. He is considered to be the strongest player born in Denmark and the strongest from Scandinavia until the emergence of Magnus Carlsen. […] Larsen was known as a deep thinking and highly imaginative player, more willing to try unorthodox ideas and to take more risks than most of his peers. This aspect of his play could even manifest itself in his choice of openings. “He is a firm believer in the value of surprise. Consequently, he often resorts to dubious variations in various openings. He also likes to complicate positions even though it may involve considerable risk. He has a great deal of confidence in his game and fears no one. His unique style has proven extremely effective against relatively weak opponents but has not been too successful against top-notchers.”

@vodot said in Tjoek's 1940 Global Map file (Updated May 30th 2018):

@Tjoek this is incredible. Printing this out as I type. Now to find a sheet of 36x78in plexiglass…

In case this info helps, here’s how I obtained the 36" x 96" sheet of plastic that my customized table (which has an extended-width version of the Global 1940 map board) needed. I found a local plastics company whose merchandise lines were described on their website, and I determined that the best option was a material called non-glare Acrylite P-99; the company had various sizes in stock, and one of them was originally sized by the manufacturer at 48" x 96" x 1/16" thickness. The 96" length was already correct, so all the plastics company had to do for me was to cut the sheet to the correct width. They then shipped it to me by delivery truck, rolled up into a tube about two feet in diameter with a sheet of cardboard wrapped around it to protect it. They even included the slice they had removed. They only charged me ten bucks for the custom cutting, and they did a nice job; the sheet went straight onto the table without needing any work on my part, other than my peeling away the manufacturer’s thin temporary film which protects the acrylic from scratching during storage and shipment.

I’m not an attorney either, and it’s usually a good idea to treat with healthy scepticism any information on the internet which starts with an “I’m not a lawyer” disclaimer…but for whatever it might be worth, here’s a cautionary note about the “copyright law is intended to prevent commercial use” argument. People or organizations who make non-commercial use of copyrighted material aren’t necessarily in the clear just because they’re not making any money. An illustrative example would be a small daycare centre which uses without authorization a picture of a Walt Disney animated character – say, Mickey Mouse – in its logo, and which receives a cease-and-desist notice from Disney’s attorneys. The notice isn’t necessarily sent because Disney thinks that the daycare centre is making money from Disney’s intellectual property, or because Disney thinks that Disney is somehow being deprived of revenue. The real point of the notice is that copyright owners (especially multi-billion-dollar international corporate giants like Disney) have a responsibility to protect their copyrighted property. Having Mickey Mouse copied by a few trivial daycare centres here in there isn’t the issue; the issue is that Disney has to put itself in the position of demonstrating that it’s serious about defending its copyrighted property…because if it doesn’t do so, it potentially weakens the legal case it might bring against non-trivial offenders, such as (for example) a company that starts selling millions of unauthorized Mickey Mouse dolls and lunch boxes and t-shirts. So while it’s true that money-making piracy is indeed the kind of commercial use that copyright law is intended to prevent, keep in mind that copyright holders can’t necessarily limit themselves to just going after the commercial pirates.

@LHoffman said in Customizers: which A&A games do you own?:

So what is everyone’s rationale for owning multiple copies, or many multiple copies, of the same game. If it is just for collecting purposes, then I suppose that rationale isn’t necessary. But otherwise is it to get pieces, for game value if/when they go out of print, spares, lending them out to others, hosting game parties or tournaments where multiple copies are needed…?

I have various reasons for owning multiple copies, but they all relate to the fact that the sculpts are the feature of the A&A games that I’ve always liked the most (with the maps coming in second place, and the actual game mechanics only coming in third place). I think I once mentioned this in an older thread, but what makes the sculpt / map combination so interesting to me is that it reminds me of the 1970s-era movie Midway, which features two map tables (a huge one in Nimitz’s headquarters in Hawaii and a smaller one on Yamamoto’s flagship), on which some suitably-shaped blocks representing planes and ships are used by both sides to plot the movements of the opposing forces as the operation progresses, as if they’re playing some kind of intricate game of chance and skill. It’s no surprise that the large Global 1940 map has turned out to be my favourite one, and I once used it and my sculpts to recreate the Midway operation (just as a map exercise, not as a game).

But anyway, I’ve always liked the idea of having a sculpt collection that’s large and diverse (both in terms of unit shapes and sculpt colours), because it offers more opportunity to depict WWII military situations on a map. Those opportunities were limited in the old days, when the number of player nations and unit types was small, but now the numbers and the diversity in my collection are large enough to allow some sculpts to be used in ways which go beyond their original purpose. For example: now that I own the second version of the Panther tank (the one introduced in Bulge, I think) in large enough numbers to fulfil every possible application as the standard German medium tank, I can reallocate the first version of the Panther to the role of a Jagdpanther tank destroyer. Ditto with the old small-scale version of the German 88mm FLAK gun: the new big version is actually used in Global 1940 as an AAA gun (which is what it was originally designed for in real life), so I can reallocate the old small version to serve as an 88mm anti-tank gun (an adaptation that actually was done with the 88mm, when the Germans discovered that this anti-aircraft gun was also a superb tank-killer). I’ve supplied China with the old lime-green British equipment pieces from (if I recall correctly) the Revised edition, to make up for the fact that China in Anniversary and Global only has infantry units; the greens don’t quite match, but they’re close enough. I have a tray (I keep all my sculpts in plastic trays) in which I’ve put all of my cherry-red Japanese pieces from the old Pacific game, and I’ve labeled it “Axis Minors” (to stand for Bulgaria and Hungary and so forth), and I have a similar Allied Minors tray in which I’ve put all the old purple Soviet pieces. I have two trays of “ANZAC grey” units: the ANZAC-patterned ones from the second edition of Pacific 1940, and the British-patterned ones from the first edition (with some AAA units borrowed from the second edition game); I’ve labeled the ANZAC-patterned one “Southern Commonwealth Dominions: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa” and I’ve labeled the British-patterned one “Northern Commonwealth Dominions: Canada, Newfoundland, Eire”. And so forth, just for the fun of it.

The unlucky POW has the unfortunate distinction of being, as far as I know, the only British battleship which was involved in two famous and important naval actions of WWII, one against Germany and one against Japan, and of ending up on the losing end of both engagements (fatally so in the second case). On the more positive side, she was the venue for the August 1941 Churchill-Roosevelt summit in Newfoundland, which among other things resulted in the Atlantic Charter. The document would be called a “communique” today (when summit meetings are common events, and post-summit communiques are a routine element of such meetings), but back in 1941 this sort of thing was rather novel. The Atlantic Charter was referenced at various times during WWII, either pleasing or embarrassing Churchill depending on the circumstances (such as when he argued that the Charter article which expressed respect for “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live” didn’t apply to British-rule India), and it ultimately helped to lay the foundations of the United Nations charter.