Posts made by CWO Marc

@Foxtrot:

Marc - thank you very much for that link - it’s exactly what I was hoping to find.

You’re welcome.  One note of caution: keep in mind that, if you base some of the nationalities in your converted set on the subtle shade differences that exist for the same nominal colour in different A&A editions, you may run into difficulties if your lighting conditions change.  I’ve found that some shades which are easy to tell apart under one set of lighting conditions (daylight vs. incandescent vs. fluorescent) are indistinguishable in a different illumination.  The green US infantry pieces (which have been produced in many slight [and not-so-slight] shade variations) are particularly notorious in this regard because fluorescent light sometimes has a greenish tinge to it.

@Foxtrot:

1. How compatible are colors from Classic, 1942, and some of the other intermediate sets. In particular, are old and new Japanese yellow close enough to be one side? What about Pacific (old, not 1940) Japanese yellow and 1942 Japanese yellow? How about 1940 Italy and classic Russia? Are revised German black black enough to go with 1942 German? Are grey revised German and old Europe German grey enough to go well with Classic German and not be confused with black 1942 German?

For colour comparison data and pictures, see this thread:
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=21158.0

@Foxtrot:

4. Are the Classic russians different enough from the new russians that they could be used as Italians

The latest infantry sculpts for the five classic A&A nations all have varying degrees of small differences from the original ones, but in most cases you have to look really closely to tell the difference.  The current Russians, for example, are armed with a submachine gun with a larger drum magazine than the originals.  The current and original British pieces have a different elbow posture: one leaves an open space at the bend of the elbow while the other one doesn’t.  (I don’t have my sculpts in front of me right now, so I can’t recall which version has which configuration.)  Those are probably the two most visible differences…and from a distance of more than a couple of feet I don’t think they’d be noticeable.  The differences in the other nationality sculpts – things like slightly different helmet shapes – are even more subtle.  They’re so minor that even from close up they’re hard to see.

New link added:

Shintokamikaze’s Global Room
    http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=22465.0

@xedasmaster:

Is war Rake the actual name for that tool? I have been looking allover for what it is called.

Page 3 of the rulebook for “Attack!” by Eagle Games rather blandly refers to these tools as “long sticks.”  I think “war rake” has a better ring to it.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=58

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=55&enmi=Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=82&enmi=Middle-earth Quest

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=137&enmi=The Hobbit

@Pvt.Ryan:

Can you do some research for me Marc? I need to now what will happen in my game if said situation pans out.

I don’t have time to do custom research for people, particularly when it involves trying to find examples of a situation that I’m reasonably sure never happened in real history.

From your original post, it sounds like you’re aiming to insert into a First World War game a situation derived from a Star Wars movie, regardless of whether it ever had any real-life historical counterpart.  There’s nothing to prevent you from doing so.  Just treat it as an alternate-history script, and invent whatever reason you want as the justification (if you want one at all) for this event in the fictional world of the game.

If you’re making this game for you and your friends, you don’t need to justify to anyone whether there is any credible basis for such a scenario.  I once read a newspaper description (many years ago) of a gaming convention at which somebody was playing a home-made tabletop miniature game involving a force of M1 Abrams tanks fighting against some Martian war machines from the H.G. Wells novel War of the Worlds.  It sounded like a lot of fun, and it was so clearly an imaginary scenario that nobody spent much time worrying about the rationale for the events in the game. (And this was long before the Tom Cruise movie which updated the WotW story to contemporary times.)

It sounds as if you’ve already decided what it is that you want to happen in your game, so my recommendation would be for you to just go ahead and do it, no matter how improbable a mid-battle national side-switch happens to be in the real world (and in the context of WWI in particular).  I think the situation basically comes down to your deciding whether you want to go for historical realism (in which case I doubt your side-switch concept can be made to work credibly) or whether you want to use your side-switch concept (in which case you can simply toss historical credibility out the window, which means that you’re free to do whatever you want).

@Pvt.Ryan:

I was aware of the first two. What I mean is have you ever heard of a nation turning on one another in mid battle of in between battles? Like I said think Star Wars

The closest real-life situation I can think of is Operation Catapult.  Britain and France were allies as late as 25 June 1940, the day the armistice between France and Germany went into effect.  Just over a week later, when France and Britain were no longer allies but weren’t at war either, the British fleet attacked the French fleet at Mers el Kebir and Oran, causing many casualties and severely straining relations between the two countries.  The French certainly felt betrayed by their former allies at the time, and to some extent have to this day never forgiven Britain for what it did.

With all due respect to George Lucas, I’ve never heard of a case of an entire country switching sides in mid-battle.  However, it’s possible that there have been cases where mercenary forces who were hired to fight for one country and who eventually found themselves on the losing side of a battle decided that switching sides would be a more profitable and healthy thing to do than to stick with their original employer.

@Pvt.Ryan:

So has anyone on this forum heard of a national bertayal? Where one nation declares war on another when they were allies?

There were a number of countries in WWII who switched sides.  Some examples:

• During the Winter War, the Allies considered helping Finland against Russia.  When Operation Barbarossa started, however, the Finns were co-fighting alongside the Germans, while the Allies sided with Russia.

• Italy switched sides after surrendering to the Allies in 1943.  Germany responded by occupying northern Italy.

• Germany was friendly with China during the early years of Japanese territorial aggression there, but later ended up at war with China as Japan’s Axis partner.

I’ve looked at the order of battle page to which you provided a link.  What it seems to do is focus on the distribution of the individual units which composed the French (and later Vichy) forces in Syria and Lebanon, while overlooking the larger command structure.  The page on the Army of the Levant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_the_Levant) is a bit more helpful in that respect – look at the section titled “Army of the Levant during World War II”.

@knp7765:

Notice that the destroyer scales are almost half that of the battleships and carriers.  Imagine how tiny the destroyers would have to be if they were the same scale as the battleships.

Yes, definitely a case where practicality justifies taking some artistic license.

@Pvt.Ryan:

I hope Yugo has troops. Turkey would be cool as like a extra objective for the axis.

Turkey’s two main values to Germany (if Germany was willing to ignore Turkey’s neutrality and was able to mount an effective armoured attack across its difficult terrain) would have been:

1. To provide the route for delivering the right hook of a pincer attack against Egypt and the Suez Canal, with Rommel’s forces west of Egypt providing the left hook.

2. To allow Germany (once Britain had been knocked out of Egypt) to drive into Iraq and Iran in order to seize their valuable oil fields.

John Keegan explores this scenario in one of the chapters in the book “What If?: The World’s Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been”, edited by Robert Cowley.

If ever the Express game series ever branches out into the realm of hypothetical WWII scenarios, that might be an interesting one to explore.

What would have helped the Axis achieve victory in North Africa?  I’m tempted to answer “More interference from Churchill.”  Wavell and O’Connor scored a huge victory over the Italians with Operation Compass, and Churchill promptly blew it by sending British troops from North Africa to reinforce Greece (where they ended up being driven into the sea by the invading Germans).

Once the map is finished and printed and mounted, it will be great to see a photo of the finished product installed on your wall.

Husky was the invasion of Sicily.  The invasion of Yugoslavia was called Operation 25 (also known in some sources as Operation Retribution or Operation Punishment).

@MEGAEINSTEIN:

For example stuka was the german figther in AA2004 revised and is a tacbomber in AA1940.
stuka was much smaller in AA2004 than it is now because it was artificially made bigger.

The problem isn’t with the current scale of the Stuka, the problem is that the early A&A games incorrectly used the Stuka (a dive bomber in real life) as a fighter piece.  That mistake was eventually fixed when the BF 109 replaced the original Stuka sculpt as the German fighter unit.  That in turn freed the Stuka to be correctly used in its current role as a tac bomber, and to be provided as an upgraded sculpt sized similarly to the other tac bomber pieces.

@kurt3892:

If Germany and Japan were able to take over the world and were the last two standing I wonder if Germany would have eventually  begun a war against Japan for being ‘racially inferior’?

That’s basically how the alternate-history novel “The Ultimate Solution” ends.  “Power is seized by Reinhard Heydrich and the most fanatical “Contraxists”, who are determined to destroy “the degenerate Yellow Race” even at the price of an all-out nuclear war in which Germany itself would be annihilated.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Solution

@The:

Quick Question are Yugoslavia and Turkey neutral and will they be able to move or will they just have initial units and play no further part except as a distraction???

Historically, Turkey was neutral and Yugoslavia was invaded around the same time as Greece was.

@The:

We could make a battle of the Atlantic where the Allied navy fights the German navy while trying to move as many convoys through the Atlantic and destroying German U-Boats

For an Express game, I’d recommend focussing on a specific convoy battle, like Convoy ONS 5 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_ONS_5), in order to keep the size manageable.  The Battle of the Atlantic as a whole lasted from September 1939 to May 1945 (it was the longest campaign of the Second World War), so it would be too big for Express.

@DrLarsen:

1/2400 is simply too big to be compatible with AA pieces unless you plan to replace entire navies and use BIG boards.  1/3000 could maybe work if you just replaced, say cruisers, BB’s & CV’s and painted them AA colors, which I experimented with… but metals mixed with plastics… I’m not so sure.  I even tried some 1/6000, but they went too far the other direction: they were just too small!

Would 1/4800 fill the gap between 1/3000 and 1/6000?  See:
http://www.pfc-cinc.com/page/page/312842.htm