Posts made by CWO Marc

@Pvt.Ryan:

Ummm Im gonna drop the Chinese ones to take up some of these. I call Operation Market Garden.

You and Spartan might want to team up to develop some special Express paratrooper rules.  Market Garden (which you’re doing) and the invasion of Crete (part of the Greece game Spartan is doing) were both large-scale paratrooper operations, so there ought to be some transferable concepts between them.

Also, you’ll find the movie to which I provided a link (A Bridge Too Far) a great source of inspiration when you’re designing the Market-Garden game.  As I recall, there’s even a scene in which General Horrocks stands in front of a huge wall map to explain the plan to his ground force commanders.

@Pvt.Ryan:

CWO i think you deserve a full mention and credit in the creators of this game. Without you half of this wouldn’t have been possible. Well it would but it wouldn’t have been as good.

My pleasure.  Looking forward to seeing the games you guys are designing.

An idea occured to me in connection with Guam and Corrigedor and other places like that which were fought over twice (sometimes several years apart).  It might be possible to use them for paired games that would use the same map (a part of the game design process that requires a lot of work) for two different scenarios.  Typically this could be a “capture / recapture” pairing.  The Pacific theatre has lots of candidates for that type of paired games, but the concept is also usable in the European / Mediterranean theatre.  North Africa was one place where the front shifted back and forth several times by a dramatic amount.  Russia was another, with some towns being fought over so many times that they ended up utterly demolished by the war’s end.

@Sun_Tzu:

I’m already using Wake Island and Guam in my Japanese Empire conquest one

Out of curiosity, is the Guam battle you’re using the original Japanese conquest or the one I posted in which the Americans recaptured the island in 1944?

@Sun_Tzu:

Operation Barbarossa sounds fun to me (German invasion of Russia on western border)

Yes, but I wonder if the scale might be a teensy-weensy too big for an express game.

Here are some more ideas, in no particular order.  Some are well-known operations, others less so.

The Dieppe Raid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieppe_Raid

Tha First Arakan Campaign
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arakan_Campaign_1942–1943

The Chindit Expeditions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chindit

The Caucasus Campaign (the parallel operation to the Stalingrad Campaign)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Blue#Army_Group_A_action_-_Caucasus_campaign

The Crimean Campaign and the Siege of Sevastopol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sevastopol

Anvil-Dragoon (the invasion of Southern France soon after D-Day)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dragoon

Operation Husky (The invasion of Sicily)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Husky

The Battle of Kohima ("the “Stalingrad of the East”)
and
The Battle of Imphal (“the biggest Japanese defeat of the war on land”)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kohima
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Imphal

The Battle of Wake Island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wake_Island

The Battle of Guam (1944)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Guam_(1944)

The First Battle of Corregidor
and
The Second Battle of Corregidor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Corregidor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Corregidor_(1945)

The Invasion of Yugoslavia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Yugoslavia

Operation Market-Garden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Market_Garden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bridge_Too_Far_(film)

The Indian Ocean Raid (1942)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_Raid

The Battle of Budapest (“The Stalingrad of the Waffen SS”)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Budapest

The Invasion of Hong Kong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hong_Kong

@spartan:

So far current map claims are:

East Africa seems to be missing from the list.

A couple of ideas for people who’d like to see the Russians lock horns with the Japanese:

1. The Soviet–Japanese Border Wars of 1938 and 1939, consisting of:

a) The Changkufeng Incident
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Khasan

b) The Battles of Khalkhin Gol
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khalkhin_Gol

(Note in that last one the presence of an obscure Russian general named Georgy Zhukov…)

2. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria

I just saw the new Axis and Allies Express Series thread.  It’s a good central location so I’m re-posting here my Operation Exporter suggestion from the other thread:

Here’s an operation that somebody might want to use for an Express game: the Syria-Lebanon campaign (also known as Operation Exporter), which was the Allied invasion of Vichy French-controlled Syria and Lebanon, in June-July 1941.  The main forces were the British (plus some Commonwealth units) and the Free French on one side, versus Vichy France and Germany on the other:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria-Lebanon_campaign

I also thought of another operation that might be good for a very small-scale amphibious assault game: the Japanese occupation of the Andaman Islands in 1942:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_occupation_of_the_Andaman_Islands

I’m not planning to design any Express games, so anybody who wants to tackle these scenarios is welcome to claim them.  If I think of any other obscure battles that might be usable for Express, I’ll post them here.

Here’s an operation that somebody might want to use for an Express game: the Syria-Lebanon campaign (also known as Operation Exporter), which was the Allied invasion of Vichy French-controlled Syria and Lebanon, in June-July 1941.  The main forces were the British (plus some Commonwealth units) and the Free French on one side, versus Vichy France and Germany on the other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria-Lebanon_campaign

It’s funny how much these negotiations sound like the line in Frank Capra’s first Why We Fight movie that talks about the three Axis nations at the Tripartite Pact meeting being busy “carving up the world…staking their claims”.  :lol:

@Pvt.Ryan:

Wow! Now I know how im goibg to spend my free time. I’d love to make one too. Any suggestions? If someone could help me to decide what tools to do it with that would be a big help. I’m thinking about a China campaign. I love land oriented battles.

Try this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Regiments_Offensive

And by the way, if you want to use some home-made Communist Chinese roundels for a game based on the Hundred Regiments Offensive, I posted a design for one in Reply # 7 of this thread:

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=20658.0

Theoretical question: if all of these express game were put together and played simultaneously, would the resulting game be called A&A Global Express?  :-)

@Axisplaya:

@Idi:

Painted or Unpainted units all die the same way. Just think of all the gaming experience you would benefit from if…… You used the hundreds of hours it takes paint each one of those tiny pieces to try implementing and practicing a winning strategy.

Nope ! Units that you spent time painting are actually more resistant. When you throw dices to defend them or to attack with them, dices tend to get better results than with unpainted OOB units.  It is due to the special energy you impregnate your units with while painting them (love ?).   This has been proved scientifically.

This reminds me of a conversation in the movie Ice Station Zebra:

David Jones: Ah, then you haven’t been on the ice before either.

Capt. Leslie Anders: No, Sir. A bullet goes just as fast up here as it does down there.

David Jones: Not quite. An insignificant difference, perhaps, but I think you’ll find the operational characteristics of the M-16 indicate that a bullet will decelerate as much as 40 feet per second per second faster in these climate conditions. It’s denser air, you know.

@reloader-1:

Spartan,
I worked on the map for a bit:

Nice!

Looks fantastic!  Great work!

New link added:

Nimitz1’s Wall-Mounted Global Map
          (Pictures located in the Global Map Availability for Mounting at Home thread)
          http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=22014.15

If it’s easier, an alternative would be to change the colour of Turkey and Albania to something lighter, and to make the colour of the sea zone separation lines white rather than black.

@spartan:

Here is the final copy of the map, hopfully the rules come out soon!  :-D

Maybe it’s just my monitor contrast settings, but Albania and Turkey are very difficult to distinguish from the sea zones because they’re all in very similar dark colours.  Perhaps the sea zones could be changed to a medium or pale blue?  This would also help to see the black dividing lines between the sea zones, which are hard to see in the northern part of the map.

You’re welcome.  Note that, over the years, the identification which has appeared in the various A&A rulebooks has changed for some of the pieces, even when the sculpts themselves have remained identical.  For instance (if i remember correctly) the British bomber was incorrectly identified as a Lancaster in the early A&A games.  One point to watch for in the Global 1940 rulebook is the Russian fighter, which is listed as being a MiG.  In the earlier games it was identified as a Yak.  I checked a reference book I have on WWII aircraft, and based on the position of the canopy on the sculpt it actually does look more like a Yak, so I think the new MiG designation is wrong.

@brettstarr4:

I am thinking about painting my pieces now too.  Does anyone have a list of what the piece are modeled after?  Like, the US tank is a Bradley, right?  If I find pictures of the real thing online I can paint my pieces more accurately.  Thanks

The last two pages of the Europe 1940 rule book has an identification chart for all the pieces.

And you can also consult this thread:

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=21158.0