Posts made by CWO Marc

It sounds like this wall map will be quite spectacular.  Looking forward to seeing the finished product.

@Cmdr:

And why isnt Schnapps on the list?  Eh?  Or some nice wine coolers or something sweet and filled with alcohol?

This expanded list raises what could be a fun question: if every player in Global 1940 was required to drink the type of alcohol most typically (or perhaps most stereotypically) associated with the country he or she is playing – with the restriction that the same drink can’t be used for more than one country – what would the list look like?  I guess sake would be the obvious choice for Japan, red wine for France and vodka for Russia, but it gets more complicated for the others.  Beer or white wine – or Jennifer’s Schnapps – for Germany?  Gin or beer for Britain?  If France gets the red wine, what does Italy get?  What about China and the U.S.?  There are certain alcohols of classically American origin, like bourbon, but which one could be considered the signature drink of the U.S.?

@spartan:

I think once I am done with Axis and Allies Express Greece I will do one for the Winter War, Finland vs Russia, thoughts anybody?

That conflict is on a good scale for an Express game.  You might consider adding some special (perhaps optional) topography rules, because the landscape of lakes and forests had a considerable effect on the fighting.  Finland has been described as a country consisting almost entirely of obstacles to military operations, as the Russians discovered to their chagrin.

Nice map and good luck with the project!  I’d suggest putting the capital names in yellow rather than red so they’ll show up better against the colour of their background.

The presence of French Somaliland opens up the interesting possibility of putting some French units there for potential participation in the fighting.

This morning on my way to the office I saw a truck belonging to this company.  My first thought when I noticed their logo was, “I wonder if they had anything to do with the decision to eliminate the plastic industrial complex sculpts from A&A Global 1940?”  All that’s missing for the two broken block pieces to look like classic ICs are the chimneys on the side.

@Stoney229:

I totally agree.  This game deserves the time and careful consideration to be the best game it can possibly be.  If that takes tweaks and revisions for the next three years… it’s worth it.  Nobody is forced to change the way they play, but if ways of improving the game are discovered, there is absolutely no reason not to give them official endorsement - the improvements are, by definition improvements!  and if you don’t think they are improvements, then you don’t have to use them, so what is the problem?

Agreed. In another post somewhere, Krieghund said that one way of looking at Alpha is to think of it as getting a whole new game out of the same purchase, which is a good point.  As this board’s own House Rules section shows, this community has a long tradition of developing improved / alternate / variant rules which add to the fun for people who are interested, and which nobody is obliged to follow if they don’t wish to do so.  I see the Alpha and Beta rules in the same way.  To me, the primary things I paid for when I bought Global were the maps and the plastic playing pieces…neither of which I can manufacture on my own, and both of which can be used in all sorts of ways that are limited only by a player’s imagination.  The rules are the most flexible part of what came in the packages, and it requires no additional purchases to replace them with upgraded or variant ones.  When rules different from the out-of-the-box ones appear (whether official ones from Larry or homebrew ones from this community), I regard them as a bonus, not as evidence that I was short-changed by the ones which came with the original game.

@ABWorsham:

The Ruwanda conflict is considered part of the Second Congo War. The war is also known as The Africa World War because it directly involved eight African nations, as well as about 25 armed groups.

It’s interesting that the amount of armed groups outnumbered the amount of countries by a factor of three to one.

I categorize those kinds of spam emails as “Earn money while in jail” schemes.

@spartan:

Here is the intro I wrote for the rulebook, thoughts anybody?

I like it.  It sets the stage nicely, I think.

A few editorial suggestions:

“It is fall of 1940 and the Axis war machine is driving across Europe, yet to see defeat.”

Technically, the Axis forces weren’t driving anywhere in Europe in the fall of 1940.  Hitler was stuck at the English Channel and was losing the Battle of Britain.  Italy wasn’t moving either.  It would be better to refer to the Axis war machine having overrun most of Europe, or having made itself the master of Continental Europe.

“France, Poland, Norway, and Denmark have all fallen under German and Italian control.”

It would be better to just say German control.  Italy had only taken a small bite out of southern France, and to my knowledge it had no troops whatsoever in Poland, Norway, and Denmark.

“where Italy had little to its name”

’ whereas ’

“the Balkan’s Campaign had begun.”

’ Balkans ’

@MrMalachiCrunch:

Churchill was a heavy drinker, I would wager he was clinically an alcoholic.

Churchill was quite proud of the fact that he had consumed a pint of champagne every day of his adult life, something he mentioned to the members of his entourage during a train trip in early August 1941.

I’ve read somewhere that, during WWII, members of the British high command who attended meetings at the White House were horrified to see Roosevelt conjure up a glass of Scotch and soda to accompany the weighty strategic debates in which he was engaged.  So I guess it’s the same principle, though without the fun element of moving neat little plastic sculpts around on an A&A game board.

@spartan:

With the map being the way it is it would be hard to do this as an economy based game

Agreed.  The historical Battle of Greece lasted just a few weeks, so it would be unrealistic to have income-collection and unit-building phases.

It occurs to me that there might be two ways of handling the presence of Crete.  One way would be to restrict the game just to the mainland phase of the Battle of Greece.  The other would be to include the Battle of Crete, perhaps using special paratrooper rules and maybe also allowing for the possibility of an amphibious landing.  The second approach sounds more interesting.  At any rate, the Battle of Greece ended with an evacuation by sea of British forces from Greece, which can be seen as an amphibious landing in reverse.  Maybe one of the rules could be that, if the British and Greek forces fail in their primary objective of preventing the German and Italian conquest of Greece (as will probably be the case if the rules depict the situation realistically), the secondary objective on the British-Greek side would be to hold back the enemy long enough to permit the Commonwealth forces to evacuate in large numbers.  This would allow the incorporation into the mini-game of the concept of having different victory conditions, like in the full-scale A&A games.

The size is good for the kind of “mini” A&A game being considered: 16 territories (I’m including the Aegean Islands, but excluding neutral Turkey) and 20 sea zones.  Enough space for decent maneuvering, while at the same time compact enough to keep things simple and short, plus ample opportunity for both land and naval actions (with air support in both areas).

A couple of typos: “Centreal” rather than Central Greece, and “Agean” rather than Aegean.  And I think the Albanian capital is supposed to be spelled Tirana.

In terms of the rules, a good approach might be to have four nations: the Greeks and the British on one side, and the Germans and Italians on the other.  That way, the basic two-player game could potentially be stretched into a three-player or four-player one which could perhaps serve as a miniature introduction (for new players) to what a multi-player game like Global 1940 is like.  Four is a manageable number at this scale.  The Bulgarians participated in the Battle of Greece, but adding them would complicate matters unnecessarily, as would splitting the Commonwealth forces into U.K. and ANZAC components.

Anyway, looks good so far, and the revised map improves nicely on the first version.

I’ll have a closer look later today – duty calls.

I’ve only had time for a quick look at the map, but here are a couple of suggestions:

• There are two areas labeled “S. Pelopennese”  The northern one should be “N.”

• The black typefont on the yellow part of the map looks fine, but I’d advise using white or yellow type on the dark-coloured territoires to increase legibility.

In the classics department, the Tom Ewell / Marilyn Monroe comedy The Seven Year Itch still holds up pretty well after 56 years.  Among my favourite lines is the one in which Mr. Sherman indignantly tells his secretary that he’s perfectly capable of fixing his own breakfast while his wife is away on holiday, and then adds, “As a matter fact, this morning I had a peanut butter sandwich and two whiskey sours.”

@reloader-1:

I am a piece junkie, and I admit it - I have probably 10,000 Axis & Allies pieces in total. I have every color version that has come out, including lime green UK pieces.

Ah, good – a fellow A&A sculpt addict.  Excellent.

@Bob_A_Mickelson:

I would love to have pro allied, pro axis, strict neutral roundels that I could use in a special diplomatic phase in which countries could attempt to change the diplomatic stance of a country.

I used a quick, easy and inexpensive method to make myself a bunch of custom roundels along these lines, using the grey mini poker chips that come with A&A games.  (I have large numbers of these from the A&A games I’ve bought over the years.)  Plain grey chips serve as strict neutral roundels.  I created four additional categories (pro-Axis neutral, full-Axis minor country, full-Allied minor country, and pro-Allied neutral) by applying two colours and two sizes of round Avery sticky labels to other grey mini poker chips.

The two colours I used are black and white.  I can’t recall offhand the precise measurements of the two sizes I used, but the small ones fit exactly into the round depresssion in the middle of the chips, and the big ones are a bit smaller than the full diameter of the chips.  The coding system I used is: small black sticker = pro-Axis neutral, large black sticker = full-Axis minor country, large white sticker = full-Allied minor country, and small white sticker = pro-Allied neutral.  Each custom roundel is two-sided: one type has the small black and the large black stickers on opposite sides, while the other type does the same things with the white stickers.  That way, I didn’t have to make as many custom roundels as would have been necessary if I’d kept them one-sided.

@crusaderiv:

One day, someone must make a movie about the battle of Kursk.

Or even better, an A&A game about it.

New link added:

Maddog77’s Bunker and Global Table
      http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=22000.0