Posts made by CWO Marc

This map might suit your needs:
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=19489.0

@ABWorsham:

What match ups are missing from this list?

A duel between the German Maus and the U.S. T28 (also known as the T95 Gun Motor Carriage) would have been an interesting Battle of the Superheavy Prototypes.

@Croesus:

British Colonies worked closely with the UK during WWII
As an NO:
5 IPCs each turn that 7 IPCs or more are spent at the Canadian IC (Units are teal, see historicalboardgaming.com for details) AND 4 IPCs are spent at the South African IC (Land and Fighter Units are grey-blue, representing UK South African forces)

[…]

Most comments are appreciated, thanks

Just a small point on terminology.  I cringe at seeing Canada in 1940 described as a “colony” of Great Britain.  Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand were self-governing Dominions since the Statute of Westminster was adopted in the 1930s, and Canada already had nationhood since the date of Confederation (1867).

@mrninjaz:

One more question for you folks that have A&A40, is there a difference in the scale of the pieces from the older games, or are they the same?

Mostly the same.  The British and German battleships are a bit larger than the earliest version of those pieces.  And there’s also the special case of the Stuka dive bomber, which was used (in a smaller version) in the earliest games as the German fighter piece, before the current fighter piece was introduced.  The Europe 1940 Stuka, which is correctly used as a tac bomber, is bigger than the one which was previously incorrectly used as a fighter.

@Variable:

So, this is the result of an estimated 80 hours worth of squinting, backache, trips to the craft store, and research on the interwebs that stretched over nearly 2.5 months. Enjoy.

My sympathies on the wear and tear this caused to your eyes and back, and my compliments on the good-looking results.

Speer was an engineer and was used to analyzing problems in a rigorous way.  He was, I think, the only defendant at the Nuremberg trial to figure out that he would probably get more lenient treatment from the court if he took some responsibility for his actions than if he just denied them or if he just said that he was following orders (which is what the other defendants did).  He may have estimated that his actions were different enough from the worst crimes in the indictments, in both nature and degree, that he stood a chance of getting away with a stiff prison sentence rather than a death sentence if he followed this strategy.

Speer’s memoirs and inteviews after the war do provide valuable information on what it was like to be “Inside the Third Reich” (as his book was titled), but they had a self-serving element too.  He understandably wanted to present himself in as favourable a light as possible, so he was selective in his recollection and presentation of facts.  In a documentary on the making of the TV series The World at War, series producer Jeremy Issacs says that the editors wanted to discreetly make the point that Speer was lying in one of his interview segments.  In this segment, Speer says that he had no idea that the Jews were being rounded up and exterminated, and that if he’d heard anything along those lines he would have immediately gone to Hitler or Himmler and asked for an explanation.  The series editors sandwiched this segment – in which a senior member of the Nazi government, and a personal friend of Hitler denies any knowledge of the Holocaust – between two other segments in which two very ordinary German citizens (one was a housewife) talk about hearing rumours and/or convincing statements during the war that the Jews were being systematically murdered by the Nazi regime.

@Slacker:

Yeah I’ve thought about that. Any idea where I could get a big enough piece that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg?

To give you an idea of the possible cost, the 48" x 96" x 1/16" sheet of acrylic I got to cover my table (not just the map) cost me about $100 Canadian (including the charge to cut it to the right size from the original stock), plus taxes and delivery fees.  I ordered it from a local plastics company.  But there are probably cheaper methods.

@221B:

Even under ideal circumstances of , say July 1940, its a difficult stretch to imagine a successful Axis invasion across the narrow and nearby English Channel, let alone vast stretches of distant ocean.

Yes, and a point which underlines this is the fact that it took Britain and the United States – two countries with long naval traditions, and who were able to draw on the vast resources of U.S. industry --over two years to plan, build up for, and execute the D-Day cross-Channel invasion.  Germany didn’t have resources on that scale to draw upon (I think for example that the Sealion plans required it to scrounge for canal and river barges for use as improvised landing craft), and Germany is traditionally a land power rather than a sea power.  German planners tended to regard the Sealion operation as just a large-scale version of a river crossing, a type of operation at which the German Army was skilled, but that was a simplistic view on their part.

On a related point, one of the reasons for which Germany remained convinced that the Allies would invade France via the Pas-de-Calais (the shortest and most obvious route across the Channel) is that it didn’t fully grasp that two major sea powers like Britain and the U.S. might have the skill and the capabilities to mount the invasion across the widest part of the Channel, something which Germany would not have been able to do in a Sealion-type invasion.

@mrninjaz:

I’m getting ready to build my gaming table, and want the board to fit nice and snug :)

Looking forward to seeing pictures of it when it’s completed.

Compared with the Axis world conquest plans presented in “Prelude to War,” the first of Frank Capra’s “Why We Fight” films, the Life Magazine plans look almost realistic.  You can watch that segment of “Prelude to War” from 2:00 to 4:50 minutes on this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umiFnWGzWls&feature=fvsr

I just love the big arrows showing North America being invaded via Greenland, the Amazon jungle, Alaska and French Polynesia.  Very practical indeed.  I think perhaps Capra forgot that he wasn’t playing a board game.

New link added:

13thguardsriflediv’s Global Table:
        http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=21913.0

@chagadiel:

i am happy and there is no mistaking those italian ships. i dont know what country used the deck design i got from a ghq painted set of ships but i thought that would good forthe italians

Nice work!  It must take a lot of squinting to paint sculpts which are that small…or do you use some sort of magnifying glass?

The diagonal recognition stripes on the decks which you mention were indeed used by the Italian Navy.  I’m not aware of any other country using them.

By the way, the shot of the cat sleeping in the box is a great picture!

@FieldMarshalGames:

Before this I thought it was just a “Tough old Gut”

I deduce from this that you (like me) have watched the classic TV series “The World at War.”

@Daedelus:

12. Thou shalt bring beer.

13. Thou shalt keep thy beer well away from the game board, lest thou should sully it with a spill.

@Raeder:

and also that muzzle break or whatever it’s called.

Close…it’s called a muzzle brake.  It taps propellant gasses when the gun is fired and directs them backwards to reduce the amount of recoil which is produced.

@FieldMarshalGames:

Bismarck escorted by Graf Spee

Oooh, nice!

It’s a great idea, Jeremy, though unfortunately I won’t be able to attend because Montreal isn’t (yet?) part of the Greater Toronto Area.

When FMG releases its combat unit pieces (which, if I’m not mistaken, will include some sort of Leader unit), I suppose a house rule could be devised saying that you can only talk to the players on your side when all your Leader pieces are in the same territory – for instance, the way Roosevelt, Churchill and de Gaulle met at Casablanca after the Allied invasion of French Morocco, or the way Hitler, Ciano and Kurusu signed the Tripartite Pact in Berlin.  There could also be a rule saying that you can only talk to the players on the enemy side when all your Leader pieces are in the same territory – an early example of which in the game would be the French surrender in June 1940.    :-D

Looks good!  Much appreciated.

Another point to keep in mind is that, in historical reality, most French territories went along with Vichy control after France fell, with only a small number going over to the Free French side in the first few months.  Having most of them switch to the FF side is perfectly fine as an alternate-history scenario, and sounds like it would be a fun scenario to play, as long as everyone playing the game is clear about the fact that it’s an alternate version of the war.