Posts made by CWO Marc

I assume from the Europe map that you’re following the same approach as the original versions of A&A Europe and A&A Pacific, which is for the maps to show only what’s needed to fight the two regional conflicts, without the two maps being connectable to create a global map?

@mojo33:

I keep them in a fishing tackle box.

Same here, but I use multiple tackle boxes because I have tons of sculpts from the various games (some in multiple copies) organized by country.  The tackle boxes I use have little plastic dividers which you can insert to create compartments of variable sizes, which is very convenient.

From what I can make out of the pictures which have been posted, the Russian pieces in the new Europe game are the same dark purple as they’ve been in the last few releases.  So the Milton Bradley game’s Russian infantry pieces, which are dark chocolate brown, would be closer to the Italian pieces, which are a medium shade of brown.

@Seven_Patch:

Ah okay, my mistake.  What is the size of the MB version?

I’ll measure my MB board this evening (if someone else can’t provide the answer before then), but I remember that the box is definitely on the large size compared to most A&A game boxes.  The MB box is closer in size (though not identical) to the Anniversary box than to anything else.  One complicating factor, however, is that the Global map consists of 4 three-panel folding boards, whereas the Anniversary map consists of three solid (non-folding) boards – so the smaller size of the Global boxes doesn’t reflect the fact that their maps add up to something larger than Anniversary.  I think the MB map also consisted of multiple solid boards, but I’m not certain.

To clarify:

I mentioned the Milton Bradley edition in response to the post which said “compare AA50 to the first Axis & Allies from the 80’s….same kind of jump from AA50 to AAGlobal…”  My point about this was that the board size jump from AA50 to Global should be equated to the board size jump from earlier games (like Revised) to AA50, but probably not to the board size jump from the Milton Bradley edition because the MB edition used a larger board than Revised.

I also mentioned Global, AA50 and AA1942, but my point about those three games was that they are basically three different-sized boards which use a very similar “Google Earth” art style to depict the world.

As I recall, the 1986 Milton Bradley A&A game came in a larger box and had a larger board than the size used in later A&A releases.

It’ll be interesting to compare the Global, the Anniversary and the Spring 1942 boards, which use the same general map / art style in three different sizes (large, medium and small) and at three different levels of detail.  Since Anniversary came out first, I guess Spring 1942 can be considered a simplified and reduced-scale version of the Anniversary map, and Global an expanded version of the Anniversary map.

@shintokamikaze:

whats the mistake???  my board look fine

The correct spelling is Palau, not Paulau.

@Dylan:

1. Greeco-Persian Wars (and Persian expansion)
2. Punic Wars
3. Sacking of Western Rome
4. All the Crusades
5. Thirty Years War
6. All the Napoleonic Wars
7. World War I
8. World War II
9. Cold War

Whats are key things in between these?

And I want important things like not the Muslim pirates invasion of Rome or Viking conquests in the Angola-Sax England and Western Europe.

I think your best single source for choosing the wars in which you’d be interested would be this book:

The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History: From 3500 BC to the Present 
R. Ernest Dupuy (Author), Trevor N. Dupuy (Author)

I have a copy of an older edition and I find it to be an extremely valuable reference source.  It’s basically a chronological list of every war in history.

@chompers:

My buddy managed to pick up his reserved copy from a clueless store clerk at the mall today.

The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.

You can see them in the link I posted yesterday:

http://boardgamegeek.com/image/348567/risk-revised-edition?size=large

When the order form refers to “15 Grey Cities” it means the grey pieces which I suggested would make good industrial complexes.

When the order form refers to colour-coded “Capitals” it means the round pieces with a star in the middle.

The revised edition of Risk has some nice grey plastic pieces that could serve as large industrial complexes:

http://boardgamegeek.com/image/348567/risk-revised-edition?size=large

http://boardgamegeek.com/image/390518/risk-revised-edition?size=large

@Table:

Also looking into a vinyl world map 36" x 72" and was wondering if you think there would be any interest?

It would depend on what the map showed.  One variable would be the breakdown of the territories on the map: would it show the world as it is now or as it was in a particular past year (like for example 1939)?  The other variable would be the proportions of the spaces.  The world as it actually exists isn’t well proportioned for wargaming purposes: Europe is too small and the Pacific is too big, which is why the A&A games distort size and shape in order to improve playability.

My guess is that there wouldn’t be much of a wargaming market for a map showing today’s national borders and using accurate proportions – especially since those kinds of current maps can already be purchased easily.  A big vinyl wargaming-oriented map showing national borders as they existed in the past, and proportioned to allow easy piece placements where they wouldl be most needed, would probably interest a lot of A&A gamers.  (I think that the old Supremacy game from the 1980s had, as one of its optional accessories, a giant vinyl map version of the basic global game board.)

@ozimek1:

Nice idea. Don’t you think Mexico should border Central US?

Actually, I’ve just made a different variant.  Unlike the last version, this one uses only direct connections, without the need for some board-to-board crossovers to take two moves.

The positioning of Mexico was a problem that kept bothering me because, at first glance, it looks like the two halves of the country can simply click together because they’re the same size.  Then I compared the Global 1940 map to the Anniversary Edition map and I realized that, in Global, a vertical strip is missing from the middle of North America (which helps to explain why British Columbia and Ontario practically touch each other).  So the fact that the two halves of Mexico look as if they are connectable is just an illusion.  That’s why, in the new variant I made, I decided to extend the border of SZ 10 all the way to the land spur at the bottom left of Southeast Mexico: because there’s a missing strip of land between the two boards.  It’s a better match with the official rules too.

Comparing Global with the Anniversary map also highlighted for me just how big the difference is in the scales between the two halves of North America in Global.  Another thing I found surprising when I compared the maps was that the Global rules say that SZ 51 is adjacent to SZ 64, 65, and 66.  SZ 51 only takes up about 20% of the height of the map, while SZ 64, 65 and 66 add up to about 45% of the height of the map, so the Global rules connect two boards in a way that implies a huge height difference between the two sides.  In the new variant I made, I disconnected SZ 51 from SZ 64, so that the height difference wouldn’t be quite so extreme.

One of the themes Hitler used as part of his political discourse was that Germany had been humiliated by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, and that this humiliation by the Western Allies had to be avenged.  (Part of this theme was a continuation of the old dispute between France and Germany over the possession of Alsace-Lorraine, a dispute which went back to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871). Having secured Germany’s eastern flank in 1939 with the conquest of Poland and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Hitler was in the perfect position to use the bulk of his forces for an attack against France in 1940.  It’s unlikely he would have missed this opportunity to achieve the victory against France which had eluded Germany during the First World War.  We can see evidence of Hitler’s desire to humiliate France from the fact that he arranged for the June 1940 armistice to be signed at Compiegne, in the same railroad car used by Marshall Foch to sign the armistice to which Germany had agreed in 1918, and from the fact that the German Army’s triumphal parade through Paris in 1940 followed the same route as the French Army’s victory parade at the end of the First World War.

@Dylan:

Actually to be honest I should be a bit more specific, what were some wars fought in these era?

Some possibilities:

The Hundred Years’ War (1337 to 1453), including the  Battle of Agincourt (25 October 1415)

The Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598)

The English Civil War (1642–1651)

Some major battles at sea:

The Battle of Lepanto (7 October 1571)

Britain versus the Spanish Armada (1588)

Just for the fun of it, here’s one possibility for an alternate way to plot the connections between the two sides of the board.  It’s a way of resolving the difference in the number of sea zones between the two sides, while keeping the land borders properly lined up.  It doesn’t completely follow the official rules, but it might be of interest to people who devise variant rules for themselves.  Moving from board to board while staying inside the black lines would constitute a single move, but crossing a black line would count as two moves.

@SAS:

SZ10 does not border Southern Mexico and Central America on the Europe map.  It does not border anything at all on the Europe map which is why it isn’t mentioned in the ruling quoted.  It only borders the Western US and Mexico territories.
I’ve attached a nice image someone made from the edges of the Pacific and Europe maps based on the connectivity rules.

Yes, on the connectivity map (which uses size distortions to make the connections line up) the corner separating SZ 10 from SZ 11 touches the border line between Southeast Mexico and Central America, so this prevents contact between SZ 64 and SZ 10.  My concern is with the unmodified map which Djensen posted.  When you put the two halves of Mexico side by side and try to make them fit together, you end up with a misalignment one way or the other:

• If you line up the two halves of Mexico’s northern border, SZ 10 drops low enough that you can get to it from SZ 64.

• If you line up the lower right end of SZ 10 with the westernmost point of Southeast Mexico at the edge of the map, SZ 10 is indeed blocked off from SZ 64, but the two halves of Mexico’s northern border no longer line up.

• Making the lower right end of SZ 10 touch the border line between Southeast Mexico and Central America (as it does in the connectivity map) is only possible with the real maps by putting the left board over the right one rather than side by side.

Anyway, I’ll probably just do as other people are planning, which is to use arrows of some sort to indicate what connects to what, and simply ignore the fact that the geography of the two halves of the map doesn’t match very well.

“Southeastern Mexico is adjacent to Mexico.
SZ 11 adjacent to SZ 64”

If the right edge of Southeast Mexico in the AA Pacific map connects to the left edge of Mexico in the AA Europe map, and SZ 64 connects to SZ 11, then SZ 10 (which is above SZ 11 and below Mexico) doesn’t seem to be covered in the rules for an East-West crossover.  The lower right edge of SZ 10 seems to line up with the water to the west of Southern Mexico and Central America, which is the upper left part of SZ 64.  So this suggests that you can go directly from SZ 64 to SZ 10.  Is this correct?

@ruwenzori:

I have a big folding table, and I think I’ll buy another one and just put them together…I still have to figure out someway to make it level…any ideas??

My table arrangement is described in replies #33 and #26 of this thread: http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=19596.30

It includes the details of how I made things level both below the map (using three canvases mounted on balsa wood frames) and above it (with a large sheet of acrylic).

The canvases were sold already mounted, so all I had to do was choose the ones that were the right size, take them home, put them on the row of tables and cover them with black cloth.  An important point was to pick canvases that were not the same width as the individual folding tables, so that the joints of the assembled canvases did not end up on top of the joints of the assembled tables.  Otherwise, the slight height differences between the tables would simply have created the same height difference in the canvases.  Having the joints fall at different places created a fairly smooth surface, which became even smoother (and looked nicer) once the cloth was added on top.

Unless plate tectonics work a lot faster than I assume they do, Greenland wasn’t connected to Canada in the real world the last time I checked a map.