Posts made by CWO Marc

@maverick_76:

How much was the piece of acrylic? I’m interested in getting it myself (for the ridges of course  :-D) and have no idea what something like that costs.

The sheet of plastic that I bought is a material called non-glare Acrylite P-99, originally sized by the manufacturer at 48" x 96" x 1/16" thickness.  The local plastics company from which I bought it cut the sheet to the size I wanted, which is 36" x 96", so they just had to cut a slice from the width because the length was already correct.  (Note that this is bigger than is needed for the A&A Global 1940 map, but my wargaming table is larger than the A&A game requires).  They then shipped it to me by delivery truck, rolled up into a tube about two feet in diameter as I recall (the rolling made possible by the fact that the plastic was just 1/16" thick).  The costs (in Canadian dollars) were $60 for the plastic itself, plus $10 for the cutting, plus $30 for delivery, plus another $15 or so for sales tax.

My wargaming table sounds from its large size as if it’s unwieldy and expensive, but it’s actually something I put together fairly cheaply: it consists of four square card tables (the kind with folding legs) placed end-to-end.  If ever it needed to be put away, I could just fold the legs of the four tables and store them in a closet, but I leave it set up permanently and I use the space under it as storage space for my A&A sculpts.  I keep the sculpts sorted in plastic tackle boxes, which are slotted into a row of inexpensive wooden shelving units (the kind that you purchase flat and assemble at home with metal key) under the table.

I’ve got an old picture of the table posted in Reply #91 of this thread, which shows the configuration I used to have:

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=15303.90

In its original configuration, the setup consisted of just the four folding tables.  I later decided that I didn’t like the uneven surface created by the joints between the tables, and that I wanted a bit more height, so I added a lightweight raised 36" x 96" slab to the middle of the table.  I made it out of three large canvases (painting canvases stretched over light balsa-wood frames) purchased at an art supply store, covered with a large sheet of inexpensive black cloth that I got at a fabric store for a few bucks.  The tables are black too, so it all blends together.  The result is a raised central section where the Global map will go (and which will be covered with the plastic sheet), plus a low-level “wing table” on each side of the central slab on which to put game equipment, note paper and so forth.

@maverick_76:

To me the map looks super, I can’t wait to just set it all up and then drool (hopefully not on it) for like the next 30 minutes.

One way to protect the map from drool would be to cover it.  Several months ago, in anticipation of the Europe 1940 game’s release, I bought a large sheet of clear acrylic (custom-cut to the size I wanted) which I’ll be placing over the complete global map.  This is partly intended to protect the map from scratches and spills and other mishaps (including drool), but it’s also meant to ensure that I’ll have a completely flat surface on which to put the roundels and the sculpts.  Although the Pacific 1940 map looks great, I find it annoying that the surface is uneven due to the joint between the two panels and the creases along which each panel folds.

A fringe benefit is that the plastic sheet will enable me to correct the roundels which are printed on the board.  I don’t like some of the printed roundels because they’re not historically accurate (like the Italian one), and I dislike the fact that some of the printed roundels don’t accurately represent which power actually had jurisdiction over certain territories (like the Solomons, which were a British protectorate, not an Australian or New Zealand one).  I’ve made myself a boxful of custom roundels which are to my liking (laser-printing them on sticky-label paper and applying them to solid white bingo chips), and I’ll place them on the map’s printed roundels before covering the map with the acrylic sheet.  The roundels used in the course of a game will then get placed over the plastic sheet, where they won’t disturb the underlying layer of baseline roundels.

Perhaps Crete is considered a separate territory from Greece on the map because the German conquest of Crete (spearheaded by a large paratroop landing) took place a month after the invasion of mainland Greece.

@Tralis:

At least in Japan’s case, world conquest sort of seemed like the plan you and your buddy always talk about only when intoxicated. We all know that sort of plan, like “We should totally start a store that sells X”.

In their book “Victory at Sea: World War II in the Pacific,” James Dunnigan and Albert Nofi mention that because the Japanese Army had so many men and resources committed to its ongoing war in China, the expansionist offensives launched by Japan in the Pacific and Southeast Asia in 1941 and 1942 were shoestring operations for which it had to make do with the comparatively small forces it was able to scrape together for those campaigns.  And in 1944 and 1945, when Japan was in desperate need to shore up its positions in the Pacific and South-East Asia in the face of the advancing Americans, it had to draw more and more troops from its Kwangtung Army in China to do so.  This in turn led to a considerable weakening of Japan’s position in China, and partly explains the quick Russian gains in Manchuria once the Soviet Union declared war on Japan in August 1945.  So it can be argued that, since it was already hard enough for Japan to hold the line in China while simultaneously fulfilling its territorial ambitions in the Pacific and South-East Asia, it’s difficult to see how it would have had the resources to succeed in an attempt at world conquest.  It’s possible that some elements of the Japanese military may have dreamed of something along those lines, but as a practical ambition it would hardly have been realistic.

@Stockus13:

Hmm, thats odd.
I did that and the pictures of the map were unchanged. I will try again.

The revised pictures aren’t larger, but they are sharper.  Look closely at the country names, for instance – they’re all legible now, whereas they weren’t previously.

@BasileII:

The fact that UK and USA were allied with USSR (which wasn’t at all a democracy…) is against this theory, plus the fact that nor UK nor USA were fighting for the liberty of Africa or Asia. In fact, before the war broke out, nobody would have believed that USA, UK and USSR woul become allies.

This is one of the ironies which Richard Overy points out in his book Why the Allies Won: the fact that the victory of the democratic Allied nations like Britain and the United States over Nazi Germany owes much to Germany’s defeat on land on the Eastern Front by Communist Russia.  He argues that the US, the UK and the USSR all saw their wartime partnership as a temporary confluence of interests (the shared need to destroy Hitler), and that it didn’t last much longer than what was necessary to do the job.

This Wikipedia article shows up quite a way down the results page when you do a search for Axis and Allies, so it was a while before I noticed it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Axis_%26_Allies_Games .  It has a nice (though at the moment not fully up to date or complete) table of the historical basis of the Axis & Allies sculpts.

@djensen:

You are correct. It is everybody except me. I’ve fixed it.

The fixed-up main maps are now much clearer, thanks.  Previously I had trouble making out some of the country names, but now I can even see some of the finer details like the “Pro-Axis” designations.  Much appreciated!

@SgtBlitz:

Germany: 7895432757237950324 units
Russia:  732089175481703748093 units
Everything else:  not important

As Stalin once said, “Quantity has a quality all of its own.”

@Razor:

makes me remember the good old days when the first A&A Europe was released, with 24 new and uniqe sculpts.

Though keep in mind that there were shared pieces of equipment in that game, like the American destroyer, submarine, transport and artillery piece, which the British and the Russians used too.

@UN:

Just because its government was pro-Axis does not mean the majority of the Spanish people were.

And although the Spanish government’s sympathies were pro-Axis, those sympathies didn’t translate into abandoning its neutrality on the official level.  An example of this policy / attitude / strategy is Franco’s handling of the Operation Felix proposal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Felix).

@reloader-1:

Keep in mind the only unique Italian sculpt was the tank. All others were German in AA50 as well.

Other than the Italian infantry and tanks, the Italian pieces were a mixture of German and Japanese sculpts.  If I recall correctly, the naval pieces were all German, the artillery pieces were Japanese, and the planes were half and half.

@SAS:

The French units are rocking the sweet trenchcoats.

And there’s a ridge along the top of their helmets, so they’re modeled on the French Adrian helmet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_helmet).

It would be nice to have some closer / clearer shots of the map so that all the territory names can be confirmed.

@Flashman:

Which is just as silly, as Volgograd is the modern (post 1960) name for Stalingrad, i.e. “town on the Volga”. It should’ve been called simply “Volga” region.

There’s an old joke about this name change.  Sometime in the 1970s, an elderly veteran of the Red Army is interviewed as part of the annual May Day parade.  Asked to talk about the medals he wears, he points to some of them and says, “These decorations were awarded to me for my service in the great Battle of Volgograd, our heroic victory against the fascist invaders.  I’m especially proud of this particular one here – it was presented to me by Comrade Volgin himself!”

@Imperious:

[ Only thing i think may be of use was his ‘rockets’ for AA tech pieces.  [/quote]

One way I’ve used those missile pieces from Superpowers is to convert them to atomic bombs by mounting them horizontally (using one of the tail fins as a connector) on the clear plastic unit stands from the “War to End All Wars” game published by Guild of Blades.  The rocket pieces made by Rolco Games work even better in this role, since their tail fins clip more solidly into the unit stands than the Superpowers ones.  (The Rolco rockets come in multiple colours, but the white ones work fine as neutral-coloured pieces usable by all countries.)

@Table:

When I designed the new tanks I used the A&A Sherman as what I would make the smallest tank.  Tanks like the Stuart would be that size.  Then I scaled up the other tanks from that size so they would be in correct proportion to each other.

Thanks for the clarifications.  So in other words, the TT tanks are correctly proportioned relative to each other, but they are on a different scale compared with the A&A tanks, and the reason that the smaller TT tanks are the same size as the A&A tanks is that the smallest TT ones depict smaller types of tanks than the ones depicted by A&A.

@Table:

Scale:  The small tanks are the same size as the A&A tanks and the larger tanks are in scale to them.

Unless I’m mistaken, the picture posted by Reloader shows both a Table Tactics Sherman (the large tank at the center of the picture) and an A&A Sherman (the light green one in the first row).  The TT Sherman looks substantially bigger than the A&A one, even though it’s the same tank, so I’m not sure what you mean by “in scale with”.

@KurtGodel7:

You also raised a good point about the heavy-handedness of the occupation effort–a heavy handedness which may have been due at least in part to the desire to suppress Soviet partisans and guerrilla warfare.

In the scenario I have hypothesized, Germany would have ruled its Middle Eastern colonies with a light touch, with an eye toward winning over as large a percentage of the local population as possible.

The heavy-handedness Germany showed in Russia may also have had something to do with Hitler’s view that the conflict in the East was a “war of annihilation” whose ultimate purpose was the extermination, expulsion, Germanisation or enslavement of the Slavic people.

I quite agree that it would have been in Germany’s strategic interests to win over the population of the countries it conquered.  I’m just wondering about their track record in this regard.  Offhand, I can’t think of any instances of a country occupied by Nazi Germany being treated with a light touch.  It would be interesting to hear of such a case.

@Holden:

Here’s a rough sketch of a Med map. This map would use all of the military units and be much more strategic in scale:

Your map includes the Straight of Gibraltar and the Dardanelles (the western and eastern exits/entrances of the Mediterranean), so you might want to add the third available route: the Suez Canal.  It would lead “off the board” like the other two depicted exits/entrances do, and could be used in the same way as whatever you have in mind for Gibraltar and the Dardanelles.