Posts made by CWO Marc

One of my favourite Second World War-era documentaries is “Attack in the Pacific.”  I’ve seen different dates attributed to it, but it would seem that the film was assembled in the spring or summer of 1945: the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa are mentioned as having already happened, but the narration makes it clear that final victory over Japan has not yet been achieved.  The film highlights naval operations in the Pacific Ocean, and deals at length with the process of planning and conducting an amphibious invasion.

CWO Marc

@Merlin:

Then Admiral Nagumo?

I think it’s actually Yamamoto, both in terms of physical resemblance and the number of decorations.  The three-star general above Yamamoto and below Halsey is Omar Bradley.

CWO Marc

@I:

I understand why, but I think it’s interesting that Hitler has not appeared on any of the A&A boxes.  I think he should be there.  I don’t feel that it would immortalize or sensationalize him.  I think it would be an more accurate (unfortunate, but accurate) depiction of a time in history.

That would make the game difficult – possibly even illegal – to sell in Germany, which has strict laws against depicting Nazi-related material except in certain contexts such as scholarship.  Note for example that, on the AAAE box cover, the Nazi flag is carefully hidden behind other picture elements, so that you can barely see one edge of the white disc and so that the swastika is completely out of sight.

CWO Marc

For the unenlightened, what are Task Force Markers?  <<

Rectangular blue plastic markers, numbered 1 to 6, with a round hollow space into which you can insert a national identity marker.  They are used to represent a whole group of ships on the board without creating crowding.  The ships themselves are positioned off the board.

CWO Marc

@FieldMarshalGames:

Colours will match COMBAT DICE colours.

Thanks for that info.  Has a colour for Italy been chosen?

CWO Marc

In my case I’ll be pre-ordering at least two sets.  After I receive the pieces and have had a chance to look at them, it’s very likely I’ll then be ordering one or more additional sets.

CWO Marc

@FieldMarshalGames:

I have a factory that is willing to do the pieces project for us.  I will be making an announcement this weekend once I have all the details ready.

It’s going to be good……   I promise!

Excellent news!  Looking forward to hearing the details.

CWO Marc

I wonder what Richard Overy, the author of “Why the Allies Won” (London : Jonathan Cape, 1995), would think of that picture.  His explanation of the war’s outcome was rather more elaborate.

CWO Marc

In “War Comes To America,” the seventh film of the “Why We Fight” series, there are some animated sequences (about ten minutes before the end of movie) which show little animated tanks pushing rows of little stick figures into stylized factory buildings to illustrate the industrial potential which Germany and Japan would command if they were to dominate Europe and Asia.  The factory buildings look almost exactly like the industrial complex pieces in Axis & Allies: a square building with three sawtooth projections on top and two smokestacks at one end of the roof.

CWO Marc

@Shakespeare:

I am willing to purchase the “Art Deco” map
[…]
Is there any movement towards that?

If you contact Cominges he’ll provide you with pricing and other purchase information.

CWO Marc

@Imperious:

the game includes about 468 pieces for only 20 bucks?

How in the hell can it be so cheap?

you can make out all the pieces and what they cost to produce and add the cost of the map, dice, tokens and wonder really how do they make money?

20 infantry
12 tanks
6 artillery
2 BB
2 CV
6 subs
6 transports
4 super fighters
8 fighters
1 general

in 8 colors

I received my copy of the game recently and the nation-specific pieces that come with the basic game are actually only in 6 colours.  I looked at the printed instruction manual (also available online at http://www.superpowersgame.com/docs/manual.pdf) and I noticed at the bottom of page 19 a note saying “For those who have mastered the game and are ready for more, there is an expansion pack available that has special unique General Bonus’s for each nation, plus Super-Weapon technologies and 2 more colors of pieces to allow for full scale 8-player games”.  This wasn’t clear from the producer’s ordering page at the time when I placed the order, but a note has since been added to it saying “Expansion pack coming summer 2009” (which gives a helpful timeframe, but still doesn’t make it clear that the expansion set provides two colours which aren’t in the base set).

CWO Marc

@TG:

If every country kept their colors EXCEPT for Italy, I would be more than happy.  Italy and Russia still look too much alike.

I’d be fairly happy with that colour arrangement too.  The brown used for Italy in AA50 isn’t easy to distinguish from the AA50 maroon/purple Russian pieces, and it causes even greater confusion once you start mixing in the dark brown Russian pieces from the original A&A edition and the brownish/olive-green US pieces from the same game.  My own preference for Italy would be light grey.  The colours used for the five main combatants in AA50 would be fine to keep as they are, but it might be a good idea to find another colour for the lime green AA50 Chinese infantry pieces.  Anything greenish will tend to be associated the US pieces.  This was the same problem that the lime green British pieces had in AA Revised: the sculpts were clearly British, but the colour was closer to the American medium green than the usual British tan.

CWO Marc

The colours used in the Anniversary Edition are:

US: medium green

UK: pale tan, a bit lighter than the normal British medium tan

Soviet Union: dark wine purple

Germany: dark grey

Japan: burnt orange

Italy: medium-dark brown

China (infantry only): lime green, somewhat different from the shade used for the British pieces in the Revised Edition

As far as the colour differences between the two editions go, the Revised Edition uses the same colours and shades as the Anniversary Edition for the US, Soviet Union and Japan.  Germany uses the same or nearly the same shade of dark grey.   Great Britain is the incompatible country: the pieces are pale tan in the Anniversary Edition and a kind of pale lime green in the Revised Edition.

In the Anniversary Edition, the five main countries nearly all use the same sculpts as the Revised Edition, except for Britain (which has new Matilda tanks) and Germany (which uses the new Panther tank design from Battle of the Bulge and the Me-109G fighter from the same game).  In the Revised Edition, Britain uses Sherman tanks, while Germany uses the original-version sculpt of the Panther (it has a shorter gun and the treads don’t have square side panels) and a Stuka rather than an Me-109G as its fighter (even though the Stuka was actually a dive-bomber).  Some of the sculpts have small differences: for example the US Shermans have smaller turrets and the Russian T-34 are narrower.  These five countries, plus Italy, also have a new cruiser piece.  Apart from its distinct infantry and tank sculpts, Italy’s land and air sculpts are copied from existing Japanese ones (artillery, bombers and fighters) while its naval sculpts are copied from existing German ones (carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers and transports).

CWO Marc

Thanks LT.

CWO Marc

These look great, ZP. Would you have one for France?

CWO Marc

@Imperious:

So get about 2,000 orders first that would be filled and that includes credit card numbers…everything… You can take this to a bank and they may give you a loan because its showing you got orders to fill and its not a pipe dream.

One thing to keep in mind is that credit card companies apparently have a time limit on how long pre-order credit card data can be held without being processed.  This was mentioned on the website of a game company that used to take pre-orders on games not yet in production in order to determine the level of interest in them; they then ran into problems with long credit card holds and had to change the way they handled pre-orders.

CWO Marc

On the subject of colors, it would be nice if there could be a fairly wide range of them.  Different colors (and/or different shades of the same color) have been used for each of the five major countries in the various A&A games, which is annoying in terms of consistency but useful for people who use the extra colors to represent additional countries as needed.  So one suggestion would be to ensure that, for each of the five major countries, there are pieces available in at least one of the colors which have been used most extensively for them (and ideally in both of the top two colors, where applicable).  My own preferences in those five cases would be:

USA - Green (medium)

UK - Tan (medium) or Beige (light)

USSR - Brown (dark or medium) or Maroon/purple

Germany - Grey (dark) or Black

Japan - Burt orange (dark) or Yellow/amber (medium)

It would also be good if these could be supplemented with other colors, to represent additional countries – preferably colors which are fairly distinct from the ones listed above.  A color scheme that I like to use, for example, is blue for France, light grey for Italy, red for China (in the last case, by using the red Japanese pieces from A&A:Pacific) and white for neutral countries.

CWO Marc

@DrLarsen:

I put together pieces from TT, Eagle, Xeno, TWG and all my own considerable collection for plastic HO’s to find the best possible piece in every category I can think of… Give me more piece options and I will buy at least some, and maybe 4 or 5 copies if they fit what I’m looking for especially well.  Glad to see TT weighing in, as I like your pieces very much from a quality angle

Ditto for me, and I look forward to buying one or more sets of whetever new pieces TT is planning to produce.

CWO Marc

Clicking on the picture of the box cover brings up a window showing the game board and the plastic pieces, but I can’t find any information on how to order the game or contact whoever is producing it.  Does this game have a distributor?

CWO Marc

Originally, I used to sort my A&A pieces (and pieces from similar games) by keeping them in ziplock plastic bags, with smaller bags inside larger ones to represent subcategories.  It soon became too cumbersome to open bags-within-bags to reach whatever specific kind of piece I needed, so I switched to using translucent plastic tackle boxes with adjustable dividers.  The box dimension I like the best among the many sizes available is 14" by 8.5" x 2" thick.  I get them from the fishing equipment section of local hardware stores, and when necessary I’ve ordered extra dividers from the manufacturer.  I apply white sticky labels to the narrow end of the boxes to identify them when they’re stacked for storage, and the lids are transparent enough for the contents to be easily identifiable when the boxes are spread out for use.

CWO Marc