Topics created by Flying Tiger

@Narvik:

On behalf of the community, we all agree with you. Buy new and better Mechs from HBG. See attached pic

Yes, I immediately checked out hbg for them. Probably will be buying them soon. It’s too bad we couldn’t get better quality for our money from wotc

You can ignore the subs, but if Japan scrambles a fighter the subs can fight in the sea battle.

Hey Narvik,
I agree with you on the Berlin NO for Russia. It is pretty silly. After all, once Berlin falls, isn’t the game pretty much over?

As for the No German subs in the Atlantic NO for UK, you can’t just go north of sea zones 86 and 87. There are convoy zones all along the African coast where Germany could station subs and bleed more money from the UK. The UK must keep those pesky U-boats away from those waters too.

The link below mostly deals with the effectiveness of Japanese torpedoes.  But the opening paragraphs have a description of the pre-war Japanese strategy, before they decided to do Pearl Harbor.  It’s interesting reading.

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-067.htm

Edit:  Sorry.  Looking at that article again, it doesn’t give as much detail about the big picture strategy as I remembered.  I was confusing it with another article.  But the gist of their original strategy was to grab the Philippines and wait for the inevitable American counter-attack.  Subs and aircraft carriers were seen as harassment units to whittle down the US as much as possible before the surface units engaged.  From there, the article in the link above covers how the surface engagement was supposed to go.

The background on the torpedoes was that the Japanese had the best on the planet.  Every other navy’s torpedoes had a range of 3-8 miles, depending on the speed setting.  The Japanese Type-93 had a range of about 22 miles on slow setting (which was as fast as the fast setting on most other torpedoes), and a range of about 11 miles on fast setting (which was REALLY fast – like 52 knots or so).  Using compressed oxygen instead of compressed air as an oxidizer for the fuel also caused them to have a less visible wake.  To top it all off, they also had a heavier warhead than other torpedoes.  The Japanese successfully kept the existence of this weapon secret until several months into the war, and built a lot of their naval strategy around it.

@Flying:

I just want to say that me and my in-laws have been playing this way for awhile and it plays very well IMO. USA without +30 would play horrible(don’t even have to think about it). Anyone else play this way?

I doubt many have.  It’s an interesting idea - what has the balance of wins and losses been?

I’d personally also include objectives related to trade/diplomacy.  The Japanese FIC objective prior to war, the German trade objective with Russia prior to war, and possibly the Russian lendlease objective, as those all affect how Barbarossa and the Pacific war play out, encouraging (or discouraging) when the axis acts.  Otherwise it seems as though it’s going to be a J1 attack (japan needs to make some gains early or they don’t have enough momentum, and the german/russian condition makes it more interesting as to when to start barbarossa - G2 or G3?

This may be better in House Rules, however, and will probably be moved.

I don’t know about printing any out (I assume you are talking about the roundels/national control markers).  At HistoricalBoardGaming.com, he has all kinds of different roundels to choose from.  They are of excellent quality and pretty cheap.  You can get a sheet of 20 for $3.95.  He has them for all the countries of Global 1940.  He also has roundels for minor countries if you ever want to play the 1939 varient, like Spain, Hungary, Dutch, Romania, etc.  He also has some variations of certain countries:  for Example, in Italy he has the OOB roundel (green edge), the “corrected” roundel (red edge) and the Facist party roundels.
There are also roundels for Oil and special units like SS, Paratroopers, Soviet Guards, etc.
Just an idea.

In Alpha +2, UK Europe starts with 28 IPCs and UK Pacific starts with 17 IPCs.

I was the Allies and my Father-in-law was axis. He pulls off sealion on his 3rd turn I think. I was not seeing it as a real threat like I should have. Nice move, he held it for the entire game(9 rounds). I never took it back from him and I defeated him with only Russia and USA. He is not the greatest player but he is not that bad. I consider myself good but not great. This is a tough game for the axis to win.

He held UK all game?  He took away from the Allies $20 - $30 a turn for all that time and still lost?  Imagine how bad it would have been for him had the UK been in the game spending that money all along - right next door … .

Also you may purchase NEW Naval and Air bases so they needed to be printed counters.

ordered it today

Flying Tiger,

I live in southern California and would be interested in a face-to-face game. I know a friend or two of mine would be interested as well.

Also, I attend all the events in LA listed by Squirecam. The A&A tournaments usually have 8 to 12 people attend/play. The person who runs the A&A tournament let’s the players pick what version of A&A they want to play. Most people play either A&A Anniversary Edition or A&A Global 1940, Europe 1940 or Pacific 1940. Some players however, still play Revised Edition. The tournament starts at 9AM on Saturday and runs until Sunday night. Saturday consists of two games. Game one starts at 9AM and goes until 4PM. The winners from all the first round games, play against each other in the 2nd round games, which goes from 4PM until there is winners Saturday night. Usually 10PM to 2AM Sunday morning. Although I’ve seen games go until 4AM. Usually by 2AM a winner is called so people can get some rest for the next day. The final game to determine the winners(1st & 2nd place) starts at 9 or 10AM Sunday morning and usually goes until between noon & 4PM. The $40 is definitely worth a weekend of A&A play. I usually come Sat morning and stay until Sun night. I usually try to find players to play the A&A Global 1940 game, since it’s the newest game out. I have a friend of mine who usually attends with me and we’re always looking for new, good players.

If you’re interested in getting together face-to-face or at the next Con, let me know and I’ll PM you my phone number.

@Brain:

@idk_iam_swiss:

if i want to play with my grandparents i HAVE to be the axis…they refuse to play if they have to be japan or germany

My grandparents actually fought against the Germans

I set up the board one time for my Grandpa who was based on Tuvalu Island in the Solomons; he took one look at it, smiled, and shook his head.  “WWII was no boardgame, son.”

Reason I like buying subs for my japan is cheep fodder.  Usually if US goes pacific i’m stalling to hold on to my money islands just long enough to crush russia, not to actually fight the US.  Because of that, cost is everything to me.

If I wanted an actual show down i’ll focus on fighters (as my 3 carriers can typically allow 12 to attack if based properly) and bombers with a sprinkling of DDs.

/corbeau blanc

Agree with you on Karelia, even though Germany can take it sometimes it’s not too difficult to take it back by Russian counterattack and/or UK invasion. Only once Germany gets heavy inf reinforcement east can they hope to hold it, and if you do a good UK/US invasion combo into Europe there should be tied lots of Germans tied up manning the West wall. In my games, Germany and Italy often seem to end up being inf-heavy hedgehogs, leaving it to Japan to finish Moscow off.

India, on the other hand, isn’t easy to hold at all. This is due to Japanese number of transports and fighters, which will overwhelm you sooner or later. I think ICs in SAF and EGY are a better UK focus, better fighting a delaying action over India and reinforce Russia with aircraft to make it impregneable.

@cond1024:

I don’t know why it warped so bad, the only thing I can think is that I set it up on my kitchen table, which is next to a huge window
and the sun beat down on it all day long.  That is the only thing I could think, but only the pacific third warped really bad, the other two thirds was very minimal.

Wash and dry it.

@Subotai:

Another fact is that with a global war game which takes 3-9 hours to finish, it can never be even semi-realistic, or else it would be a very boring game which no one would want to play, and then only the balance could be realistic. The other option is to do this in a sophisticated computer game.

I think we should rather complain about the gameplay issues, rather than AA50 being to a-historical.

But there are some exceptions, as some rule changes are both easy and historical, as closing of the Dardanelles, but then all the other straits should have the same rules, as according to history.

I think you may be referring to the scope of the realism of the game.  All the AA games are semi-realistic to begin with as they ‘abstractions’ of the war.

What is complained about though is how so many people seem to go after Europe first as the Allies.  The fact that they did this historically is true.  But when it happens in the game, it’s what is derided.  That’s all I was saying.  We don’t like how the Axis win by a-historically sandwiching Russia but we also don’t like how the Allies historically win by surrounding Germany/Italy.  We live in a funky world of ideas, and possibly not sure which side is up.

What’s strange is that it is considered that the Axis have the advantage in '41 and it takes the Allies working together to win so when we ask, ‘why has the game turned into KGIF?’ it’s possibly because it’s the only way to win, it’s desperation.  KGIF is more viable because of the proximity of the Allied powers to the Euro theater of the game.  If Germany/Italy had the ability to stalemate the Allies on their income alone the game is way out of whack, but generally speaking in my experience, they don’t and have to use their advantage early to win before the Allies get into full swing.

Thats not the only problem… the lines that separate the borders are not delineated well enough. Its hard to see in moderate light what is going on. Big mistake, but luckily my map makes that clear.

Thank you for the review, I just got this game but I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, so it is nice getting to have an idea what it is like.
As for your comment about the subs, My opinion is that subs are better when you have 2-3 because 2-3 subs is not enough to just build a lot of (if any) destroyers, but enough to damage a Navy considerably.

I’m not sure where (or if) you can download them, but here’s the setup from the Player Help section.  I believe the Revised Setup is the second post.

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=6226.0

That is another good option. Seems we agree with USA and UK should not be played by the same player  :-)