Posts made by frimmel

@Gargantua:

Ah hell yeah! I miss the RED Japanese pieces in the original Axis and Allies Pacific,  and that game was a damn good one.

Original Pacific is the best looking set in my opinion. Pretty good game too.

Guadalcanal.

You’re lucky it wasn’t poisonous.  8-)

Page four: http://www.axisandallies.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Axis-Allies-Battle-of-the-Bulge.pdf

You’re welcome.  :mrgreen:

On the first turn when you do Order Card #1 the units in the airborne boxes get a “free” shot (attack hitting on one without suffering a counterattack) at enemy units in their zone. Afterwards they are just “regular” infantry and would attack and defend on the appropriate order cards and you don’t use Order Card #1 anymore.

I think there is such a thing as “objectively good.” If there weren’t there would be no such thing as film school. Cinema is like writing. It has forms and structures and grammar. You can’t just throw anything on the screen and tell a coherent story or a story that emotionally resonates with people. While whether or not you’ve enjoyed something is an important aspect of watching films, that lots of people enjoyed a movie is not alone the determining factor in whether it is “objectively good.”

Today the studios don’t care whether they produce something that is any good. They care whether or not “enough” people pay to see it. This is why everything seems to get such mixed reviews. Why we get trailers so far out. Why we then don’t see things in the final movie that they showed us in the trailers. They are producing a product that is functional for a large enough segment of the population. They want audiences to not hate it so they won’t tell their friends not to see it.

@Wolfshanze:

@frimmel:

I missed the target? Whether or not you enjoyed a movie and whether or not you love a movie are independent of whether or not that movie is any good. Sometimes they go together, loving it and it being good. Other times they do not. Rogue One is really a bit of a mess. And what everyone seems to love about Rogue One really bodes ill for the future of all these anthology films.

[Sigh]… whether or not you missed the target, you certainly missed the reference…  :wink:

:roll: Did I miss it or just ignore it? That was so “not subtle” it didn’t deserve a pat on the back.

@Wolfshanze:

Khan you greedy bloodsucker, you’ve managed to hit just about everyone else, but like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target…

Star Wars Rogue One was an excellent movie… I loved it from start to finish.  I must also admit I spent about half the film going “how the heck did they bring that dead guy back to be a major character”… I raced home and dug up everything I could find on that aspect… very interesting, and had me fooled.

I missed the target? Whether or not you enjoyed a movie and whether or not you love a movie are independent of whether or not that movie is any good. Sometimes they go together, loving it and it being good. Other times they do not. Rogue One is really a bit of a mess. And what everyone seems to love about Rogue One really bodes ill for the future of all these anthology films.

@Private:

I love Monopoly. But every time you play someone new they have their own interpretation of the rules and are incredibly unwilling to consider the possibility that the way their family has always played might be incorrect.

Obviously their family must be wrong because mine is always right!

Thank the heavens that A&A has such clear and easy to understand rules. :-)

That is exactly the biggest problem with Monopoly. No one actually plays by the rules particularly the one about auctioning off landed on but unbought properties.

@LHoffman:

@frimmel:

I’d have liked it much better without the shaky-cam which I tend to think is a trait of directors who don’t actual believe in their material and as I think more about the tonal unevenness I’m inclined to pin that on a cynic trying to make a sort of traditional patriotic war movie and badly copying “Saving Private Ryan.” But he didn’t believe any of it. Maybe I’m trying to say the film was trying to be both “The Green Berets” and “Born of the Fourth of July.”

Did you ever watch Jason Bourne? As in the new one.

I was interested to see if you would post about it back when it came out, knowing you are an anti-shaky cam guy as a general rule. You will absolutely flip your $h!t if you watch it. I walked right out of the theater less than 30 minutes in, it was so bad. Still haven’t seen the end.

The plot was poor and derivative, the acting was uninspired, the characters were all re-hashes of previous versions. It did not hold my attention at all. The camera work and editing was so broken that it is the only film that has actually made my head hurt trying to follow it.

I skipped the last two Bourne movies. While I had originally been okay with the second even actually liking it on exit of the theater and I revisit the first with some regularity I was burnt out by the third and so have passed on them. I think Bourne Supremacy with a few exceptions gets shaky-cam and fast edits right.

The film is very kinetic and driven and that’s on the shaky and editing. Supremacy does though use the wave the camera around on someone sitting still bouncy framing at points which I despise more than the more cinema verite and way they shoot action scenes shaky cam. I also think Supremacy pushes the whole thing about as far as it can go and Ultimatum tried to one up it and was practically unwatchable and where I really came to grips with the issues with the technique and the first movie I noticed the editing.

So I didn’t see much need to take in the Renner one and this most recent one.

Ultimatum and Quantum of Solace are really where my “crusade” against shaky-cam began.

What I’d compare it too is “Pearl Harbor” or “Titanic” only the first half isn’t quite as boring as either of those. You get to the big thing happening like the attack starting and the ship hitting the iceberg and the movie becomes much more interesting. I don’t care to see the whole thing again but I’d watch from just before they leave to steal the plans till the end again. The neat things are really neat and much of everything else is a pile of “meh.”

I’d have liked it much better without the shaky-cam which I tend to think is a trait of directors who don’t actual believe in their material and as I think more about the tonal unevenness I’m inclined to pin that on a cynic trying to make a sort of traditional patriotic war movie and badly copying “Saving Private Ryan.” But he didn’t believe any of it. Maybe I’m trying to say the film was trying to be both “The Green Berets” and “Born of the Fourth of July.”

And as I write that I find the idea coincides with my thoughts on Edwards’s “Godzilla” where I’d constantly get the idea that he’d made choices because they were cool without really understanding what made them cool.

Aside from the Essos of the new characters in this I’d have to look at a cast list to do more than be guessing at their names. I’m really curious what the movie looked like before the re-shoots or whatever they showed the earliest test audiences. The more I think about the script/screenplay the more I hate it.

@aequitas:

ROGUE ONE over EP VII, Hands down!!

That is SW as we know it!

a must see.

no intentional spoilers but you might piece some together with stuff I say

This is most certainly not “SW as we know it.” It is a tremendously tonally uneven movie. My impression from the previews that there might have been something there before they “focus-grouped the shit out of it” was largely born out. I know this because the line from the trailer “I rebel” didn’t make the final cut. I can see why around the time of the highly publicized re-shoots they were talking about the movie “not feeling like Star Wars.” What was “focus-grouped out of it” was the highly cynical underlying story. The movie was also just full of the crap cinematic sensibilities of modern product cinema. Scope and shaky cam do not go together. Why film a movie in 2:35:1 only to fill it full of claustrophobic close-ups where you bounce the frame around?

There is some neat stuff in there with regards the space battle but the use of actual footage from Star Wars was jarring as all get out. I find myself hard pressed to remember the names of any of the characters not the main girl. The script was not a mess but didn’t earn any of the emotional beats it aimed for and just sort of bumbled into something resembling a point and the whole thing is salvaged or more salved by the very end of the movie which keeps it from being an utter downer trip to the movies.

That’s tough. I find it unlikely at this point that you have any option other than replacing the whole game. Try eBay. You might find someone who bought a set for the pieces and is selling the cardboard parts.

Okay so caught the whole thread and I’d agree that IF this game needs house rules it certainly would be in the area of some sort of penalty to the Rebels moving the base. Maybe that lost rep point, maybe some sort of free move for the Imperials.

Alternately some sort of way to not draw the probe card for a system I’m currently standing on as the Imperials would be terrific although the Rebels remaining hidden despite the Empire being around is pretty flavorful. Or on those lines some other intel mission or intel leader maybe.

That and the Rebels can get too many big capitol ships too quickly and make up their material deficit early on pretty much amount to my only complaints with the game. And they aren’t big complaints or really “broken” things.

This game is terrific.

Skipped ahead to post but and say this is a frelling awesome game. Last game I played I thought once again (with some considerable frustration) the Rebels were going to slip through my fingers but they hadn’t in fact moved the base. I sent Boba Fett to capture Luke, turned him to the dark side with Vader and The Emperor and then sent Luke to lead the final assault on the Rebel base. At that point I didn’t actually care if I’d win the battle as the whole thing was just crazy cool.

This is a pretty balanced game really but it is certainly more difficult for the Imperials as they have many more things to juggle and balance. The main concerns are the probe deck and getting enough material moving through enough systems.

Many of the games come down to a big battle for the win.

I especially like the alternating nature of doing missions and activating systems in a turn between the sides instead of Rebels do their thing/Imperials do their thing. It makes for many interesting decisions.

And all of my games have been, “Whoa, wait, It’s WHAT time?” Long games but they fly by.

I highly recommend this game for any A&A fan.

Ohhh and these are pricey but look perfect… https://www.topshelfgamer.com/collections/featured-products/products/zen-bins-rebellion-custom-trays

Sundown kid is correct. Units don’t get locked in combat. Note also that if you’ve built the airfield with supplies you control you score the point even if you don’t control the island.

@General:

I have to agree with the refrain I’ve read about a clumsy rule book, but it’s not the only game to ever have that problem. I think the game is balanced, since there are enough restrictions for establishing and relocating the base, and the Imperial player has a lot of fun building big, bad Super Star Destroyers and Death Stars. The real fun is the cat and mouse game of using and saving leaders for attempting and foiling missions.

The game is in need of FAQ sheet.

The biggest problem I think for the Imperials is drawing “dead” probe cards.

I pulled off the Homing Beacon mission and narrowed down the region of the base. Guessed wrong on a Veers action card that let me just drop units on a planet and moved into the system at the only available space adjacent to my other units which I knew wasn’t where the base was (gut feeling knew.) I then pull my probe cards and drew both of the systems I just landed in. And of course the Rebels used their move the base mission that turn as well.

So I’m more or less back at square one with hunting down the base and I’m pulling probe cards for systems I’ve got units standing on.

I agree the game is all in the mission assignments, choosing the right systems for them, opposing or not, and doing your movements and missions in the right order.

I’ve played a three games of this now and it is long but it doesn’t feel so. Players alternating on doing things during turns. At this point it feels a bit skewed to the Rebels as they’ve won all the games. The Imperials feel like they are chasing their tails. But I think that it is mostly not quite latching on to how to play Imperials yet. The game seems well balanced.