Topics created by johnny

1.  Changing your facing is free as part of your movement.  If you cannot move (say due to disruption) or if in the assualt phase you you opt to attack instead of moving then you cannot chnage facing.

2.  Unless otherwise indicated on the card, all units can fire in any direction regardless of the facing.  Units that have restrinction are noted on the card and usually state “Fixed Howitzer” or some similar special ability (or restriction as the case may be).

The Base set is the first set, reserves in one of the later sets.

1st release - Base set
2nd release - Set II (sometimes called Eastern Front)
3rd release - Contested Skies
4th release - D-day
5th release - Reserves

Each of the releases has different units, but they all play well together ;)

D-day is the only A&A game with cards other than setup or things like unit stats in minis. D-day is much shorter than most maybe all other games. I don’t think any of the games I’ve played have been longer than three hours and I would guess much shorter like 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 and 1 half hours.

While I’ve never played Memoir '44, I have played Battlecry which is a similar system and the cards are not really similar. There are three sets of cards: Order, Fortune and Tactics. The Order cards are the only ones you must play with and they are basically the phases of the turn. As the game progress some of the phases no longer happen and those cards can be removed from the game.

The Fortune and Tactics cards are optional. Tactics cards give you a one shot benefit to be used during a particular order. You use them once and they are removed and can’t be used again. Fortune cards ask you to roll a die. Depending on the outcome of the roll one side will gain a benefit or suffer a hinderance. Fortune cards come up everytime you come to the Order card they are associated with. If the order no longer applies then the Fortune card can be removed as well.

I think D-Day is a nice game and it is a good intro to A&A for younger players or a nice quick game if you want to play more than one.

@Mr:

I saw some of the expansions of A&A have cards.  Do they offset the luck factor of the dice?

I’ve played a many of card-driven military board games and the luck factor is just a high as dice only games.

Ahem, if you are drawings cards, how is that any less random (barring cheating) than rolling dice?

I agree with critmonster – the bizarre results make the game more interesting.  Think of it this way – if every game played out the exact same way, then how interesting is that?  Chess is a bad comparison in some ways because, except for the fact White moves first, the players are perfectly evenly matched.  Not so in A&A.  The game is carefully balanced, but the Allies and Axis clearly don’t have all the same pieces or all the same advantages.  Their positions, pieces, economies and opportunities are all different.

A great example is a recent game I played where, as Japan, I DID NOT GET A SINGLE HIT IN PEARL HARBOR!  Lost 5 pieces (yes, probably should have pulled back) and then proceeded to lose my transport fleet on the U.S.'s turn.  Talk about your big holes, but it was great fun figuring out how to dig out of that situation.  I probably won’t face that again for another 50 games, but you bet I’ll always remember THAT battle!

So my point is, the bizarrely random results are the stuff of which great war stories are made!  That’s why we all spend our time on a forum dedicated to a dice game instead of being hunched over our chess boards.  :wink:

I just want enough Inf to absorb all the hits I might take in Round 1, and for me to have enough Art/Arm that I have enough punch to wipe out all of Russia’s Inf in Round 1.

Basically, I just don’t want to run out of Inf before the other guy.

Submarines do not fight against air units.

Everything else - transports, subs, carriers, destroyers, battleships - do.  Of course, transports have no “attack” value, but transports can defend.

A battleship that is NEXT to a sea zone or land zone in which fighters are involved takes NO PART in that combat.  (unless for battleship bombardment, which you already know about).  So if you have a sub in one sea zone and fifty battleships in the next sea zone over, the lone enemy fighter that attacks your sub is perfectly safe.

Mr. Harris can be found here: http://www.harrisgamedesign.com/bb/index.php

@johnny:

Is it a good strategy to try and get small pieces to build up an economy or to try and take out victory cities first?

Is it a turn limit game and/or short time limit game?
If so, economy is not as significant, especially as the game gets toward the end.
In a time limit game, economy is focused entirely on “do I have enough IPC to build what I need to take the VCs?”

If it is a death match with all the time in the world, the economy becomes more important.
In the death match, if I can stalemate the VC situation while getting a leg up on the economy, I will win.  In this kind of game the 19 IPC that UK has scattered through Africa, Asia and the Pacific gets valuable.  The Allies are not well positioned to get units into these areas and even if they try to build a factory in the southern hemisphere it is either on the front lines or severely limited by unit count.  India and Sinkiang are classic gambits.  Australia, Union of South Africa or Brazil are less obvious choices with pros and cons…

Even when I want to save for a big navy, I still buy at least enough infantry to fill my transports.  Well, unless that chews up my entire bank. :P

I have skipped the combat phase numerous times.  Sometimes it is not worth trading the land so you can preserve units.  For instance, if you are reduced to Moscow you might not want to trade land so you can stock up.

Oh nevermind then … just wondering  :-)

Check out this thread on this very subject!!!  :-)

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=7842.0

Correct… once you offload, both the TRN and the unit are done moving for the turn.

I usually build on J1 and J2. Quicker you get tanks on the mainland the better!

@The:

You can believe whatever makes you feel nice and cozy. Thats what religion is for. To hide your head in the sand while the world goes about its way with all of the violence and suffering and death that is involved. I dont care about what a religious persons version of the world is. If people want to live in a cartoon Universe where anything is possible,so be it. But when you start to enact local,state and federal laws based on biblical nonsense or have national policy based on armegeddon and the “end times”,thats when I will confront the religious nuts head on.  People have been saying the end of the world is right around the corner for two thousand years and yet here we are. Question: Does anyone here remember 500 years ago? Answer: No because you were dead.
                    Its odd that no-one has mentioned my criticism of Genesis. But I know why. No-one can rationally explain all the fantastic lapses in logic concerning it. I am always amazed how frightened people are to question the beliefs they were taught as children. As we mature,we eventually let go of Santa,tooth fairies, the boogey man. But we cling to these afterlife things and are afraid to let go of them. Its completely understandable,though. It takes a strong person to accept the fact that life is random and this mortal life is all that there is. Any wimp can say " I believe!! I believe despite what is in front of my eyes!!". Faith is a weakness of the human mind. What is the difference,really, if a scientist says " You are just an ape that evolved from slime over billions of years " or a christian preacher saying “You are just dirt that sins.” They are both quite depressing,except we have massive evidence for one (evolution)and scant,pathetic,mostly written evidence for the other.Christians now-a-days should really take history lessons about the church because there is a lot they can learn. They seem to think that the church just tolled bells,had mass and everyone was happy for the last two millenia. Actually,they were involved in some of the most heinous crimes in histroy,including the Holocaust,slavery and stealing money and labor from the poor to build their eyesores. 
                                              I would be a believer if there was the evidence for it. If there were THE BIBLE,the one-and-only unaltered BIBLE,where I could go and look at it,kind of like the Declaration of Independence and say to myself " This is THE BIBLE,the ORIGINAL BIBLE,completely written in its scribble-dot-dash format (not English of course) yet there it is. It cannot be burned or pages torn out because this is THE BIBLE,the LITERAL WORD OF GOD and cannot be destroyed or altered ,no matter what a mortal does to it. Is there such a thing? No. The Bible,especially the New Testament,was written over hundreds of years,edited,diluted,re-copied in error by monks,so it is just a plain old book. Nothing special.

What method do you use to determine the veracity of ancient documents?  You seem to have a lot of knowledge in the area of ancient manuscripts, and I wanted to know what methodology you have used to arrive at your conclusions.  But let’s forget the ancient writings in the Bible for the moment.  I’m curious how you apply your thought to other documents of antiquity and the outcome of your investigation(s).  Please explain.  There are many other documents that could be discussed besides those in the modern day Bible.

Understand:  I am not arguing about whether a given text is "the word of God."  Instead, I am simply talking about old documents.  I am sure that in school past/present you have discussed “old” texts besides the Old and New Testaments.  I just want to know why you know what you know.  Forget about the religious part of it.

I also see your talking about faith again despite not answering a word of what I said about it.  Again, it is not the idea of “faith,” but the object of it that is what should be argued about.

Also, I looked back through your posts and couldn’t find an argument about Genesis to answer.  Sorry if I missed it.

LOL… since you mentioned it… BAM!

To further complicate matters the TRN and the troops must be from the same country. Only UK troops could board a UK TRN and unload in the same turn.

US troops would load onto a UK TRN in non-combat and would not unload until the next US turn either in combat or non-combat.

Something like MechanizedWarfare suggested works best; US & UK vs GE usually works well. A free-for-all is interesting to do sometimes, but often it simply ends up with two players joining up against the third who doesn’t have a chance.