Best posts made by Krieghund

The “1942” version of the AA50 box above is prototype artwork for the box cover. It was released only as advance promotional material for the game, and no copies were printed using that design. I know this because I worked on the project.

I suspect that the same may be true of the “385” Pacific version, due to the piece count. I know that there were some discussions during development around the pieces that might be included.

I’m not sure about the Revised versions, but the second one may also be a prototype, as it is also a “flat” view of the cover art, and not in three dimensions.

I hope this helps.

@Martin Confirmed.

@scottbrooks The first thing you need to do is forget everything you know about 1941. This is a completely different game, with mostly different rules. Looking at it through the lens of 1941 is just going to be confusing (as you’ve already discovered). Approach learning this game as though it didn’t have “Axis & Allies” in the title, with no preconceptions, and you’ll have an easier time.

The order cards are nothing but a framework for walking the players through the game turn, sort of like a player aid. They simply remind you of the phases of the turn, and what you can do in each of them.

Having a look at the FAQ may also be helpful.

I hope this helps…

@The_Good_Captain Now that’s odd. When I answered this, I was looking at the illustration of the map in the Rulebook, not at the map itself. In that illustration, the border between those sea zones meets at the border between Union of South Africa and Mozambique. However, as we can see, on the map itself, it doesn’t. Interesting. In any case, you’re right, the answer should have been “yes”.

@The_Good_Captain Example 2.

@thecabal The effect it would have is that the player taking casualties would know the results of all of the dice rolls before deciding on casualties. Using the actual rules, they have to choose casualties from each column’s results without knowing what the results of the remaining columns will be.

@the_good_captain said in Rules Question/Clarification:

My reading of pages 20 + 26 is that if a country’s capital is in enemy hands, and a friendly power controls another factory owned by this country, the friendly power can use the factory and collect IPCs.

Yes.

I was really hoping that if Italy fell to Russia and Russia fell to Japan, that America or Britain could later use the Italian factory. "

No. You cannot capture a territory from a friendly power, whether or not that power has fallen.

If the USSR controls Italy when Moscow falls, it retains control (and cannot use the IC) until Italy is recaptured by the Axis, after which another Allied power could capture it from the Axis (and use the IC). The same applies to Karelia.

@The_Good_Captain Yes, it’s legal.

@DoManMacgee said in Axis & Allies Stalingrad: Early Review and Balance Impressions:

From what I understand, playtesting pre-Renegade was done by some combination of Larry, his private staff/team (most of whom went on to form Nightingale Games and are now working on War Room, Imperial Borders, etc.) and internal Hasbro/WotC staff. I don’t know the names or skill levels of any of those people, or how the names/faces changed over the years, but I think that may be part of why you saw games like 42SE, G40 and 1914 (which all seem balanced enough at a low level but becomes lopsided once you start playing more seriously) come out over the latter part of that era of A&A.

There were also external playtesters, many of whom were very skilled, beginning with Revised in 2004. This was no different than it is now, other than perhaps not quite so wide a net being cast, as the communication among the community was not as well organized as it is today.

The philosophy was that the games should be balanced at a low level, as that’s where most of the players are. Doing otherwise would present a barrier to new players that would turn them off to the game. Players at a high level, of which there are fewer, tend to participate in the online community and can obviously use mechanisms such as bidding to balance the game at that level.

For your reference, Larry’s Tournament Rules for 1914:

Larry Harris’ Axis & Allies WWI 1914 Tournament Rules.pdf

@GigaSmoot The answer is “B”.

I have created a new topic with a file containing the rules. Could someone please “sticky” it? Thanks.

@emmettdd @AndrewAAGamer There’s actually a ruling that was made on BoardGameGeek regarding this question. Per that ruling, it is legal to plan to land in a territory already at its stacking limit if there’s a chance that a landing space will be made available through combat. However, if that space does not become available, the air unit(s) will have no place to land and will be destroyed.

Apparently this ruling has not yet made into the posted rules or FAQ. Sorry for any inconvenience.

@The_Good_Captain Such an attack is not legal. Per page 17 of the rulebook (Renegade version, in the FAQ for the original), when attacking by both sea and land (a flying fighter counts as by land), there must be at least one infantry unit in the land force.

If the land attacking force did also contain an infantry (making the attack legal), the artillery preemptive strike would occur before determining air supremacy, as the latter is part of the land combat sequence. Of course, if this were possible in your example, you wouldn’t need to do the amphibious assault at all.

@emmettdd Air units can be assigned to escort the Benghazi convoy sea zone, but not from Benghazi, as it is out of range. They must be either deployed to the convoy sea zone or assigned to it from another territory in range, such as Mareth. They also may not land in Benghazi afterwards for the same reason.

@SuperbattleshipYamato Not in the same round. Units leaving a contested territory by transport have only two options for where to go in the same round. The first is to offload into a territory that at the beginning of your turn was either controlled by your power or contained units belonging to your power. The second is to remain at sea, in which case they would only be able to offload into Nigeria in a subsequent round.

@The_Good_Captain From page 30 of the Rulebook:

Each eligible infantry or mechanized infantry must be paired one-for-one with a supporting artillery (an artillery may not support both an infantry and a mechanized infantry), but paired units need not necessarily be attacking from the same territory.

@The_Good_Captain No.

I agree that a strict reading of the exemption rule in and of itself would indicate that Dutch territories could be claimed by AAA, as this case is not mentioned explicitly. I wrestled with this for a while before making my ruling. However, I also believe there’s enough wiggle room there when combined with the rules on Dutch territories and friendly neutrals to interpret it the other way, for the reasons I’ve outlined. The fact that we’re even having this conversation supports the view that there are two ways to interpret it.

For what it’s worth, I am certain that Larry didn’t want AAA to claim Dutch territories, any more than he wanted them to convert friendly neutrals, for the reasons I stated. This in itself wouldn’t cause me to rule the way that I did, but in combination with the aforementioned “wiggle room”, I deemed it to be enough. If I had my way, there would be an FAQ update to reflect this, but getting one these days is like pulling teeth.

As an aside, this issue was originally addressed in the AAE40 1st Edition FAQ, at the same time that the 2nd Editions of both games were being developed. The AAA exception should have noted this case explicitly in AAP40, but it simply got dropped during the development of the 2nd Edition and it has remained lost until now.

Larry has purposely never mentioned specifically how many of anything any unit represents, as the games are not intended to be simulations. The only sure thing is that they all represent more than one.