Posts made by murraymoto

uh…  actually that is already on there…

while you could add a naval base to it (since it’s there IL), you cannot add an airbase to diego garcia.

we could just use the place phase 2 units here box for it if you’d like. lol

I do not know of a checklist for indvidual numbers of pieces for each game.  I do know that the new versions after Classic (AAE, AAR, AAP) add artillery and destroyer pieces to the mix, and while the shapes of pieces are different, the other types of pieces are the same as the original (Classic). 
   The shapes of pieces from Revised to Europe are the same except for the German armor units (Eur has Panthers, Rev has Tigers).  Colors are different in each of the versions too, slight in some cases, drastic in others.

Boardgamegeek.com has some pics of pieces, if that might help…
http://boardgamegeek.com/images/game/10093
http://boardgamegeek.com/images/game/520

What about Diego Garcia south of India, right about where the ship is layered in the Indian Ocean?

info about it…
http://www.bitsofnews.com/content/view/3778/43/

@ncscswitch:

Example:
USA has 2 loaded AC’s off Wake and controls Wake Island.
USA in the previous turn bought 4 FIGs and placed them in Western US.

Didn’t realize you were talking about starting here at San Diego.  Simply trying to agree with you that fighters from WUS can reach deep into the Pacific to land on ACs that are there, perhaps stationed at Wake like you said and hit in and around the home Japanese islands.

If you go from WUS on turn 1 to take Wake, turn 2 to take Oki, then 3 to hit the fleet you get additional naval forces that were placed at WUS on turn 1 and fighters begin arriving too for the fleet attack and for xday.  1 extra turn while you are chewing up additional ipcs along with UK farther south and Japan not gaining ground on Moscow may be a way some want to go.

Non-IPC islands are like one’s views of armor v artillery, they may work better for one situation than another, but they are in the game, so you can way to use them, but they don’t have to be used for everything.  Maybe in one situation they work better than another, that’s the beauty of it.  Maybe it’s 6 one way, half a dozen the other.  Like DarthMaximus said, given the right strat, the islands hold strategic purposes.

You could exchange fighters with ACs in SZ 60 too, and land fighters in Buryatia, then hit Japan too, skip the southern islands all together. (turn 1 to HI, turn to attack fleet in SZ 60, turn 3 to attack Japan)

You can do the same thing with Okinawa and gain the ipc too.  Fighters from WUS land on Carriers in SZ 58, and fighters from AC in SZ 58 land on Okinawa, and also puts you into position to hit Philippines, Borneo, or New Guinea.

If your main US force backs Japan around the home islands, a smaller force (or UK) can often walk away with the valuable southern islands too, because Japan may not want to split their forces to hit south or leave the home islands vulnerable.

You have a good number of CBs, they will help action in the seas. 
I like the SZs, more streamlined around the North Atlantic and North Pacific.
For the size of the Philippine SZ, it could be split in two (north/south).  If New Guinea is 3 SZ, why not 2 for Philippines.

for the sake of mention but discussion down the road…
@deepblue:

The only argument I can see for having the US CBs where they are in the Pacific is that it pulls the US quicker into the pacific.  The Japanese can strike them without hitting the mainland, I kind of like that idea.  It keeps the “turtle” US players from just sitting back.  This will force him to protect his assets. 
The other argument for CBs near these islands (Line, Gilbert, Marshall) is that it adds value to the islands.  Without the CBs this area is void of value.  I like this idea too, adding value to the region.
On the same note some people have suggested that the CB near Wake Island be removed.  I will use the same argument here, without the CB these islands (Wake, Iwo, etc.) have no value.  This gives the area some value.  (By the way this is another CB I did not add.)

I would suggest that we keep the CBs and also add some small value to the islands themselves (even if it is just 1 IPC).  Too often I see games where the US/UK forces bypass the islands without value for the ones with some value, even if it means by-passing a few INF or not being able to use their fighters for another round on the way through Island hopping.  just log it away for another week…

@unc_samurai:

It’s a Wizkids product that doesn’t involve pre-painted miniatures.

What! Where’s the fun in that then?….

oh wait, there are some, just one color each though.  (exhale…)

[attachment deleted by admin]

Wow Deepblue, you went to town on the Seazones.  The new dotted lines look great, and your SZ movement streamlines the zone movement.

Convoy Zone thoughts
  Just about every CB appears to touch at least 3 SZs.  That may not be a goal necesarily, but there are a couple that do not, and I think it could help if they did.

The Russian CB should be moved down just a bit so it rests on the line of SZ extending from Finland.  That would make it accesible by 4 SZ.

The US CB north of Midway, could be moved SW to so that it touches the Midway SZ, as well as the ones East and North of it.  It looks like the CB is big enough to still touch the Eastern SZ that it currently touches.

The UK CB East of the Solomons.  It could be moved north to touch the Gilbert and Line SZs (which would make it a bit closer to Jap attack) or South to touch the Fiji SZ (which may be more realistic to shipping routes from the South Pacific around South America)

Hey Deepblue,

I’ll take the blame for getting the discussion off topic.  I like having CBs, just had the thought strike me that if we didn’t have a good basis for them (ie, didn’t need them), maybe it would save time for you in making them.

There is basis and need for them and they add alot.  The moves and additions you have I think will work well.

I think the British Med CB instead of another in the Atlantic, though it would seem crowded would be great, especially if you remove one of the ones from the coast of Africa.  Unless the Germans or Italians get to start with sub or something down that way, they are unlikely though I think to hit it unless they are steamrolling the rest of the world.

Aaaah….  I see, that’s a great idea, adds a lot of variance too, as you could attack each turn.

At first I thought you were talking about if UK had 40 total IPCs, the convoys would represent half, and taking them would just deduct that from the total as the supplies couldn’t get through to the homeland. 
Your way forces attacks on them every turn if you want to keep knocking them down.  Very nice.

It has similarities to both risk and A/A.  You have specific military pieces (land/air, and naval in the expansion) that you can build each turn and then attack with, but it has a diplomacy aspect too, to take over countries and influence minor nations. 
  The die rolling system isn’t number based, but is based on icons of the units on each die.  If you roll for the fighters and get a fighter icon up on the die, they score a hit.
  It is an interesting concept.  Haven’t played it much, can’t get the group to move off of A/A, but we’ve thought of taking the map (which when you put the regular and expansions together is about 1/4 bigger than A/A) and using it for A/A, and using the extra pieces as extras.  Alas, no transports or bombers.  arrrgh…  so we just bought more A/A pieces…

I think risk has its place, or places.

I started playing risk as a kid, when my friend had it and we never even read the directions.  We ended up coming up with our own rules that were closer to A/A with some attack defend rules like Imp. Leader mentioned.
  We played it for years (even using the actual rules at times) until that day when at a hobby shop we saw that glorious box of A/A and jumped right in. 
  It is great with a bunch of people who aren’t committed enough to learn A/A at parties and such, but I do think of it as more of a starting point into strategy games, like stratego.  I think alot of the variants in risk and similar games (attack!) are trying to draw the audience that is not quite ready for A/A or other deeper strategic games.
    2210 is a good variant, but I like the Castle edition better.  It is based in Europe and has a number of empires to control rather than continents, along with cards that give additional reinforcements, diplomacy, spies, admirals, generals and such.  You pick a capital to place your castle chip in, and attacks can only use 2 dice in sieges.  A very nice twist on the classic.  And what was cool was that it had the Europe map on one side and the classic on the other, bonus!
    I’d like to try the Star Wars and LOTR editions, the Napoleon edition looks interesting too.

@Imperious:

The convoy boxes dont represent IP income the same way say a land territory does.

The convoy box represents a point that you can attack a nations income on the high seas because the convoy box is representing all the supply/trade that nation is comsuming to stay in the black. Its a point of interception of the transit of income. The Convoy box should not have a value itself, but rather a maximum value that can be destroyed from a nations IPC pool.

say each box has a value that represents the maximum value that can be destroyed in a turn. Thats what the number should represent which would simplify the accounting.

IL, are you saying that if a convoy zone is taken in this scenario, that dice are rolled and that many ipcs, up to the max listed are lost from the owning country’s income on hand, like SBR?

@Imperious:

UK had nearly 50% of her GDP generated by her colonies and they need to be attacked by subs to simulate an ability to starve the British into submission.
UK convoy box in indian ocean, cape horn, and south atlantic are needed.

Not looking to start the IPC discussion here, but the need for convoys is based in IPCs, so I will mention them here.
The only way to starve the UK into submission here is going to be to take away all of her land.  If you count the current on-board IPC values for each country you get the following:
Germany-52
Japan-34
Italy-27          Axis total-119
Russia-37
UK-74
USA-71          Allied total-184

Just compared to Revised and Classic, UK is not that much of an industrial powerhouse, and I think that bares out historically too.

Now, this is large part because many territories have been changed/added since the original inception of this variation
but deepblue was right when he said,
@deepblue:

Convoy Boxes
I am assuming that the boxes are use in some part to augment the “off map” resources of the nations for these smaller theater games.  So adding all of them from both games into one map is a bit over kill.

In both AAP and AAE, the rules state that convoy zones represent income and materials from other parts of the globe.  Here we have just about the entire globe and all of those countries are represented.  So, if Convoy Zones are to be kept in the game, then the territories that the materials represent must be in some way affected, or else there is double materials coming from somewhere.  I think that this has to be part of the rationale for having convoys or not.

Currently, UK has 9 convoy zones totalling 22 ipcs.  italy has 12 territories and 1 convoy totalling 27.  UK certainly had more income, industry and trade than italy, this is more to point out the amount of ipcs that the UK is gaining from these convoys while still gaining IPCs from the 65 territories (Axis have 60 total) that UK controls on the map.
 In the smaller scale variations of AA, the Axis were able to attack the supply routes of the Allies via the Convoy Zones because the territories with the materials were not on the map.  Here we can actually take over the country that they are shipping from.

I like the Convoy Zones, but I wonder how much they are needed when you can take the actual territory.  And to use Convoys, I think you have to adjust the value of territories to balance, otherwise the Allies are getting double payment when they control territories and still getting payment when they have the convoy and not the territory. (In AAP, there is a Russian Convoy that is out of play when a particular territory is taken, Karelia I think)   In some cases this might mean that there are numbers of territories without value, or much value, like I could see happen in Africa.  Are they going to be a worthwhile target with that depleted value?

I could see if a Convoy represented materials from South America, which is neutral and not going to be attacked by the Allies, though it could be attacked by the Axis and if the Axis took Brazil, then the Allied Convoy didn’t count anymore.  In a way, the German Baltic Convoy would line up too, from the ore from Sweden.

On the current convoy locations:
USA
the Alaskan convoy needs to be moved farther out from North American coast.
move the Caribbean convoy to take the place of the UK one

Germany
Baltic convoy for Germany

UK
Moving convoy from Spain to West. Med

Russia
Move convoy northwest towards finland

Japan
no change

DeepBlue, 
  For the convoy zones for the week, are you thinking that there are too many of them, not enough, or just open to discussion?
  My bigger question is what their values will end up as, but that is probably later discussion.

One seazone question?
  The territory of Borneo, it touches the large seazone that surrounds most of it, mainly south of the island, but there is also a very small part of it that is in the seazone to the north with Brunei and the Philippines.  That puts Borneo within reach of the Japanese homeland in one turn.  I think it is ok to be that close, just wanted to ask.

Great job!

@deepblue:

I will change the color of the Vichy territories south of the Sahara to one of the following:
A) Neutral
OR
B) British (Free French) controlled.
Please vote and tell me which option you like best.

A) Neutral is my vote

I’ve seen film footage of German commerce raider ships avoiding icebergs off the coast of antarctica during the war, so we know they were near.  alas, no Antarctica on the map…

Nazis, Polar Men, u-boat bases, 2 allied excursions to find them, sounds like a good reason to have Antarctica

I know it’s not a seazone issue, but what about combining the Northern Territory and Southern Australia territories into one?  Is 5 territories in Australia too many considering three of them are basically unihabited, outback and unlikely to even be invaded?

I would be in favor of Vichy being a different color (whether slight or more), but being German occupied with German forces.  The different color would allow for house rules to make it neutral.  (and if voting, i would vote for either of the 2 on the left)

Definitely game play is an issue.  Following the store-bought A/A game setup gives most of the Vichy territory to Germany, even though that game starts early '42.  However, as IL pointed out, Germany didn’t attack Vichy until August '42.  The gameplay comprise I think wins and house rules can be developed by whomever wants them.  The color change can better allow it, but wouldn’t mandate it.

Too many rules can be kill the fun for many more casual players.  And if we changed so much along the eastern front of Europe to allow Germany more options than just attack USSR, then we have just taken them away and forced them to invade Vichy.Â

I agree that to make Vichy neutral and more historical, then you do have to implement a number of special rules mandating how they are played and all that deepblue mentioned about when the allies attack or how many turns it even takes before the US can enter the war.  I don’t mind the Germans getting funds from far south vichy territories, i think it adds variations and the potential of what could have been, which I mentioned before.  I have a friend dying to start with a sub base in Madagascar because on the current setup of ipcs, germany has about 55 while UK has almost 80.  Though IPC values haven’t yet been finalized, Germany could use all the help it can get… but, I digress…

Vichy=German

@pdel21:

Is it possible to order sets of replacement pieces for the folks who may not have those board games.  For example, I can see the utility in cream pieces for Neutrals, so if I wanted to order a set from AH is that possible.  I don’t have the revised game, just AA original, AAE and AAP.

i tried ordering replacement AAP and AAR pieces in January from Hasbro, they said they only had AAP pieces, but from what I’ve read in threads is that there is always something that they do not send you when you try ordering from them.
But there are other places to get more pieces.

Good points Micoom,

Perhaps the half circle sea zone that extends from Portugal to Morroco should start at souther end of Portugal and extend to souther tip of Morroco so Morroco is not touched by 2 sea zones, makes it a full 2 turns from US, currently same distance from UK.

Splitting Solomons into 2 sea zones could give some historics to Guadalcanal, if one territory, then 2 sea zones that show some of the back and forth play between US and Jap.  Historically, they traded it back and forth for a while between day and night fighting of ships.