Gargantua - how did you get it to work? I’ve spent ages looking for a AA50 map to download but can’t find it anywhere. On the wiki it won’t even give me a URL to download it, saying its included in Triple A, which it clearly isn’t. Can anyone help?
Try joining the lobby server, there’s a lot of help there in the lobby notes. Maps work fine.
Dude, don’t give WOTC any more ideas… You’re already shelling out up to $200 for AA1940Pac and Eur, and you want to give them a chance for you to shell out MORE? You’d basically be paying an extra $20 (if not more) for errata and a new rulebook, for christ’s sake. I don’t think many people would even need to buy this global game expansion anyway, with both sets already.
Hell, this is like the thread started on the Darkfall forums about if NA players would have to buy a new copy of the game for the NA servers, which immediately got flamed down, then the devs saw it. Before 2 weeks went by, major announcement came that it was necessary for people who already bought the game client would have to pony up for a NA copy of the game. Don’t give them any more ammo with the A+A franchise.
Shoot, get an old copy of Panzer General. That hex game rocked.
Welcome to the A+A boards, BigKahuna!
Hoping that you have your answers already, but here goes:
1. Strategic bombing raids (SBRs) ONLY attack the industrial complex of a territory, not the units therein. If your game is playing without fighter escorts (optional rule decided by players ahead of time), the defender gets to roll his AA gun for each bomber SBRing the territory (killing a bomber for each 1 rolled), and that’s it. If you’re playing with fighter escorts, check the errata to see how many shots the defender gets for the fighter(s) stationed ONLY in the industrial complex’s territory. Surviving fighters don’t get to bomb the factory. Other than that, the other units in the territory don’t get to participate.
2. Usually that’s the case with this game, getting enough people to actually play a 5 person game. Team up, of course! Usually UK and Russia go well with the same person, sometimes I see UK and the USA by the same person. If only two people, obviously Axis and Allied teams.
3. Shoot, just use a pad and paper, but probably 30 of each should be more than enough. IPCs usually in the range of 50-60 per side at their highest.
@Brain:
I think the game should have leaders like in the War game. Wouldn’t it be cool to get a Hitler piece in the game.
LOL I bet you played that Star Wars empire video game where the Emperor and Darth Vader could be shipped around to various planets to influence Rebel/Empire standings… So is the Hitler piece going to be a last ditch piece on which if he dies, the Empire falls?
The leaders could give a boast of defense when their territory is under attack :-)
LOL, a Hitler leader piece should give a +5 to all die rolls to German troops when defending a territory. He was an awful tactician. Remember Berlin?
@Brain:
I look at A&A as a 2 player game so I couldn’t care less about an individual country being the winner.
Really? I find it much more fun with all the spots filled.
LOL. Argh, multiplayer is fun (especially on TripleA) until you find out you’re having to play the clueless guy’s turn for him/her anyway. If I ever get to play multiplayer AA50 in real life with 6 people (hard to do with all the friends halfway across the country) I just suggest stuff and let them decide. Usually you just watch as they flounder around a few turns and you end up bailing them out on what to do. It’s hard to have a learner’s curve on a game you play once a year. I have horrible luck with the dice when it comes to the pivotable battles, so always let the other guys on your team roll, less stress that way.
Meh, might as well go for the whole schmear for the capital. If the British player lets you… Sealion’s just not going to work, I think; the Germans will have less IPCs at the game start than Britain does, and the Jerries need a transport for every two land units they want to shuck over to England, vs. England just needing to plop down 8 inf a turn. The transports themselves will require protection in the Baltic, and the land forces will require a heavy air force presence to join them at the end, too. Plus, even if all this does pan out, the USA is always right around the corner from declaring war and killing what few land units that survive the invasion the next turn. Trying to make British sausage with this weak German meat grinder isn’t going to lead to a happy conclusion for the axis, ever. Doesn’t seem that Sealion will ever be possible, except for end-game.
The more I talk about Sealion on the boards, the more I realize its going to be impossible to simulate it with the Axis and Allies ruleset. The money you get every round can be spent on any unit type without regard to actual logistics in real life… planes don’t have to worry about fuel and repairs, infantry can be infinitely made without constraints on an actual population (let’s conscript the 12-year olds this round!), and so on and so on. The only way I can see Larry trying to accurately depict the Dunkirk scenario (making Sealion possible) would be having Britain start the game without any IPCs, to represent the debacle at Dunkirk where most of the army’s heavy equipment was lost on the beach. Or by placing constraints on what can actually be “built” each round, like limiting the UK’s ability to build infantry to 2-3 for the first 2 rounds or something.
Also, the Baltic fleet is rather limited in its usefulness, with the current game. If you spend your IPCs building naval units off Germany, what can you really do with them? Invading Russia at Karelia is pretty much the only alternative, and the fleet is still bottled up for Britain with its larger IPC pool to destroy at leisure. Norway and Finland are like 5-6 IPCs and not worth near as much as Africa and India. Unless there’s some rule introduced blocking Britain from its IPCs at game start, Sealion is a farce and the starting navy units should be sacrificed for time. Attacking Britain’s colonies seems to be the only working strategy, so Med fleet is still best alternative.
I like it; definitely makes a Sealion build plausible for germany with the West germany production and IC; should also be a lot easier to keep a fleet in the Baltic afloat with the added spaces. Hope they add in some sort of no pass rule for the Danish Straits like it is for the Suez canal; historically the Straits were mined to hell and gone by both sides during the war. Also, the distance between germany’s capital and Britain’s SZs won’t allow any mad-dash psycho end-the-war in one fell swoop baltic runs by the Brits. The US also needs 2 turns to come to Britain’s aid as well as Africa, something that will be noticed as well, stop that stupid north africa shuck.
Hope it ends up something like this, I like it. Russia looks ENDLESS, should be fun to play.
Man, I don’t even want to know how screwed up AAE40 turn order is going to be. US going first after Germany just doesn’t fit in with the other incarnations where US always has the last word on the board each turn. Could really screw up any Sealion attempts as well, plus it doesn’t fit in with the neutrality rules, really, where the response for war would be reactive instead of pro-active.
Germany and Italy should either have a Russian or British turn between them on the Europe map or the game will get unbalanced with Axis can openers/re-inforcements/plane landing sites vs. the various fronts in Egypt, Russia, or France. Judging by history, I don’t think German and Italian troops worked together that effectively in RL, shouldn’t be in game that way either.
Man, what would be the French Forces in Africa represent? Like 1-2 infantry? Couldn’t have been that many, compared to the Maginot Line.
Bah, this game does little to represent REAL troop/aircraft/tank numbers during the war… It simply factors in the surprise attack strength Germany had when it attacked both France and the Soviet Union. Both countries were caught with their figurative pants down, and the lower starting troop numbers represent that in-game.
It would be pretty hard to build this where you actually have plastic on the board representing the total army sizes and still have Germany win by rolling the dice. Maybe you could load the dice, like giving all Germany die rolls a -1 for the initial invasion of Fall Gelb in the Ardennes or Operation Barbarossa, and having all the Allied die rolls +1 for the battle. But dice odds would still throw the game out of whack for the Axis some of the time, in which case not having the units there in the first place negates this probability.
LOL France goes last. Of course it does.
Well, Italy and Germany can double team that front, at the very least. Looks like the Italian can opener for Russia in AA50-1941 will survive for this version. There’s something.
Yeah, I was looking at this earlier on the AA40P boards… if the US gets like 50 IPCS for the West coast in that game once they enter war footing, are they ALSO getting ANOTHER 50 IPCs for the east coast too? Would be ridiculously inbalanced unless there was a rule stating the US had separate economies for both the east and west theaters, and even then, 100+ income for the US is simply outrageous. Would probably be historically accurate, but really impossible for the Axis to overcome after round 5 or so.
Not sure how these games are supposed to work separately AND also as a global map option with any pretense of game balance.
Rules that make sense.
Neutrality that lasts as long as you don’t attack neutral powers. (Otherwise, what’s point of neutrality, unless you like jumping the gun?) In 1940, the USA wasn’t at war with either Japan or Germany, and didn’t really want to go to war either.
BALANCED GAMEPLAY (like to really see how they will manage USA’s double wartime footing income with this version). See neutrality example, above.
Independent French player that joins Axis side once Paris falls (VICHY COLLABORATORS!!!) If Paris is retaken by Allies, French player switches to allies side…
Feasible German Operation Sealion opening.
We have not yet seen the Europe map, so this is a quite premature issue to start discussing. Who know, WOTC may even get bankrupt before summer 2010, and then we will never even see this map. So what I try to say is, do you want cheese with your whine ?
Considering that all the copies of AA50 SOLD OUT, and WOTC STILL doesn’t realize how much of a gold mine the Axis and Allies franchise is, WOTC going bankrupt is definitely a plausible scenario. Watch them hang onto the copyrights until the bitter end.
If Larry doesn’t take into consideration Vichy France, then that will be a big blunder.
Per LH
FYI - After wrestling with this Vichy siht, I decided to skip the whole thing. France will be considered an ally power and that’s it. The confusion generated by the Vichy loyalty thing is just not worth the extra game steps. Also… perhaps I did not mention this but if and when France is liberated it reappears as a self-standing power with its own economy. The rule may end up providing France with an automatic influx of new units appearing on the board. - I’m still toying with this idea. It’s got to be simple and instinctive.
Aw, France should switch sides during the game, Marshal Petain in VF was a total German collaborator, probably worse than Quisling in Norway. Vichy France paid millions of francs to “sustain occupying forces” for Germany (spoils), was totally controlled by the SS and was compliant in persecutions, plus there were some French who joined anti-communism divisions and definitely worked with the German authorities.
At this time in history, after the Great Depression of the 30’s, democracies were seen as inherently “weak” and prone to lacking the resolve to combat the helplessness caused by the failure of the world economic system. Fascism was seen as a viable alternative to democratic governments ruled by the whims of public opinion and the depressed economy. The rise of Nazi Germany was mostly done the same way that other governments got out of the depression, lots and lots of govt. spending, but you couldn’t tell that the rebuilding of Germany from WWI wasn’t ALL due to the switch to fascism.
At the beginning of WWII, Germany had just burst out of its borders and was seen as unstoppable in taking over all of Europe and possibly the world. France at this junction was trying to make the most out of a bad situation and there were definitely willing collaborators trying to get as much out of the new world order as they could. There was definitely some resistance, too, but for the most part the French realized they had been beaten and knew they had to go along with the Jerries for quite some time before help would come.
Let whichever side controls Paris have the French on their team! The Free french could be under control of the British player, and if the Allies liberate Paris, have the dice rolled again to see if the territories revert back to Allied control! Would be funny as hell to see France switch sides 3-4 times per game!
Jesus though, how much money will America start the war with? 100+ IPCs? I mean it makes sense, the US really was the reason the Allies turned the war around in terms of equipment and resources, but still, will the Axis have a prayer if the US can just suddenly plop down 100+ IPCs of units on the East coast for 3 turns after war dec and walk through France?
Guess its supposed to be unbalancing, US entering the war. I guess there’ll be limits on how many units the east and west coast can pop per turn too.
@WILD:
There was a lot of back stabbing going on in WWII. Hitler did it to Stalin, Franco backed out on Hitler, England walk out on France(although forced). I don’t see how you could hold any merit for any of the treaties or agreements of the time. They weren’t worth the paper they were written on. If Japan hadn’t bitten off more then they could chew with the US they could have attacked Russia’s back door at any time. I’m still not sure why they nailed Pearl. I guess they thought they could scare us into signing some type of agreement allowing them to do as they pleased in the Pacific as long as they left us alone. The Tripartite Pact also guaranteed that Germany and Italy would join in against the US (another deterrent aimed at keeping the US from declaring war). Boy that backfired, now Roosevelt had the ammo he needed.
When this game starts the US is not at war. Hitler felt he would be parading through Moscow by late fall of 1941, just as he did in Paris in the spring of 1940. If Hitler could have got Japan to attack Russia’s back door around the time of Barbarossa (a double back stabbing on Stalin) Hitler might have got his parade. There were open talks of Japan ending its nonaggression pact with Russia, because of the Tripartite Pact it had prior with Germany. Japan instead decided to go after the Euro colonies in the Pacific and invite the US into the war.
This game starts before all this. You as ruler of Japan can do what ever you want especially the first couple rounds. In the global game if you want to attack Siberia then as Tiger Woods would say “just do it!”
I would think that in the global game a Japanese attack on Russia would not bring the US into the war, just as attacking China won’t.
Think Japan attacked Pearl Harbor more out of a sense of regaining honor, the US had been playing rough with them diplomatically about the Chinese, and had cut off their oil supply they needed to run their war machine. Basically Japan saw no way out once they realized they had no way to obtain oil except for the euro colonies in Borneo and East Indies, which were technically under protection from the Brits and the US. I guess they thought they were knocking out two birds with one stone by sinking the American battleship fleet and going for broke in the Pacific.
Japan attacking Russia, well, either side wasn’t really interested in what Eastern Russia/Manchuria had to offer, though they had several skirmishes. Neither side wanted a worthless war over a bunch of crap land, but Russia and Japan had bad blood since WWI, so its feasible the skirmishes could have been pushed into a war. If, however, the Axis alliance had been a bit more together from the beginning and Germany had let Japan know about its designs on Russia, maybe they would have been in on Barbarossa. And you can do that in this game! Whether it will actually be worthwhile with all the new territories is probably another matter.
Seems like third round, anything goes! Though US prob going to be pretty boring to play until round 3. Guess the games will be a lot longer :( .