Posts made by timerover51

Both boards look very nice.  I like the idea of laminating it and then mounting it on a board.  That makes if much more durable.

That is when house rules come into play.  Also, looking at how other games handle combat, like Xeno Games which uses an 8-sided die.

I need to do some reworking based on games this summer, and then get them into a form suitable for sale.

@Caesar:

With D12, the logic would be to simply double your numbers and your odds don’t change.

Actually, I have used 12-sided die, but have not simply doubled all of the numbers, depending on what version I am playing.  I use the D12 to get greater differentiation between various units, and in some cases, nationalities.  The Italian infantry division in World War 2 had only two regiments, instead of just about everyone else having 3 regiments.  As a result, should have different values than other infantry units, but with a D6 that is not possible. With a D12, you can give the Italian infantry a different attack and defense factor than the other infantry units.  Similarly, the best Japanese tank was about on par with the US M3/M5 light tank series, and nowhere comparable to either the M3 Grant/Lee Medium or the M4 Sherman, and they showed little ability to use tanks in mass, preferring to deploy them in company-sized units with the infantry.  Rather than having the Japanese armor attack at 6 and defend at 4, I have them attacking at 3 and defending at 4.  The defense factor is based on the Japanese willingness to literally fight to the last man, and their ability to camouflage tanks in defensive positions.

You can alter ship attack and defense values in the same way.  Maybe you give a destroyer a 6 for attacking submarines, but a 4 for attacking surface ships, and depending on the navy, anywhere from 1 to 6 for engaging aircraft.  Japanese destroyers were seriously deficient in light anti-aircraft weapons, while the US Fletcher-class ships would have been rated by the Royal Navy as anti-aircraft cruisers. From this, you might want to give a US destroyer a defense strength of 6 against aircraft.  A D12 also makes it easier to put cruisers in the game, inbetween the destroyer and battleship.

There is a lot more you can do with a D12 dice than simply double the standard numbers.

Rule number 1 does look like it might be good to include.

I am thinking of allowing the US to move bombers to India in a non-combat more in one turn, and then move the bombers to China on the next, either with a combat more or non-combat more.  It took the US only two weeks to fly bombers from Seattle, Washington over the Atlantic Air Route, across Africa to Cairo and then to India.  As for fighters, once landed at Takoradi in West Africa, they could be flown to India and China on the same air route.  That was how the British were getting aircraft quickly to the Mid-East, and the route was functioning well by December of 1941.  It took two weeks for a newly completed B-17E to fly from Seattle to Java in the Netherlands East Indies and participate in its first combat mission.

If I add cruisers to the game, I will go to a 12-sided die roll to increase the differentiation in combat abilities between destroyers, cruisers, and battleships. With respect to AA fire, the Japanese were pretty bad when it came to ship-borne AA weapons, while the US cruisers were on par with the battleships.  I allow for shore-bombardment by all ships, but only in support of an amphibious invasion.  No battleships standing off shore and clearing the area without an invasion. No aerial attacks on infantry either except in conjunction with an infantry unit, whereupon the infantry get a plus 1 on their attack roll, similar to artillery support.

As a side note, the US refitted an older British Light Cruiser with an armament similar to that of a Fletcher-class destroyer, but with less automatic weapons due to top-heavy problems.  The British rated it as an Anti-aircraft Cruiser.  Just something to think about when defending against air raids with US destroyers.

We just played a modified version of the 1st Edition Pacific game in my summer gaming class, using the Red Minis.  It had 6 players, 5 Allied and the Japanese.  The Allied were the U.S., Australia, British India, the Netherlands, China, and Japan.  The Netherlands did not have an IC but could buy some units from the United States using income from the refineries in the Dutch West Indies and Lend-Lease credits.  The Japanese player won because the Allies failed to cooperate effectively.  Getting 5 middle school and high school males to cooperate is not at all easy, just like Allied cooperation in World War 2.  It makes for a great learning tool.

Playing any Axis and Allies game with more than two players makes if far more interesting than a basic two-player game.

@rodgerkeith:

Hi all.  Been lurking on this forum for a while and I’m really impressed with the info you can find here.

After picking up AA1942.2 and playing a few games, I’d like to try out Guadalcanal but would rather not pay a premium price.  Anybody have a map I could print out?

If you are still looking for maps, there are a variety in the Marine Corps histories of the Solomon Islands campaign.  You would have to add the required sea zones.

@Wolf555:

Greetings,

has someone put together events, event charts or event cards for this game and would like to share it ?

I use a standard 52 card deck for Event Cards for Axis and Allies Classic and Pacific 1st Edition.  Spades give the weather events, so a total of 13.  They do cover the entire world, however, and the remainder of the deck are event cards covering different areas.  I would have to see to the extent what I have worked up could be modified to cover World War 1.  However, I will not post it here do to copyright issues, as I have copyrighted my work.

There is an interesting report by the US Office of Naval Intelligence on the Battle of the River Plate, with quite a few photos and ship damage reports.  It can be found here, at the Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library, and downloaded for free.

http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org

As for a battle between the Admiral Scheer and a Baltimore–class cruiser, I would bet on the Baltimore-class ship, unless the Scheer got some early lucky hits on gun turrets, as the Spee did on the HMS Exeter.  The USS Salt Lake City, one of our two oldest heavy cruisers in World War 2, with an older gunfire control system than the Baltimores, was able to score hits on the IJN Nachi at ranges in excess of 21,000 yards.  The following comment from the ONI report applies to the Spee’s gunnery.

German shooting was described as quite good, initially, but the accuracy fell off rapidly.
(a) 11-inch opened with two 3-gun salvos, very close and on in deflection.
(b) 5.9-inch also fired at Exeter; no definite hits determined, but many splinters came aboard.

My first books were the Winston Churchill World War 2 series.  I started reading them when I was nine. Then it was Chester Wilmot’s Struggle for Europe.  In High School, the Morrison series on US Naval Operations, along with a of other ones.

My first World War One book was T. E. Lawrence’s Revolt in the Desert.  I picked up one of the reprints, and it is still a good read.  Flows faster than Seven Pillars of Wisdom, of which I also have a couple of copies.

@Tall:

Tigerman,

I took my 1940-global map to a professional Sign Shop and had them enlarge it 150% to 48" x 108"(4’ x 9’).  It wasn’t the least bit cheap, but I believe it was worth every penny.  It’s soooo much easier to see everything now, and makes gameplay much more enjoyable because you simply have the room to touch the units and move them around without an unholy mixing of everything.

I hope that you might reconsider the map dimensions to include them at 48" x 108" or a proportionate fraction of that,…say 36" x 79".  I know the “Coach” at HBG has offerred to print maps at differrent sizes before.

I feel that if you were to include the “Full Size” Global Proportion that the increase in map area would be very USEFULL in a Solomons Campaign map(as well as others in this series).  We wouldn’t just gain a great deal of very important Sea Zones,…but also other islands and/or off-board locations like Truk, Esprito Santo, Nomea(?), locations along the Eastern New Guinea coast, and Port Moresby and /Australia.

I implore you to please keep this “full size global proportion(FSGP)” in your consideration.  Also, I think that many, many, players would also think this a great innovation in their gaming experience,…A smaller map in SCOPE of the Solomon Campaign EXPANDED to a larger size.

I think almost everyone likes the impressive size of the 1940-global maps and would be interested in this one PRIMARILY because of all the EXPANSIONS in it.(more units, more capabilities, and a global-size map).

You are the “Map Master” of this project and I yield to your obvious knowledge and experience.  But I will continue with my ideas and opinions if I think them sound and important until you convince me otherwise.

We’ll talk further when you get some more time, friend.

Like I Say,…What Do YA’LL Think???
                                                                                          “Tall Paul”

If your map is much larger than the current size of the Europe 1940 or Pacific 1940,
you are going to have a hard time putting it on a standard size dining room table.  Tall Paul, you need to back of demanding the largest possible map.  I cannot put the combined boards for the current Europe and Pacific games on my dining room table and still have room for anything else.  I will be getting CoachofMany’s large maps for use in a classroom setting where I can put two large tables together, but that is in a CLASSROOM, not my dining room.  If you do a map, all of you need to think about the fact that the average player is going to play on a table probably about 60 X 30.  My dining room table, with one expander in it is 72 X 30.  If the game map does not fit on that, it is not going to sell.  I have the same problem with the two Attack maps and to a lesser degree with the Eagle Games War: Age of Imperialism map.

Second, the larger the map, the more expensive it is to print it.  I am getting the large 1939 maps from Coachofmany for the historical games class that I work with, but the organization that I work with is paying for them.  There is no way that I can justify buying a 48 X 96 map for my own use.  Use a large-scale map for the Coral Sea Game, and then a different scale map for the Solomon Islands game.  Guys may love a large map, until it is time to pay for it.  The Coral Sea Game would be a tactical-level naval game with no land combat, the Solomons Campaign is an operational-level game that has both sea and land combat.  The two levels are not compatible on the same scale map.

Have any of you seen or have the original Midway game by Avalon Hill from the late 1960s?  That had a very good search system.  No need to reinvent the wheel for that.  I will dig out my copy and summarize the way search was used.  The same system could be used for the Coral Sea, the Solomons, and any Pacific naval game.

However, you need to keep in mind that, except for a period from 1 June 1942 to mid-October 1942, the US was reading the Japanese naval codes, and one problem the US had was to make sure that a Recon plane spotted the Japanese forces so as not to give any our code-breaking.  You would need to factor that into the game.  For help with that, you might want to check the book, Ultra in the Pacific, by John Winton, where he covers the operation use of Magic intel.  I helped John research that book and we went through an incredible amount of paper concerning the intercepts and communication to the fleet in the daily intel summaries.  I have a copies of some of the more interesting intercepts.  They make for very fascinating reading.

Eagle Games basically did this with their War: Age of Imperialism game, which is not longer available.  They still sell the miniatures for the game however, and there is a computer version that they still might have available.  I have to see how many of the computer games I still have.

For the basic game, they have the British, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia.  I have added what I call the Lesser European states: Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Italy as one group for simplicity of play.  You could have Spain and Portugal together, the Netherlands with it East Indies colonies, and the Italians with a desire to expand into Africa as separate powers as well. The main problem is right now, they have only 6 colors for units, so that limits the game to 6 players.  Pieces are nice and you also get native infantry modeled after the Zulus and native cavalry modeled after the Central Asia mounted fighters.  Building are city modeled after the Great Zimbawea, a factory, school, nice steam engine, and a fort.

I have a copy of the game, and I am thinking about expanding it to the New World by using the combined Attack and Attack Expansion boards.  They do not have either the resource or native level markers available, which is unfortunate, as I have already checked.  It was a nice game, and it would be good to get back into production.  We have a lot of fun with it in our summer game program.  The students really like it.

Table Tactics used to have available the Central Powers units, which if you combined them with say the infantry figures and artillery from Attack, you could pretty much have what you needed for a WW1 land game, and the naval units, less carriers, would cover the naval aspect.  You could pretty much eliminate the Asian aspect as that lasted a very short time.  You did have the Emden raiding in the Indian Ocean and Von Spee’s squadron sailing across the Pacific, sinking Cradock’s two cruisers, Good Hope and Monmouth, and then attacking the Falklands, where 4 our of 5 of his cruisers were sunk in December of 1914.  Aside from those naval actions, you do not have much at all.

You would need the Mid East and Africa for those campaigns, and Lettow-Vorbeck was still fighting in November of 1918, and you cannot pass up the Arab Revolt and Allenby’s campaigns in the Mid East, nor Gallipoli.  The current Europe 1940 board would be about right, reset to 1914. Another option for a start would be the basic Attack Game board covering Europe and the Americas, and then redraw the boundaries.

I am talking to Table Tactics about doing some more WW1 tanks besides the Mark II that they have: the French Renault, maybe a British Whippet as a later war tank, the German A7V, and a Rolls-Royce armoured car for the Mid East.  Given the small size of most of your WW1 fighters, you probably would want to use 1/300 scale for the fighters, rather than 1/600.  I am checking with another company on Zeppelins, and they already do a nice blimp.  Get a mix of 1/2400 scale and 1/4800 scale WW1 ships, and you have the basis for a prototype.

For Countries in the Game, you have the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire on one side, and the British Empire, France, Italy, and a Russian/US player.  The US comes in with either the Russian Revolution or the use by Germany of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare.  I have thought of a couple of ways to trigger the Russian Revolution, with the option of preventing it if the Ottomans are knocked out soon enough.  Hard to say how to handle the Balkans, as Serbia has a claim to be in the game somehow, unless they are controlled by the Russian player until knocked out of the war.

There should be some nice naval actions between the German and UK, and the Italians, the Austrians, the French and the UK in the Med, with some chance for action in the Baltic and the Black Sea.  Not sure how to handle the stalemate on the Western Front as yet.  However, it is only 2011, so there is time yet.

**The “four-pipers” converted to fast transports were officially listed as APD, not DDAP.  It would be easiest to use standard US Navy designators.

Carriers:**
I am not sure what you mean by a separate class of “fast carrier”.  All US fleet carriers, from the Lexington and Saratoga through the Midway Class could make a minimum of 30 knots, except for the Ranger with a trial speed of 29.25 knots, and the Wasp, with a trial speed of 29.5 knots.  The Independence-class CVL, converted from Cleveland-class light cruiser hulls showed a trial speed of 31.6 knots.  The only “slow” carriers that the US had were the CVEs, which had speeds from 16.5 to 19 knots.  As for “fast escorts”, again, what do you mean?  All US cruisers could do a minimum of 30 knots, as could the Iowa-class battleships and the Alaska-class larger cruisers.  The only slower ships were the old battleships, the treaty-limited North Carolina and South Dakota class of battleships, and the destroyers escorts.  I see no need whatsoever for a separate group of “fast ships”.

The first of the Essex-class carriers, the Essex commissioned on Dec. 31, 1942.  The first Midway-class, the Midway, commissioned on Sept. 19, 1945.  I think that the Midway class can safely be ruled out for any type of expanded Solomon Islands campaign.

Time Frame:
I would argue that with the capture of the Admiralties in March of 1944, that the Solomon Islands campaign effectively ends.  You should not worry about anything beyond that date, and with a 3 month lead time to get equipment, except aircraft, to the theater, I would say that the cut off for any new ground equipment should be December of 1943.  That rules out the Sherman “Jumbo”, produced in the spring of 1944 all of which went to Europe and the Pershing.  The Sherman was more than adequate for the Pacific as the heaviest Japanese anti-tank gun was a high-velocity 47mm piece, good against the Stuart, but marginal except at very close range against the Sherman.  Some Pershings were deployed on Okinawa, and if you really need them, Table Tactics makes a very nice Pershing as part of its Engage series, although it would be a little large for A&A game scale.

Unit Types:
The Solomons campaign was fought in JUNGLE.  You might need mechanized infantry and self-propelled artillery in Europe and North Africa, and maybe in the Philippines, but not in the Solomons area.  You are not going to be able to use it at all. You might want to include a DUKW unit, for resupply.

Assuming you go with the early 1944 cut off, then you eliminate the P-51 and the B-29, and the P-38 was used as a fighter-bomber as well.  There would be no Montana-class battleships.  The Iowa and New Jersey commissioned early enough in 1943 to possibly be involved, except that they were used in the Central Pacific as the only battleships that could keep up with the carriers.  The two Alaska-class ships to commission, the Alaska and the Guam, did so in June and September of 1944 respectively.  You should have a Catalina for reconnaissance and as an ASW plane.

As for carriers, the Essex-class could carry over 90, with an air group of 36 fighter, 36 dive bomber, and 15 -18 torpedo planes.  Japanese carrier groups were no where near as large.  I would argue that an Essex should have 5 aircraft, not 3, 2 fighter and 3 attack, or 4 fighter and 1 attack.  Morison does a very nice job of giving carrier air group information in his books.  A CVE has 1 aircraft, either a fighter or attack, a CVL has two aircraft, a fighter and an attack, Enterprise or Saratoga-class, 4 aircraft (one or two fighter, two or three attack), then Essex class.  That is for the US, I would need to look up the data for the Japanese.  If you have to make things even for the Japanese verses the US, 1 fighter or attack for a CVE, a fighter and an attack for a CVL, and 2 fighters and an attack for a CV.  Note, a P-38 looks really weird on a carrier.

Table Tactics already was producing land mines, and they could just as easily be used as naval mines.  However, land mines were used very little in the Solomons, mainly because of the terrain.  Naval mines were used, but are you sure that you want to introduce them?  Some areas, such as Iron Bottom Sound, are far too deep for mines.
Other areas, like Ferguson Passage and Blackett Strait near Kolombangara, can be mined and were.  On the whole, the water depth in the Solomon area is really pushing it for mines.  Also, are you going to allow for aircraft delivery?  Air-delivered mines proved to be very effective in the Bougainville-Shortlands area.  Mines mean minesweepers, added cost and complexity.  Are you looking at a game or simulation?  A game can be done with the KISS principal.  With naval and land mines, you are straying into simulation or much smaller scale territory.  You give someone who knows what he is doing or has a creative imagination land and naval mines, and you will find out how fast that they can change the game.

First, see the following post for some idea of my background.
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=18023.15, see reply #19, I am the Timerover51 quoted.

Second, the tanks used by the Marines in the Solomons, both at Guadalcanal and the Central Solomons, were M2A4 and M3 and M3A1 Stuarts, not Sheridans.  One of them is still sitting in a marsh in the middle of Arundel Island near New Georgia and is a minor tourist attraction for the islanders.

Third, see the following for the organization and equipment of the Japanese Special Naval Landing Force units.  It is the Handbook on Japanese Military Forces, Oct. 1944.

http://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Japan/IJA/HB/index.html#index

They were quite similar to the Marine Defense Battalion units and were not intended for use as an amphibious assault unit.  The amphibious unit that was supposed to attack Midway was the 28th Infantry Regiment of the Japanese Army’s 7th Infantry Division, detailed to the Japanese Navy for amphibious operations, commanded by Col. Ichiki.  One battalion of this unit, under command of Col. Ichiki, was the unit that attacked the Marine perimeter at the Battle of the Tenaru River, and was wiped out.

For the analysis of damage to the Yamato and Musashi, see the following Report of the US Naval Technical Mission to Japan, which is also summarized in Bill Dulin and Bill Garzke’s book, Axis and Neutral Battleships of WW2.
http://www.fischer-tropsch.org/primary_documents/gvt_reports/USNAVY/USNTMJ Reports/USNTMJ-200H-0745-0786 Report S-06-2.pdf
The report is in PDF format and can be downloaded and printed out.

For additional source material on the Pacific War, I would suggest looking at the following online source as a start, as it has a lot of the US government publications online, including the official and semi-official histories.  As a minimum, you need to look at the official US Army history, Cartwheel:  The Reduction of Rabaul, the Marine official history, The Isolation of Rabaul, S.E. Morison’s books on Guadalcanal and Breaking the Bismarck Barrier, Paul Dull’s Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the official Army and Marine Corps histories of Guadalcanal.  Shots Fired in Anger by Lt. Col. John George, who fought on both Guadalcanal and with Merrill’s Marauders, is an excellent source of information on infantry fighting in jungle terrain.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/index.html

With respect to battleships, the US designed the 2 ships of the North Carolina class and the 4 ships of the South Dakota class prior to beginning the Iowa-class ships.  The Washington, the North Carolina, and the South Dakota all saw use in the Guadalcanal series of naval battles.   The US had only one battleship with 12 inch guns active in WW2, and that was the Arkansas, all of the other ships carried 14 inch or 16 inch guns on the Maryland-class of 3 ships.  The 12 inch guns on the Alaska-class large cruisers were far more powerful than the guns on the Arkansas, firing an 1140 pound AP projectile verses an 870 pound AP projectile.

The book, The Amphibians Came to Conquer, posted on the above site, has a lot of maps covering the area of Guadalcanal and the Central Solomons, which you might want to take a look at.  The maps are all capable of being downloaded.

I have developed a 6-player expansion of the original edition of Pacific, that can be located under House Rules-Pacific at the main site page, and have been playtesting and refining them for several years.

Lastly, aside from improved aircraft, the two main technological advances that occurred during the Solomon Islands campaign were good quality microwave radar, allowing for night actions where the US gradually reached a position of superiority over the Japanese by mid to late 1943, and the proximity fuze in the spring of 1943, which boosted US anti-aircraft effectiveness by 50%, from a 33% shoot down rate to a 50% shoot down rate of attacking Japanese aircraft.  The Betty loss rate was even worse.

As for scale, you are looking at regimental-size units at most, and could go to battalion-sized units at the cost of having a few more figures on the board.  In the jungle present in the Solomon Islands group, and the Southwest Pacific area in general, naval gunfire and artillery were of limited effectiveness against well-dug in infantry units.  The shelling of air bases by naval gunfire was good only for temporary neutralization, and then only with a lavish expenditure of ammunition, say 4500 rounds of US 6 inch naval High Capacity rounds, and then maybe only for 24 to 48 hours.  Remember, even the October 14th bombardment of Henderson Field by the Japanese battleships Kongo and Haruna only knocked out Henderson Field for the morning, and by afternoon, Marine planes were attacking the Japanese transports. Where artillery was most effective was in defensive fire against an attack, where the enemy was exposed in the open, rather than dug in.  Close air support doctrine had not been developed as yet, and in heavy jungle, was apt to be ineffective at best, and dangerous to one’s own forces at the worst.

I am still working on a set of replacement rules for the Guadalcanal game, and will be using a 12-sided die roll to account for the addition of the cruiser to the ship mix, as well as the PT boats. I would recommend a 12-sided die for use in any A&A game where you have cruisers as part of the ship mix, or mechanized infantry or tactical attack aircraft.  If you allow for tactical attack aircraft, then drastically reduce the effectiveness of fighters against ground units.  The fighters used during this period, up to late 1943, simply did not have enough of a bomb load to be effective against larger ships or dug-in infantry or infantry in the jungle.  The P-40 did become far more effective later, following modifications that allowed in to carry up to three 500 pound bombs or rockets.  The Wildcat and Zero never were effective fighter-bombers, and the early Corsairs were all used as fighters, not fighter-bombers.

Tactical attack aircraft should have a higher attack value against ships than for ground units, and adjustments to hitting should be made based on terrain.  Dug-in infantry in jungle should only be able to be taken out by attacking infantry with artillery support, and flamethrowers would be a boost as well.

First thing, find out what conventions or game groups are in your area, and run the game at the convention or group meeting.  A convention gives you word of mouth advertising, exposure to dealers, and also helps with refining the game if it has some bugs that you have not seen.

Put together a bundled package of map, rules, and basic pieces set in a Zip-lock bog for Historical Board Gaming to sell.

Get the game mentioned and reviewed on Board Game Geek if you can.

But the biggest thing is number 1, get some game exposure.  Coachofmany has a good site and some great stuff, of which I have bought a lot, but you need to get the word out about your game.

@Krieghund:

since United Kingdom is not an island.

The UK is not an island?  Interesting, considering that it is smaller than a lot of US states and totally surrounded by water.  Hard to find a spot in the UK more than 100 miles from the coast.

And why the limit on the number of planes scrambled?