Cool, the Italians, Romanians, and French are getting fleshed out. Each get a commander and some fire support.
2 German, a Japanese, an American, and a Russian aircraft. Three Air Superiority fighters and two ground attack aircraft. Five planes? Not much to contest the skies with.
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The Katyusha looks good for the cost, but I can’t decide if the salvo ability is really worth it. Are there any soldiers that can be hit with only two successes? It seems snipers and Anti-tank guns already disrupted are the only things touchable. The Flakpanzer seems to be a good unit to have if you know you’re dealing with a lot of soft targets.
And the preview minis are….A Sturmovik! It keeps getting better for the People’s Army. More cool stuff to throw at the facists. The other mini looks like a forward artillery observer or a simple radioman. I can’t tell nationality, but it’s definately a winter weather outfit.
I understand the “This beach only” deployment restrictions, but this is my question (I apologize for not making it clearer).
You have four slots for deployment on Utah as opposed to the eight on Omaha. The first line of reinforcments (six units) is Utah beach only. Order Card 14 says roll 2D6 for the U.S. The rulebook says "if there’s not enough room, remaining reinforcments must wait until a leter turn. It also says Reinforcements enter play in order from left to right and top to bottom. Does this mean that on turn One as the U.S., It doesn’t matter what I roll (unless I roll under a 4 on two dice), because I can only place four units? From reading the rules as written, my first wave of reinforcements is at max four units and on Utah Beach only.
You forgot Yugoslavian Partisans. They’d basically be Kuonmintang Riflemen without the SA drawback, and they should get a +1 DEF when defending hills.
As for morale, you can get around that by having lower defensive values and using the SA from said Chinese Riflemen. When any irregular gets a face-up disrupted counter, destroy it immediately.
You could make a Pacfic Theater airborne scenario. The U.S. Marines did airdrop onto Corregidor, evne though it was a genuine disaster due to very low drop height.
Is the Allied reinforcement chart supposed to limit your units in the first turn or two? If you place as many units on Omaha as the deployment silhouette allows, do you then stop placing reinforcments, or do you skip to Utah beach?
I have two Hellcats for trade.
Wants: All units pertaining to
Italy
Poland
Romania
Fan requested favorites like the Supermarine Spitfire and Jagdtiger also roar into action.
Did a lot of people ask for the Jagdtiger? Kinda odd. Anyway, can we hope to see (1) More airborne support units, (2) Rangers (cause we needs us a Pointe Du Hoc scenario), and (3) Free French forces.
The new preview is up, and we’ve got stats for the 105mm Sherman and the SdKfz 234, and what do I see? We’re getting a Katyusha!! The flakpanzer is also nice, but the late-war Russians just got real good. I hope the range of the Katyusha’s rockets is reflected on the card.
To add to the questions of weather and other strategic factors, I assume there will also be some mechanism to represent the limited fuel supplies the Germans were working with in this campaign?
My only concern about Axis and Allies as a collectible miniatures game is the inveitable glut of items available for play. Magic set the standard for restricting tournament play for those who hadn’t collected the early power cards. The Clix games are doing the same thing-Mechwarrior has a restricted tournament environment.
I don’t want to see the same thing happen eventually in A&A. One of the great things about historical miniatures gaming is the fact that the Panzer IV is never rotated out of the game - that would be absurd. Granted, if such a thing would happen, I’d quit playing in an organized format, but I don’t want it to come to that.
I bought it when it came out for the 360. Thanks to a patch, Xbox Live’s interface is now on par with that of the PC. I’m trying to crawl my way through the veteran setting. I spent a week on the cliffs of Pointe Du Hoc alone. I shudder to think what Hill 400 will be like.
That this US girl fell trying to do a trick as she was about to win and ended up with the Silver instead of Gold.
Why, would you do that? It’s the Olympics for goodness sake.
Has anybody asked Leon Lett for his opinion?
The ability to build and sustain a rotating pilot base was one of many advantages that the U.S. enjoyed during the war. The ability to recover downed pilots is an inherent advantage of fighting either at sea or over your own territory. As an aggressor, Germany cannot expect to recover more than a slim percentage of its pilots shot down in action over enemy territory. That’s a factor Germany has to accept in its overall strategy.
Having perused the Avalon Hill boards, and comparing every Sherman mini to about four different Sherman web galleries, I’m convinced it’s the M4A3, 105mm. If they’re going to try and give the US an assault gun, why not the Priest?
And, the new pictures are up. Why is there another freaking Sherman?? The 232 is nice, but the LAST thing we need is another Sherman….at least one in American markings.
In order for us to determine if Germany and their allies could have produced a favorable outcome during the war, we have to examine two factors, one dependent on the other. First, what were the war aims of the Axis powers? In order to know how to define the conditions of victory, we have to establish German (for they are the guiding strategic force in the Axis) objectives. Once those are ascertained, we can define an outcome that the German High Command would see as “successfulâ€.
For the duration of this post, I will refer to the collective strategic decision makers of each country as a monolithic entity. For the purposes of this discussion we can ignore the political infighting that was embedded with most nations, as the overall war goals are fairly consistent, the French collaborators notwithstanding.
The Germans had a series of strategic objectives. First and foremost, the Germans wanted to regain the Danzig region and restore a continuous national border. To accomplish this met direct opposition with the Polish. Warsaw would not agree to relinquish this territory. This objective brings England and France into opposition with Germany, adding a second objective: Germany must maintain a secure nation, without suffering a major defeat similar to the so-called armistice of the previous war.
Given the German doctrines in place of a swift, decisive campaign, the German forces have to strike within a certain time window in order to avoid a prolonged conflict. The Polish territorial question came to a head in the summer of 1939. Had the Germans waited to initiate an attack against the Allied armies, rather than strike in the late spring/early summer of 1940, then the likelihood of increased Allied industrial production could negate the superior training and doctrines of the German army. As is stood, the German armor was outnumbered by the French armor. Whether the French would have corrected their policy of dispersed armor is impossible to surmise, but they could have produced more tanks had the Germans waited to attack later than 1940. Delaying the start of conflict with any of the belligerent parties would have seriously compromised the German capability to deliver a swift and decisive victory.
Once the Allied forces on the continent were defeated, the Germans were left with one battlefield: England. The German strategy of crippling the capacity of the Royal Air Force was a sound one. It is here that we find an opportunity for the Germans to change the outcome of their conflict. Had the Germans maintained a policy of destroying the logistical chain supporting the RAF, and their ability to house planes at air bases, the Germans could have fared better in crippling British industrial capacity.
Here we see the German’s first strategic flaw. They have eliminated the French as a decisive military force, but for how long? The continued existence of Britain leaves an unstable political situation in Western Europe. But, even if the Germans land on the coast of England, and as in Thomas Mackey’s Invasion! force a capitulation of mainland England, what prevents the Americans from entering the war and attempting to aid Canada, South Africa, and the rest of the Commonwealth from liberating England and eventually France? It is easy to say that Germany can avoid fighting America for a time after Pearl Harbor by not becoming Japan’s co-belligerent, but if the German position on the European continent becomes too strong, would the Americans have eventually intervened?
This conundrum doesn’t even take into account the great bear lurking to the east of Germany. Russia’s strategic importance and their affect on outcomes is a whole other topic, one that I will examine in a later posting, particularly after suppertime.
I assume there will be a fixed and/or random weather chart, since the overcast weather early in the campaign was of major help to the Germans.
I still have my IG Armored Column from a couple of years ago. I bowed out of playing when they moved to 4th edition. I can understand the hefty price on pewter miniatures, but asking $50 for a rulebook is just too steep.
They can teach any supercomputer to play chess. They have yet to teach a computer to play go. Apparently there are way too many permutations to string together an intelligent AI script.