Hey there,
I have very little experience playing A&A on a real board but would like to introduce some friends to it. One of the things that I always found difficult about A&A on the board is organization. Specifically, I find the role of aircraft very difficult to keep track of, since fighters and bombers may fly many spaces from an origin country to a battle. Once in the battle, everything is kind of mixed and I imagine we will forget where each fighter came from originally, or more specifically, how far it has already moved.
How do you deal with this? I was considering some sort of markers to place in origin countries, one for bombers, one for fighters.
An alternative I suppose is to use an array of D6 dice, and sort of have a die displaying how many moves have already been made with each plane participating in a combat. So I would perhaps have a fighter model and a bomber model off to the side where I keep all my other stuff. Then, for each fighter, place a D6, facing the number of moves used (or remaining, depending on the convention we choose) up.
On that note, as a slight rules question. If you have say 3 fighters attacking a country which as AA, and 1 of them gets shot down. Can you choose to lose the fighter which has used the most amount of movement already, or would you need to roll a die 1:1 for each fighter.
Any other ideas about board organization that might help us get through a game and not get bogged down in game piece overload?
I’ve always used dice. If I have enough space, I’ll put it right under the plane in the territory. I usually have the number of remaining moves showing.
As for your plane as a casualty question, we’ve always rolled all dice like that at one time. And you can choose any one you want as the casualty, so yes, you could always pick the one with the fewest remaining moves.
Hello TheBeninator
I am a stickler for combining multiple stacks in any territory into one stack to make it easier to consider attacks. Some players will just scoop everything into a mess, but that just creates difficulties for everyone. Nevertheless, as always with A&A the board is rather small for the units that can be involved and many of us on this forum have printed our own larger maps using artwork kindly shared by colleagues here.
Even so, with a big battle I will remove the units engaged from the board to allow an accurate tally of dice to be thrown and casualties.
As a heretic I think allowing access to the triple a battle calculator can speed things up if some players are slow. Better though is a time limit, which precludes the need for the calculator, if that can be agreed.
Like the Col. I use a dice for each plane’s remaining moves. I bought some small dice for this purpose. Having removed the units engaged from the board it is easy to deploy the dice alongside the appropriate aircraft.
I believe that the defender chooses casualties so can select whichever fighter he wishes.
Best of luck!
I find the role of aircraft very difficult to keep track of, since fighters and bombers may fly many spaces from an origin country to a battle. Once in the battle, everything is kind of mixed and I imagine we will forget where each fighter came from originally, or more specifically, how far it has already moved.
How do you deal with this? I was considering some sort of markers to place in origin countries, one for bombers, one for fighters.
You can always get a set of these…
http://www.historicalboardgaming.com/HBG-Aircraft-Fuel-Range-Markers-Acrylic-_p_2765.html
One technique which can reduce board clutter is to use movement stands (flat plates of transparent plastic mounted on three legs) to carry your air units. The planes continue to operate on the game board itself, but at a higher altitude and thus on a separate level than the ground units. Litko manufactures such stands:
Fleet Movement Stands
https://litko.net/collections/board-games/products/fleet-movement-stands
I bought the little d6 and stack the planes onto those.
