Release Date?

[Witt]

Great. But how? Amazon US you said and for 54$.
I tried and only said July 27th. Not earlier. Oh well!
Enjoy!

[lozmoid]

I don’t know how it all works, I just placed my order on Friday morning (GMT) and got the despatch email today this afternoon. The pre-shipping delivery estimate was something like July 22nd - 29th. And now the actual delivery estimate is 18 July exactly. Weird but there you go.

[DrLarsen]

@wittman:

Great. But how? Amazon US you said and for 54$.
I tried and only said July 27th. Not earlier. Oh well!
Enjoy!

I think the key might be that there is more than one entry for it under Amazon.  I saw the same thing at first and then looked around and found one that purported to be able to ship immediately… I then followed K’s lead and sprung for the one-day shipping, thinking “this is probably a mistake, I want them to get it out to me before they realize it!”

The one that announces it as a preorder is actually fulfilled by Funagain Games, a well-known game distributor (and they are offering at a solid discount, btw.)  Looks like the one that I pulled the trigger  on is fulfilled by Amazon itself, and I’m guessing someone in their bureaucracy screwed up and missed that they’re not supposed to be shipping them yet!  So jump in before they catch their mistake!

[knp7765]

@DrLarsen:

I think the key might be that there is more than one entry for it under Amazon.  I saw the same thing at first and then looked around and found one that purported to be able to ship immediately… I then followed K’s lead and sprung for the one-day shipping, thinking “this is probably a mistake, I want them to get it out to me before they realize it!”

The one that announces it as a preorder is actually fulfilled by Funagain Games, a well-known game distributor (and they are offering at a solid discount, btw.)  Looks like the one that I pulled the trigger  on is fulfilled by Amazon itself, and I’m guessing someone in their bureaucracy screwed up and missed that they’re not supposed to be shipping them yet!  So jump in before they catch their mistake!

Oh, I am betting it is NOT a mistake. One possibility is the people at Amazon got ahold of this game and realized that everyone else isn’t shipping until the 27th and figured “Hey, let’s get a jump on all these other sellers”. Plus, they are offering it for the full $29.99 while most of the pre-order sellers are offering the game for significantly less (some as low as $19.25 ea) so Amazon is actually getting some of us to pay them MORE money for the same game.
Another possibility is the reason they can ship it now is BECAUSE they are charging the $29.99 price. All the other sellers offering the game on pre-order for the lower prices is because they are getting the same kind of price break from WOTC. Perhaps Amazon actually had to pay a little more for these games so that they could sell and deliver them now.

[knp7765]

By the way everyone. Me and my buddy have played a couple more games now. So far, Axis wins every time, in fact they seem to take a pretty big lead early. Some of it might be due to his and my playing styles, but I’m still going to say this game is definitely Axis favored. Maybe they start out too strong, just not sure.

Our last game actually took quite a long time – 14 rounds. Not sure about the time, but I would guess roughly 5 hours or so. It was technically an Axis victory, but you would really call it a Japan victory because the last combat consisted of two battles: one for Berlin and one for London. Yes, England ended up being the last Allied power left.
Germany took Moscow. USA went mostly Atlantic and got a force in Western Europe and Southern Europe. Germany took back Western Europe, but then the Brits took it again. The US force in S Europe took a chance and attacked Germany, and won. Germany got their capital back, but then UK took Berlin. Germany got it back again, just to have UK take it again. This time there wasn’t any German forces that could retake the capital so UK kept it.
Meanwhile, Japan managed to build up a large enough force to hit W USA. Japan and US exchanged Western US 3 or 4 times before Japan finally held on to it. Next round they attacked Eastern US and took it. Now, except for a few warships, USA was pretty much out of the game.
UK liberated Moscow but Japan had already sent stuff across Russia and up from India so they took it back. Now with control of the Americas plus factories in Russia, it was only a matter of time before Japan hemmed UK in and wiped them out. Plus, Japan was making almost twice as much as UK by this time. (about 32 per round for Japan vs 15-17 per round for UK).
Two main mistakes were made in this game. First was Germany liberating their capital twice just to end up giving the money over to England twice. Second was UK liberating Moscow without enough men and tanks to keep it from Japan. Under German control, it did nothing but once Japan got it, they could use those factories.
I look forward to seeing when some of you guys try it out and see if you think it is Axis favored or not.

[CWO Marc]

@knp7765:

Me and my buddy have played a couple more games now. So far, Axis wins every time, in fact they seem to take a pretty big lead early. Some of it might be due to his and my playing styles, but I’m still going to say this game is definitely Axis favored. Maybe they start out too strong, just not sure. […] I look forward to seeing when some of you guys try it out and see if you think it is Axis favored or not.

Did you and your buddy switch sides during any of your games?  If the Axis wins regardless of who plays it, the rules may indeed favour the Axis.  If on the other hand the two of you always play the same side, then relative player strength may be the explanation.

[boboshonda]

OK.  Played on Friday night with my friends.  1 regular 1novice and 1 new.  First off I will say I agree that the Axis seems to have a big advantage.  They won on turn 6.  Russia was out on the 2nd turn and England fell on turn 6, and only because of some really bad early rolls by Germany vs England.  Otherwise I think they could have been out by turn 4 or 5 easily.  Japan had taken the east of Asia and some inslands and were at 13 or14 IPCs.  More then enough to keep the US occuppied in the Pacific to keep Germany free from worry. It was fun, but seemed almost too easy for the Axis.  But this is only based on one game.  Could be more balanced, just so happened to go that way this time.

Now for the people playing.  The Novice player realy seemed to pick the rules up quickly and certainly seems willing to move to a game of 1942.  So that was good.  The new player liked the game but was still mind blown at first over the rules.  By the end of turn 3 or 4 they seemed to start to get it.  They said it was fun, but they weren’t real excited over the whole thing.  The good news is they are willing to play again now that they feel more comfortable with the rules.  Hopefully that will swing them.  Of course they loved rolling the dice in my FMG dice tower.  That may have saved the day when they were confused at the beginning.  The transport rules are what really was most difficult to grasp for them.  I understand that.

All in all…a fun night and a fun game.  Hope to play some more soon.

[Bob_A_Mickelson]

Appreciate the report

[knp7765]

Here’s a couple of more comparison pics. First the new fighters. It’s the tops and bottoms of each plane, first two rows are the German fighters in this order from left to right: OOB Me109, 1941 Fw190, HBG Fw190.
The next two rows are US planes from left to right: OOB P-38, Pacific F6F Hellcat, 1941 P-40, HBG P-40, HBG P-51
The HBG versions seem to have quite a bit more detail on them while the 1941 versions seem to look a little more like the actual plane because they are a little bigger. Now I kind of wish HBG’s planes were a little bigger.
Next pic is all the German vehicles available to us now. The new Tiger is on the far left, followed by a mix of OOB and HBG Axis Minor units. I think all the different vehicles match up very well.

[knp7765]

Here’s another couple of pics I just wanted to share. It’s all my German and USA vehicles all lined up. Soon I will have a large set like this for Russia as well.

[knp7765]

@CWO:

Did you and your buddy switch sides during any of your games?  If the Axis wins regardless of who plays it, the rules may indeed favour the Axis.  If on the other hand the two of you always play the same side, then relative player strength may be the explanation.

Yeah, that also occured to me. When our group gets together, we roll dice to determine who gets which country. However, I prefer to play Axis and Steve prefers to play Allies, so in our first few games of 1941 I was always Axis and he was always Allies. Hopefully next week we can get the rest of my group together to play this and take different countries to try it out and give it a more varied experiment. While we all are really into Global 1940, all of us have been very interested in 1941 since we first heard about it at the end of March.

When I get a few more games played, particularly with different people changing Axis and Allies, I will let you guys know if there is any difference.

[Tobit]

Well I just got my copy today. I was impressed with Amazon’s shipping. I ordered on July 4th (US holiday), chose the free super saver option, and got it today. So it was basically 3 day shipping.

I busted it out, and got my wife to sit through my explanation of the rules. I’ve been trying to get her to play for a while, and this (hopefully) shorter version was the persuasion I needed. We didn’t have time to play, we’ll do that on Thursday. We were saddened to see the 15/17 IPC misprint. I feel like it really can’t be anything but a mistake, since the board seems to contradict itself.

I’m excited to see how it goes!

[Cow]

holy hell they shippy before release date!

[lozmoid]

Order update:

Status:  In transit

Location: UK

Event Details: Initiated customs clearance process

Love it!  :-D

[Yavid]

@Cow:

holy hell they shippy before release date!

Go to Amazon and search for the '41 game there are two of them up there. One says you have to wait till the 27th and is cheaper the other will ship today but you pay the full $30 for it plus shipping

[Cow]

i didn’t see the other one.

anyway, I hope not all the boards have the misprinted money thingy. Like maybe they printed two seperate batches.  Early release has the wrong stuff and later release has it right.

[Yavid]

I didn’t either till the other day so i’m waiting too

[Cow]

maybe we get a prize, a version that has the correct money for our wait lol.

[Cow]

I am just glad the board is small. I actually like being able to finish a game

[lozmoid]

Order update:

Status:  In transit Â

Location: UK

Event Details: Completed customs clearance process

Maybe I’ll get my copy before July 18th?!  :-o

Edit:

Status:  In transit

Location: GB

Event Details: Arrived at destination country

Confused - I thought it was in the UK already.  :? lol  Oh well.