@CWO:
What I personally like so much about the boardgame incarnations of A&A is that I get to move real little plastic models on a real mapboard on a real table. I have nothing against online games and I have no problem with people who prefer the electronic version of A&A; my individual tastes simply don’t happen to be for online gaming. Like Toblerone and Tall Paul, I find it more satisfying to handle actual sculpts.
Two of the first WWII movies I ever saw – Sink the Bismarck and Midway – feature multiple scenes in which high-level naval officers stand around large map tables, scrutinizing various small wooden markers which depict the major warships of the two adversaries, pondering their next decision or moving the markers to reflect the evolving situation at sea. Sink the Bismarck shows one such table (on the British side, in the Admiralty’s Operations Room), while Midway shows two such tables (a Japanese one aboard Yamamoto’s flagship and an American one at Nimitz’s headquarters). I remember thinking how cool these tables looked, and being struck by the way in which these officers seemed to be playing a complex, high-tension game with quite deadly real-world consequences. So when A&A came along, I was happy to get a chance to have the same kind of fun. As newer A&A games started being published, with more sculpt varieties and bigger maps, it didn’t take much to turn me into a piece junkie. And when the first-edition Global 1940 mapboard came along, I took the step of assembling a dedicated gaming table for it, complete with a sheet of acrylic to cover the map. I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of my table and my sculpt collection, and they add an extra kick whenever I re-watch those two movies on DVD.
My only problem with the plastic pieces in later versions of axis and allies is that they try too hard to accurately represent the pieces, resulting in different sculpts for different nations. Veteran’s won’t mind, but I train a lot of new people, (hosting an axis group in St. Louis, Mo.) and because the naval units are to scale, often (especially in second edition pieces) new players can’t tell the difference between destroyers, cruisers, and transports with some nations such as Anzac, Britain, and France…In my humble opinion, make the types of ships out of scale, Large for BB, Medium length for Cruisers, short for destroyers, and make the transport wider or fat for easy identification. We should not need a silhouette card book to Identify the Bismark from the Prince Eugen. ;)
@Tall Paul AMEN!
@CWO Marc. Love your commentary and helpful insight you provide to the community.
CWO Marc,
@CWO:
What I personally like so much about the boardgame incarnations of A&A is that I get to move real little plastic models on a real mapboard on a real table. I have nothing against online games and I have no problem with people who prefer the electronic version of A&A; my individual tastes simply don’t happen to be for online gaming. Like Toblerone and Tall Paul, I find it more satisfying to handle actual sculpts.
Two of the first WWII movies I ever saw – Sink the Bismarck and Midway – feature multiple scenes in which high-level naval officers stand around large map tables, scrutinizing various small wooden markers which depict the major warships of the two adversaries, pondering their next decision or moving the markers to reflect the evolving situation at sea. Sink the Bismarck shows one such table (on the British side, in the Admiralty’s Operations Room), while Midway shows two such tables (a Japanese one aboard Yamamoto’s flagship and an American one at Nimitz’s headquarters). I remember thinking how cool these tables looked, and being struck by the way in which these officers seemed to be playing a complex, high-tension game with quite deadly real-world consequences. So when A&A came along, I was happy to get a chance to have the same kind of fun. As newer A&A games started being published, with more sculpt varieties and bigger maps, it didn’t take much to turn me into a piece junkie. And when the first-edition Global 1940 mapboard came along, I took the step of assembling a dedicated gaming table for it, complete with a sheet of acrylic to cover the map. I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of my table and my sculpt collection, and they add an extra kick whenever I re-watch those two movies on DVD.
––Another movie with a big situation table, although it monitored only air units was “The Battle of Britain”, at least until the roof fell in on the table after the Stukas attacked. In case you couldn’t tell, I also love old war movies.
“Tall Paul”
@Tall:
CWO Marc,
@CWO:
What I personally like so much about the boardgame incarnations of A&A is that I get to move real little plastic models on a real mapboard on a real table. I have nothing against online games and I have no problem with people who prefer the electronic version of A&A; my individual tastes simply don’t happen to be for online gaming. Like Toblerone and Tall Paul, I find it more satisfying to handle actual sculpts.
Two of the first WWII movies I ever saw – Sink the Bismarck and Midway – feature multiple scenes in which high-level naval officers stand around large map tables, scrutinizing various small wooden markers which depict the major warships of the two adversaries, pondering their next decision or moving the markers to reflect the evolving situation at sea. Sink the Bismarck shows one such table (on the British side, in the Admiralty’s Operations Room), while Midway shows two such tables (a Japanese one aboard Yamamoto’s flagship and an American one at Nimitz’s headquarters). I remember thinking how cool these tables looked, and being struck by the way in which these officers seemed to be playing a complex, high-tension game with quite deadly real-world consequences. So when A&A came along, I was happy to get a chance to have the same kind of fun. As newer A&A games started being published, with more sculpt varieties and bigger maps, it didn’t take much to turn me into a piece junkie. And when the first-edition Global 1940 mapboard came along, I took the step of assembling a dedicated gaming table for it, complete with a sheet of acrylic to cover the map. I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of my table and my sculpt collection, and they add an extra kick whenever I re-watch those two movies on DVD.
––Another movie with a big situation table, although it monitored only air units was “The Battle of Britain”, at least until the roof fell in on the table after the Stukas attacked. In case you couldn’t tell, I also love old war movies.
“Tall Paul”
Battle of Britain… nice situation room.
Gentlemen Please…
What about the first few minutes of Battle of the Bulge? When Col Hessler gets to see the war room? And see the “Toys” Germany is making these days… the ones that aren’t for children. :)
“The First Battle vill turn dem into men”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JDkdc246QQ
I remember humming that song plenty of times, whilst planning my conquest of Russia over the board of the 2000 release of Europe.
Those THICK Panther tanks on the board, and Stuka fighters… Yeah… :)
And NOBODY should ever forget this epic moment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=Csv1wXOr5tY&NR=1
Gar,
––It’s good to hear from you, buddy.
----I believe it was Don Rickles who suggested trying to “make a deal” with the tank commander. “Who knows,…maybe he’s a Republican!”
“Tall Paul”
And NOBODY should ever forget this epic moment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=Csv1wXOr5tY&NR=1
Nice Garg…nice!
Thanks Garg.
I enjoyed that. Has been a while since I saw the film. I had forgotten that, excepting Clint, they all look a bit mental. Must be the thought of all that gold.
I did notice the tank number is wrong(115). There were only 4 Tigers in a Platoon.
Thanks for those references to the map tables in The Battle of Britain and The Battle of the Bulge. I’ve never seen the first one; I have the second one on DVD, but I don’t recall much about the opening map room scene, so I’ll have to check it out this weekend. The film Action in the North Atlantic is another movie with a nice, big map table, which we see (all too briefly) at some kind of US Navy command centre after Bogart’s tanker gets sunk. And I think that one of Frank Capra’s Why We Fight films, “The Battle of Britain” (not to be confused with the later film of the same name mentioned by Tall Paul), shows planes being tracked on a room-sized map table using little markers moved with long sticks by a group of WAAFs wearing earphones, while air control officers watch from an observation gallery one floor up.
It occurs to me that, in an odd echo of the current thread’s discussion of models on horizontal map tables versus graphics on vertical screens, the movies Midway and Sink the Bismark use both methods to depict the forces which are engaged. In addition to the map tables and models that I’ve mentioned, Midway has a couple of scenes in which officers on the Lexington are plotting aircraft movements with grease pencils on a vertical sheet of glass, to which three small cardboard carrier profiles are (somehow) attached. As for Sink the Bismark, it has a scene in which a WREN officer is standing in front of a map affixed to a vertical corkboard, moving pin-mounted flat markers depicting various ships.
Whenever I watch Midway, I’m always amused by the map table continuity errors. There are some scenes in which the positions of the models on the map tables change between the long shots which feature the actors and the map close-ups which were shot separately by (presumably) the second-unit crew. The best example on the US side is the scene in which Nimitz asks Spruance what kind of moves he would recommend for the three American carriers. The best example on the Japanese side is the scene in which Yamamoto learns that Operation K has been cancelled.
Gentlemen Please…
What about the first few minutes of Battle of the Bulge? When Col Hessler gets to see the war room? And see the “Toys” Germany is making these days… the ones that aren’t for children. :)
“The First Battle vill turn dem into men”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JDkdc246QQ
I remember humming that song plenty of times, whilst planning my conquest of Russia over the board of the 2000 release of Europe.
Those THICK Panther tanks on the board, and Stuka fighters… Yeah… :)
Always loved that part of the movie. And the music was so excellent that I ended up buying the film score.
Guys,
––This is certainly an entertaining little discussion. I just remembered another map board used in a movie.
It was the old black & white John Wayne movie "In Harm’s Way where the “Rock”(John Wayne) was in his Cruiser’s C.I.C.(combat information center) where they plotted the Japanese progress through the straights where his son was manning a PT boat. The son was KIA in the battle. Obviously the plotting board was a vertical transparent
c.i.c.-type where the yeoman wrote backwards on the rear side of the board. Another one of those military skills that wouldn’t translate to civilian life post-war, haha.
“Tall Paul”
Classic
Revised
Europe 1940
Pacific 1940
I have every edition since classic except AAGC and AAE40.1 In mulitples. Almost have my collection of HBG to where I want/need it. Used to play Hasbro/Iron Blitz religiously. Played GTO for a bit long ago when it first came out. TripleA I like for hot seat or practice games never in competition but I don’t know that much about it competitively. PBEM looks kind of cool but with my schedule not sure how reliable I’d be for matches. I’d like to try some online at some point but my passion is F2F with freinds, fam, and good buddies.
Off topic I think a console version for the major systems while not my peference, would be awesome in lieu of F2F matches.
I was first interduced to A&A at the age of 12 on a trip to Oregon. Classic, played a pair of games over that trip with some friends. Was the most fun I had playing a game that I could remember at that point.
When I got home I couldn’t wait to get one of my own, and had no money. So I instead ‘converted’ my classic risk over to A&A. Horses were tanks and I used Legos for boats and planes. I played that game til it was literally falling apart.
I finally got my hands on my own copy of A&A classic, 2nd edition I believe about a year later. And I played that game til it was falling apart. Using artillery from risk I even made up my own rules on artillery, and I implemented destroyers using Legos.
A few years later I got revised edition, no more Legos or risk pieces!
I stumbled on axis and allies enhanced over at LH site, I marked on my board to play with the new rules, my favorite was using VC to produce infantry, with the type of government directly reflecting the cost per infantry
I fell out of it for a few years and, unforturnity, missed out on what was prob the best A&A game made…anneversery. But I’ve since at least printed out a map and a set of rules so I could play it
Since then I have purchased spring 42, both editions of G40, 1941, 1942 2nd edition and 1914
@Uncrustable:
When I got home I couldn’t wait to get one of my own, and had no money. So I instead ‘converted’ my classic risk over to  A&A. Horses were tanks and I used Legos for boats and planes. I played that game til it was literally falling apart.
I finally got my hands on my own copy of  A&A classic, 2nd edition I believe about a year later. And I played that game til it was falling apart. Using artillery from risk I even made up my own rules on artillery, and I implemented destroyers using Legos.
Great story. I love the part about the Legos, which shows that you’re a man who will let no obstacle stand between you and a game of A&A.
Own Europe 99, and 1941.
As well as played Global.
I like sitting at a table with my friends and playing the game.
Flipping the board rule is in place if you flip the table you owe everybody 10 dollars. Who wants to spend 50 bucks sometimes because you flipped the table?
Own Europe 99, and 1941.
As well as played Global.
I like sitting at a table with my friends and playing the game.
Flipping the board rule is in place if you flip the table you owe everybody 10 dollars. Who wants to spend 50 bucks sometimes because you flipped the table?
Lol never had a board flipped but had a Russian tank chucked that could’ve blown through an engine block.
Since the rule has been made noone has flipped the table… Yet.
It was flipped once after turn 3 of are second game of global.
I was Italy and taking over a poorly played Japan from a friend who had to go. The Allies were going really hard on the Pacific and after my turn 3 which was extremely good especially with dice rolls. They took there turns and flipped the table as they saw the writing on the wall. That is why the rule was in place.
