Pacific as an expansion of Europe

Seems logical Mr. Tralis. However, this is probably just the way they chose to word it. Europe isn’t an “expansion” of Pacific, it’s a stand alone game. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

Expansions don’t come out first. By correct reasoning AAE40 is the expansion for AAP40.

But in truth they are stand alone games. Expansions remain the realm of outside companies that provide house rules and new pieces to existing games.

I wish Larry would make an expansion every now and then. So I wouldn’t have to spend a hundred dollars to get an update.

I was talking about AA products and not games in general.

I get your reasoning. But they are officially separate games that can be combined, but if you had to call one an expansion then I would have to say P40 would be that since territory on it’s board opens up when you combine Europe to it.

One way of looking at this question is to compare A&A Europe 1940 and Pacific 1940 with the original separate releases of Attack! and Attack! Expansion, by Eagle Games.  The map in Attack! corresponds roughly to the half of the world that’s in Europe 1940.  The map in Attack! Expansion covers the other half of the world (roughly the area that’s in Pacific 1940), and the two maps can be combined (in either direction) to form a single very large map of the whole world.  The key difference between the two Attack! games and the two A&A games, however, is that the Attack! base game can be played without the expansion, but the expansion can’t be played without the base game. The base game includes plastic ground and air sculpts, and provides a card-based naval combat system to partially make up for the lack of ship sculpts in the box.  The expansion provides plastic ship sculpts which replace the base game’s naval cards, but it lacks any substitute for the base game’s ground and air sculpts, and so it can’t be played on its own.  So it’s a true expansion, rather than (as in the case with Europe 1940 and Pacific 1940) two freestanding games which can be either played independenly or combined to create what could be described as a third game.

Germany had more army divisions than Japan, and was viewed as the greater of the two threats by the Allies – hence the “Germany first” overall strategy which they pretty much followed.  So in that respect, Europe was indeed the priority theatre, as Tralis said.  But in terms of game design, I agree with I.L. that the fact that Europe 1940 and Pacific 1940 can each be played on their own means that the “expansion” concept doesn’t really apply in their case.

The latter.