HBG - Axis & Allies Parts/Accessories and Custom Piece Sets Store!

SHIPPING DELAYS DUE TO SEVERE WEATHER!!!
Please allow some additional time to receive your orders right now. A severe storm in Central USA has knocked out all power to HBG. You will receive orders as soon as possible. Thank you!

@Variable:

SHIPPING DELAYS DUE TO SEVERE WEATHER!!!
Please allow some additional time to receive your orders right now. A severe storm in Central USA has knocked out all power to HBG. You will receive orders as soon as possible. Thank you!

We got power back this afternoon, so I am working as hard as I can!

Finally got around to placing an order for some new pieces from HBG.  Thanks, HGB!

@coachofmany:

@Variable:

SHIPPING DELAYS DUE TO SEVERE WEATHER!!!
Please allow some additional time to receive your orders right now. A severe storm in Central USA has knocked out all power to HBG. You will receive orders as soon as possible. Thank you!

We got power back this afternoon, so I am working as hard as I can!

Yeah, we had some of that same nastiness up here in Wichita. Lost power for about an hour and a half. How long were you guys out?

Despite the crazy weather at HBG, we are having a BIG SALE this Saturday and Sunday in case you missed it in the newsletter and on FB! Discounts on all Battle Pieces Sets, roundels, and Battle Bucks. Check it out starting Saturday morning.

knp7765- A few hours without power. Downed trees everywhere. Power flicked on and off throughout the day. More tonight…

@Variable:

Despite the crazy weather at HBG, we are having a BIG SALE this Saturday and Sunday in case you missed it in the newsletter and on FB! Discounts on all Battle Pieces Sets, roundels, and Battle Bucks. Check it out starting Saturday morning.

knp7765- A few hours without power. Downed trees everywhere. Power flicked on and off throughout the day. More tonight…

Still 37,000 without power here in Tulsa, we lost power for one day but we are up and running .

The Allies needed a boost to thier bombing capabilities.  So picked up some Mitchells , Corsairs, and Avengers.

I know you guys are busy but I have completed my coaster set from you guys for WW2(AWESOME) Guys are gonna laugh their butts off when they see them. Real nice touch to the feel of the game night. Question are the WW1’s in the que? Would definitely order them as well. Thanks HBG.

Dave

Hey guys, check this out. Been using some of HBG’s cool pieces. At this point in the game, Germany has developed Jet Fighters, represented by the Me262. Imagine Me262s on a Graf Zeppelin class aircraft carrier. Pretty cool looking I think.
You might note that Germany has also developed Long-Range Heavy Bombers, as represented by the great Ju488.
The Tiger tanks don’t represent any advance in technology. I just like using them.

@knp7765:

Hey guys, check this out. Been using some of HBG’s cool pieces. At this point in the game, Germany has developed Jet Fighters, represented by the Me262. Imagine Me262s on a Graf Zeppelin class aircraft carrier. Pretty cool looking I think.
You might note that Germany has also developed Long-Range Heavy Bombers, as represented by the great Ju488.
The Tiger tanks don’t represent any advance in technology. I just like using them.

At this point… is the game not yet over?

Believe it or not, it wasn’t quite over yet. We were using the Anniversary board and victory cities. The Axis needed 15 of the 18 to win. The US and China gave Japan fits in the Pacific and the Allies still had Washington, San Francisco, Honolulu, Sydney and Manila.
I think the next round finished it. Germany invaded and took Eastern US while Japan finally got their stuff together and took the Philippines and Australia.

@knp7765:

Believe it or not, it wasn’t quite over yet. We were using the Anniversary board and victory cities. The Axis needed 15 of the 18 to win. The US and China gave Japan fits in the Pacific and the Allies still had Washington, San Francisco, Honolulu, Sydney and Manila.
I think the next round finished it. Germany invaded and took Eastern US while Japan finally got their stuff together and took the Philippines and Australia.

I was going to say…  :wink:

If the Axis didn’t win after all that, I think there would be a case of titanic mismanagement.

Well, not necessarily. What if the US suddenly came up with B-2 bombers, Abrams tanks and Terminator foot soldiers?

@knp7765:

Well, not necessarily. What if the US suddenly came up with B-2 bombers, Abrams tanks and Terminator foot soldiers?

Those would take a pretty substantial research effort to produce with 1940s technology…but at least the M1 Abrams has the advantage of being available from HBG:

http://www.historicalboardgaming.com/Modern-Tank-M1A1-Abrams_p_431.html

Excellent way to bring us back to topic. Nice!

UPDATE!

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=29115.60

Hey guys,
Thanks to HBG, we are getting a wider array of units that we can incorporate into our existing A&A armies and navies. I have been working on a list of values and have run into a few problems. I am also dabbling with moving to a D12 system since it gives more options to squeeze in some units.
One problem I am having is early war vs. late war equipment. Like Russian fighters: OOB gave us the Yak 3 (late war) and HBG gave us the I-16 (early war). The Yak 3 was a very good fighter and could compete with the Luftwaffe fighters but the I-16 performed very poorly by comparison. So I first thought early war fighters should be Att 2, Def 3, Move 4, Cost 8-9. Then I thought the P-40 was also considered early war and it was a pretty decent fighter. Plus, the Germans had the Me 109 since the beginning and it was top notch. So how do you distinguish different early war fighters?
Another problem is early war vs. late war battleships. OOB gives us the USS Iowa (late) and HBG gives us the USS Nevada (early). I understand the differences in the actual ships, but what would be the differences for game purposes?
Here are some of my ideas going from cruisers to battleships:
                          D6 A  D  M  C    D12  A  D  M  C
Light Cruiser              3  2  2  10            6  4  2  10
Heavy Cruiser            3  3  2  12            6  6  2  12
Pocket Battleship      4  3  2  14          7  5  2  14
Battle Cruiser            ?  ?  2  16          7  6  2  16
Battleship (early)        ?  ?  2  18          7  7  2  18  2 hits to sink
Battleship (late)          4  4  2  20          8  8  2  20  2 hits to sink
Heavy Battleship        4  4  2  24          8  8  2  24  3 hits to sink

So there are a few of my ideas. Do any of you agree with them? Or, perhaps have any suggestions?
I was also wondering if Battle Cruisers and Pocket Battleships should be considered the same class or different. I think Battle Cruisers were heavier armored and armed than Pocket Battleships, which were sometimes considered very heavy cruisers. Also, should Battle Cruisers also take 2 hits to sink? Any other differences between early war BBs, late war BBs and Heavy BBs? Any ideas would be welcome.

Extending the list of purchasable units to different levels of light and heavy or elite status could serve to bog the game down a bit and just make it more complicated. I mean after all, few people have the resources to buy OOB battleships or the desire to buy cruisers, let alone all of these variants. This also may be my preference for using a 6-sided die; there are only so many numbers to use. It does limit the differences in unit types.

But maybe that is just me… My intent has always been to use whatever units HBG makes as doubles for the OOB, mostly regardless of their wartime status. So a Nevada-class battleship would be like a normal battleship 4-4-20. An I-16 would be the same as a Yak 3 and so on.

However, in looking at your chart for ships, I will say that I do like it. Ships are one area where I can really see this working (as opposed to fighters or even tanks). I would like to see heavy battleships and heavy carriers as purchasable unit types.

The real challenge will be for some less historically minded people in identification of what class of ships are on the board. It is easy to tell the difference between a battleship and an aircraft carrier, but what about a light cruiser and a heavy cruiser? A light cruiser and a destroyer? A battlecruiser and a cruiser or a battleship? Really I am not so worried about that, if anything the confusion should be entertaining.

Or, what if there are two different sculpts for essentially the same unit type? For example: what if (and very likely) HBG produces two light carrier designs for the US or Japan (or what if one is called and escort carrier and the other a light carrier)? Will you try to differentiate them or use them interchangeably as a light carrier?

A simple solution is the best solution. But at least we have variety.

@knp7765:

I was also wondering if Battle Cruisers and Pocket Battleships should be considered the same class or different. I think Battle Cruisers were heavier armored and armed than Pocket Battleships, which were sometimes considered very heavy cruisers. Also, should Battle Cruisers also take 2 hits to sink? Any other differences between early war BBs, late war BBs and Heavy BBs? Any ideas would be welcome.

I’m not experienced at converting historical ship data into game combat values, so I’ll just provide some background information on the ship types you’ve asked about.

The Deutschland-class Panzerschiffe (which the British press nicknamed pocket battleships) were an odd hybrid of several ship types.  They had 11-inch guns like a first-generation German dreadnought battleship or battlecruiser, carried fewer of those guns than a typical battlecruiser (and much fewer than a battleship), were about the size of a heavy cruiser, were only moderately fast by cruiser standards (though they did have a very long range), and had weak armour protection roughly on the scale of a light cruiser.  They can most concisely be described as over-gunned and under-armoured heavy cruisers.

Battlecruisers were notoriously easier to sink compared with battleships, as demonstrated by the Battle of Jutland in WWI and the destruction of the Hood in WWII.  This is hardly surprising because battlecruisers traded protection for speed: they had less armour (and fewer guns) than battleships, but were faster.  For  a battleship, the rule of thumb for a balanced design was that the armour protection had to be proportional to its own firepower, meaning adequate enough to allow the vessel to fight against another battleship carrying guns of the same caliber as its own.  Battlecruisers, by contrast, were unbalanced designs – in the most extreme cases, they were eggshells armed with hammers.  (One oddity was the Scharnhorst class, which reversed the usual battlecruiser philosophy: they were over-armoured relative to their original 11-inch guns because they were intended to be uprated to 15-inch guns at a later date.)

One final note about battlecruisers concerns the odd situation of the United States.  On the one hand, the US demonstrated that the battlecruiser concept was pointless when it built the Iowa class.  The Iowas showed that, with WWII-era technology and a good design, you could combine the firepower and the armour protection of a battleship with the speed of a battlecruiser (and indeed superior to that of most battlecruisers).  On the other hand, the US – which had never previously completed any battlecruisers – became the last nation ever to build them when it produced the Alaska class 12-inch gun super-heavy cruisers.  They were fine ships but a poor investment: no faster than the Iowas (33 knots), but much weaker in firepower and armour.  The US would have been better off completing Illinois and Kentucky, the planned third pair of Iowas.

In terms of early and late battleships, the dividing line would roughly be between battleships built prior to about 1930 and those built afterwards.  The pre-1930 ships were mostly of WWI vintage, with a few additions in the 1920s.  They’re usually described as “slow battleships,” reflecting the fact that, at that time, you generally had to choose between power (battleships) and speed (battlecruisers) in your designs.  The battleships from the 1930s and 1940s are known as “fast battleships” because they were much faster than WWI-vintage battleships; fast battleships could make at least 27 knots, and several classes (notably the Iowas and the Littorios) could do even better than that.  So that’s one way to divide battleships.  Another way of dividing them would be into a European group and a Pacific group.  This has nothing to do with A&A Europe and A&A Pacific (though it’s a nice coincidence), but rather reflects the fact that the most modern battleships used by Britain, France, Germany and Italy during WWII tended to be smaller in size and armament (typically 14-inch and 15-inch guns) than the ones used by the US and Japan, which were bigger in size and armament (mostly 16-inch guns, with some 14-inch ones).  The 18-inch Yamatos, however, were glaring statistical outliers, so they deserve their own category.  The same case could be made for the Iowas, which hold the speed record for battleships and whose 16-inch main guns (50-caliber-length weapons firing very heavyweight shells) delivered an armour-piercing punch which was not all that much smaller than that of the Yamatos, which were shorter (thus producing less muzzle velocity) and which fired AP shells which had a smaller weight-to-size ratio.

That was excellent Marc.
Thank you.