Combining Your A&A Editions.

I’ve been combining my sculpts for years.  As each new game comes out I take notes on the contents, particularly on the appearance and colour of the sculpts, then I put the sculpts into Flambeau Zerust plastic storage trays (tackle boxes with movable dividers). The trays are slotted into low, wide, stackable wooden storage shelves (the kind you buy flat and assemble with a screwdriver).  The trays are arranged by country.  The US, Britain, Russia, Germany and Japan currently have four trays each, due to the large number of sculpts each country has.  Each of those five sets of four trays starts with a large compartment devoted to the main infantry pieces for the country in question, followed by smaller compartments for variant-colour infantry (such as the dark green US marines from the original Pacific game) which I use represent elite or special units.  After the infantry, there are tray sections for the various equipment types (land units first, then air units, then sea units), subdivided by specific types (tanks, field artillery, anti-aircraft artilley, etc.) in the main colour (or shade) for that particular nation.  Then comes a section for infantry units whose shade is problematic – different from the main shade, but difficult to distinguish from it under most lighting conditions.  (Most of the pieces with this problem are the American troops, which have been produced in about ten different shades of green, but fortunately it’s not a problem to quarantine the problematic ones because I have such a large number of correct-shade ones.)  The final tray sections are devoted to equipment pieces which either have ambiguous-shade problems, or which are radically different in shade or colour (like the cherry-red Japanese equipment units from the original Pacific game).

Italy, ANZAC, China and France are less complicated (because their pieces have never been produced in multiple colours or shades) and require fewer trays (because they’ve been in fewer games, and thus I own fewer of them).  The order of the pieces in the trays is the same as for the Big Five: infantry first, then land and air and sea equipment.  Italy’s pieces occupy two trays, in part because they include the German-design and Japanese-design pieces with which Italy was first provided, plus the Italian-specific designs from Europe 1940 2nd edition.  Due to the many ANZAC pieces I own, ANZAC would in principle have two trays too – but what I’ve done instead is designate the Pacific 1940 2nd edition’s butternut-grey units as ANZAC ones (in their own single tray) and the Pacific 1940 1st edition’s butternut-grey units as Canadian ones (in their own single tray).  China is in one tray, with the Chinese infantry supplied by Anniversary and by Pacific 1940.  China has no official equiment, so I use one-half of the lime-green British equipment from Revised to fill that gap.  (More on the other half in a moment.)  France is in one tray, which represents both the Third Republic and the Vichy regime.

The project on which I’m currently working is to integrate the new pieces from A&A 1914 into my collection.  I’ve taken the blue 1914 French pieces and put them into half a tray, where they represent the Free French forces.  (I haven’t decided yet what to put in the other half of the tray.)  I’ve taken the pale green 1914 British pieces and put them into half a tray, where they represent South Africa.  The other half of that tray holds the second half of the lime-green British equipment from Revised, plus the lime-green British infantry units from the same game, to represent India (which technically is just a British imperial colony rather a Commonwealth Dominion, but which is an autonomous regional economy in the Global 1940 rules).  That leaves six 1914 sculpts sets whose use I still have to determine (which will be my project for next weekend), plus the generic equipment sculpts from the Milton Bradley edition.

I also have a single tray in which I put the generic-shape (and generic-colour) anti-aircraft artillery units and industrial complexes from the earlier A&A games, plus special extras from various other games I own: atomic bombs, nuclear mushroom clouds, city markers and so forth.

@toblerone77:

Thanks a lot Marc! I really appreciate response! Yeah I’m really leaning toward combining my sculpts and thought clear plastic divided boxes would be perfect. I’m still debating though. Combining even just sculpts would help my logistics immensely.

My pleasure.  If you go here…

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=20658.0

…and look at the first picture in the first post you’ll see (under the gaming table) the plastic storage trays I use and the wooden shelving units that hold them.  I put an identifying label at the front end of the trays, so you can read them even when they’re slotted into the shelves.  That picture was taken over two years ago; I’ve doubled the number of wooden shelves since then, to keep up with my ever-growing number of trays.  I also combine and store my national marker roundels in the same way.

When choosing a storage tray, make sure you can purchase separate packs of extra dividers.  Trays usually come with a few dividers already in them, but organizing an extensive A&A sculpt collection requires way more dividers than you need for more mundane purposes (like arranging your fishing hooks and weights, which is what these trays are usually designed for).

Yes, the tackle boxes are the only way to go.

Now, should we have separate WWII and WWI boxes?

@BJCard:

Now, should we have separate WWII and WWI boxes?

It’s a matter of personal choice, depending on what your particular purpose is.  In my case I’m combining them because I’m using the WWI sculpts to supplement the WWII ones – mainly to provide sculpt sets to WWII nations for which no A&A pieces are officially provided.  Anyway, the WWI sculpts are so distinctive that it’s easy to extract them from any combined WWI/WWII storage box, if ever they’re needed on their own.

Toblerone77,

––Well, like so many things relating to this great game called Axis & Allies, there are a lot of choices that you can make according to your personality or tastes.
––To answer your basic question I have always tried to keep each of my different versions of A&A separate and complete in their own right. I guess I’m just enough OCD to prefer it that way. Of course, for me it wasn’t necessary to do so in between 1st and 2nd Edition 1940-Global games as all I did was buy the 2nd edition rulebooks and starting locations of the units. Everything else is the same and I still use same my enlarged map.
----I’ve been using transparent tackle boxes to store my A&A units for years. The type I use have 5 different trays plus additional storage compartments all combined in a very nice carrying case. It was all I needed to carry everything for a 1940-global game.
----However, I’ve recently bought some carrying cases with much larger trays in deference to all of the “NEW” units and unit types from HBG and FMG. Where before it only took one tray to hold every unit of each country’s units,…now it will take 4-5 trays for each major country. There are now so many tanks, aircraft, and ships, and 3-5 paint schemes of almost everything,…the larger trays were totally necessary.

----My home computer crashed recently, and I’m now existing on my new tablet. I’m still learning a few of the different “procedures” of a Tablet vs. a PC and when I’m done I’ll try and remember to post some pics of my “Tackle Box
A&A Armories” for your perusal. They not only look good, but are VERY CONVENIENT and keep everything organized.
----Also, since I’ve started my collection of painted A&A units I’ve redone my trays so that units are spread out and not on top of each other in order to protect their custom paint jobs.

“Tall Paul”

The only useful way:

One Box for each country and a bigger one for all supplies (ICs, chips,…)

I really like the big labels on the boxes (unit identifications under the cover, national identication on top of the cover).  Is the Norwegian flag on the cover of the German box a deliberate choice?

I´m born in southern germany. Its forbidden here to use a flag with a swastika or hakenkreuz.

Norways flag contains a blue cross. I tried to rebuild a flag for axis & allies germany after the included markers ![](https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSEprn_0YgedPCpMxZIxruq2_JltY-C6HpJiYIJOV9KZmO-N2x5Gg) But my Printer didnt centered the picture right where it belongs. I will fix this issue just in time

I’m at the moment also considering combining the units of my games. And tackle boxes seem to be the right choice, unfortunatly I didn’t find any till now that found fitting. Does anyone use other methods for storing the combined units?

The way I did mine was a bit more complex than most. First, I combined all the pieces I got from the Global games (I own both 40.1 and 40.2 editions). These I separated into the tackle box trays like most of you. To this I add my vast array of HBG pieces (perk of my job). Then I have a separate couple of trays for chips, dice, counters, etc. This is all stored in wood boxes from Ikea.

Now the tricky part… I painted the pieces for AAGC and BOTB so those live inside the original game boxes. I deconstructed Revised and 1942 and placed all contents into the 1942 box with no pieces. I need these games the least, but the maps and charts etc are there if I want to play them. Next, I like AA50 the best so I took all my favorite WOTC/Hasbro pieces from ALL games and made my “dream” AA50 game. Only OOB pieces. For 1942.2 I left everything in there so it can be played anytime. It had enough unique stuff in it that I didn’t want to go fishing in my tackle boxes later for it. For 1941, I used mostly my Revised pieces. I like this game ready to go for teaching others A&A basics but hated the boring mix of units. So I upgraded them so to speak.

Bottom line, take your favorite pieces and use them for your favorite / most played editions. You get the most enjoyment out of them this way! I have my “ultimate set ups” for each WOTC game, plus my mega parts collection of WOTC / HBG for playing Global or any other game. I slowly phase out what I don’t need in that set as we produce more HBG sets.

@toblerone77:

I’m going to need to get more boxes

The story of my life.  :-D

Great looking collection, and I’m impressed that some of your games are still factory sealed.  I’d never have the self-discipline to leave sculpts untouched in their original box!

@toblerone77:

Eventually I will teach him to play when he’s old enough.

That’s a sweet story.  Catching them young is a great way to promote the hobby.  If I’m not mistaken, Wittman’s daughter has gotten quite good at telling the difference between the various A&A sculpts!