For me the dark and lighter red/blue doesn’t work. When it’s in a stack, depending on the lighting, you cannot differentiate what’s light or dark, so you gotta zoom in with your head about 2 inches from the stacks. And I have perfect vision. Anyways, in my only game played so far I have used any shade of blue to represent 1 unit, and any shade of red to represent 5 units. We ran out of blue a couple of times in which case we used the old gray chips. I suggest this to anyone as it worked out really well for us, the amount of units per TT is really easy to see that way.
I really like the red and blue chips for the 2 different powers, though I do agree that the “light and dark” can be difficult to distinguish in faint lighting. But when you have Mr.Spilly-Pants knocking over stacks in Europe it is a lot easier to sort out which chips were CP and which were Allied powers.
I dont have perfect vision, and i have had no problem with the dark/light chips
Of course i use this new fangled light bulb doohicky over the game table :P
Where does everyone buy extra chips? HBG? What’s the website? I’d hate to have to buy a complete new game, just for more chips.
If you want the same chips that came with the game I suggest looking on ebay or kijiji, I have seen them for sale on there. I have purchased chips from FMG before and they were quite good, though they don’t match up with the in game chips at all and they were a bit pricey. All cheaper than buying a new game though
HBG have only the mini-sets in stock for the new design:
http://www.historicalboardgaming.com/Supplement-Bag-Chips-1914-WW1_p_1444.html
http://www.historicalboardgaming.com/-Bag-Chips-42-2nd-Ed-Half-Bag_p_1445.html
I got extra 1914 chips from HBG
They sell out pretty often though, think there are some in stock right now
HBG is by far the best place to look for A&A
I solved two of the problems listed above in one swoop by using a completely different chip system:
Each power has just one stack of units in a tt:
white - 10 infantry
grey - infantry
red - artillery
dark blue - fighter
brown - tank
By mixing in all the chips from all my A&A games I just have enough. Some of the stacks are rather tall, but overall there’s much less messing about swopping chips and shifting stacks, and there’s no overcrowding on the western front; hence, less chance of knocking over stacks.
The artillery, tank and fighter sculpts are now redundant, but the game is a lot more manageable without them.
note: Harry Larris is the chap I interviewed about the game, he is not me.
Have you considered just painting some stripes down the side of the chips? Black for armor, red for artillery ect…. Red on red would be 5 art, black on white would be 1 tank.
I don’t find the number of chips to be a problem with anything other than infantry, and I have another colour (MB version white) for 10 infantry.
Two or three large stacks in a region are much less of a problem than 7 or 8 medium ones.
