Nation- (and City-) Specific Victory City Markers

@ossel:

MOSCOW MONDAY!

Beautiful!

Next is Tokyo Tuesday! <<

To be followed by Warsaw Wednesday?  (Just kidding…)

Keep up the great work!

@P-Unit:

I don’t know if this is relevant, but we use two different colored flags for capital city control in Global games

I like your concept of having joint-nation flags (US/USSR and Japan/Germany), which are potentially usable in various ways, so for the fun of it I’ve just made a couple of them using a different design, based on the five major powers of the classic A&A games.  One is a US/UK/USSR flag and one is a Germany/Japan flag.  I’ve posted them below:

@ossel:

MOSCOW MONDAY!

Next is Tokyo Tuesday!

Nice ossel, job, well done! :-D

Wow, the German flag mixed with the Japanese flag, looks cool! :-D

@John:

Wow, the German flag mixed with the Japanese flag, looks cool! :-D

P-Unit provided the basis of the concept by putting the A&A German roundel in the middle of the Japanese flag, which I thought was a clever use of the fact that both historical flags had central discs.  The book “Reluctant Allies: German-Japanese Naval Relations in World War II”, however, shows that cooperation between the Germans and the Japanese during WWII was marginal at best; for all practical purposes, they fought independent wars.  The US/UK/USSR alliance did a little better in terms of cooperation, but in general terms the US ran its own show in the Pacific, the USSR ran its own show on the Eastern Front, and the UK was close to being a one-man operation in India, Burma and the Indian Ocean.  It was only in North Africa, southern and western Europe, and the Atlantic that the British and the Americans conducted full-blown joint operations on a large scale.  So while these joint Allied and Axis flag designs are fun for gaming purposes, all the parties concerned would have been horrified at the concept in real life.

@CWO:

@John:

Wow, the German flag mixed with the Japanese flag, looks cool! :-D

P-Unit provided the basis of the concept by putting the A&A German roundel in the middle of the Japanese flag, which I thought was a clever use of the fact that both historical flags had central discs.  The book “Reluctant Allies: German-Japanese Naval Relations in World War II”, however, shows that cooperation between the Germans and the Japanese during WWII was marginal at best; for all practical purposes, they fought independent wars.  The US/UK/USSR alliance did a little better in terms of cooperation, but in general terms the US ran its own show in the Pacific, the USSR ran its own show on the Eastern Front, and the UK was close to being a one-man operation in India, Burma and the Indian Ocean.  It was only in North Africa, southern and western Europe, and the Atlantic that the British and the Americans conducted full-blown joint operations on a large scale.  So while these joint Allied and Axis flag designs are fun for gaming purposes, all the parties concerned would have been horrified at the concept in real life.

Yes, so true about the war. I just like the matching colors of both flags together. They mesh well together is what I meant.

@John:

I just like the matching colors of both flags together.

Thanks – glad you like them.  :)  The thumbnail view is a bit fuzzy, with (at least on my screen) some strange little square artefacts in parts of the two pictures, but when I click on them to get the full-sized versions, the pictures come out correctly.

@ossel:

As promised….
TOKYO!  :-D
I ended up going with the idea of just showing the Meiji Shrine, and I like the simplicity and cleanness of it.
What do you guys think? Should there be another building in there?

I think it turned out great!  It looks perfect to me, and I agree wholeheartedly with what you say about its simple and clean appearance.  Very nice!

@ossel:

As promised….

TOKYO!  :-D

I ended up going with the idea of just showing the Meiji Shrine, and I like the simplicity and cleanness of it.

What do you guys think? Should there be another building in there?

I agree, when you make things simple, it looks cleaner. :-)

@ossel:

Here’s Honolulu.  I’d appreciate some feedback on this one, it’s sort of a different concept than the other pieces. Any suggestions are welcome.

I dunno about this one.  I think that this combination – a large geographical area depicted in a somewhat abstracted way at a low level of detail, and without any features (like the Golden Gate Bridge) that would have high recognizability even at this small scale – ends up being a little too generic-looking.  I doubt I could have identified what it was if you hadn’t already mentioned what it was going to show.  Perhaps it’s just because I’m not that familiar with how the area around Diamond Head looks.  Comparing Ford Island with the picture I posted a couple of pages ago, the version in the model looks too thick (especially when compared with the surrounding landscape), and it lacks the presence of the ships anchored in Battleship Row (which on this scale would be minuscule).  To me, Battleship Row is a signature element of Pearl Harbor (the attacking Japanese pilots certainly thought so too), so I’d be more in favour of a model devoted just to the harbor itself (with a correspondingly much larger representation of Ford Island) rather than to a model including so much of the surrounding landscape.  But that’s just my personal preference.

@ossel:

Ok, so maybe I can blow up Pearl Harbor (bad choice of words…)

Um, yes, I see the problem with that phrasing.  :wink:

Attached below are two pictures which may be helpful, courtesy of the sci-fi movie The Final Countdown.

Ossel, These look great! I think Tokyo is perfect. To me the most important thing is whether or not it improves game play and removes confusion. If I saw that piece, I’d instantly know which city it represents.

I can’t say the same thing for Honolulu. I kinda like having each city represented by the most iconic building over a landscape, but I can see why you went with this as there really aren’t a lot of iconic structures.

Overall the amount of work you’re putting in is awesome. Looking forward to the full set!!

@ossel:

Here’s Honolulu.

I’d appreciate some feedback on this one, it’s sort of a different concept than the other pieces. Any suggestions are welcome.

Like Marc says, it is a preference thing. I do like the volcano, but he is probably right, most people know about battleship row and that would probably be the best way to go. I do like what you did though. :-)

On the issue of capitals vs. non-capitals, I’ve done a pit of checking and it looks as if the distinction is a bit complicated on the Global 1940 map board:

True national capitals:

Berlin
Cairo
London
Manila
Moscow
Ottawa
Paris
Rome
Tokyo
Warsaw
Washington

Cities which are technically not national capitals, but which serve as the only VC located in a particular country:

Calcutta
(The real capital was New Delhi)
Sydney
(The real capital was Canberra)

Cities which are technically not national capitals, and which are both located in a country for which no true capital serves as a VC:

Hong Kong
(The real capital was Nanking)
Shanghai
(The real capital was Nanking)

Cites that are not national capitals and which are located in countries for which a true capital serves as a VC:

Honolulu
Leningrad
San Francisco
Stalingrad