Lets talk about chips

We use different colored chips for each unit type.  I really helps to clean up stack on the board and to tell how many of each unit are in a territory.

white = infantry
black = tanks
green = art
orange = mech
brown = bomber
blue = fighter
yellow = tac.
purple = navy (we ran out of colors so had to make due).  We keep talking about painting the purple different colors for different ships but never get around it.

We still use reds to represent 5 units any type of unit.

@Young:

That’s awesome cyanight, how did you magnitize each chip? and do any of those colors lock with the oob chips, or did you have to replace all the chips in your game set?

I drilled a hole 3mm in diameter through each chip and inserted a 3mm x 1mm magnet. I placed a small amount of super glue to keep them in place but they are very snug without the glue. Then I placed a small sticker on top and bottom to make it look nice. All the chips are interlocking. I bought the blue, red, orange, black and purple from HBG. Even if you don’t have a magnetic board or magnetic pieces its nice since they prevent the chips from tipping over. The cool part is you don’t have to worry about polarity either because you just flip the chip and then the polarity will match.

@Bar91:

We use different colored chips for each unit type. � I really helps to clean up stack on the board and to tell how many of each unit are in a territory.

white = infantry
black = tanks
green = art
orange = mech
brown = bomber
blue = fighter
yellow = tac.
purple = navy (we ran out of colors so had to make due). � We keep talking about painting the purple different colors for different ships but never get around it.

We still use reds to represent 5 units any type of unit.

That’s cool Bar, I’d love to see a picture of your game board with the chips sometime :)

I had problems with the Red chips from the OOB. The might have been from an older AA set Im not sure.  All the HBG chips I got worked with the grey ones.  They are very cheap. I think 50 for $3.

@cyanight:

I had problems with the Red chips from the OOB. The might have been from an older AA set Im not sure.  All the HBG chips I got worked with the grey ones.  They are very cheap. I think 50 for $3.

You got the HBG chips to interlock with the OOB chips? I had a problem with that, both red and grey. Also, some OOB chips from older games won’t work properly with OOB chips from some newer games.
Anyway, I really like the chips I got from HBG so I got some in all colors and just sold off all my OOB chips. Also, like you said they are cheap so I got a lot of them. I got 6 tubes of white, 3 each of red and blue and one of all other colors. I even have these neat little Plano cases to hold them. Here are the values I give them:
White = One
Red = Five
Blue = Ten
Yellow = Twenty
Green = Fifty
Black = One Hundred
Orange = Five Hundred
Brown = One Thousand
Purple = Five Thousand
Pink = Ten Thousand

Now, of course everything past green or black I got more for novelty than actual use, but they are there anyway. Could you imagine an infantry unit with a pink chip under it? An infantry stack of 10,001! How many rounds would it take to build up a stack like that? And what kind of stacks would an attacker have to have in order to chew through such a stack of infantry?

Anyway, Young Grasshopper, I would strongly suggest switching over to the HBG chips. Then you would have plenty of chips that all work together. You could sell off your OOB chips on eBay and make a little of your money back too. Well, that’s up to you anyway.

I just checked my chips and matched them up with each other to see if they all interlock.  The red, Blue, Green and Grey all interlock.  I checked my order history on HBG and the only two I bought were Red and Blue.  So the Green and Grey are OOB.

Here are the order number and prices for the chips.
Order ID      Description                Price
Chip_Blue    50 Blue Plastic Chips    $2.49   
Chip_Red    50 Red Plastic Chips    $2.49

I didn’t check the black and orange because I don’t use them with the other colors but they do interlock with each other.

Another nice thing about the chips being magnetic is if you want to pickup a chip off the board you can use another chip to pick it up by just hovering the chip over it.  Sometimes its hard to pickup a chip if the area is cluttered or you have big fingers, hehe.

@Young:

KNP, do all the HBG chips lock well with each other the way oob chips lock with each other, in other words… is the HBG quality as good as oob?

Oh yeah. All the HBG chips interlock with each other, all colors. I’ve gotten great use from the white, red, blue and yellow. As for the higher colors, I checked them out when I first got them and they clicked together just fine.

@Young:

@knp7765:

@Young:

KNP, do all the HBG chips lock well with each other the way oob chips lock with each other, in other words… is the HBG quality as good as oob?

Oh yeah. All the HBG chips interlock with each other, all colors. I’ve gotten great use from the white, red, blue and yellow. As for the higher colors, I checked them out when I first got them and they clicked together just fine.

So it’s probably best to not use the oob chips at all and replace them with HBG chips considering how few you get oob, and the fact that they don’t lock with anything out there. Could be a conspiracy theory, but maybe HBG is out of stock on gray and red axis and allies chips on purpose just so we all buy their other chips :)

Ha ha ha! Well, maybe so but I like them anyway and I don’t mind supporting HBG for them to keep making the great sculpts we all want. Plus I like the bigger variety in colors.

One thing I’m curious about. How many of you use a “3 count” chip and do you think it really helps out on the game board? It just seems like an odd number to me and would make things a little more hard to figure out at a glance. I guess once you got used to the color it wouldn’t be so confusing. Is it for game board aesthetics or for a limited number of “1 count” chips?

For me its a limited number of chip count. Its easer to see a green chip from a distance than a stack of 3 grey to me. I wish the green chip was a different color because for standard poker chip value green is 25, red 5, white/grey 1, blue 10.

Cyanight, you win :-D

I showed my wife and daughter the picture of the chips, told them how you made them, and my daughter told me I should make my own set… but her daddy isn’t that cool.

How long did it take you to make your set?

Another useful accessory for long A&A games are the kind of stackable chips shown in the picture below.  They’re inexpensive and easily obtainable from local suppliers in most cities and towns.

@Stalingradski:

Cyanight, you win :-D

I showed my wife and daughter the picture of the chips, told them how you made them, and my daughter told me I should make my own set… but her daddy isn’t that cool.

How long did it take you to make your set?

It took me a couple weeks. I used 3mm X 1mm Neodymium magnets. You can easily find them on Ebay for about 100 for around $5. You don’t need to use much glue and that is what I learned from doing many of the chips. Use a 3mm drill and secured the chip to be drilled with tape on a piece of cardboard or like surface. Slowly drill the hole all the way though the chip. It may crack a little in the center but if it doesn’t crack all the way through your glue will fix it. Then I just used those 10mm dot stickers that people use at garage sales to cover both sides of the chip.

This second pic shows my IPC board which is a small replica of the main board. Here the board can be tilted perpendicular and still hold a stack of 30 chips.

@CWO:

Another useful accessory for long A&A games are the kind of stackable chips shown in the picture below.  They’re inexpensive and easily obtainable from local suppliers in most cities and towns.Â

I hear the come in various flavors too :)

@cyanight:

I hear the come in various flavors too :)

And they don’t need to be magnetized, unless you have a serious need to add some iron to your diet.