Noob here: Do I just paint over the plastic pieces that come with the game?

Use a lot of the same units.  Whenever I play, I give one player like 10 shermans if he is the us.  or 10 panzer IVs if he is germany.  It helps because you have less cards to look at for the movements and attacks.  If you cut out air, that shortens it too.

@Motdc:

The starter is not meant, unfortunately, to be a stand-alone game.  You must buy at least a few more booster packs to get a good mix of units to mix-n-match a decent army together.

That’s exactly it. You’ll need probably 4 or more boosters to make the starter actually enjoyable. Anything less than 100 point battles just aren’t fun.

Mine was in a center hex in the hills and upon deployment it was one of those cringe moments.  He had a Typhoon.  The funny thing is he didn’t use it on the Nash so I was able to bump it off mid game.  I’m please with the results 55 point to 45 cost I’ll take that any day.  If it wasn’t for the mortor and the Improved Indirect fire it may have been higher kill points.

Axis Fan

Understood on 100 point armor builds but the year makes a huge difference.  Is this just in general, or are you building for a specific scenario?

Your initial question is a 100point armor build viable for the germans?  Just an opinion but, Yes. On earlier scenarios as you go up it will get harder and you will have to be more creative lets say 1943 and up (the allies just have good cheap stuff).  The 35 pt Panther(1942 I think) a brummbar(1943) and a Hetzer(1944) are all good.  The Brummbar is priceless against infantry and is fairly cheap 22.

Regards,

Axis fan

I’ve found that past 300 points the games all run around the same amount of time. I think it might have something to do with the fact that the game starts wrapping up at turn 7 regardless… otherwise, I dunno. But the 350 and 450 point games all ran the same amount of time as the 3 hour game: 3 1/2 hours. Which was way too long. Hehhehe. Usually the standard 200 point games we play last around 2 hours, or a little bit more if there’s a rules hitch or joking around instead of playing.

-=Grim=-

@surfdog:

i palyed a few games on the plastic maps and got tired of it, i wanted a 3d game board i took a 3x6 piece of plywood cut it in half and covered it with dark green felt, i decided on 4" hexagons,

Word, that’s the route I’m going on. I hope to have a hexed battleboard ASAP, and there’s a TON of 15mm WWII terrain out there on the net. I’ll just nab some of that. The mats the game comes with are OK to learn on, but to perpetually game on these drab, flat maps that have roads mostly going on one direction… blegh.

-=Grim=-

With Set II coming out you’ll be able to field and effective Soviet team and Japanese team. There are a couple of new Japanese tanks that are pretty good.

You might even be able to put together a Chinese team but you might have to amek a house rule that allows more than 15 units per team or play 80 pts. or something. Those 2pt soldiers don’t really fill out the points very well.