Sired's Map project - Updated- 4/16 - files available see first post

@EnglishImperialist

Sure, just on a very practical level, getting a piece of vinyl and your magnet, take them to home depot and thest them on the metal you’re considering.

I didn’t much like the standard magnets and went with the rare earth type. Strength 35 is good, but 55 us great. I really like strong magnets for every thing but the chips, it’s nice to have a weaker magnet on those. I really like on ebay the 12mm x 0.5mm N52 Strong Round Disc Rare Earth Neodymium Very Thin Magnet.

It became a more expensive project than I anticipated, but still happy I did it. I ended up getting multiple copies of the game, then lots of loose used pieces and ordering bulk from websites, then magnitizing all those pieces…it was a lot, but a fun process. Because it’s in my living room, I tend to get decals and paint…it’s a fun hobby.

I spent a lot of effort cutting down my metal sheets to the size of the game, but I was thankful I had some leftover metal surface, it’s nice being able to put spare pieces, chips, and markers underneath the map.

A small glue gun is an important purchase. You’ll want to be able to control a small amount of hot glue while magnitizing the pieces.

One thing I’ve always wondered is if the Axis and Allies community has a standard for magnet orientation. It won’t matter until you try to put a plane on an aircraft carrier, or on a chip. Mine are standardized to my house, but what if I ever wanted to buy a customized magnetized piece…?

For magnets, I talked about the chips earlier.
I really appreciated having a craft/sewing ruler ($1 at walmart), it helped me plan ahead for magnet purchases, but these are what I liked…
12mm x 0.5mm disc for chips
3mm x 1mm Disc for fighters and tac bombers.
10mm x 1mm Disc for infantry originally
8mm x 1mm Disc for tanks, infantry, AA guns, and are just a bit wider than a cruiser
3-4mm wide x 2mm tall disc for hollow aircraft carriers.
4mmx 4mm Disc (set for each) for aircraft carrier that need drilling.
12mm x 1 mm Disc for flight stands and are just a bit wide for battleships.

3mm x 2mm x 1mm rectangle for strategic bombers.
10mm x 5mm x 1 mm rectangle I used on transports, many artillery, and mech infantry.
10 x 5 x 3 rectangle I have on destroyers.
10mm x 10mm x 1mm rectangle fit nicely inside or under factories, as well as custom air and naval yards.
20mm x 2mm x 2mm for submarines.
20mm x 10mm x 1mm are good for kamikaze markers.

Standard ceramic for nation markers, I like they are thick and easy to grab. Be aware, some are weaker than others.

This is just what I did, figuring all this out.

In retrospect, I do like that all the ships have different magnets, it helped me and friends identify which is what kind.

If I was doing this again, financially I’d probably put the 8mmx 1mm disc’s on most everything (except carriers and planes, and maybe chips). Just one big bulk rate purchase.

But again, get a mm ruler and see what’s good for you.

Enjoy!

TRICK OUT YOUR OOB MAPS WITH ARTWORK CUT FROM YOUR SPARE/DUPLICATE RULEBOOKS, LINK IS HERE!!! https://youtu.be/QMkfdDdvqus

And on a related point: if you look at an online map of the world and place a rectangular sheet of paper on it so that one of its long edges lies on the equator (alternately covering, for purposes of comparison, the bottom half and the top half), you’ll notice that most of the world’s land masses are in the northern hemisphere.  All of North America, all of Europe, virtually all of Asia, and much of Africa are located there.  The main land masses in the southern hemisphere are South America, the lower part of Africa, Australia, and Antarctica; the rest of the southern hemisphere is mainly water, which means that for A&A map purposes it’s mostly wasted space.  Oceania, a.k.a. the Pacific Islands, including Australia and New Zealand, did see significant action in WWII, so its inclusion on an A&A map is quite relavant…but by the same token Antarctica is a land mass that’s traditionally (and with good reason) omitted from A&A maps.

In case this is useful, here’s a page which shows photos of all the sculpt types in A&A 1941 (http://www.axisandallies.org/p/axis-allies-1941-preview-unit-details-and-abilities/) along with a list of how many sculpts of each type are in the game.  Clicking on each picture will give you an enlarged version.

Awesome :)

BAH!!! I was going to order them from https://www.litko.net/BMaker/ but if im going to custom order them I dont want to alter them. Especially if I go with something as clean as the Clear. I could go bigger… say match the size of the standard chips so they still stack nicely but i still think I will have the problem of them being top heavy in the end, especially since I want to have them 1.5" high and not just the one inch. I thnk Im going to hold out and try to snag up some 11mm dia 3mm thick steel blanks for a base. May take some time, but here’s to hoping

@General:

I love the level of detail to the map, have you considered using the Star of India from the British Raj for UK Pacific territories?

Glad you liked the custom map.  No, the idea of giving the British Pacific territories distinct roundels hadn’t occurred to me.  It’s a concept that has potential advantages, for instance because it would highlight Britain’s two-income situation in Global, but on the other hand I like having a single British roundel for the whole world because it highlights the extent of the British Empire.  (A grade-school child back in the1930s or so allegedly wrote in an assignment that “The sun never sets on the British Empire because the sun sets in the west and the Empire is in the east.”)

The file service named Mediafire, already has this. There is not need to run up costs on this site to allow downloads. Why not use that free service?

Plus we already got IL’s map thread with most of these map files. If that is not true, post all the files there that are missing.