Modernizing A&A Classic to more current standards

Just though i’d put this out here in this dusty old forum… but I never liked the original Styrofoam trays… even when I was a kid in the 1980s… i though the spaces were too small and too hard to pull units out of, and most glaringly of all, they were what I would call “Gravity storage” trays… meaning, if gravity wasn’t your friend and you flipped over or carried your game box in a direction different from a certain gravitational pull, all your units would pour out.

Anyhoo, I procured some Husky 7" trays for the five nations and one Husky 6" tray for my accessories bin from my local hardware store, slapped some stickers on them for some pizzaz and got a much better looking and storing version of A&A Classic.

Sorry for the delay…

The original game only comes with Red and White Chips… and I had the ORIGINAL 1980s red and white chips in the box… for whatever reason (probably attic storage before I restored the game) the chips did not survive the 30+ years without changing colors and just not worth keeping when I restored the game.

I bought new chips off Amazon and decided to give it a slightly more “modern” update, to include the new standard of Gray, Green & Red chips… I saw no harm in doing so, and purists can always ignore the green chips if they so choose.

As for the stickers on the new storage bins (I really did always hate the Styrofoam trays), I used vista-print to make the flag stickers. I simply went to vistaprint’s website, used “small rectangular product labels” and slapped these images on them to make the flag stickers. They could probably be done on a home printer as well, i’m just lazy and wanted it slightly more professional than my home printer.  I guess i’ll link my flag images in the next few posts…

There’s nothing special about the flags, just WWII era flags I grabbed and used…

Here’s…
Germany and Japan

Here’s

USA & UK

Here’s
USSR and Italy

This is what you end up with…

No problem, hope you enjoy the flag stickers… some of the flag files I posted above are slightly modified… as-in “elongated” over a typical flag… America and the Soviet Union are two of the more prominent examples of the elongated flags. This was to accommodate the “Rectangular Product Label’s” peculiar non-flag shaped size (product labels are just a little longer in width than the typical flag). The files are longer than the stickers turn out, this was on-purpose to give the proper “stretch” over the product labels… as you can see in my final stickers, they look more natural than the elongated sticker files (excess length doesn’t make it onto the flag sticker). Note also the US flag is accurate to WWII USA… as it has 48 stars instead of the 50 star flag after the war.

Obviously Italy isn’t in the Classic A&A game, but I made it and included it for anyone using Anniversary or Global, as both include Italy (I used another set of these stickers on my A&A Anniversary storage trays).

Enjoy.

@AcesWild5049:

I dont know how you navigated through that website to get this result. I couldnt even get the images to fit into their template without a ton of white space around it. Can throw out a link to the exact page on the website you used?

Ya… they definitely changed their format to something different than when I ordered them… it’s definitely a downgrade on ease of use.

Here’s the link that should get you somewhere close to where you need to be:
https://www.vistaprint.com/marketing-materials/labels-stickers/product-labels?xnav=swsProductOnly_ResultTitle

To get the same items I have, on that page select “Sheet, Rounded Rectangle, Horizontal, 3.5"x2”, White Paper" and then choose the finish you want and hit “Start Designing”… choose “Upload your design”, then add your image.

Finally on the sizing, it might look off, but I actually lengthened some of the flag images intentionally to get them to fit right… realize you need to FILL THE ENTIRE LABEL… this means feel free to have parts enlarged beyond the label… I did this intentionally with flags like the US Flag to get them to fit right… just enlarge it so much it fills top to bottom, don’t try and get the entire length of the flag stripes in. You might have to pull the image down, stretch it taller, then reposition it back to center until you fill the label top to bottom… just do this on all the labels you should be fine.