What on earth are the pieces that you need to play Global War 1936?! Like, just an actual list of useful pieces please.

@trig just going to weigh in here one thing I wish we had thought of off the hop is using all your A&A standard infantry as militia and buying the 1/72 box sets for regular infantry - we ended up doing that anyway and it works good -just at first we bought like a 100 Dutch infantry for HBG to use as milita

Don’t mean to beat a dead horse here. But I agree with the above approach of playing with what you have, and adding incrementally as you see fit.

We started out with A&A Global 1940 as our base, along with the other 2-3 A&A games we had on hand. We did the same thing as above too, and just used chips to denote the different types of units. A tank with a blue chip was a light tank, white chip heavy tank, no chip medium tank, etc.

But over the last few years we’ve dipped in to some pieces. We personally like the aesthetic of a unique unit for each type, but also find it easier to remember that than a color wheel of chips! This is much more expensive of course, but doing so in pieces isn’t so bad. But everyone has different levels of disposable income. Dropping $100-$150 divided between the three of us from time to time hasn’t been so terrible. Using the HBG markers is an obvious great way to go. You can utilize your OOB infantry as Militia, Marines, Airborne, Regular Infantry that way, for only the cost of the markers.

If you do want unique HBG sculpts, I’d recommend starting by getting the base set pieces: Cavalry, Militia, Mountain Infantry, coastal subs (though I think the original game subs make great use for these though too), TBD’s. Get some white “Dutch” units for the minors/neutral powers too to flush those out if you want them.

From there, I’d expand the more unique units. Make the A&A OOB tanks your medium tanks (most commonly used), and buy some light tanks for each. Buy trucks for motorized infantry. Use the OOB Strategic Bomber as your heavy/strat bombers, then buy a few medium bombers. From there you could get marines/airborne as well.

After that, you could focus on fleshing out the rarely used units: heavy tanks, heavy strat bombers, jet fighters, advanced subs, etc.

My biggest hindrance now has been buying unique ship sculpts for V3. I’m having a hard time pulling the trigger on buy unique sculpts for light/heavy cruisers, battlecruisers/battleships/fast battleships. That’s been a big change for me that we’re still trying to decide what’s best!

Oh one more thing i wanted to mention if you are to build your set on the cheap.

Bingo Counters. You can get multi-coloured sets of these little educational counters for cheap on amazon and then use the different colours for your specialist infantry; Yellow = Militia, Blue = Marines, Green = Airbourne, etc. I also use the reds for a nations unique unit; IE Gukras, Foreign Legion, Panzergrens.
Just glue them onto your infantry/vehicles and youre good to go.

My biggest hindrance now has been buying unique ship sculpts for V3. I’m having a hard time pulling the trigger on buy unique sculpts for light/heavy cruisers, battlecruisers/battleships/fast battleships. That’s been a big change for me that we’re still trying to decide what’s best!

That is the challenge. When I set out to build my navies for each nation, I created my wishlist below.

1. Consistent quality of the sculpt
2. Sculpts for many types of ship classes for each navy
3. Custom scales for ships I.e 1:3000, 1:2400 etc,
4. Same molded plastic used for painting consistency
5. Custom ships that I wanted like the the Plan Z ships for Germany or the surface raiders like the Pinguin and Atlantis.
6. One shop that could do all these things.

Let me know if this is something your interested in.

@chris_henry
We used the old axis and allies battleships from like the classic version or whatever as battlecruisers the size is nice cause it’s just between the real battleship size and the heavy cruiser (we used AA Europe and pacific cruisers as heavy cruisers) ditto on the old subs as coastal subs

@linkler I also made use of my old 80’s axis and allies pieces for battlecruisers and coastal subs as well as risk cavalry. I denote cruisers between light and heavy with different colors of paint on the bow and stern. The possibilities are virtually endless in what you can do for units in this game. I am currently buying HBG pieces to replace certain units and or make upgrades as I can.

@mark-the-shark @Linkler yeah, that’s where we’re at too. The 80’s game pieces become useful for some of that for us too.

Luckily for us, we’ve been slowly adding for a few years now. We’re at the point where we don’t have a ton of backlogged items we need. Meaning, we can start buying some of these pieces if we want to now as well without breaking the bank all at once!

I’m just waiting for tank destroyers and SSP to come back into stock. I haven’t seen those available since we got V3, and we hadn’t bothered having them on hand before since they weren’t part of V2!

Ha. I trimmed down the bombers to 2 engines and used for land sea plane. Also took and trimmed off cranes on transport and used as oilers. From 80 game pieces.
Can’t remember what I used for ship sea plane.
And yes BB were Used for cruiser type and AC for escort carriers.

We were able to cover many of the units with our A&A 1940 Europe/Pacific sets. We used A&A WWI units for militia, Coastal Defense Ships, Coastal Subs, etc. and Risk units for a bunch of other units like Cavalry and China CCP. And we have some translucent markers to identify units like Medium Bombers, Mountain Infantry, Light Cruisers, etc. Since we happened to own those 4 games, we were able to start playing after only purchasing the map.

Really important was to have a white board with a list of all of the units, and what sculpt and/or marker we were using to represent it.

Since then, we’ve purchased some units (like Tank Destroyers and Self-Propelled Artillery). I find the board is much easier to decipher, and the game is much more enjoyable, when there are unique sculpts for each unit.

A few posts up, Trig put the link to the suggested list of pieces. You just have to keep in mind that that list is what you would need to never run out of pieces. Needing 16 Infantry units for KMT China or Communist China I suppose is possible, but not in any game I’ve ever played.

If I wanted to put a new set together right now from scratch, I would take that suggested units list, invest in a few cans of spray paint, try to find some used A&A and Risk games, and supplement with the cheapest units for sale on HBG. For instance, https://www.historicalboardgaming.com/United-Kingdom_c_242.html has Infantry, Battleships, Bombers and Fighters for $.10 apiece. Japanese Subs cost $.04 each. And in their sale section, you can find collections like https://www.historicalboardgaming.com/Battle-Pieces--Allies-Wrong-Color-x5_p_3837.html where you can get some of the non-A&A units like Medium Bombers, Tank Destroyers, Motorized Infantry, and Self-Propelled Artillery for $.29 apiece. All of these costs will definitely add up, but you could make a pretty good set.

Seems to me HBG could sell sets of units based on what other games you have…

Here is how I proceeded.

I already owned the A&A Europe 1940 first and second editions, so with the pieces from all these sets, I had a good base for France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and USSR, plus the Chinese infrantry for KMT.

I also own the A&A pacific with red chinese soldiers that I am using for the CCP infantry (there is also one Pacific edition where the japanese pieces are red).

This still leaves a lot of pieces to buy from HBG or to scavenge from other sources (cavalry, neutrals, militia, air transports, medium bombers, coastal subs and battleships, TBDs, light cruisers, tank destroyers, advanced mech and artillery, SP-artillery (basic and advanced), motorized infantry (trucks), etc.).

Some powers have specific and different sculps available, but not all, so in the end you will need to paint pieces and still use some kind of tokens/markers to distinguish some special units.

As @Ghetty pointed out, if you can get your hands on HBG « wrong colour » pieces for units that you have to paint anyway, that is a good option to obtain cheap pieces. Their spare pieces from old A&A Games can also provide a cheaper option and can be purchased individually, but are not always available. For instance, I built almost all my Canadian forces for the CAW expansion with older « celery » color british units and painted what was missing.

I also bought some scupts from I will never grow up games. Unfortunately, I find that the 3D printing leaves a lot of visible « fibers » and the plastic is very brittle and small details can easily break, such as tank barrels and ship towers. IMO, the best sculpts from them are the German trucks which can be used for Motorized infantry (especially if you don’t own A&A Battle of the Bulge for the trucks).

I think that you have to see Global War as an ongoing project, as there will probably be new pieces available over time that can replace your generic units or markers.

I would not advise anyone to try to get « everything » before playing their first game. You have to go by steps and find out over time what you are missing and what can be improved.