AA50 on Steroids!

@bigwatcher Looks very intriguing, does it balance out between the two sides and are All the territories still the same as OOB?

@bigwatcher I was really hoping you wouldn’t have added extra territories+seazones, a lot of others done the same thing with their Own House rule maps that other players just can’t play those house rules with their Own OOB map with them added changes- I suggest keep the map simply the same with your other house rules so that others could readily play them on their OOB map without going thru the Hassle of spending money or extra time printing the New changes- that’s what stops me from trying out other player’s house rules…☹️

Hey @Bigwatcher, looks awesome! Where can I get the map files?

As an AA50 player, love this. I would also like a down link if available.

@bigwatcher Thank you! I purchased the BBR Anniversary map and play with it exclusively.

@bigwatcher said in AA50 on Steroids!:

Thanks to Oztea’s suggestions. I had been trying out to improve the current AA50 map and setups that can play on BBR for the past months. Just printed out a copy and test-played with my buddy… so far so good, still some minor balancing to do.
I wanted something in-between Anniversary and Global40…less rules and time consuming but bigger map. Since its a game im playing with my young son, i tried my best to add in some historical battles, figures and events into the map…inspired by Lt.Dan’s BBR Global40 map.
Next I will be doing up a 1940 setup.

Definitely better than the original, in my opinion.

Since you seem fairly serious on putting some historicity into the map (and realizing that is starting from Axis&Allies…) I’ll make a review on this, and, don’t worry, I’m not going to nit-pick on good enough names (like calling the Netherlands as Holland, which is acceptable, or calling Northern France as just France, which I find acceptable too):

• RIO DE ORO would be better called SPANISH SAHARA.
• FRENCH CENTRAL AFRICA makes me think you are referring to FRENCH EQUATORIAL AFRICA. The territory is the eastern (and less important) part of FRENCH WEST AFRICA, so it can be called simply NIGER (as the territory you have drawn appears to be almost only Niger plus the British colonies) or, more correctly, EASTERN FRENCH WEST AFRICA. However, it would be better making it British and calling it NIGERIA (or NIGERIA GOLD COAST) because Nigeria was arguably the most important African colony at the time. Alternatively, I guess you can change the name from FRENCH CENTRAL AFRICA to CENTRAL FRENCH AFRICA, but I don’t like this idea.
• ANGOLA is completely outside of Angola. That is mostly SOUTH WEST AFRICA (which was British, game-wise). I understand and agree ANGOLA is wanted on the map, but I just suggest cutting a piece of BELGIAN CONGO for representing it.
• KENYA is completely or near-to-completely outside Kenya: better calling it SOUTHERN ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN or UGANDA.
• ANGLO-EGYPT SUDAN should be called ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN.
• I understand that the map generally follows the convention of naming the main part of a territory as just the whole territory, but it is really weird to see a name like UNITED KINGDOM next to SCOTLAND (even calling it GREAT BRITAIN would be too much): I would consider renaming UNITED KINGDOM to ENGLAND.
• BALKANS would be much better called as YOUGOSLAVIA. Also, make sure to use the pre-WW2 borders with Italy (Istria was Italian!).
• Since it borders BELORUSSIA across the marshes, EASTERN UKRAINE is more like NORTHERN UKRAINE, or rather just UKRAINE if it comprises the city of Kiev and you follow the (RUSSIA-territory-like) convention of naming the main part of a territory as just the whole territory. If EASTERN UKRAINE is UKRAINE, then UKRAINE has to be renamed to something like SOUTHERN UKRAINE.
• I understand that the point is not having a territory with the same name as its victory city, but seeing VOLGOGRAD is horrible. I suggest calling it STALINGRAD even if it is the same name as the victory city. If that is unacceptable, maybe call the territory STALINGRAD PROVINCE or STALINGRAD OBLAST or ROSTOV or maybe VOLGA.
• SAMARA must be renamed to KUYBYSHEV. By the way, that was the new capital of the Soviet Union from late 1941 until 1943.
• A territory north of Moscow that spans as wide as to border Belorussia in the west and Tunguska in the east is a major challenge for naming (and for making sense as a zone to start with). Consider splitting it west-east into two territories, calling them VOLOGDA and KHANTY-MANSI NATIONAL OKRUG, respectively.
• The Siberian territories as a whole don’t really make sense and some names are just wrong as names (for the period, at least). I’m just going mostly to ignore all the names there and try to find good enough new ones based on their borders, also with respect to lake Baikal as drawn: rename NOVOSIBIRSK to OMSK, rename TUNGUSKA to NOVOSIBIRKS, rename EVENKI NATIONAL OKRUG to KRASNOYARSK (albeit it can retain the name as a second-best alternative), rename YAKUT S.S.R. to IRKUTSK, rename STANOVOY KHREBET (or however it is spelled in the map) to BURYAT-MONGOLIAN A.S.S.R., rename BURYATIA to WESTERN YAKUT A.S.S.R., rename SIBERIA to YAKUT A.S.S.R. (and have the Yakutsk city in it if anywhere), rename SOVIET FAR EAST to NORTHERN SOVIET FAR EAST or NORTHERN KHABAROVSK or maybe KAMCHATKA. As for AMUR, I don’t think there are really much better names for a territory that goes from Chita to Primorye, but it may be better renamed to KHABAROVSK if renaming SOVIET FAR EAST to NORTHERN KHABAROVSK.
• KANSU would be much better called SINKIANG.
• NINGSIA would be better called KANSU if renaming KANSU to SINKIANG.
• HOPEH is completely misplaced by a long shot (so much that I wonder if that is a misspelling of HUPEH): it can instead be called SZECHWAN (where the provisional capital of China, Chungking, was located). If you meant and want it to be HUPEH (which I advice against too), then I strongly suggest renaming SIKANG to SZECHWAN, instead.
• JEHOL would be better called HOPEH.
• TAIWAN (Formosa) would be better called FORMOSA (Taiwan), mostly for consistency with KOREA (Chosen).
• EAST INDIES would be better called DUTCH EAST INDIES or JAVA SUMATRA (and, no, this is not like renaming Madagascar to French Madagascar: East Indies is a much larger area than the Dutch part of it, largely overlapping the Malay Archipelago and comprising at least the Philippines).
• CENTRAL UNITED STATES is largely outside the conglomerations of States known as “West North Central” (whose westernmost States were North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska), “East North Central” (whose westernmost State was Wisconsin), “West South Central” (whose westernmost State was Texas) and “East South Central” (whose westernmost State was Mississippi): I highly recommend renaming CENTRAL UNITED STATES to MOUNTAIN UNITED STATES. Moreover, once CENTRAL UNITED STATES is renamed to MOUNTAIN UNITED STATES, WESTERN UNITED STATES should be renamed to PACIFIC UNITED STATES. Moreover, if actually wanting to have CENTRAL UNITED STATES, I suggest splitting ESTERN UNITED STATES in two, vertically about on the border between Alabama and Georgia, calling the western part of it as CENTRAL UNITED STATES and the eastern part as ATLANTIC UNITED STATES. As a final note, to have the two westernmost areas of the United States (which, as drawn, are clearly Pacific and Mountain) having a total production of 16 out of 28 is crazy, especially for the time: they were nowhere near that important (but similar observations could be made for other parts of the map, like China). Also, Alaska was almost worthless, and the Aleutians were the definition of worthless.

Of course, I realize that some of the above name-changes will require moving city names around on the map, but I think that’s fairly obvious in every case.

Moreover, if the French roundel means “Vichy-France aligned”, that is wrong for FRENCH EQUATORIAL AFRICA. If the game starts at the start of Barbarossa, Iraq should be British or British-aligned.

Also, I want to point out that, in the setup tables, you are using the country flag for every power but using the army war flag for Japan only, whereas I see that the capital of Japan is arguably correctly flagged on the board (although that looks more like the air force roundel than the national flag), but inconsistently with the flag on the tables, while all other flags are consistent between what you have for the capitals and what you have for the setup tables.

@bigwatcher You’re welcomed.

However, I was pondering again my suggestion of splitting the VOLOGDA territory in two, calling them VOLOGDA and KHANTY-MANSI NATIONAL OKRUG. Unfortunately, that would not fit with how and where the Ural mountains are drawn, since the current VOLOGDA territory appears to be all west of the Urals as drawn (so it cannot comprise KHANTY-MANSIA) (By the way, the Ural mountains are rather small mountains, so they are not realistically impassable.).

So now I’m oriented to see the VOLOGDA territory as being an area spanning about from the Vologda province to the Kirov province and possibly also the Perm province: it can be still split in two vertically, calling them VOLOGDA and KIROV, or it can be left as a single territory.

Here are the new rename changes for Siberia, which do not imply redrawing any borders nor splitting any territories:
NENETSIA->KOMI A.S.S.R.
URALS->EASTERN KOMI A.S.S.R.
VOLOGDA->VOLOGDA
SAMARA->KUYBYSHEV
NOVOSIBIRSK->BASHKIR A.S.S.R.
TUNGUSKA->OMSK
EVENKI NATIONAL OKRUG->NOVOSIBIRSK
YAKUT S.S.R.->KRASNOYARSK
STANOVOY KHREBET->BURYAT-MONGOLIAN A.S.S.R.
BURYATIA->WESTERN YAKUT A.S.S.R.
SIBERIA->YAKUT A.S.S.R.
SOVIET FAR EAST->NORTHERN KHABAROVSK
AMUR->KHABAROVSK

As for territory changes:

• I would merge NENETSIA and URALS into a single territory called KOMI A.S.S.R. (because those areas as drawn are currently very narrow east-west in reality).
• I would split VOLOGDA vertically into two territories, called VOLOGDA and KIROV.

The above is, at the end, merely a compromise to temperate the huge distortions inherent in the drawing. I believe that they make more sense than my previous suggestions if you look at the Urals as drawn, but make matters some whorse with respect to western China (Sinkiang) as drawn. If you look at China and Mongolia, the current NOVOSIBIRSK territory (which I suggest to rename to BASHKIR A.S.S.R.) would be actually eastern Kazakhstan, SAMARA would be western Kazakhstan and KAZAKH S.S.R. would be southern Kazakhstan plus Kyrgyzstan, plus Uzbekistan (or at least its Kara-Kalpakian part), plus Tajikistan.

@bigwatcher said in AA50 on Steroids!:

inspired by Lt.Dan’s BBR Global40 map.

I think it would be good if you give a link to that, so one can compare.

Anyway, I think a foremost issue in how hard is to make sense of Asian Russia is the drawing of the Urals. I don’t know if you decided to draw the Ural mountains there yourself or that comes from this other map you have referenced.

Assuming you did it, I guess that you got this “Urals” territory from Axis&Allies Europe/Global and so decided actually to show the Ural mountains themselves on the map, drawing them along the eastern border of the territory. I think that, instead, if wanting to draw the Ural mountains (which is really not necessary), you should have drawn them on the western (not eastern) border of the “Urals” territory (so, having the Ural mountains between the current “Nenetsia” and the current “Urals”).

Indeed, if you look at the original Axis&Allies Europe 1940 map, you can see that straight to the south of the “Urals” territory there is the “Novosibirsk” territory. Knowing where New Siberia is, this can only sensibly mean that the territory called “Urals” is meant to be mostly or entirely east of the Ural mountains.

@bigwatcher All right. If you would either change the location where the Ural mountains are drawn or avoid drawing them at all, I can take a look at the Sovietic Union once again and give a new set of suggested names for the various territories. I’m not sure of the names I’ve given as I believe that is very hard to collocate names with the map as it is because of the relative positions of the Ural mountains and the north-western corner of China (which is adjacent to both Mongolia and the Sovietic Union and I assume is the Altai prefecture of Sinkiang). Also the Russian railway from Moscow to Vladivostok not passing through the SAMARA territory is a limiting factor to proper naming, as the city which is nowadays known as Samara was a possible albeit not obligatory hub of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway#/media/File:Transsib_international.svg

@bigwatcher I sent the proof waiting for you :D

@bigwatcher Hi, can I buy or download the beautifull map and: all the setup cards anywhere?:+1: :dark_sunglasses: