Custom map for AA50

Hi ! First of all, I am new here, so apologies if I do anything wrong ;)

I wanted to share (a draft - low resolution) of my custom map for the anniversary edition (that I never saw or played). The original is a 155 cm diameter vector file - which is the size of my round table. I am planning to print it soon on neoprene, but wanted to check for eventual feedbacks before ;)

Despite Europe being already slightly oversized, the territories there are still quite small. Not smaller than the original though, so I guess it could do the job. I wanted to do it as historically accurate I could (with a focus on spring 1942, but the 1941 scenario can still be played in principle), so some territories are further splitted with dot lines - for cosmetic purposes only. Oh yeah, and it is labelled in French, apologies for that.

I wanted to keep it as close as possible to the original game, not to hamper the balance. Nevertheless, I made some changes that I hope don’t change much. In a nutshell :

• Changed names of many territories, just for fun (and/or accuracy)
• East Poland became Ukraine and Ukraine became Crimea, so I switched the IPC value between them to keep 2 IPC in Ukraine.
• Eastern Ukraine got an access to Azov sea. Planning to set a Kerch Straight rule with the need to own Caucasus to enter Azov sea (making this access pretty useless).
• Sea zones 15 and 16 are not connected (which should be irrelevant with Dardanelles rule).
• Panama is not connected to East Coast (no way to do that on a real map !) - but I don’t see how it would really impact the game.
• Himalaya and Sahara are not territories anymore, but replaced by a black line forbidding access (which should give exactly the same result) - added also Alps to restrict access between Italy and Germany without cheating with Switzerland’s size.
• Added a couple of additionnal neutrals (again without any in-game effects).
• Added Guianas as extra UK territory (but a 0 IPC territory on that corner of the map should really change anything)
  All the rest is purely cosmetic OR room for optional house rules (not yet fully decided - can discuss them separately if anyone is interested) - but can be ignored to play the genuine game. For example Free French territories are by default administered by UK.

One last thing I am wondering about is SZ 26 (very ugly) - is it really used ? Can it really make any changes ? Otherwise I’d like to get rid of it.

Glad to read any kind of feedbacks if it inspires anyone ;)

@goekawar, well, yes. But I suppose you can identify most of the names, can’t you?

@goekawar, I got your point. But I’m sure that if you were playing, let’s say, a German game, and decided to customize the map, you’d have translated it in your language ;)

Do you guys have an opinion on sz 26? Is it really needed?

@goekawar, OK, that’s your choice. Everybody is bilingual in the Netherlands, you don’t translate movies neither, I guess that’s your culture. 😉

Thank you guys ;)

I am still working on this map (which looks already quite different than the version posted above).

I’ll keep you updated once I finally print it !

@Argothair, thank you for the feedback, very appreciated !

I made several print tests and corrected the design to ensure there was enough space in the small territories. Some place are really crowded (Baltic Sea…) but it fits - and it is not worse than on other OOB maps.

Agree that the polar projection is not the most rational, but I chose it on purpose. I’m lucky that the table is huge - plenty of empty oceans then where to place the trays and boards ;)

I note your remark on Soviet territories. Siberia seemed to me the best name for the “urban” oblasts of Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo and Krasnoyarsk (let’s say the “heart” of Siberia, as opposed to the autonomous ethnic “empty” districts). K-M covers the Khanty-Mantsi AOK, Yamalo-Nenetski AOK and Komi ASSR, but I don’t remember why I chose that name instead of another one. I’ll check for a better option.

Agree as well about IPC values, but those are OOB. I was planning to switch at least the 1 IPC “lost” by UK in Madagascar to Iran. Again this question “how deep do I want to change the original game”

Hi, folks.

I initially started to mod the ww2v3 game in TripleA to test some of the house rules I wanted to play with my map. Like, to make sure I wouldn’t print it with game-breaking mistakes.

At first, I was using a roughly modified version of the game map. But after a while, I thought “why not use my own map”… and that became a new project in itself!

Here is a (purposedly blurry) glimpse of what it looks like so far :

I am testing several variants:

• OOB rules (1942 scenario) with just the modified map (including new straits rules), additional territories and adapted setup.
• Same but with a fully reviewed unit roster (including Tacs and Mechs)

Both variants have optional additional players (can be individually disabled before starting the game), with their own rulesets :

• French
• Commonwealth
• Neutrals

Not sure I’ll ever publish it… but I’m having a lot of fun ;)

@vodot Thank you :)

You motivated me to open a separate post about the project:

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/40630/ww2-spring-1942-ironclad-an-enhanced-aa50-game-on-triplea

@8d88 thank you for your message! Actually, the current project is quite far from the map I shared in the opening post. I twisted it already multiple time to increase space in Europe. I also printed several draft, and it fits (or at least, with similar constrains than the original map), because it’s total diameter is 155 cm (that’s big 😆). It also means that there are quite a lot of empty spaces on the table (which is useful for other purposes). But overall, this is all “for fun” and the design (polar projection) is definitely not the best for a game with an emphasis on Northern Hemisphere.