Fortress America and Conquest of the Empire

Used to play FA to take a break from A&A back in the late '80s and my friends and I had fun, but I don’t think we were really playing it correctly.  A couple of years ago a friend in my gaming group in Colorado picked up a copy of FA from ebay because we were all stuck in the Axis & Allies/Future Risk rut before we got copies of A&A Europe and Pacific.  We were all excited to play FA again and we had a decent game, but compared to the mechanics of A&A, the mechanics of FA seemed sluggish and counterintuitive.  We have played FA twice and no one is clamoring for an FA session anytime soon especially since we are now exploring new A&A terrain with Europe and Pacific.  We might use some of the FA pieces in a variant A&A scenario (motorized land vehicles).  In any case, you still have to love the “Saddam” picture on the box.  I’ve only played Conquest once, the new edition with the classic and the new rules (we played classic, but are looking forward to trying the new rules) and I enjoyed the game but my only (minor) complaint is that the new board is a little too large than necessary.  In my view, though, A&A revised still reigns supreme. :-)

fort is fun and has the advantage of a quicker play out

shogun is great

conquest, being the first of the brood, is too simple but i am interested in trying the variant

a&a is still king

@cyan:

@Jennifer:

I used the Fortress America pieces for WWIV version

what happened to WWIII?

IMHO, WWIII was NATO vs Warsaw Pact.  NATO won, with the unfailing guidance of the last true Republican President, one Ronald Regan.

Though, at the time we had just assumed WWIII would be nuclear and WWIV would be more conventional to avoid nuclear fallout.  Thus armies would go back to infantry, armor, fighters, etc.

Jenn, there is another forum for political discussion.  The title to this one is “Other Games” and, no, I don’t think that includes politics . . .  :roll:

@Weekend:

Jenn, there is another forum for political discussion.  The title to this one is “Other Games” and, no, I don’t think that includes politics . . .  :roll:

is spreading propaganda one? if it is then Jen has that one down flat.  :evil: :lol:
edit: sorry replaced the unappropriate language

is spreading lies one. if it is then Jen has that one down flat.

out of line dude

@critmonster:

is spreading lies one. if it is then Jen has that one down flat.

out of line dude

sorry forgot this was a primearly republican place.  also sorry i don’t look at Regan like he was a god.

Posted by: cyan

Quote from: critmonster on Today at 05:01:14 PM
Quote
is spreading lies one. if it is then Jen has that one down flat.

out of line dude

sorry forgot this was a primearly republican place.  also sorry i don’t look at Regan like he was a god.

you are making less and less sense with each post.  and aren’t you the one who dogged me out about improper grammar/spelling?

calling someone a liar IS out of line (IMHO)  disagreement is fine, even healthy as long as the discourse is civil and the information exchange is pertinent.

@critmonster:

calling someone a liar IS out of line (IMHO)

yes it is.

OK people we now have a spelling check for the bad spellers…

and stay on topic BTW

yes a grammer check would be a decent idea.

Make sure it has Punctuation Check too!

OKAY back to the topic at hand.  Fortress America.  I bought this sucker off ebay and love it.  Even better than Axis and Allies.  I have finally figured out how to win with America!

Kill Russian bombers.  Fall back and force them to fight you one zone against one zone.
Delay the best you can the Central Americans so you can divert forces behind them.  Same strategy, force them to fight you one zone against one zone.
Stay one zone ahead of the Asians and continually retreat so they can’t use the helicopter jump where they can take an extra zone.  You can delay them up to 10 turns.  Fight back once you retreat back to Minneapolis.

PS.  Jen, your pics get hotter and hotter!!!  Damn Girl!  :-o

Hey Rune, the secret weapon for America is the mass redeployment card, If you can turn that card after you get holedup in Minn, it’s game over!

Oh also, maximise use of the giant friggen lazer beams.

I have enough games going on right now.  But at some point, I wouldn’t mind playing a game of FA by forum.  There is PMEM map and dice server available on the web.  If any of you guys are interested, I’ll find the map and dice server and post the link.

Oh also, maximise use of the giant friggen lazer beams.

Yeah, that’s what I meant by destroy the Soviet’s bomber squadron.  I had my opponent out of Bombers and was forcing him to fight me one-on-one in the cities of Pittsburgh, Cinncinnati, etc.  I could have won the dang game that I played except I my stupid forces couldn’t capture a city that was occupied by one infantry.  Gaaaaaa.  Still can’t claim a win with America, but I know the strategy now.

I WOULD LOVE TO PLAY THIS GAME THROUGH EMAIL OR FORUM IF ANYONE CAN GET IT.

RB

Okay, here’s the link to the PBEM web-page.  It has PBEM rules and a chart where you can roll to see what Partisan Card you draw (it’s explained in the rules):

http://members.aol.com/evilhedpro/fa/fapbem.htm

The link to the map is here, though I haven’t yet figured out how it works:

http://www.taulbee.us/webfa/

This is a link to the OOB Rules (a rough copy):

http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/Fortress_America.pdf

Here is a link to the Fortress America Players Association (who knew?):

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/fapagroup/

They appear to be the source of the map.

And, finally, here’s a really cool high-res picture of the game:

http://www.visi.com/~spookshow/famerica.html

If anyone can figure out how the map works, let me know.  I suggest contacting the FAPA folks since they apparently originated the map.  Unless someone has a better idea, I think it would be cool to bid to play America.  We could assign values to the pieces to determine who wins the bid.  Say 6 for a Hovertank, 8 for a Helicopter, 15 for a bomber, etc.

I forgot to mention, the link to the PBEM rules also has a dice server.  Pretty necessary, given the varying die involved (d6, d8 AND d10).

Forgive my ignorance since I haven’t played these games online, but what is a “bid”?

RB