Pictures Thread

Its in the right place. Start us off by posting the first picture.

Here is a picture of a newspaper found shortly after my last game as the Axis…

… wel after all my Axis games actually LOL!!

Here’s a couple of starters for ya.

Me and my mate play with a para-trooper house rule, so you’ll notice there are more bombers than you’d normally purchase.

East

West

Sime, what an interesting looking game. its looks like the Japanese were deep into the atlantic, as they have WI, are they pulling abck out? Why would they? They should maintain atlantic dominance, and bombard London. And germany can get into the act soon by builing their own trannies. With a double attack on London, it will fall shortly. There lloks to be a stalemate in asia for the time being. But london will fall well before toyko is threatened!!! Clear advantage to axis here.

That must be a joke picture. How can the allies possibly continue even say 2 turns before that picture was taken?

@AxisOfEvil

That Jap fleet came through the Panama Canal and took WI.  They then headed South to capture Brazil.  On the turn after the picture was taken, the Jap fleet linked up with the Kraut fleet in sz12 and Germany bought a factory for Western Europe. The following turn both fleets moved to sz6 and Germany pumped out 10 transports over 2 turns with the objective to take England.

By then USA was poised to invade Africa, whereas Africa was poorly defended by Germany.  I decided to forego the invasion of Britain because once captured, all of those African IPC’s would go to USA when they began their African campaign.  Instead I planned to take my fleet (and 20 transported units – a 1/1 split of tanks and inf) south to either help in defending Africa, or to head to the Pacific and give some aid to the Japanese.

So I moved south to sz12.  USA wasn’t paying attention and failed to place enough units in E.USA to defend against my 20 units, so on my next turn I took E.USA and ended the game.

@ IL

It definitely isn’t a joke picture.  My mate (who was playing the Allies) doesn’t like to give up, so he’ll keep playing well after you or I (or any sane person) would have given up.

I don’t know how you tolerate playing without markers… Also it looks like a joke of a game haha, like you’ve just chucked alot of pieces on the board for aesthetic value. The scenarios verge on the unrealistic. However I will give you the benefit of the doubt.

How does the paratrooper rule work? You’d have to have an extra rule I reckon, like if paratroopers take an island the waters surrounding the islands cannot be in enemy control for a turn afterwards, otherwise the paratroopers die of starvation  :-P I mean you could even bring into effect the AA gun against paratroopers, a roll of one where an AA gun kills a paratrooper.

I think these rules are along the lines of, if a unit is cut off from its home territory then it should defend at minus one. So say for instance if Germany takes West Russia but the three spaces of land in a vertical line behind it (I think it would be ukraine, belorussia, and karelia) are not in German control. Then the German units if left there after a turn must defend at minus one. The rule definitely adds more realism to the game.

I think the reason why paratroopers are not in the game, and I think it was a wise decision by Larry Harris et al. is because in the war paratroopers were not effective period. Germany lost many crack troops in Crete for a small consolation, Market Garden was a hoot with German troopers feasting off Allied air drops, and the last largely unheard of paratroop drop across the rhine into Germany at by the allies was another disaster. I think the only successful but not even necessary paratroop drop was in D-day.

I’m not sure what you mean by playing without markers.  There are markers on the board – or do you mean using that marker chart to track IPCs?

[EDIT: I just realised you mean the chips under the units that count as one or five of that unit, depending on colour.  I prefer to play without them if possible, it adds to the aesthetic value and it makes it easier (IMO) to remove individual units that die during battles]

In regard to paratroopers, I am sure pretty much everyone here wouldn’t like using our rule since it makes the game unrealistic, but we use it because we have found it to be more fun.  It opens up so many more strategies, and you always have to be alert as to what the enemy can threaten you with.  That’s why there are so many men on the board – leaving a territory empty is asking for an enemy paratrooper to take it without a fight.

You are right that you could add specific rules for paratroopers to make it more realistic (like the rules you’ve suggested in your post) but we like the simplicity of our rule whereby a paratrooper can be dropped anywhere that the bomber can make it without needing to worry about the question of supply.

In any case, it is extremely rare that a paratrooper will be dropped into a territory that is cut off from the front line.  Generally they are used to bolster numbers in an attack on the enemy’s front line, or to attack the territory just behind the front line while the main army attacks the front line itself, creating a salient into the enemy’s territory.

The paratroop drop on Corregidor in 1945 was quite successful.  You had quite a few paratroop drops in New Guinea where a regiment-size drop was used to sieze the area for an airfield.  There were a couple of very successful paratroop drops in Burma as well.  The paratroop drop on Sicily might be arguable, but it did severely hamper the efforts of the Germans and Italians to counterattack the landings.

I suspect that the reason for no paratroops in the game is a matter of scale.  With each infantry piece representing several divisions as a minimum, a regiment or division of paratroops simply is too small to represent.  Those can be put in when you have a much more tactical game like D-Day or potentially Guadalcanal.

As for the map, that looks too much like a set up board to be real.

I don’t know enough about the pacific theatre to know about those paratroop drops, but sounds interesting I’ll have to read into it. I also forgot all about the sicily air drops, and yes I think your right they were successful just not overly brilliant if I recall. Prolly the only time Monty did something right…

Paratroop drops, yes a matter of scale, but having said that they did air drop whole divisions. I think you would have to buy a special plane, and special men, and you could only buy one plane and two paratroop infantry, and if you lost any of them that was it… Also make them really expensive.

In the 98 hasbro A&A game a normal bomber could move 1 INF unit per turn.  The bomber had to be involved in combat.

In WWII yes they did drop entire divisions.  If you are interested you should read up on Operation Market Garden.  Or if you are lazy like me rent the movie “A Bridge To Far” staring Sean Connery.

Operation Market Garden droped 2 US divisions (82, 101), 1 UK division (Brittish 6th), and the Free Polish Parachute Regt.

I would like to see a glider rule.  They used gliders to move jeep’s and smaller ART units.

LT

Macro level people… remember that.  Axis & Allies utilizes a world map and there are references to some division level forces that were used in a small percentage of the battles during WWII.  That is a micro level.  You can not really mix the two very well, it just doesn’t work out, IMHO.

There are plenty of games that deal with the micro-level of battle if you want that sort of unit.