Cool!
Pros and Cons of Axis and Allies Anniversary Edition
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FYI: I posted this elsewhere, but I thought folks here might be interested in my review. I am a longtime lurker on this site and have found comments by numerous posters to be very useful in the past.
Eight Things I Love about the New Edition
1. The trays for holding your pieces. The Revised edition was terrible in this regard, and the Classic edition’s Styrofoam boxes left something to be desired. The anniversary edition ones are great.
2. The larger board. Although there are some issues here and there (see below), the bigger board is a great thing. The Revised board was too cramped, and the Classic board had the awkward boxes at the top of the board for extra units.
3. Italy! I like the way that Italy has been included. It is by far the weakest power, and to make it anything else would have been to fly too much against my sense of history. Yet, Italy, especially if one plays with National Objectives, has fun and interesting things to do during the game. Heck, Italy even took Stalingrad in my first 50th edition game!
4. China! I love the way that China is incorporated in this game. China’s semi-independence from the U.S. and its great expansion in number of territories makes it much more interesting, essentially adding more challenges and difficulties (and rewards) for Japan without giving the U.S. and equal boost in IPCs, etc.
5. National Objectives: I really like the way that these objectives encourage historical simulation in play. I do think that they have some drawbacks (see below), but I love them in general.
6. Revised Weapons Development Rules: I have never really liked weapons development, as it seemed to increase the role that luck already played in the game. I also thought several of the weapons developments in both the Classic and Revised were too game unbalancing. Although I haven’t played with these new rules yet, they seem on the surface to me to be the best rules yet in this area.
7. Naval Units: The addition of the cruiser is cool, but the best thing is that the naval units are cheaper all the way around, making naval purchases more viable and interesting. I also really like the way that transports have been changed, removing them as “cannon fodder” in naval battles, which always bothered me since it was hyper ahistorical.
8. 1941 or 1942 Start Options. I had rules for a 1939 start for the Classic Board, and I am glad to see two starts built right into the OOB rules this time.
Five Things I Don’t Love in the Revised Edition
1. The non-folding board: I hated the four-fold Revised board. It was already coming apart on me, so having three pieces is better than that, but why couldn’t the board three-fold like the Classic Board? Maybe there is a reason for this, but it eludes me.
2. The Pacific as “Pond”: The Pacific seems very “shrunk” in comparison to the Atlantic which is expanded in size over its geographical dimensions. I am not terribly bothered by this, as both are probably necessary for good gameplay.
3. Offshore Bombardments: I liked offshore bombardments taking out defending units before they could roll a defensive die. I will recommend going back to this in our group.
4. National Objectives and Germany: As a friend pointed out, Germany’s grand strategy options are severely limited in this edition. In earlier editions, especially in Revised, Germany could viably go after USSR, England, or Africa or some combination of these three. In the 50th edition, because of its National Objectives and because of Italy, Germany is really limited to attacking the USSR.
5. Game Length: This may be biggest issue of all for me. I think the best thing about Axis and Allies is that you could play a World War II game heavy with logistics in one evening’s time (or in a tournament). Adding Italy seems to extend the time a bit, though maybe not as much as I think once we get used to the new rules. I think that the 1941 start would take quite a while to complete even under the 13 game victory city conditions.
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Yeah, I agree with all of your “pros” with AA50. My only gripe is that Avalon Hill forgot to send my Chinese artillery, tanks, navy and airforce! :-o
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Here is one of the biggest cons… They put yet another VC in North America. It should have been put in S Africa.
LT
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@LT04:
Here is one of the biggest cons… They put yet another VC in North America. It should have been put in S Africa.
LT
I think so too; I would like there to be more action in Africa.
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@LT04:
Here is one of the biggest cons… They put yet another VC in North America. It should have been put in S Africa.
LT
Definitely the biggest con, I still can’t believe they would do something like that.
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I think they should’ve made Las Vegas a VC you could bet IPCs if you caputed it. And there should be an NO for the US called “Mafia Stomp.”
Here’s how it would work:
For every turn the US holds Las Vegas the Italian player must give 10 IPCs to the US player.
LOL……I heard this one just barely missed the cut during play testing…direct from LH :evil:
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I actually view Italy and China as cons. Italy makes life difficult for Germany by stealing valuable real-estate. China is just a nuisance altogether, it woulda been better as just being left as American.
As for the trays, I’m trying to figure out decent dimensions to stand all the units in an organized way by using jewelry boxes so that you can slide open the drawers of my table and have your pieces there.
I’m even getting chips with control markers printed on them….also looking for someone to use a dental implant carving machine to make me new pieces out of a nice durable material like porcelain or maybe Pine though I like porcelain better and the machines are already calibrated for it. Thing is, can you paint them??? I want hand painted pieces. hehe.
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@Cmdr:
I actually view Italy and China as cons. Italy makes life difficult for Germany by stealing valuable real-estate.
but in real life Italy did make life difficult for Germany during WW2 :wink:
WW2 German joke:
“what are German soldiers three wishes? a Russian coat, American food, and an enemy like the Italians”for game purposes, Italy, on the other hand, breaks the double allied turn (USA-USSR).
and yes, it’s less money for Germany, but Italy and Germany together still have a lot of money. -
I like the Italians in the game. China to me looks like it could play an interesting role in this too. I just wish they would’ve made them a little bit more useful (i.e. China)
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Possibly my resistance to Italy being it’s own nation is previous experience with people trying to make Axis and Allies with an Italian player.
I like to think my resistance is just the fact that there are not enough territories on the map to make Italy viable. Possibly if France was divvied up into 4 territories with Germany owning the north and Italy owning the south “Vichy” area.
Also, why does Italy not start with Italian East Africa? It’s ITALIAN East Africa after all! Outside of Italy itself, you would think this would be the number two spot for Italy to start with! (Just based on the name alone.)
I don’t know. I guess things might be a bit more interesting if: Germany was worth 12 IPC, Italy was worth 8 IPC, an new territory was added to Southern France worth 3 IPC and starts Italian. This would give Italy +5 IPC (and Germany +2 which I think it needs, not to mention the extra building capacity would really help them.)
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@Cmdr:
Possibly my resistance to Italy being it’s own nation is previous experience with people trying to make Axis and Allies with an Italian player.
I like to think my resistance is just the fact that there are not enough territories on the map to make Italy viable. Possibly if France was divvied up into 4 territories with Germany owning the north and Italy owning the south “Vichy” area.
Also, why does Italy not start with Italian East Africa? It’s ITALIAN East Africa after all! Outside of Italy itself, you would think this would be the number two spot for Italy to start with! (Just based on the name alone.)
I don’t know. I guess things might be a bit more interesting if: Germany was worth 12 IPC, Italy was worth 8 IPC, an new territory was added to Southern France worth 3 IPC and starts Italian. This would give Italy +5 IPC (and Germany +2 which I think it needs, not to mention the extra building capacity would really help them.)
All good points. I think this was done with the expectation that there would be a sixth player for Italy there by reducing some of the pressure of the german player.
As far Italian East Africa, that territory, if history serves me, was occupied in the 30’s (maybe 35’) and the UK had already forced Italy out of there before 41’.
If you added Vichy France you would have to add French naval units and compensate for all the French colonies.
LOL…stop putting bad ideas into my head Jenn… now I’m going to have to work on this senario and I’m runnning out of playing pieces. Actually I have six other colors of A&A compatible pieces from the Eagle Games Attack! series,
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I think if you just rolled the Vichy French into Italy (like Italy was rolled into Germany for all previous versions of the Global Scale Axis and Allies games) you could solve some of those problems.
I would make them part of Italy though, not part of Germany. The idea is to give Italy some cash to actually do something other than be Germany’s little brother. (Or in the case of one game, work VERY HARD orchestrating the game so Italy took lands, Germany only liberated and reinforced. But that took 30 rounds.)
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I believe the Italians don’t own that territory because by that point in the war Britian had already re-claimed it.
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