Now that I have people to play with, I caved and opened my shrink wrapped A&A game box. It was exactly like Christmas, except a Christmas only a kid can have. The excitement was palpable.
Axis & Allies: Anniversary and I are finally together! :-D
(Cut to Splandau Bullet’s True)
So to commemorate this timeless moment, here are my first impressions. Consider yourselves privileged.
PRO: The box is large. Physically it’s imposing. It screams “Play Me” with testosterone fueled grunts. The ladies even made passes at it.
CON: Money. There needs to be more money. That’s how MJ’s and I roll. Based on simple wear and tear, money is the first thing to go.
CON: Money. What is this single-sided crap? I’m sorry Wizards, but your expensive printers couldn’t turn sheets over? Even my prints double sided.
CON: Money. Is it just me or is the artwork for the IPCs too visually distracting? Like the artists were trying too hard? Original artwork for each denomination would have been nice. The original did this (the $10 eagle, $5 hammer, $1 Valkyrie), why couldn’t you?
PRO: The compartments. Oh baby. Genius idea. Why did it take until 2008 for the board game industry to realize this?
CON: Only three partitions per compartment? The original styrofoam trays had plenty of dividers. Why couldn’t these?
PRO: The plastic unit pieces. Unique molds per Nation. I could get use to this. Plus none of my units were seriously defective. 8-)
CON: The plastic unit pieces. Destroyers, Cruisers, and Battleships are way too similar. I’m not just me either. EVERYONE complained about this. The unique molds only made things worse. There should of been reference charts for this in the rule book.
CON: The plastic unite pieces. Some of the molds are strictly inferior to the originals. Battleships and transports had more detail and were more recognizable in the original. The German transport is a complete joke. It looks like a large canoe.
PRO: Anything cardboard (control markers, the battle board, etc.). This is quality sh*t. It’s thicker than the originals and a BIG improvement from revised (which I heard was razor thin).
PRO: The Rulebook. Larry Harris did a superb job on this one. Easy to read and kudos to the section in the back summarizing each unit. Plus the pages are colored!
PRO: Tech. A big improvement over the original.
CON: The plastic chits. Gray? Did too many people complain about white? (Same goes for the gray factories and AA guns). Plus, they’re of inferior quality to the originals.
PRO: The board. It’s big. Yes, size matters.
CON: You have to assemble the board? The original was a tri-fold, why couldn’t this one be?
PRO: The board. It’s thick enough. Seriously, what’s with all these complaints about warpage? I mean, I do live in California, where the weather is perfect. Is the rest of the world trapped in a humid cesspool or something?
CON: Gameplay. Just as I predicted, A&A:50 is not a “beginners” game. Just explaining the different units to new players was exhausting. And we hadn’t set up the board yet. If A&A:50 is you’re first purchase from the line of A&A game, I pray for you.
PRO: The Eastern front. Great idea splitting up the territories from Berlin to Moscow, making for a more fluid front. In my game the Germans were able to drive Mongoloid Russians back to the Urals. This never happened in the original.
Anyways that’s it for now. I hope you had your fill clones!
@TG:
The German transport is a complete joke. It looks like a large canoe.
hahaha, so true! glad to see someone else echoes my first thought on seeing it
@TG:
PRO: The Eastern front. Great idea splitting up the territories from Berlin to Moscow, making for a more fluid front. In my game the Germans were able to drive Mongoloid Russians back to the Urals. This never happened in the original.
It is really good that Germany alone can beat USSR in 1941, as it almost happened in real war
I would also like to see an AA game where the Red Army can take Berlin almost alone as they did in 1945
hahaha, so true! glad to see someone else echoes my first thought on seeing it
Exactly! Did the German transports actually look like this? It’s like some twisted joke. I’m ready to reuse my old German transports from A&A original. All I need to do is spray paint them black.
that’s a picture of the german supply ship ‘altmark’. so yes, the supply ships from the original would be a better representation :wink:
Yeah, the German transports didn’t even attempt to model cranes on their ships. How are they suppose to offload cargo?
+Karma for a great pic :-D
If I may say one positive about having a three piece board and that is if you ever need to move the game (for whatever reason) it is a lot easier move the board one piece at a time rather than trying to juggle a fully connected three piece board.
I do wish there was some way to better connect them during game play.
Great Review TG!
It’s awesome to know someone got as excited about the unboxing ritual. I third the motion that the german transports are lame, but hey, kudos for trying to make unique units (sans the italian navy and air force).
All i all, I don’t think i can ever really get excited about a game of Classic now that theres so much more to be had in AA50.
Lastly, great Spandau reference.
If I may say one positive about having a three piece board and that is if you ever need to move the game (for whatever reason) it is a lot easier move the board one piece at a time rather than trying to juggle a fully connected three piece board.
I do wish there was some way to better connect them during game play.
Some type of interlocking mechanism would’ve worked wonders for the board. They could of even cut the board like three big jigsaw puzzle pieces – that, wouldn’t have been difficult at all to do.
TG, Jumping back to con about the unit compartments.
With my brother-in-law in Iraq my 8 year old niece has been doing a little acting out. I broke out my old copy of Risk for her to try out.
I really never gave risk much credit after I moved onto A&A but those plastic boxes that came for each nation were genius. I mean they wouldn’t do for A&A to small yada, yada, yada but to think thet a durable, rigid-plastic container came with my “ye olde” copy of Risk I think goes to show that WOTC could have done a little better with the unit storage.
LT
We also have difficulty identifying naval unit. they should have used some sort of subtle convention to easily identify them, such as a flat stern for CAs, rounded for DDs, and whatever.
Every game someone weeps because they either misidentified a naval unit for a transport or accidentally used one ship for another during purchases, causing grief later. We would have been happy with the same models for each nations ships.
seems like japanese, us and uk cruisers look very similar to destroyer, where-as all the other nations cruisers are as big as a battleship (just a little shorter with the squared off stern). if you look closely then you can tell the difference, but when just glancing at them it’s easy to make the mistakes :|
The squared off stern is the best way to tell Destroyers and Cruisers apart – though not always.
I wish they had just made the battleships BIGGER to avoid any confusion.
^^ agreed. the BB should be the biggest ship by far
^^ agreed. the BB should be the biggest ship by far
Did you have all your BB? I was shorted one! Atleast it was the Soviets…i dont see them building them but still…
yeah, all my pieces were there thankfully :-D
after some thoughts, i kind of wished they had of done AA50 like a monopoly limited edition, as in metal pieces, wooden storage boxes, and so forth. if only there was an AA50 deluxe-ultra-mega-edition like that haha
