Axis and Allies Enhanced: Anniversary Edition

**Forward by the Team Leader of the Team that Created AA50:Enhanced:

Attached are the rules for AA50e.   The concept of the AA50:Enhanced rules was to incorporate the idea of Convoy Raids by submarines into the AA50 game.  However, as with any change to a game, other things have to be tweaked to rebalance things, which is how rule sets like AARe are created.

AA50e (or 50th Anniversary Edition, Enhanced) is true to the Anniversary Game and true to the ideals and rules put forth in the Enhanced, Revised Edition of Axis and Allies.

As is always the case in a huge undertaking such as this, not every game tester agreed with ever decision made by the development team, heck, for that matter, the entire development team (5 of us) didn’t agree all the time either!  However, recommendations were made by the game testers (which include gamers from AAMC, DAAK, FOE, Real Life and AA.org) were sent up to the developers and most of those ideas were incorporated.

It was noted that victory cities in Anniversary Edition are completely out molded.  The original idea of the victory city was to provide an alternate route to winning the game and to encourage global game play.  In AARe the addition of more victory cities was to exemplify the need for global game play, according to the developers of AARe.

While we originally wanted to keep Victory Cities in the game, it soon became readily apparent to everyone involved that we either needed 30+ victory cities (which was to be a real headache!) to accomplish the same goal as AARe or we needed to find an alternate method of winning the game.

Not wanting to scrap a single rule from AA50 but only to ENHANCE AA50, we decided to leave the original victory cities and original requirements to win by conquering victory cities alone!  Instead we adapted the National Objectives Rule in AA50; as they were originally written; such that if your team was able to have a certain number of national objectives at the end of any game turn then you could also win the game.  We found that this was highly motivating in keeping players active on a GLOBAL SCALE (the primary objective of AARe) and thus fit completely within the mandate of creation of the AA50e.

After working these out, we turned our attention to national advantages and technologies.  As some of you are well aware, Anniversary scrapped the national advantage charts and doubled down on the technology charts.  After an intensive review of the new Anniversary technologies and the AARe national objectives it was mentioned that they were virtually identical.  Thus it was eventually determined that it would be far wiser to just copy the rules from the national advantages and assign them to their appropriate technology.

For example, America used to have a National Advantage called “Mechanized Infantry.”  Anniversary also has a technology called “Mechanized Infantry” and the two are virtually identical (save for the 1:1 ratio needed on Inf:Arm and the bonus units America used to get.)  Thus we moved the Mechanized Infantry National Advantage for America into the Mechanized Infantry Technology on the Chart.

The only real “rule” that was significantly altered in the original set of AA50 rules, that I can think of at this exact moment in time, is the method used to discover technologies.  Many of the play testers preferred the AA50 rules to the AARe rules, but it was pointed out that the AA50 rules had many flaws if we wanted to retain as much as possible from AARe.

_Flaw 1:  In AARe a player purchases 4 researchers for an attempt at a technology or 6 to automatically get it.  It is technology specific, meaning you get the one you want.  It was referred to as the 4:2 Rule.

Flaw 2:  In AARe there was an ability to “share” technology where if one ally had a technology, the others could get the same one at a reduced cost.

Flaw 3:  In AARe the technologies of lesser power (or use) were cheaper than the technologies of greater (utility) were._

To correct those flaws, the rules for technological discovery were altered to be identical to the ones in AARe.  Meanwhile the concept of retaining a researcher throughout the life of the game (assuming he never made a technological break through) was discarded as it did not fit into the new schema.

Lastly, there was a strong, and I mean STRONG, push for the retention of national advantages (since it made a nation different than another nation) and two new naval units.  Since we (the development team) could not determine a valid set of 36 national advantages (6 for Germany, Russia, Japan, England, Italy and America) on top of the 12 Technologies we limited them to two different national advantages for each nation and added them, and the naval units people wanted, to the optional rule sets for use in private games if players agreed to use them.

Lead Designer
Commander Jennifer Christman**

Summary of Changes:

Some background information:

1)  OUR changes to the AARe default rules are highlighted in red.  Anything that is black is a pre-existing rule, so please don’t yell at us for black text, yell at the team who created AARe.

2)  WE used rules from national advantages to fill in the technological charts (since there are twice as many technologies now.)  This of course meant that many of the national advantages were no longer needed, thus, national advantages were eliminated, the ones retained are now listed in the optional advanced rules for players who want to use them. (Each nation has 2 that they get, no more choices.  China has two, Italy has two as well.)

3)  WE added the two naval units that really, REALLY make the game more fun to play and round out the naval aspect of the game as optional advanced rules as well.  NOTE: You do not need to use the two new naval units listed in the optional rules, but the consensus of the game testers and designers was split with significant numbers on BOTH sides of the issues, and the solution was created to make the two naval units not already included in AA50 as optional rules.

4)  The TEAM’S over all guiding principle was to make as few changes as possible while retaining all the rules from AA50 and as many of the rules as possible from AARe.  Sometimes this meant eliminating things from AARe, sometimes it meant cannibalizing a rule from one section and placing it in another (ie Mechanized Infantry rules from AA50 and Mechanized Infantry rules from AARe - USA National Advantage.)

5)  If anyone finds an exploit in the rules and thinks it is game breaking, please notify us here and we’ll run it past the developers and testers to see if the rules need to be tweaked or if the rules can be used to counter the exploit as written.

Added PDF version of the rules for MAC users and others who do not have the ability to open Word Files.  I’m told Macs have issues with MS Word 2007, not sure why.
AA50e.doc
AA50e.pdf

Thanks, 5.a is now corrected to read:

a. Once during the game, at the start of England’s turn, you may declare a D-Day Invasion, a combined attack of British and American forces which occurs on the American turn.  D-Day may only target France and/or Northwest Europe, and all attacking land and sea units MUST amphibiously assault from Sea Zone 7 (with the rare exception of land units already in Germany and/or Italy which may attack France and/or Northwest Europe as per regular rules.)  Air units may come in from any territory provided they have enough movement points.

Some.  The stuff they did not like was shifted down into advanced, optional rules.

Just about the entire document is from the original AARe text (as you can see from the text being black vs what I had to add or edit which I made red).

Really, the only changes were the addition of cruisers, the changing of techs to AA50 techs, the addition of territories and sea zones on the new map and the allowing of NOs to grant a victory (additional VCs were added in AARe to encourage global warfare, but instead of adding yet MORE victory cities to make up for the lack of need, the decision was made to allow NOs or VCs (or both obviously) to grant a victory since the NOs pretty much require full global warfare to achieve.)

The latest incarnation has not been commented on by axis or cousin.  Dunno, maybe they didn’t like it when I challenged some of their decisions and now they are boycotting the adapting of the rule set, maybe they’ve just been too busy or maybe they just don’t want to create a AA50:Enhanced game?

@axis_roll:

For the record, this is NOT an ENDORSED version of AA50e.

Jennifer, please stop posting your assemblage of rules as The Enhanced Rules for AA50..  Your rules were not created via a consortium of A&A players to fix agreed upon game playout issues nor have they been play tested.  You have even incorporated rules from other game editions for no reason!

Make up your own name for your Rules Set, do NOT used AA50e.

How about AA50HP  (HodgePodge)?

Wow, are you ever wrong on all accounts!

These rules HAVE been play tested on multiple different sites by many players, they work, they do not “incorporate rules from other game editions for no reason” they only incorporate rules from AARe and AA50

And they are sanctioned

Just because YOU CHOSE not to consult on the drafting of the rules does not invalidate them.  You are no one special, Axis.  You’re a rank and file player like the rest of us.

The attached PDF are THE OFFICIAL AA50:ENHANCED RULES, end of story.  If you would like to create a different set of rules you may feel free, but my set is the first released and published and game tested and approved by the player base.  Many people had a hand in helping to create them which, indirectly, includes the original designers of AARe since much of the rules are copy/pasted straight FROM AARe (which was done purposely to make the minimal amount of changes to the rules.)

If you know AARe and you like it, AA50e is virtually the same but with the addition of Cruisers, the changes to naval units as listed in AA50 and national advantages being replaced by technology (since they over lapped.)

Axis has no valid authority to lay claim to the name AA50e and I suspect, has no support for his claim to ownership of the name AA50e.

Also, if anyone finds a valid exploit in the AA50e that the myriad of game testers failed to find, please point it out and a discussion will be held by the game testers and further game play will attempt to see if it “breaks” the game or if there are rules already in place to allow strategies to counter the exploit.  So far we, the game developers who adapted the AARe rules to fit in the AA50 rules and map, feel the current rule set is as strong or stronger than the AARe rules were/are.

AA50e.pdf
AA50e.doc

You see, Axis has a bone to pick with me.

1)  He feels slighted because his only critique of the game was that there were too many “new” rules.  There are no “new” rules in Anniversary Enhanced, there is only a blending of AARe rules to work within the rules of Anniversary.  Had he given us a specific example of rules HE had a problem with, then HIS issues would have been taken under advisement and the game may or may not be even better than it is now. (We will never know, he stubbornly refused to work with anyone but chose to sit on the side lines yelling and screaming unhelpful profanities until he was ignored by the entire development team.)

2)  Cousin Joe has been informed, he was emailed with copies of every set of rules for his approval.  We only received one response from him early on in the development phase where he expressed interest that the rules were being adapted to run in Anniversary Edition.  He seems to have gone to great length to keep himself out of the development process, one might suspect because he didn’t like dealing with people who acted exactly as Axis_Roll has been where everything turns into a slanderous attack and flames in an effort to kill something good.

3)  Seeings as AARe rules have been put into Anniversary Rules with very minor changes, and I mean very VERY minor changes, this is really AARe Version 2.0 more than Anniversary:Enhanced.  The team decided to go with Anniversary:Enhanced because Anniversary, not Revised, is the foundation of the game.  Had Axis_Roll but even downloaded and read the rules even once, he would see his entire argument is bunk since there is virtually no significant changes between the two rule sets.

4)  As team leader or the rule set, and the first group to publish the rules, we get first dibs on names out there anyway.  Just because you publish a book called “The Life Story of Anne Frank” does not mean someone else cannot publish a similar story called “The Biography of Anne Frank”.  They’re different titles, different authors, working on the same subject.

5)  As I mentioned in the forward (first post) dozens upon dozens of players have worked hard over the past couple of months trying to get AARe rules to work on the Anniversary Board with the Anniversary Rules.  Obviously with most of the NAs being turned into Technologies and new territories placed on the map, there had to be some adjustment of the rules.  Things like changing the name of Western Europe to France in the section about D-Day Invasion.  It’s an uber miniature change, semantics to be exact, France is still Western Europe, they just named it France this time.  That change is indicative of the changes made from AARe to AA50e.

6)  If Axis_Roll would like to put together his own rule set (and I highly doubt he has the patience, stamina, fortitude or creativity to do so, which is not a flame, just a statement that I don’t think he has the personality to do it, even if he is a “good guy”) he may call his rule set AA50:HP or whatever he wants.  Obviously, I’d take umbrage as well as the entire development staff and maybe even Cousin Joe, if he attempted to steal the name or any of the currently published rules for AA50:Enhanced since it is now a working, functioning and published rule set. (Copies have been sent to the US Copywrite Office dated Jan 18, 2009)

7)  Now, if Imperial Leader would be so kind, it would be great if axis_roll’s comments were deleted from the thread.  It is painfully obvious that he is attempting to stir up discontent in an effort to kill the hard work of dozens upon dozens of individuals for his own personal gain by slinging mud.  Right now there are 3 major clubs that are looking to this board for their copies of AA50:Enhanced and the users who do not know better, might think axis_roll has some influence or say over the matters instead of him just being some discontented user with a bone to pick with me personally.

@mpc220:

@axis_roll:

I just think it’s lame to copy his rules from a different game and add them to the new game and label them under someone elses previously established name.

I agree completely.  The three guys you mentioned cared for and nurtured the AARe ruleset for YEARS, and now it’s basically been hijacked out from under them.

They were not hijacked.  Cousin_Joe and everyone else was made fully aware of what was being done when the official word came that they had no interest in creating the Anniversary Enhanced Rules themselves.  They were asked, begged and pleaded with to assist and they chose not too.  They relinquished control provided we did not make any drastic changes.

As I mentioned, the only real changes to the game from AARe to AA50e including little things like Western Europe’s name being changed to France, obviously the countries of Italy and China were added since they now exist whereas before they did not, etc.

If you were to so much as download and read the rules, you’d never have made this post.  Doing a line by line comparison would show you that almost everything from AARe is the same in AA50e.

The name was not chosen to confuse anyone.  This is the valid heir to the title, no other heir exists.