New Guinea an Island?

Razor,

Nice try  :-D  I was thinking it was probably something they discovered in playtesting.  But I just can’t think of a reason to differentiate between islands and continents for this purpose.  I know, for instance, that the Italians had a pretty good navy.  Their surface ships were mostly well-designed and fast.  They did not, however, equip them with sufficient anti-aircraft capability.  They didn’t have any aircraft carriers of their own, which forced them to hug the coastlines whenever possible in order to stay within range of land-based air.  With the current rules, they could be protected by an airbase in, say, Sicily.  But if they were in the Adriatic they’d have no defensive air cover, even if they had airbases in both Yugoslavia and Italy.

Page 16 of the manual: “An island is a territory located entirely inside one sea zone”

Since New Guinea’s territories are located within 2 sea zones, it is not an island for game proposes and planes can’t be scrambled from airbases on them.

You can place airbases and naval bases anywhere. If any of New Guinea’s territories had an IPC value of 2 or more you could also build an IC there since it’s isn’t an island for game proposes.

New Zealand is considered an islands (pg. 3 of the Official FAQ).

@Texas:

I am certainly not suggesting to buy another game JUST for the chips.  But if someone happens to have both, the chips are interchangeable.  In some long A&A games, more chips might be handy.  You could also use the Warlords black chips as 10s or to mean something else.

Multicolored mini poker chips rock. I use the crap out of them in my own game designs. In Pacific I use orange and yellow chips to indicate damage on installations. I match colors with counters in A&A minis land and naval to use as backings for the micron thin counters, or just by color in very large battles when I run out of counters.

@Texas:

Of course, it might be more trouble than it is worth to sort them or whatever.  I know some gamers combine game parts from different games into a big “pool” of game equipment.  I usually keep games and their parts separated, so it will take a bit of extra effort to dig out two games to play just one game but wanting extra chips.

Back in the day a friend of mine had a bad habit of “pooling” game equipment. He had a huge collection (thousands) of the airfix/revell 1/72 world war 2 soldiers all mixed together in a freaking tackle box. Most unpainted. It took hours to sort through them when we wanted to table top battle or “enhance” the original A&A. Not a fan of pooling.

@Texas:

Anyway, it was just an FYI.

Thank you for adding another board game to my want list…

There are only 2 islands that I feel are worth this treatment, Carolines and Pearl.  But, the key is to put a decent amount of men on them, 4-6, and the land planes with the airbase.  This makes it a nightmare to assault.

Sure, my opponents did in our first game: I was the Japan.

I attacked the US navy at Hawaii with my huge Imperial Navy: obviously I destroyed all while they don’t scrambled any fighter nor tactical bomber. At his turn, the US player counter-attacked my ships, destroying all them… We closed the game and immediately started a second one: there’s no fun in playing Pacific without ships! :D

@Uncle_Joe:

on a related note, I certanly hope the UK is one territory in Europe 1940. So they can scramble to protect it just as japan does

That would mean that Britain could only touch one sea zone (unless they want to make an exception rule) and would almost completely rule out any possibility of a German naval attack or Sea Lion attack.

It would probably make it too easy to build up and invasion force to clobber Germany since the US can just stack up planes in England and they can defend the entire Brit fleet as well.

Not sure I’d like that…

I would have to agree.

Sean

no its the same.  sea battle first.

@trackmagic:

I just got my game today and I was actually impressed with the quality of the “cardboard” pieces. They are laminated with some kind of a matte-textured rubber. I think they did a good job on this!

Well it’s a good thing you like them, because I think it is the new trend with WOTC. Being cheap that is. They didn’t even hire a proofreader.