HBG clearly wants all of my disposable income.  AND THEY SHALL HAVE IT.

I’m with Pacific War.  Really glad HBG came along.  It’s awesome to have that ability to buy up a few pieces here and there to fill out sets, as well as getting scores of new pieces to really take the game to the next level.

As for the expansion sets’ content… while I’d sorta prefer sets with smaller numbers of unique sculpts in higher quantity, the products HBG puts out are so great, I’m going to buy them either way.  Gotta support small businesses!  Plus, my games are steadily looking prettier and prettier with all the supplements HBG’s putting out.  They’re just too good to pass up!  Even if I don’t know what I’m going to do with them yet, I want them!

I ordered from 12-7 Games.  According to the UPS tracking, it went out Friday, and should arrive either today or tomorrow.  Woo!  :-D

Map, please!  :-D

Just tore in to my new FMG Italians.  Figured I’d put my piece count here, too.

8 bomber
3 transport planes
7 tacs
12 fighter
12 arty
6 heavy tank
5 light tank
12 armored car
6 truck
7 commander
11 rifle inf
13 smg inf
13 ss
6 bb
6 cv
12 dd
6 ca
13 transport

Little disappointed with the number of air transports, but these pieces are so freaking cool that I don’t think it’s really an issue.  I’ll probably get a couple extras when I buy some sets of Axis minors from HBG.  Keep up the good work, FMG!  :-D

I haven’t put up many AAR’s (or played too many games of Global yet), but in my experience… France can be a bit forgettable.  I’ve yet to see the French Med fleet survive round 1, so I wouldn’t know what to do with it if it survived.  I usually have the French West African infantry march across the continent to defend wherever the Allies need defending, and once tried bringing the Syrian infantry to help defend Egypt (which helped speed up Italy’s route to Iraq).  The French destroyer around Madagascar I’ve seen either sitting in the Red Sea to slow down the Italians if they capture the Suez Canal, or heading into the Pacific to harass Japan.  It usually isn’t all that interesting, not really doing much but posturing before it gets sunk by the Axis.

Also, I’ve never seen it worthwhile to consolidate the North African infantry.  I prefer to keep them separate so Italy has to fight for all three of the territories (and I’ve seen single French infantry units there take out 2, 3, once even 4 Italian infantry; this usually proves to be a Pyrrhic victory for Italy).

I voted ANZAC because I’ve found them to be FAR more useful in Global than in Pacific 1940.  They can do some pretty neat stuff, particularly if you can keep both of their NO’s open.  In the few games I’ve played, I’ve seen ANZAC tearing apart the Japanese Navy with packs of subs, SBRing a Japanese IC in occupied FIC, and island-hopping with the best of them.  I love how that little power can be such a pain in the @$$.  It feels like the US’s little brother in that theatre, and it certainly makes Big Brother proud.  :-P  Oh, wait…

I’ve gotten in one game.  Didn’t have the time to play it through to completion (only place I had the room to set it up was my bed, and I needed sleep after 7 hours of play  XP).  Called it a draw.

Used the most recent set-up changes for Pacific.  Japan never got close to India.  They skirmished with the Soviet troops north of Manchuria, which really slowed them down, and lightened the push into China.  Once the UK got involved, the Burma Road stayed open, and ANZAC dropped a number of subs which shredded the Japanese navy.

Over in Europe, Germany overwhelmed Paris G1, as well as sinking the vast majority of the RN, the remainder of the RN was sunk G2, and G3, a Sealion just barely captured London (at the cost of a few planes) while simultaneously launching Barbarossa.  Germany went light into the Soviet border territories, drawing out the full force of the Red Army, which was soundly crushed by the next wave of German troops (mechanized infantry are quite useful in that regard).  When I called it quits, Germany had a stack of tanks sitting in Leningrad ready to start pushing towards Moscow, and Italy (which did spectacularly well in Africa) was making a slow push towards Stalingrad along with a smaller German force.

At the end, the US had a sizeable force in Iceland ready to try to liberate London, as well as another force in North Africa pushing towards Egypt, and small fleets dashing around the Pacific.  Germany looked like it was still going strong against the USSR, though the Soviets’ all infantry build after the fall of Leningrad would have probably made Moscow a tough nut to crack, Italy was being forced to turn its attention from the Soviet Union to the US forces that were starting to push into north Africa, and Japan was lying on the ground convulsing, bleeding out of a hole that wasn’t quite big enough to kill it.  Not sure how it would have turned out.

Well, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing the Soviet battleship leaving the Baltic Sea.  Makes it easier to ferry troops to Leningrad when I don’t have to take out that annoying Red Fleet, and I can take it out when I spread out into the Atlantic.  So it COULD potentially be useful to Germany to let the neutral Soviet fleet out of the Baltic.  I’d have to see it in action first before passing judgment, though.  Could be interesting… I may try it, see what happens.

So we’re all (I’m sure) eagerly anticipating the release of E40 so we can combine it with P40 and make our (TOO HUGE FOR ORDINARY TABLES!!!) super-awesome Global game.  Which begs the question: how many of you are going to play Europe 1940 as a stand-alone game (at least some of the time), and how many will only play the combined game?

Heck, I’m still locked in a debate with my friends at college as to whether we want to play E40 separately first, or combine it with P40 and play the global game first.  On the one hand, playing it alone can be useful for getting a feel for what strategies work on this game, as well as figuring out the political rules (which we may end up waiting for an FAQ on, anyway, if P40 taught us anything about the quality control department at WotC).  On the other hand… the combined game is going to be HUGE, and what boy DOESN’T want to play with his shiny new toy right out of the box?

My initial instinct is to play it separately first, just to try out the new political rules, and afterwards… I may still play Europe 1940 separately more often than combined with Pacific 1940, simply due to the fact that I don’t have a table large enough to put it on (nor will I likely have the free time to play it often (and victims friends to play it with.  :-P)).

(I apologize if there’s already a thread about this – I didn’t see one, and can’t search the forum, apparently.  If it’s a duplicate, feel free to delete it!)