Whoops. Tried to quote Black Elk here, but my noob status shines through.

Hello everyone. I’ve browsed this and several other A&A/board game forums for years, but I’ve never posted til now  :-o

I love this series of games. On a rainy summer day about 13 years ago my cousins and I discovered my uncle’s old Classic Edition of Axis and Allies. We had been playing Risk for a few years and were starting to really outgrow it (we were all around 13 years old at the time). This game opened our eyes - we didn’t know that there were better strategy board games than Risk, but this launched us into a while new world.

Since then, we collectively purchased Revised (2004) A&A50, and 1914 and we rotate through playing them. We’d LOVE to get the two pieces of Global '40, but at this point we have all come to realize that it’s probably a bad idea: we live in different states, only seeing each other (for more than a day or two at a time) for about 2 weeks around Christmas time. We generally find time to play at least one full game then, but purchasing Global for the purpose of playing it once a year (or less, if we feel like playing a different version at times) just doesn’t seem worth it.

We have discussed several times the idea of a virtual version of these games for us, but we have mostly resisted the temptation until very recently (playing with a real board/pieces is such an important part of the experience for us!) But we are now testing out the Vassal game engine online and an app called simply “1941” for our phones/tablets.

I HIGHLY recommend the app. It’s not called Axis and Allies, nor is it officially linked to A&A, but the resemblance is obvious and it’s a really fun game. They have two setups (1941 & 1942) with several rule variations for each setup. The mechanics took a little getting used to (strategic bombing and combined bombardment with amphibious assaults were particularly puzzling), but once you figure out how to play, it’s a ton of fun. And super easy! It’s essentially a PBE game: you play your turn and the game sends a notification to the other person to play theirs.

I would love if board games came with a stronger and more direct digital connection. Having to scour the Internet for A&A-based games is a bit off-putting and if the digital version was directly released with the board games, then updates to rules and such would be way easier to disseminate - the game/app would simply inform you that a new update was available for download (and you could implement the changes for your actual board game accordingly).