Posts made by EBard5

A few months ago I read a book about the US naval activity in the Atlantic prior to Dec 7, and my takeaway was that Roosevelt felt compelled to fight against Germany very early on in WWII, and from 1939-1941 he was pushing every boundary he could in the Atlantic theater to get closer to that goal, without directly coming out and declaring war. He understood the political realities and that the country wasn’t yet in favor of war, so he essentially fought a secret war in the western and middle Atlantic, that only the navy and administration knew about in 1940-1941. Lend-lease and helping the British were part of this push. As was the US occupation of Iceland, which had to be done by one of our two Marines Corps divisions, because the law at the time prohibited overseas deployment of the Army in peacetime (or something like that); both this and lend-lease give an idea of the sort of playing with the rules that Roosevelt was doing.

The book was “Mr. Roosevelt’s Navy – The Private War of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, 1939-1942” by Patrick Abbazia. Written in 1975 but republished in 2016 by Naval Institute Press and available on Amazon. I didn’t notice any factual errors, despite the book being so old. Very interesting insight into the orders given to the US Atlantic Fleet, our “neutrality” patrol, and Roosevelt’s strategic intentions. I highly recommend the book if this topic is of interest to you.

EBard

I’d be interested in seeing what rules you’ve come up with. I too feel air power is not well represented in the game and have been working on a bunch of new approaches to try to fix it. All untested at this point but I’m pretty excited about some of the ideas I’ve come up with.

I was writing up a long post with details and then hit the wrong button and lost it, but I will try again later to write it up and share.

I’m currently painting my set, once done I plan to take photos of all the pieces and then create some little booklets (maybe index card sized?) for players to reference. Each page of the booklet will include small pictures of each nation’s copy of the unit plus its stats. I’m hoping to theme the booklets to look like those Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) recognition manuals.

This is the final set for the time being. Depending on how much demand there is for these pieces, I’m open to making one or two more sets, maybe in the late Fall or next year sometime. Right now I want to take a break for a bit and then work on some other projects (I have a long list of requested ships that I want to work on next).

If I do make more sets, one would probably be a “Capitals of Europe” to fill in some of the missing cities like Madrid, Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, and Prague. Then the second set might contain non-european capitals that are in high demand. Definitely let me know if you have suggestions for cities or buildings that can be used and I’ll write them all down and consider them.

Leatherneckinlv, you have the large set.

Also for future reference, here is the original thread (link) where we discussed which pieces should be in this set.

And another picture better showing the sizes…

Hi all,

The rest of my victory cities are now available for purchase on Shapeways. Here is the list of pieces in each set:

Set 2A: Europe
Central Railway Station (Helsinki, Finland)
St. Mark’s Church (Belgrade, Yugoslavia)
Saint Sophia Cathedral (Kiev, Russia)
The Marble Arch (Libya)

Set 2B: Asia
Temple of Heaven (Peking, China)
The Raffles Hotel (Singapore)
Trans-Siberian Rail Station (Vladivostok, Russia)
Railway Station (Novosibirsk, Russia)

Set 2C: Africa
Basilica of Algiers (Algeria)
Cape Town City Hall (South Africa)
Stockholm City Hall (Sweden)
Hagia Sofia (Istanbul, Turkey)

Set 2D: Americas
Christ the Redeemer statue (Rio de Janeiro)
Empire State Building (New York City)
Kavanagh Building (Buenos Aires)
Navy Pier (Chicago)

Renders of the larger set are attached to this post, next to pieces from my first set that came out last fall - to give an idea of the size of the pieces.

They are available in both the smaller or larger sizes to match my earlier sets, and can be found here: Link to Shapeways Store

I have not test printed any of the pieces, but they all pass automated Shapeways checks and should be fine. Please contact me here or on Shapeways if you encounter any problems with the pieces.

Enjoy!
EBard

@Trenacker:

I look forward to buying some cruisers and battleships from you in the next month or so. What is the appropriate scale to match up with OOB pieces?

On the left-side of my shop homepage there is a list of categories. Anything in the “Axis & Allies” categories is sized to exactly match the OOB pieces. Avoid the 1/1800, 1/2400, and 1/4800 scales. Also all of my models should have their dimensions listed in their descriptions, so you can verify the size if you’re interested.

Hi all,

I’ve got some new planes available on my Shapeways store: P-51 Mustang, Soviet MiG-15, and the German Horten Ho 229 flying wing. Also a nuclear plant that can be used as a major factory or research center.

The MiG makes a great jet fighter and flavor piece for the Soviets, albeit a few years ahead of its time. The Horten looks very cool, but because it lacks a fuselage and tail it can hard to pick up and hold; I’d recommend putting it on a flight stand. The P-51 is intentionally sized up, because I plan to use it as an advanced long-range fighter with special rules and wanted it to stand out from the other fighters, and look a bit more imposing on the board.

Also, I haven’t forgotten about the additional victory cities, they are coming. Most are already done and I’m really hoping to get the last few done this month.

EBard

Thanks for sharing the video! That’s great to be able to see the two sets side by side…

… But something doesn’t add up with the sizes of the buildings. Manilla, San Fran, and Calcutta temple are NOT the same between the two sets. They are 5-7 mm different. I just went back and double checked all of my measurements and verified that I uploaded the correct sizes to the larger and smaller sets and everything looks correct. I wonder if Shapeways made a mistake and sent you two copies of the large pieces for those three sculpts? They were printing a bunch of copies of the sets at the same time, maybe a large and a small set got mixed up during the printing process and their staff put the wrong pieces into your’s and someone else’s order… I’m just speculating but that’s the only thing that I can think of to explain why your pieces don’t seem to be the right size.

Manilla should be 21mm and 26mm lengthwise. San Fran should be 29mm and 37mm long. Calcutta should be 14mm and 18mm wide. Queen’s building should be 12mm and 15mm wide across the middle.

I’ll also clarify again: Cairo, Leningrad, and Ottawa are identical between the two sets. And Aloha Tower happens to be nearly identical (1mm difference after my last-minute tweaks… didn’t realize it ended up so close).

I am planning to continue on and make additional cities. I’m hoping to get one or two sets done over the next 8 weeks during my time off around the holidays. As soon as I get a set done, it will be released. Here’s my current list of cities and buildings and a very tentative breakdown into sets (#1 and #3 may trade some pieces).

Set 1:
Helsinki - Central Railway Station
Belgrade - St. Mark’s Church
Kiev - Saint Sophia Cathedral
Libya - Marble Arch

Set 2:
Peking - Temple of Heaven
Singapore - Raffles Hotel
Vladivostok - Trans-Siberian Rail Station
Novosibirsk - Railway Station

Set 3:
Istanbul - Hagia Sofia
Algiers - Basilica of Algiers
Cape Town  - City Hall
Stockholm - City Hall

Set 4:
Rio de Janeiro - Christ the Redeemer statue
Buenos Aires - Kavanagh building or Casa Rosada?
New York City - Empire State Building
Chicago - The Stevens Hotel or Navy Pier? Navy Pier?

At the moment I don’t have any plans to make any additional pieces beyond these. But if you have suggestions for cities or buildings, please do send them to me and I’ll write them down. I do like the way these pieces look on the board, and it’s been fun to see how others are using them to spice up their games; so if there is a compelling set 5 or set 6 to make, I am definitely open to making them. A “capitals of Europe” set with Madrid, Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, and Prague seems like a decent possibility eventually.

Thanks for making the video, that was great! I’ll try to answer a few of your questions that came up in the video below:

Q: Why are there two pieces for Paris?
A: When I made the first set of capital pieces there were people who wanted the Eiffel Tower and others who wanted the Arch de Triumph. Since the Eiffel Tower is a civilian landmark while the Arch de Triumph has a military background (commemorating the French who fought and died in the revolution and Napoleonic wars) I thought both landmarks had a strong case to be included. The real reason there are two is that the Eiffel Tower was easy to make, so I added it in as an extra.
Bonus answer: The Arch de Triumph can also be used to represent the Arcul de Triumf in Bucharest if you play with that victory city.

Q: Why are there two pieces for Hong Kong?
A: The Queen’s Building represents British rule of Hong Kong while the Wong Tai Sin temple represents a native Chinese landmark. I also tried to keep the Queen’s building smaller, for people who were tight on board space, while the temple is larger for the crowd that prefers bigger pieces. Finally, I figured that the Wong Tai Sin temple could easily be used as a victory city for any other Chinese city in the event that was desirable.

I also want to clarify for anyone late to the thread that the sculpts for Leningrad, Cairo, and Ottawa were scaled down in the “Large” set of victory cities from what you saw in the video. The Honolulu Aloha Tower sculpt was scaled up for the “Small” set of victory cities so that it is closer in size to the one in the video (video was of the “Large” set).

The difference in size between the “Small” and “Large” sets is about 30-40% – put differently, it’s about 5mm different for any given piece. So if you are worried about board space, look at the smaller set; whereas if you are most interested in visible detail and pieces that stand out on the board, you may like the larger set.

Ok, the sets are all available for purchase on my Shapeways shop. Here is the link to the page listing them all. Please let me know if anything is confusing or if you encounter any problems… otherwise, enjoy!

https://www.shapeways.com/shops/ebardmodels?section=Axis+%26+Allies+Capitals&s=0

Here are some pictures of the pyramid painted, I really think at the smaller size it looks fine. This is on the Global War 36 oversized board.

So I’m going to use the smaller pyramid in both sets, same as Leningrad and Ottawa. And when I say “smaller” I do want to be clear that these three pieces are exactly the same size as the larger set’s Stalingrad factory. So if anything they were probably oversized to begin with.

I’ll work on getting the sets ready now and they should be available for purchase later tonight or tomorrow at latest.

And more pictures… First is of the smaller pyramid, which I actually don’t think looks too bad. Second picture is of the original capitals that I redid.

I’m currently painting the pyramid to see if that changes how it looks. I’m leaning towards using the smaller pyramid in both sets; that was the size I designed the model for and I think it looks fine in-person. The other option I’m considering is creating a version with flat sides (no steps), maybe with a different sharper angle to the top, and offering it in White Strong & Flexible to achieve the not-smooth look from a distance.

More pictures…

Pictures of the smaller set. Here are all the pieces together. (painted pieces are the original set of capital cities)

I just got my set in the mail today too. Based on a two-second glance at the pieces, they all look pretty good; nothing broken or otherwise wrong with the printing process. Honolulu tower was a bit small, so I will probably scale that up for the smaller set. I’ll try to post pictures tonight.

For the bigger set, my plan is to swap out the Leningrad, Cairo, and Ottawa sculpts with the ones from the smaller set. That happens to be an easy fix to get all the sculpts the same size on the bigger set.

As for the pyramid, I need to look closer at the smaller version tonight and see how I feel about it. I think I designed it in the smaller scale and then scaled it up for the larger version, so it’s possible this version may look better. I also have a few ideas of how I might be able to make it better, so I’ll experiment tonight and see what I can come up with.

My first attempt at making the Cairo sculpt actually included the three pyramids on it; but I really didn’t like it because each pyramid was tiny yet the sculpt as a whole was quite large (bigger than the current pyramid). My second attempt was the single pyramid that we received.

Bob77, yes those pictures are of the larger set.

It was the Cairo Pyramid, Leningrad Winter Palace, and Ottawa Parliament Building.