Nice image, thx. And it points out the fallacy of the “square stern” as a differentiator: the Russian navy has two vessels with a square stern.
Not that that is likely to be a problem during play :roll:, but still.
I might just print that out and include keep it in the box. Isn’t that kind of ridiculous, though?
I find the sea vessels very hard to discriminate. While sub vs. aircraft carrier is obvious, a lot of the 1942 sculpts can be hard to tell apart. For instance, which sculpt is Germany’s destroyer, and which is their transport? All 4 vessels appear to have some kind of armament if you look closely, so you can’t use that to distinguish. I don’t know my historical navies well enough to know, either. While you can just pick, if you forget your choice it can be very confusing to recall later in in the game.
I just played and we had a fiasco of a seabattle; to put it bluntly, we all thought Germany had a battleship + cruiser on the board, when they only had a destroyer and a transport. Needless to say, it changed the outcome of D-Day.
You can see that the Germany cruiser is longer than the transport when they are side by side, but if they’re not I don’t think their function is obvious from their form. Now that I look closely, I can see that one vessel in each navy has square stern, and I assume that is the destroyer. Still, the Japanese and German transports look unlike the British and American ones, and neither of the Axis vessels look like the transport profile in the rules.
I’m thinking of adding a dot of paint to help signify which is which for our next time out. Is there another technique that you guys use, or am I just being dense? Since my whole group was confused, though, it seems like something the playtesters should have caught during design.
I just uploaded a scan:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/vvoydozzmzg/AXA1942.pdf
if you want a prettier one you’ll have to wait ;)
Not very pretty–my scanner only allows for 14MB PDFs for some reason. Not searchable. Also, no color. But I included the FAQ as part of the pdf.
Not the best copy, but it’s a punt until we get a better one. HTH.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/vvoydozzmzg/AXA1942.pdf
Also, I’ve attached a picture that describes the units. I would recommend including it in your ruleset.
You’re right, wrong forum. Sorry!
I thought this was the forum for the Spring 1942 rules, but see now that it’s a 1942 variant of the AA50 rules–different beast. I think the original poster was confused as well…
I suspect that this has been answered before, but I cannot find it.
It seems like it is possible to abuse the retreat rules to move units more spaces than they should be able to.
For example, (R1, original placement) Russia attacks Germany held W Russia from both Caucasus and Karelia.
After just one round, all of the attacking units in Caucasus can “retreat” to Karelia–which would be a a two turn move for infantry and artillery from Caucasus to Karelia, if W Russia were instead already held by Russia.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to have thought of that, the wisdom of that particular move being besides the point. Is that considered a legit move, or can you only retreat if eg you have some movement allowance left?
followup on question #2:
It appears that sea vessels can choose to engage the Sub, but it can just submerge and immediately disengage at the defender’s option (unless there’s a destroyer present, natch).
That would mean that the attacker was denied both an opportunity on the sub, but since they attempted to initiate a sea battle they also couldn’t do a bombardment. Right? So if you want a guaranteed chance on a sub, you need to have a destroyer accompany. Or ignore the sub altogether, and suffer their attacks next round-which would be brutal, because a sunk defender couldn’t respond.
If you’d done the Google search you recommended, I think you’d find that new 1942 rules aren’t available anywhere. At least, I wasn’t able to find them.
The most recent version of the rules available on the web appears to be the Revised edition published in 2004. If anyone has a PDF of the rules published summer 2009, I’d appreciate it.
