Posts made by Paper_IPC

This game had a dual purpose - a starter experience for noobs and kick ass pieces for A&A nerds.

Italy wasnt going to be a stand alone nation in the early concept stages - hence the cover not having any Italian represtation.

Bonus - Bull Halsey appears twice - but most of you prolly observed this.

Initially, there was going to be Dive Bombers and Torpedo Bombers as seperate units! Tactical Bombers are the result of a desire for simplicity.

We all have cool stories, some of us had relatives who actually served during World War II. Some of us even had those relatives see us play the game, perhaps even bought it for us. Mr Harris writes in every A&A game about how his Father, who served in The War, inspired him to create this historic game that has brought so much joy, competition & arguments to each of our play groups.

Smearing of all things the zombie fad on our beloved game is a weak brand management call. Que the “its acquisition” and “well, see if you have a brand castle you must make a boat extension…” or “the only way to make it grow is to bring in new people” apologists.

This is nonsense. Its hasbrah-wizardz, owners of MtG and they can get eyeballs on a friggin Emoji Axis & Allies variant if they wanted to. Hell, being the Lords of Dungeons & Dragons you’d think they could parouse the MM and do better than this, I mean is Rick even still in walkin dead? How many zombie games are there? And the great Axis & Allies has to perform this weird dance?! Shameful.

The Anniversary Edition, A&A 1942, Pacific 1940, Europe 1940, A&A 1941, A&A 1942 2nd Ed and the 1940 2nd Eds had little to zero marketing & advertising. The outdated website had only scant information in the form of a sell sheet or something akin to that. There was never in store posters or flyers or anything… There was never an official Axis & Allies presence at GenCon let alone the other shows (no slight on the wonderful community & tournament organizers you know who you are BRAVO to all of you)…

Still the Brand was kind of reborn with Anniversary Edition as wotcs first attempt was also a fail - Axis & Allies Revised. To this day the ugliest sku they made amirite? Good Christ Anniversary was a revelation! Still, Revised was the first new updated version of Axis & Allies 1984 (Pacific & Europe being theater games - both awesome, especially Europe) and they undoubtably moved a shit ton of them. Goddamn I hope the digital effort I see isnt using that board look - its fucking awful whats up with the x-ray corn flakes floating around the oceans?

Anyways if that thing sold and if this non-Larry-Harris-kitch-trend-acquisition-device sells reasonably, which it prolly does cuz wotc reasons, then there could have been some other variant created by Harris. How about A&A 1939? Start the godamn game when the Hun rolled into Polska. Maybe go further back to like 1936 and have the Nations be able to begin things in different places than they did. Perhaps A&A 1946 - Stalins USSR is out of control and the Allies must stop them. Or if there must be a row boat brand extension keep it in the moat and do say a “Fortress Allies” where only the US stands and is being invaded - yeah like that Amerika game but better. Anyways they ripped off A&A & Fortress so why not. :)

I understand if some people love the variant, and certainly understand the designers just trying to offer something new and interesting (although cards in A&A makes me shudder), but they could have done way better and I still can’t accept hasbrah-wizardz turning my Grampas into 2 hit dice D&D undead. Especially today.

I think they should have gone for a bigger swing.  I mean they control D&D where is the D&D A&A?  Even if D&D players dont bite en mass, a well done fantasy area movement game is in order.  With the world of D&D at thier disposal they could release a whole string of games!  How about this:

A&A Europe 1940 chasis (box, board, internal boxes)
-new dice debut D4, D8, D10, D12, D20 of course
-new sculpts for 6 “nations”
-7 base unit types w special abilities etc
-6 nation specific special units w sa etc

Maybe leverage the wonderful sculpts Wizkids has been doing  -  print them in smaller scale, use Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms…
You could launch army boxes in waves or maybe just do so with another game depicting a different area I dunno.  Make it on the Global board, that would be great.
And dont go all “Axis & Allies is too complicated and loong…”  goddamn WotC been sayin that shit for years as they over see game slike D&D and MAGIC LOL…
Let Larry Harris go nuts with the whole D&D universe at his fingertips, it will sell out.

How many zombie themed games are out there anyways?  Arent they a bit late to the party I mean Walking Dead is in like Seaosn 8!

Here is another option for War Roomery - when playing on this old girl there will be no #Rage_Spins or #Chit_Sprays as she might not be able to take the rage fueled RPMs.
Drawers have plenty of space for all the chits, D12s and pencils.  Think there are 6 drawers, wait how many players is War Room anyhoo?

Ya ya - when you War Room Rage Quit its a spin of some nature, we gotta coin a term:

Rage Spin
War Room Rage Spin
Rage Quit Spin
War Room Quit Spin

Re the Lazy Susan issue, I may have discovered the answer to all our War Room dreams, its an antique leather top rotating/lazy susan drum table!

https://bid.auctionbymayo.com/m/lot-details/index/catalog/12485/lot/1621153/

This is an old image - in the middle compartment one can clearly see a Carro Armato 13-40 in the upper right hand corner.  Right off its nose is the old German Cruiser sculpt with the squared off stern.  To the right of the stern of the Cruiser is the old Japanese Artillery sculpt.  Didn’t even take a new shot!  They won’t lift a finger!

Does anyone know if it will come with clamps to hold the boards in place?

I heard the whole print run is numbered - can anyone confirm?  So are they adding a sense of scarcity/limited edition-ness to this item if its true?

And hey weren’t Cruisers in the original Anniversary Edition?  If so why does the Amazon description make it sound like they are a new sculpt/thing? 
Does any A&A bro know if the Italian tanks are gonna be Carro Armato 13/40s like in the original release?  They better not be Pantherz again - just wrong.

Anyone know where you can have custom Lazy Susans made?  I need a special War Room lazy susan for this SKU!!  Also does anyone know if those are 10 sided or 12 sided dice?  Haven’t ran my Ranger/Cleric in like 23 years.

The Amazon write up is terrible - they don’t even have their facts straight.  They appear to have rewritten an old description and added their own inaccurate babble to it.  Cruisers were ALREADY in Anniversary Edition - it’s not a new thing to this SKU.  Goddamn they need a Brand Manager.  And why the fuc wouldn’t they reveal what the new sculpts are?  And why are they so obsessed with length of play?  Oh that’s right they make lots of quick to finish games…wait.

Clearly whoever is handling the A&A line has no experience with the game.

Yeah check out the images on the Nightingale Games site!  Man this game looks cool - do I see rail lines?  What the deal with those dice?  WOW!

Streamlined game play - that’s rich.  Those who don’t understand A&A always get hung up on the length of play.  It’s one of the most common complaints for people who never played.  This is the same company that manufactures Dungeons & Dragons right?  Kreighund - care to shed some light on this?  Hey btw what are the new sculpts has anyone seen anything about that?

No connection but been playing for a long time and its cool A&AAE is coming back.  Hoping for some work to be done on 1942 2nd Edition - love that game. It would be cool to have a new setup including tactical bombers and mechanized infantry in that baby!  A&A 1942 3rd Edition!  Oooh yes I would pay $80.

Oh man those games are awful - complete disconnect from standard A&A Rules and on way smaller scales (Battle, Theater whatever).  The cover art on all of them are an embarrassing downgrade from what came AFTER them.  That artist sucks, check out the cover of A&A Revised (one of the worst A&A skus ever produced) it has a fucking Mussolini on it.  Wizards works with literally hundreds of artists for Magic and D&D and they cant get a new cover?  That runs like 3-4 grand, wow they are lazy.

The cover of Battle of the Bulge has a friggin Nazi featured on it - and the tanks had to be corrected as the guy literally drew tanks from the Patton film (which were M48s & M41s) originally.  Thanks to a wonderful designer, those tanks were doppleganged into Tiger IIs and so don’t look so bad.  The only reason D-Day ever stayed in print is coz it’s cheap and so TRU “carried” it for a while.  Save your money these games are terribad.

The sculpt updates could be swapping out the original German/Italian Cruiser - it changed post Anniversary - and maybe a different Italian tank.  Coz reasonz.  The main reason there were so few Anniversary Editions is because there were issues with the tooling Hasbro still had that was used for the print run.  There are fewer than 30,000 original Anniversary Editions on Earth.  The game was never supposed to have a three panel board btw.

It is unfortunate that there will not be Mechanized Infantry, Tactical Bombers and Anti Aircraft Artillery in the game - important pieces that are a permanent part of the A&A family of units.

That it is being reprinted because of concern over secondary market value is hilarious if true.  That it is being reprinted because it is low hanging fruit and an easy way to bring A&A back from the dead is more believable.  Oh and the game was NOT revered internally - a birdy told me it was viewed as an annoyance by most wotc employees or an afterthought at best.  Remember WotC pulled the plug on A&A at the Dawn of the Recent Golden Age of Board Gaming.  Literally at the moment it had the most momentum it ever enjoyed at Wizards - and with little to no marketing support or online presence - they killed it.

If you have an original and are concerned over it losing value, don’t.  In time people will still want one of the original games and the value will come back - maybe not what it’s at now though - heh.  If you are one who always wanted one and can now GET one at a reasonable price, then rejoice!  Hopefully someday Wizards of the Coast will understand what they have on their hands and infuse some experience, passion and new ideas into the old girl.  Axis & Allies Endures.

Reveal - WotC is working on a House on the Hill - Axis & Allies variant called: Bunker on the Hill.