Posts made by plumsmugler

So given the fact that America is going to be sitting out of this war for a couple of turns doesn’t it seem logical to go for a casual South American campaign while you’re waiting to kick off your entry into the world war? With your transport off the Atlantic coast you could drop off a tank and an infantry onto Brazil as well as your fighter and strat bomber starting in the Eastern and Central United States.  Once you activate Brazil that will leave you with 4 inf, 1 arm, 1 fig, and 1 bomb.  You could easily take out Venezuela or, if you’re feeling a little adventurous, even have good odds at knocking out Argentina and Chile.  Hell, just go after Argentina and Chile and send a second transport the turn after to take Venezuela.  This is practically a guaranteed extra 8 income a turn for America since Axis attempts on the continent are unlikely.  I would think America would want to go for this every game.  Thoughts?

Like many of you I’ve been pouring over the new map, rules, and unit placement provided on the forums and the previews David Jensen has put together on the home page.  I’ve been having a hard time developing an initial strategy to the game because I have to keep referencing things and I can’t keep track of where all the units will be and where I would move them and what not.  But then I had a brilliant idea.  Rasterbate it!  All you have to do is rasterbate the image file David put up in the most recent preview of the game and bam!  You have an exact replica of the new board.  Just use the pieces you have from your other Axis and Allies games and you can start play testing today!  Voila!

I got started back in high school about 8 years ago.  I didn’t start with any of the actual board games but the video game version of the original for the PC.  My uncle lent it to me and I thought it was tons of fun.  After playing it for a couple of months I forgot all about it until about 3 or four years later in college when I was in a game store and saw revised edition on the shelves.  I thought, “holy crap I loved that game!” and bought it right then and there.  I’ve been playing it on and off since then but have really picked up my play since AA50 came out.  Now I play it all the time and have been starting to play AAP40 alot too.  Can’t wait to play it combined with AAE40!  My friends and I have been joking about making a massive game of A&A by integrating all of the other forms of the game into one giant game.  AAP40 and AAE50 together will deliver just that!  Might toss in the D-Day, Guadalcanal, and Battle of the Bulge games to make it as epic as possible.

Can British and Japanese navies occupy the same sea zones when they are neutral with each other?  Same goes for USA and ANZAC.  If not navies at least transports and subs?

I ask because if they are not allowed to I would think a good Japanese strategy first turn would be to keep a couple of cheap surface warships off the coasts of Java and Celebs which would not allow UK to land troops without declaring war on Japan.  Since going to war with UK and ANZAC and not USA is a great opportunity for Japan it would seem the best strategy to either deny ANZAC and UK income or provoke a war with them.

@bigopfer:

You are totally right Plum, the game is not worth the money they charged. The map IS amazing, the gameplay IS really fun. But you nailed it with the boxes, paper money, IPC chart, cardboard pieces, lack of tac bombers. I mean, I paid basically the same money for this game as I paid for my copy of AA50 and this AA40 Pacific is missing lots of the quality that AA50 had.

Exactly!  I was totally content with how they presented AA50.  Everything was high quality and all aspects of the game and its components were top notch.  Totally worth the money I spent on it.

While this game certainly has some high quality aspects about it, (especially the game play, which is all that really counts in the end) there are so many small blunders it’s really frustrating.  The income chart is what gets me the most.  It seems like the day before they shipped the game out somebody realized “Oh crap!  We forgot income charts!” and then threw together the first thing they thought of and tossed it in the box.  I’m surprised they weren’t scribbled on a piece of notebook paper.

The US can’t land it’s planes in British or Australian territories until it is at war? Where did it say that in the rulebook?

Also, if the British and ANZAC forces go to war with Japan but Japan is not at war with the United States does that allow Japan to occupy the Dutch East Indies or is that still a declaration of war with the US?

@kcdzim:

The reason the US can’t declare war until fired upon to reflect the isolationist mindset of pre WW2 US.  We didn’t want to be involved in another war after WW1 (heck, we didn’t even join the league of nations), so we let the rest of the world sort itself out.  Until Japan poked us.  If Japan hadn’t attacked Pearl it’s possible even if Japan had hassled the UK in the east Indies we still may not have gone to war.  Doubtful, but possible.

Ok I reread the rules and it appears they can’t declare war until attacked or by the end of the 3rd turn.  The rules are written a little confusingly so I thought the US could declare war at any time.

So I couldn’t find anybody to play with after I bought the game yesterday so I was a HUGE nerd and played the game by myself.

From my playthrough Japan owned absolutely everything.  As Japan I focused alot of forces on China early and had taken over the country without any real resistance by turn 4.  I also sent a decent sized Navy down south and sunk the British fleet.  While I captured all of the East Indies I lost all of my transports to US bombers but it was easily worth it since the Allies wouldn’t be taking them back for several turns.  By turn 4 I had Britain holed up in India with lots of troops massed on each side of the border and it was inevitable I would capture it in a few turns.  The US made the Pearl Harbor mistake by sending it’s whole fleet there to protect Hawaii.  I figured if I didn’t then Japan would get another victory city and 5 bonus income so I made the sacrifice.  By the time I stopped playing (I didn’t finish) Japan had taken over all of Asia except for India, had a massive fleet off the coast of Australia, and the US and ANZAC were just about to start kicking Japan out of the South Pacific.

While I’ve only played the game once I’ve noticed several flaws:

• Why doesn’t the US declare war it’s first turn to get it’s massive bonus income?  This seems to be the most logical thing for them since Japan will probably initiate its attack on it’s second turn anyway.  Might as well allow America to get another extra 40 IPCs.

• What the hell is with the income chart?!?! It’s maximum value is 48 IPCs, yet America exceeds this as soon as it goes into war production.  It would made sense if the chart went up to a max of 50 IPCs so you could just reset the token to 1 on the chart to indicate that you are at 51 IPCs.  But no, it’s 48 for absolutely no freaking reason!

• With the units it starts out with Japan will destroy China so long as it puts in MINIMAL effort to do so.

• While the board is magnificent, nothing else about this game justifies me paying $80 for it.

• The container boxes are sweet, but there’s no separate box to hold all of the chips, dice, facilities, etc.  And why are there no dividers like in the Anniversary boxes?

• Why on Earth is there no paper money?!  You know why I like paper money?  Because it’s far easier and more convenient than writing numbers down and scratching them out over and over again!

• Why does ANZAC only get its one NO once?  If they can hold a Japanese island for more than one turn I say more power to them and let them keep the extra income.

• There are not enough plastic peaces in the box.  Japan gets the exact amount of tactical bombers it needs to start the game with if you use the chips to identify more than one unit.  This means that if you ever by a single new tactical bomber or wish to split up a current force of tactical bombers you’re out of luck.  I was running out of American pieces too.

• This is an admittedly petty and minuscule complaint but the Japanese tactical bombers are incredibly difficult to set on the aircraft carriers correctly because of their little landing gear on the bottom of the piece.  Maybe I have OCD but I have to have the planes sitting on the carriers correctly before I can do anything else.  I spent a lot of time doing this.

While I’ll give the actual gameplay more of a chance because it might still be really good, these other problems are ridiculous.  While they are mostly small issues, all of them together start to really annoy the hell out of me.  And what’s even more upsetting is they are all EASY to fix if there were any time put into it.  If it’s a matter of cost I’d be willing to pay an extra $5 for a sufficient amount of plastic peaces, paper money, an extra box, dividers in the boxes, and an income chart that isn’t mindbogglingly stupid.

@Tralis:

But they are also a hell of a lot worse than infantry on the defense.

While the added 1 IPC cost may not seem worth it for the increased movement I would think that due to the vast size of China on this map they will prove useful for Japan later in the game.

I wanted to open up this thread for people to ask questions about the two new units introduced in this game, the Mechanized Infantry and the Strategic Bomber.

Here’s my questions:

1. Will mechanized infantry be supported by artillery just like regular infantry?

2. Will these units be incorporated into future A&A games and will they make molds for the Anniversary Edition so I can incorporate them into it?

I really like the new SBR rules.  The old style of “double dipping” made SBRs incredibly not worth it.  The fact that attacking escorts and bombers got fired on twice made the liability too great. Now it is still iffy if you want to commit to SBR but at least your fighters aren’t exposed to SO much danger anymore.

So the initial link to the rules and errata seems to have gone bad and I don’t feel like sifting through all 40 pages of this thread to find the fixed one.  Is there a way to edit the original post so it’s a good link again?

Haha wow Gamerman, that is an insane game you had going on there.  All that technology floating around, a huge British presence in Africa, Italy owning Karelia and Madagascar, Russia owning Scandinavia, a British fleet off of the lower coast of Brazil. That’s pretty nuts.

I also like how you changed the name of your opponent in the save file to “anonymous.”  + 1 for respecting anonymity.

@bugoo:

Do NOT abandon Karelia!  G had 4 inf, 1 art, 3 arm and a bunch of planes in range.  Russia could have had a stack of 11 inf, 1 art, 1 arm plus 2 uk figs there.  You gave germany free money without them even having to work for it.  If you had to do an attack you should have struck Baltic States.

While in this game I would agree with you that he should not have given up Karelia, if Germany is really gunning for it I abandon it every time.  While that’s a big stack Russia can put there, Germany will take it if it wants to and it’s inevitable.  If they don’t take it G2 then they’ll take it G3 and then you’re going to have a gigantic German presence there with no Russian troops behind it in Arc.  I’d rather pull the AA gun, 5 inf, and 1 art out of there to be used later instead.

Although granted once again, he should have held on to Karelia in this particular situation.

I’d say the biggest problem with the ‘beeline’ strategy here is that it’s a total gamble.

It can certainly pay off if the Russian player is rolling badly.  I lost the game within an hour because my brother sent in a ton of tanks and planes into Russia the third turn.  He got in there because he took Belorussia 2nd turn and my forces couldn’t take it back.  (I’m notoriously unlucky.)

However, if it doesn’t pay off then the Germans lose steam really quick.  This is because the axis player cannot hold territories once he takes them.  He sends in 4 or 5 tanks and a bunch of planes to a single territory and loses 1 or two tanks in the process.  Russia simply sends in a bunch of infantry, an artillery, and a fighter to retake it and suffers minimal casualties.  If Germany keeps this up past the 3rd turn then UK and USA will be breathing down its neck in France by then and there are no German infantry to defend with.

This type of tank rush just turns into an expensive troop exchange with Russia that Germany will not win unless extremely lucky.  Germany needs to take it’s time to conquer Russia which means staggering infantry and artillery buys with tanks buys.  And some air force buys interspersed in there as well.  So long as Germany can keep up a lot of pressure on Russia throughout the game then Italy or Japan can move in for the knock out 1 2 to win the game.

I’ve noticed that a lot of players in the '41 scenario knock out Egypt on G1 and then roll all over it with their tanks after that, snatching up all of the African IPCs.  They argue that Germany needs those IPCs because they’re fighting all three Allies at once.

I think this is a mistake.  Granted, Germany has a lot on its plate throughout the game, but if played properly, they’ll be making 45-50 IPCs after G2 and can keep that up pretty effectively.  At the same time, unless they start building more ICs or get increased factory production, they can only build 10 units a turn anyway.

Italy on the other hand seems to have been created as a point of opportunity for the allies.  If they can knock out the Italian navy 2nd or 3rd turn then Italy doesn’t really have the income to defend itself and the attention Germany has to pay to it to keep it alive distracts it.  An Italy with a higher income means it can defend itself, afford to repair damage to it’s IC, retake France or reinforce it when necessary, and put added pressure on Russia.  Plus if Italy has the income to produce a full six units a turn that means the Axis in Europe have a production capacity of 16 units in Europe a turn instead of Germany’s sole ten.  Hell, I’ve played games where once Italy’s income gets into the 30s it can start putting some serious pressure on both America and the UK.

A healthy Italy means a much stronger Axis presence in Europe and a much more pleasant experience for the Italian player, if you’re in a six player game.  Although, a stronger Italy is just more fun the the Axis player in a two player game too.  To led Italy atrophy due to Germany taking all of the African IPCs will just make is so much easier for the Allies to capture and thus leading to an Axis loss.  In my opinion a lost capitol which cannot be immediately retaken ends the game for either side.

Ok, that helped with figuring out how to use the game but I’m still having the problem of infoview and toolbar not appearing unless I reinstall.  I followed the instructions of deleting the .ini file and keeping the windows to the middle of the program but neither work.  While this is a pain for my PC, for some reason I don’t have this problem when I run the program on my laptop.

Is there a tutorial page for ABattleMap somewhere?  I can’t figure out how to scroll around the board.  Also, it appears when ever the toolbar and infoview go away the only way to get them back is to reinstall the program.  (not that it’s very difficult anyway)

Hey, I’m a grad student at IU Bloomington and am looking for some people to play with.  Any takers out there?