Messages

16

Reviews / Re: Pacific Game Pics

« on: July 07, 2015, 01:53:33 PM »

Georgemak1 - I checked the sites for the manufacturers you listed, and didn't see the Indian Sikh miniatures listed at any of them. Do you recall which company you got them from?

17

General Discussion / Re: Questions about getting the game ready to play

« on: June 11, 2015, 02:49:09 PM »

Looking forward to seeing your game posts!

You are? Umm... you DO remember how our games usually went, don't you? And the headaches from all of the resulting rules questions for all the situations that never happened to anyone else?

18

Rules Questions & Clarifications / Re: Questions on newest Rulebook (2015)

« on: June 10, 2015, 01:13:34 PM »

Reading the Europe rules, I have a question about 9.2 Counter-offensives. If Player A attacks a territory without any armor units, and player B declares a counter offensive, and has armor, does Player B's armor get the bonus for having armor attacking an opponent without any armor?

19

General Discussion / Re: Questions about getting the game ready to play

« on: June 10, 2015, 12:56:23 PM »

Hi Bob - I wonder if you tightened up the margins too much? All the pics on the forum are with minis mounted on the counters at 100% size.  I hope you get some good games in - post some pics and play-by-plays once you get it going!

Mark - I printed them at 100%. Going back and looking at some of the photos that folks have posted I see that all of the counters are pretty small. I don't like having units overhang the edges of the counter. Maybe I'm just OCD. At the point down the road where I'm ready to start mounting stuff I think I will blow them up a bit and reprint them. Will definitely post once I start playing. Other than cutting out all of them it's ready to play (Europe only).

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General Discussion / Re: Questions about getting the game ready to play

« on: June 09, 2015, 03:55:14 PM »

Got everything mounted. We plan to play with the counters until I can get significantly more miniatures painted. In the meantime I would advise anyone about to mount the counters that they need to be blown up - I'd say about 50%. Otherwise, any miniatures mounted on them will cover some of the information on the counter. I'll need to have all of these redone when I'm ready to mount the miniatures - which, at the rate I'm going, will be about 10 years from now...

21

General Discussion / Re: Questions about getting the game ready to play

« on: June 06, 2015, 08:03:29 AM »

Just took it all to the printer. Should be able to play next week using the counters. I need to step up the pace on painting.

22

General Discussion / Re: Questions about getting the game ready to play

« on: June 05, 2015, 02:58:22 AM »

I was afraid you were going to say Photoshop. My understanding is that it has a rather high learning curve.

Can you print on this photo paper using a standard color printer? Will it print on the entire paper, or is it going to want to insert margins?

You may have guessed that I'm not the most technical of people...

23

General Discussion / Questions about getting the game ready to play

« on: June 04, 2015, 05:11:07 PM »

I’ve got some questions for you guys.

How did you make the really sturdy counters (airbases, damage) for the first edition game? I’d like my counters for this game to be sturdy like those. I know you said you made the counters for this game by gluing the counter sheets to thin Styrofoam sheets, but I’d like something heavier than that. If I can’t duplicate the counters from the first edition I might try gluing the sheets to some matte boards.

What program did you use to create the counter pages? I have already come up with additional units and I’d like the counters for them to match yours. To do that I either need to come up with a way to create new counters or edit the existing counters.

Miniature painting is going slow, so we’re going to start out by just using the counters and add miniatures as I get them painted. Hopefully we’ll get to start playing in the next couple of weeks.

24

Introduction / Re: Advanced Struggle for Europe (ASfE) is AVAILABLE!

« on: January 12, 2015, 07:41:45 AM »

The ironic thing is that I doubt I'll ever get to play it. The guy I used to game with has a lot of other stuff going on in his life now, so we don't game any more. I still wanted to get it though in case my gaming situation changes in the future. I didn't want to take a chance on waiting until I had people to game with, then try to order it sometime down the road only to find you guys were no longer selling it. If I have the files I can always print it all out when/if I have someone to game with.

BTW, what is your convention schedule looking like this year? Will you be at GenCon or Origins?

25

Introduction / Re: Advanced Struggle for Europe (ASfE) is AVAILABLE!

« on: January 12, 2015, 06:32:19 AM »

I mailed payment this morning to the address sent to my email. Hopefully you'll have by the end of the week.

I'm going to have to buy a second ping pong table, aren't I...?

26

Introduction / Re: Advanced Struggle for Europe (ASfE) is AVAILABLE!

« on: January 10, 2015, 02:17:58 PM »

Hey guys,

Be sure to check the forum email. I want to order the advanced game. Please contact me for payment arrangements.

27

General Discussion / Gen Con?

« on: July 19, 2014, 04:09:58 AM »

Hey guys - it's been a long time since I've been on, but I've never forgotten about the game. I was just wondering - will you guys be at Gen Con in Indy this summer? If so I might be able to get loose for a day to try out the new version.

28

General Discussion / Re: Find Players/Groups

« on: December 18, 2009, 02:52:49 PM »

*Ahem*

Did you forget Kentucky?

I thought with all the issues we've run into the last few years you'd be at the stage of dreading seeing messages from me by now. And here you don't even remember us...

29

Rules questions from first edition / Re: Air Units in Combat

« on: October 25, 2009, 06:10:24 PM »

I do not support the one use idea for aircraft. It is a 3 month turn afterall. I support the current rules where after the attack phase, the aircraft can support one defensive action.

I prefer the hard and fast rule - no front line unit - no support fire (even at a 1)


ken

I think one use each for offense and defense could work, but I'm leaning toward the single use to replicate some of the decision making that you run into in World in Flames. In WiF you have to be more realistic in how you use your aircraft - if you use them all at once you have nothing to counter with later on. Allowing one use for each offense and defense in my opinion doesn't do enough to deter the kind of problems we've been having.

Regarding the length of the turn - yes, it's true that a turn represents three months, but then that same argument could be made about any other unit in the game as well. Why can't infantry be used more than once? Why can't ships move more than once? The answer is the game has been designed with certain arbitrary rules to produce historically possible results. There isn't really a reason for letting any unit make more than one attack (or limiting a unit to one) other than that's just the way the rules have been worked up.

There's no question that letting air units attack with no front line unit is a problem. A bigger problem in our games has been having giant stacks of aircraft (usually Germany) either making a massive airbase attack, or failing that, adding 15-20 dice to a ground attack. Not letting unsupported aircraft attack, as you have done, is part of the answer, but something still needs to be done about the problem of massive stacks of aircraft. We've tried stacking limits and this hasn't worked, so now we're going to try falling back to something I know works in another game and see if that solves our problem.

30

General Discussion / Re: Add the Graf Zeppelin to the 39 game

« on: October 24, 2009, 12:15:37 PM »

From all research on the web - The ship was ready in 39 to launch about 30 aircraft, however with help from the Japaneese they started testing steam catapults and this was completed in early 40 and the new carrier aircraft that used the catapults were available in may 40. My point is - the carrier was ready in 39 it just was not launched with rolling aircraft.  They waited for the catapults then they waited for this and this etc..... Politics/Egos delayed the carrier and thus without the air support of this carrier their Navy was ultimately destroyed. They also had a second carrier in production it was slated to be complete in summer 40 as well. So the question is what box to put the carriers in. I propose to start one in the 3 box and one in the 2 box to simulate the addition of the catapults.   Comments
Ken

The thing is tough - that each carrier unit is like 2-4 carriers.  Each carrier plane unit has got to represent at least 100 aircraft or so to make the scales reasonable.  So, if you want to start a German carrier on the production chart, I would start it in the last build box if at all.

Ken,

If you want to be historical, I think the best place for a German CV to start would be where it starts now – not on the map.

The first point to consider is Mark’s comment. Each CV represents several ships, not just one. Otherwise, the US would need to begin with 7 CV’s.  Germany only started construction of two CV’s, the Graf Zeppelin, which was launched in 1938, and Hull B (Germany did not name a ship until it was launched - conjecture is that Hull B would have been named Peter Strasser), which never progressed beyond the laying of the keel and was scrapped in 1940. The GZ was never more than 80% completed, and if Germany had ever decided to complete it some of the completed work would have needed to be torn out and redone. I won’t get into that issue here – the list is far too long – but the ship was much further than 20% from being operational.

In addition, it was discovered from experimentation that the Ju-87s that were to be used as attack planes would be barely adequate to the task, even after modifications (though it could be argued they would be no worse than the Swordfish used by the British), and the Messerschmitt 109s slated to be the fighter group were totally unsuited to the roughness of carrier operations. Several modification schemes were considered to be able to utilize the 109s (including the fitting of fixed landing gear) but it was realized by most that what was really needed was a completely new design specifically created for carrier operations.

To play devil’s advocate, let me ask you this – if you are going to let Germany start with a CV on the construction track to represent the Graf Zeppelin, what do you plan to do about France? France began the war with an operational CV (though not a very good one). Are you going to add a CV to the map for France to account for this? If you do, then France would have half the CV strength of the US, and so you’d need to add CVs to the US, which means you then have to also add them to Japan, and now your ratio of CVs to other ships is wrong…

I really think the navies in the game are pretty close to correct respective to each other now as it is. You start adding ships and you’re either going to unbalance things or you’re going to have to adjust everyone else’s navies.

The Graf Zeppelin is an interesting “what if” of history, but it was just a single ship, and would have been obsolete upon commissioning if it had been completed.  If you’re going to stick to a historical take I can’t see that there’s any justification to add a CV to Germany.