Right off the bat, for the hardcore AA player, the feel of everything is very good. This is definitely not your 80's Axis and Allies game. Larry has put to good use 20 yrs of playtesting that's for sure.
Here's my take:
Rulebook - The rulebook is nicely done with important examples placed where needed. I would have moved the unit information portion up closer from the end, but that's just a nicety that's really not needed. The hardcore player will be very familiar with the rules even though there are a few important changes that will certainly get more than a glance over.
The markers are made of a "laminated" cardboard that feel really good and should last several hundred game plays without wear.
The battleboard and National Production/Research Development Board are nicely done. It would have been even nicer to have what each Research technology actually did right there on the Development board like before (instead of having to look up each one in the rulebook), but it's something that one will get use to.
Industrial Production Certificates have apparently gotten more expensive to make, because that's my only guess for the cheaper feel I found with them. They are thinner, smaller, and one sided. I liked the feel of the old money better, but it all spends the same I guess. Funny thing is, is that this game has higher Industrial Production for every country than before, yet I think we got the same number of 1s,5s and 10s as before. I almost ran out of 1s twice already!
The units--Same as you will find in any AA title since the classic....nation specific units to represent the different uniforms and different equipment used by the different countries. I was very, very pleased to see the US fighter represented by those Navy fighters from the AAP and NOT those crappy P-38s! It just didn't make sense to me to use a P-38 to represent the thousands of mono-fuselage fighters the US used during the war, and besides, having a P-38s land on an aircraft carrier was just stupid.
Obviously that same line of thought was being applied to the Junkers Ju, and it too got replaced by something a little more "historical", and again, much to my liking.
The new mapboard still has me sitting on the fence however. It's bigger with more spaces and comes in three different pieces. And all of that turns out to be good and bad. I understand the worries about board warpage and folding, but I didn't feel comfortable just sliding 3 pieces together. I felt compelled to hold them together with clips, but even that didn't seem to keep the center of Europe from having a little "out of sync-ness" to it. Again, you can't make everybody happy so it's something you will either love or hate or love to hate and play on with.
And it must be my eyes, because it seems every new game mapboard nowadays come with national borders that are harder to make out. I can hardly tell where Italy ends and the Balkans begins.....again maybe it's just me.
New updates:
Research and Development got a nice overhaul. Investing in technology is never going to be a waste again. Buying one researcher marker will keep you rolling for the rest of the game....until you develop something. Investing more money will only speed up the development process. And there are now a half dozen more techs to go after and they all seem to have been well playtested. There is no reason for every country (except maybe Italy) not to try and develop something. If things are going right, two or three techs may be in the cards for some nations.
New Improved Nations:
Italy and China are introduced like never before. They are seperate countries now that will give and get their share of headaches. Italy especially, because it can really gum up the works for the Allies. Of course it is limited to just two major roles. Either it goes all out against Russia or all out against Africa....or maybe all out against both, but with limited funds it's going to be interesting that's for sure. I will say this, it's nothing like putting down that first Italian marker after it manages to take over some new territory. The Duce would be very proud.
China has made Japan's life alittle more difficult, but nothing that can't be dealt with. Japan is still the bully of Asia and the new China hasn't changed that. What China has done is become Japan's new whipping boy. Japan is now going to do to China what it has been doing to Russia for years. China is going to get alot of attention from Japan in the form of tanks and infantry. The great thing about this is that Japan still does not have to eliminate China. It just needs to keep the Chinese hordes at bay long enough to take out India or Australia or the Western US or all three. This is something that is very do-able.
China does get to start with one US fighter to represent the Flying Tiger squadron. The fighter can't leave China, but one could still potentially mix it up with American fighters flying in to support the Chinese cause, so it's nice if you can differentiate it from other US planes.
Now this is where one of those yucky P-38s from an earlier AA title will do wonders. I used one from my AA: Pacific game and it looks nice and works great. (And if that isn't good enough for you, according to Wiki, the P-38 was use extensively in the Pacific China-Burma-India theater of operations. So it should feel right at home in China.)
Naval units are cheaper so expect to see lots of ships and shipbuilding. Cruisers make their debut and everyone seems happy about them. Transports however got stripped of their guns and now actually need naval support. However, the new 0/0 transport has seemingly upset a delicate balance in the world of AA gamers and is something that looks like will be up for debate for the next 20 yrs of playing.
Were they wrong for stripping the lowly transport of it's killing power or have they just unlocked the secret to strategic naval warfare WWII style?? The jury is still out and likely will be for a while on this one. I personally like the idea ALOT because transports were never intended to sail alone, even a whole 6 pack fleet of them, but that's my "damn the torpedos....destroyers fullspeed ahead" opinion.
Speaking of torpedos, subs are now invisible to aircraft without an offending destroyer around to spot for them. This makes subs alittle stronger than before and coupled with their lower price, will surely make life hell for many ship boat captains....at least until well supported naval task forces show up.
Bombers are cheaper and there is already a "winner's strategy" for bombing Germany back into the stone age circulating around the net. Not sure if I buy that one, but it's something that will continue to be talked about until it's proven folly I guess.
And speaking of bombers, SBR got an overhaul that doesn't strip the player of IPCs....at least not right away. Damage to ICs now limit the number of units that ICs can produce. It's a neat way to limit the placement of new units in key territories or keep them off the mapboard and out of the fight all together. But of course this damage is repairable.....for a price.
Gameplay: There is a bonus money option which is designed to steer players toward a more historical gameplan and should be played in every game. It's nice to get more money than your nation produced each turn and besides, who in their right mind would turn down free money for doing what they were suppose to be doing anyway. Now, this is a change I really like and I'm very happy to see. Good job Larry on pushing the game more toward a historical feel than ever before.
The Victory Cities are back again and there are even more of them. However, this does lead me to the biggest and perhaps my only problem I have with the AA50 game. To win a standard game, 15 VCs is the goal. 15 VCs out of 18. That's crazy!!! Hell might as well ask the players to win out with 18 VCs!! Against average skill players that's not going to be at all easy and it's going to take quite a bit of time to do...and it's something that is really not needed. I'm thinking 13 VCs should be the standard. It will not only take less time, but may be even fairer to both sides.
And apparently to add insult to injury, Ottawa is now a VC city. I'm extremely surprised that after all the trouble Larry went through to make the game more historical, he allowed Ottawa to be a VC city. Are you kidding.....Canada has a VC city. That's just Dumb.
I'm pretty darn sure Hitler wouldn't have wasted his loaded transports of german supermen on invading Ottawa! Even with all of Europe and Asia under knobbed boot and heel, Ottawa wouldn't have made the top 10 list of most important cities to invade. Washington...... hell yes, but not Ottawa!! Ottawa being labeled a VC city along with the 15 VC standard, makes me wonder just how well playtested the VC portion of the game was.
Why not Cairo or Tehran? One of those two would at least give Italy a chance to grab a VC. And those are legit cities that the Axis have a shot at and it wouldn't have made 15 VCs seem like a joke.
Well, all that being said, I still think AA50 is a complete winner! It is a must for every Axis and Allies player out there. Even though the VC system is going to need a future houserule, the game's new design and new changes will be enough to keep everyone interested for years to come.
Last edited on 2009-01-01 08:03:49 CST (Total Number of Edits: 3)
Posted Sat Dec 27, 2008 1:48 pm
While Washington may have taken priority over Ottawa to invade in the first place, I'm sure that anyone who chose to invade the States would have invaded Canada shortly thereafter. Canada did actually contribute a fair bit to WWII. Anyway, how many often is Washington invaded?
