Axis and Allies
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Axis & Allies is a popular series of World War II strategy board games, with nearly two million copies printed[link]. The first game was originally designed by Larry Harris and published by Nova Games[link], before being republished and popularized by the Milton Bradley Company. Milton Bradley released Axis & Allies as part of their Gamemaster series in 1984, and it was the most successful of the five. In April 2004, Hasbro released the Revised Edition under the Avalon Hill name.
In all of the editions of the core game, up to five players can take control of one of the Axis (Germany or Japan) or Allied (UK, Soviet Union or USA) nations. The object of the game is to win the war by capturing enough critical territories.
Axis & Allies is not a strict historical wargame, due to its streamlining for ease of play and balancing so that both sides have a chance. For instance, the economic model is simplistic, with each territory producing a number of "IPCs" (Industrial Production Certificates) good toward the purchase of any unit. Moreover, the game is supposed to start in the spring of 1942, but Japan is immediately in position to attack Hawaii again, while Germany is pressed well into the USSR with an initially superior force. Another significant difference is that the Soviet Union and Japan are opponents at the start of the game; historically, they did not go to war with each other until 1945. If the game were truer to history, the Axis empires would be at their apex at this time, about to be pushed back home – but, of course, that would not be a very competitive match.
Despite its deficiencies as a historical simulation, the game is often played in high school classes to help teach students about the global scale of the conflict.
While the Milton-Bradley edition was recognised as a classic, many experienced players felt the game quickly became unbalanced and repetitive, with conventional strategies developed that would ensure an Allied victory.
Milton-Bradley Version
Basics
The essential mechanics to the game are easy to pick up. Each side's objective is to conquer enemy territory, achieving victory by holding two enemy national capitals; the Axis can also win an "economic victory" by gaining enough territory, which is more common in practice due to the difficulty of attacking London or Washington.
Each player progresses in order: USSR, Germany, UK, Japan, USA. On each turn, the player declares IPC spending for production and research (which gives a random chance to enhance units). The player then declares combat moves, attacking enemy-held territory. Much of the playtime is spent resolving battles. Each round, all the attacking and defending units get a chance to hit once. A unit scores a hit if the player rolls, with a six-sided die, a number less than or equal to the unit's attack or defense score (e.g., infantry makes a better defender than attacker). Each player gets to choose how to distribute casualties amongst his or her own units and removes them from the battlefield. (This provision makes it practical to bring cheap cannon fodder units along to soak up hits.) The battle continues until either force is destroyed or the attacker withdraws.
After all battles are concluded, the player takes noncombat actions: moving reinforcements, landing aircraft, etc. Then he or she deploys units purchased at the beginning of the turn in territories with an industrial complex and finally collects income from all occupied territories to end the turn.
This cycle continues until, after USA's turn, the victory conditions are met for one side.
Units
| Unit name | Edition | IPC Cost | Attack | Defense | Movement | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Infantry | Original | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | |
| Revised | ||||||
| Armor | Original | 5 | 3 | 2 | 2 | |
| Revised | 5 | 3 | 3 | 2 | Renamed "Tank" | |
| Artillery | Revised | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | raises an infantry to 2 Attack |
| Fighter | Original | 12 | 3 | 4 | 4 | |
| Revised | 10 | 3 | 4 | 4 | ||
| Bomber | Original | 15 | 4 | 1 | 6 | may do bombing run against opponent's IPCs |
| Revised | 15 | 4 | 1 | 6 | ||
| Anti-aircraft gun | Original | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | may shoot down each overflying aircraft |
| Revised | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | ||
| Destroyer | Revised | 12 | 3 | 3 | 2 | turns off submarine abilities |
| Battleship | Original | 24 | 4 | 4 | 2 | |
| Revised | 24 | 4 | 4 | 2 | requires two hits to destroy | |
| Aircraft Carrier | Original | 18 | 1 | 3 | 2 | may carry up to two fighter units |
| Revised | 16 | 1 | 3 | 2 | ||
| Transport | Original | 8 | 0 | 1 | 2 | can carry up to 2 infantry, or one of any other land unit |
| Revised | 8 | 0 | 1 | 2 | can carry any one land unit, plus one infantry | |
| Submarine | Original | 8 | 2 | 2 | 2 | gets to bypass some combat rules, for "free shots" |
| Revised | 8 | 2 | 2 | 2 | gets to attack first, can go under hostile ships | |
| Industrial Complex | Original | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 | immobile factory, allows production of new units |
| Revised | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Revised Edition
To revise the original game, Mike Selinker led a design team that included Larry Harris, designer of the first edition. The revision aimed to address some major concerns with the original and make the game more fun. Selinker also wrote a series of [articles] describing the changes.
The overarching change is in the victory condition. To win in the original, either side could seize two enemy capitals, but the Axis could also win an economic victory by capturing enough resources. This rule gave the poorer Axis a leg up, but led to anticlimactic endings. Also, it often took many, many turns to finally capture heavily fortified capital cities. The designers scrapped this rule and implemented victory cities, where each side starts with 6 of the 12 cities. In addition to the national capitals, these include Paris, Rome, and Leningrad in Europe, Calcutta, Shanghai, and Manila in Asia, and Los Angeles in North America. With this rule, players can decide what constitutes victory at the start – playing only to 8 victory cities makes for a shorter game, while more hardcore gamers can play until one side controls all of them. [link]
Another important change concerns unit capabilities and statistics. In the original, infantry were a cheap unit and turned out to be most useful as cannon fodder, by taking hits that would otherwise destroy more valuable units. This tended to lead to massive buildups by players amassing stacks of infantry in neighboring territories, unable to do anything other than buy more infantry, which can be ineffective attacking units by themselves due to their miniminal attack value. While infantry were left unchanged in the revised edition, the tank unit defence was increased to encourage players to use combined arms rather than just rely on infantry, and to balance the value and effectiveness of comparable groups of infantry and tanks. [link] Other changes include the addition of artillery units, which increase the attack of attacking infantry, destroyers, which negate the first-shot advantage of subs, and a significant increase in the usefulness and effectiveness of transports and amphibious assaults, by allowing transports to carry any one land unit plus one additional infantry unit.
The [map was also reworked], with a new art style and many gameplay changes. One important change is the fragmentation of Germany's Eastern Front. The area from Berlin to Moscow now includes many small territories, a victory city (Leningrad), and a strategic industrial complex at the Caucasus. This change was designed to encourage more dynamic play in an area that often bogs down into heavy fortification. Another notable change is to the South Pacific region, which now provides much of Japan's starting income and is a much more valuable target for Allied incursion. [link]
A new system of optional rules was implemented. Each power has six possible advantages, representing tactics or technologies used in the war. For instance, if the UK has the "Enigma Decoded" advantage, it may quickly move units during Germany's turn in response to an attack on UK territory. A number of these advantages can be chosen or randomly picked for each side at the beginning of each game to alter gameplay.
Many other changes are documented in the manual, [available for download] from Avalon Hill.
Spinoffs
When Hasbro acquired the Milton Bradley Company, they kept Axis and Allies in print as part of their Avalon Hill lineup, a rather prestigious game company they bought in 1998. Under the same brand, they published two follow-up games, [[Axis and Allies: Europe]] (1999) and [[Axis and Allies: Pacific]] (2001), that were designed by Larry Harris, the original designer of Axis and Allies. The latter especially tinkers with the original game mechanics and tries to make the game feel less scripted while keeping the appeal of the original.
Larry Harris also designed the latest expansion game in the series, [[Axis and Allies: D-Day]] (released June 2004). Based on the Allied liberation of France, the game plays at a tactical level (rather than a strategic one like its predecessors), getting rid of most resource management and using a smaller-scale world. D-Day won a 2005 Origins Award for Best Historical Board Game. Harris has a forthcoming expansion, Axis and Allies: Battle of the Bulge, which will be published in November, 2006.[link]
In 2005, Avalon Hill released a line of miniatures under the Axis & Allies brand.
Several computer games were also based on Axis & Allies. They include turn based strategy closely based on the board game, while more recently a real time strategy game was based on it. The real-time strategy (RTS) game includes a mode that is more closely related to the board game, but you can only attack one enemy occupied territory per turn and can either fight battles in RTS mode or have the computer decide the outcome. There is also a campaign mode in which you can fight as the Allies and try to defeat the Axis or be the Axis and try to change history and in the end defeat the Allies. All of the battles in the Campaign mode are fought in the RTS mode.
An open source version of the game called TripleA also exists in which one can play alone or online against other players.
House Rules
There are many common and varying house rules invented for use of balancing or modifying the game. Typically, house rules can be a variation/combination of 2nd and 3rd edition Axis and Allies rules. Sometimes, they can have more extreme variations of this.Bidding
Bidding is a popular house rule most commonly used on Axis & Allies games via E-mail. The practice of bidding balances the game by allowing players to bid IPCs in order to play as the Axis. The player who bids the least IPCs plays as the Axis powers. After a player "wins" with the lowest bid, this player may use the extra IPCs gained to immediately purchase additional units and place them anywhere in Axis controlled territory before the game begins. Bidding is used to enhance gameplay due to the fact that experienced Axis and Allies players believe the Allies have an inherent advantage.Free For All
A party game style of Axis & Allies, where each country is not an alliance but an individual power that can attack any opponent. This style of play works best with four or five players, but can also be played with only three players though there is less of a chance of balanced play. Players can chose to ally with, attack, or rescind alliances freely in a Free For All. For example, Germany and Russia can be allies and maintain control of the easily defensible and profitable mainland territories in order to weaken their opponents. Allies can also place their units in each other's territories. (A player can choose to eliminate an Ally's units within his territories by declaring a battle.) Since the game is designed for balanced play between specific allies, a Free For All is inherently imbalanced. However, the balance of power is most effected by strong alliances, or the weaker countries allying against a stronger country. If a Free For All can be played until completion, it could take an excessive amount of time. Either a winner is determined by the group when time is exhausted, or play resumes when the players meet again.Random House Rules
-No Tech-Rolls: Disables Technology Rolls in order to allow strategy to be a determining factor in the game rather than luck.-No Diesembark Tank Blitzes: Tanks cannot advance an additional territory after being disembarked from a transport.
-No Flyover: Disallows aircraft from flying from Western Canada to the Atlantic Ocean. (In actual play, this only counts as one movement space.)
See also
- Axis and Allies Members Club
- Axis and Allies World Club
- TripleA
- Axis & Allies (2004 video game)
- Axis & Allies (1998 video game). The 1998 release has several bugs that the Axis and Allies World Club has fixed in an unofficial patch. [Axis and Allies World Club]
External links
Official sites- [Avalon Hill's official Axis & Allies site]
- [Axis & Allies rules errata and FAQ]
- [Larry Harris' game site]
- [AxisAndAllies.Org]
- [Axis & Allies Discussion and Strategies]
- [Axis & Allies Miniatures] Yahoo! Group
- [Axis & Allies World Club] - club for Axis & Allies online using a custom patch of the 1998 CD
- [Caspian Sub] - Axis & Allies articles for strategy, puzzles (called strategic exercises), and mailing list
- [Deutscher Axis & Allies Klub] - German Axis & Allies club
- [Generals of Waterloo] - Tribute site with history, strategy, tactics, alternate rules and expansions
- [TripleA] - an open source Axis & Allies game for Online and PBEM play
- [AACalc] - a web-based combat simulator/calculator for Revised Edition
- [Philip Hall's odds calculator] - Windows utility for Milton-Bradley edition
- [Honor and Infamy: Commanders] - an Axis & Allies add-on game
- [Plotted A&A] - variant in which players plot each turn's activities in advance
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