Customer Reviews

Axis And Allies Revised

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First off, be sure that you love REALLY long games with complicated rules and LOTS of pieces on the board (and that you have friends who like the same thing) before purchasing. That said, this is an awesome game.

I never played the un-revised version, so I have no way of comparing the two. I did, however, love everything about this version.

The game board is thick cardboard folded in 6 parts. It is of high quality, and it's longer than the standard game board. It is a map of the world and most of the territories have financial values. As you attack your enemies and take over their territories, you also increase your income depending on the financial value associated with the territory that is now yours. There is an additional cardboard piece that allows you to track the changing income. (Lots of table space required for all of the additional stuff).

You also can do something called weapons development. During your turn you have the opportunity to buy dice to roll to give yourself advantages. Some examples of advantages are increasing the defense strength of your jet fighters, allowing your anti aircraft guns to shoot at industrial complexes, and increasing how many spaces your aircraft can fly, etc. If you roll the number needed to create the development, you may now use this added ability for the rest of the game. This is risky, because money is limited, and you are not guaranteed to roll the appropriate #.

There are plenty of plastic pieces that come with the game.The pieces that come with the game are: aircraft carriers, battleships, destroyers, submarines, transports, infantry, artillery, tanks, fighters, bombers, anti aircraft guns, and industrial complexes. In order not to lose all of the parts, I got small tackle boxes for cheap at Walmart and used a label maker to label everything. It's a lot less messy than keeping all of the little parts out on the table in front of you. There is a card which tells you how many of these pieces to put on the board to start the game. The set up time takes a little while because there are a lot of pieces to put down to start the game. The card is full of valuable information. It tells you how much it costs to buy each unit, how many spaces they can move across the board, how strong they are on attack and on defense, turn sequence and combat sequence...basically everything you need to know to play the game. Each power (Soviet Union, Germany, United Kingdom, Japan, and the United States) starts with varying amounts of money and troops. Germany and Japan starts with lots more troops but less money, so they have more incentive to attack quickly to increase their income. The allies are a little more challenging to play due to the fact that, inspite of the fact they have more money to start the game, the united states and united kingdoms resources are located across the water, and it takes a bit to transport these troops and get established in areas they need to be in. The soviet union can quickly get overwhelmed by germany since they have little money and not that many troops, plus a lot of land to defend.

When I first learned the rules to this game I was completely confused on many points. It took a full day of trying to figure them out. Then I emailed the manufacturer and kept asking questions until I felt comfortable. There are a few websites out there that give some good answers to questions as well. Once you learn the rules, however, it is easy. I just think whoever wrote the manual could have made it a whole lot easier to understand than it is.

Gameplay is pretty basic. You do the following in this order: You develop weapons if desired. You purchase units, conduct combat if desired (troops from multiple territories can attack one territory), do any non-combat moves, mobilize the new units purchased at the beginning of your turn to any territories that have Industrial Complexes on them (you can buy more industrial complexes to place on different parts of the map) and then collect your income. You may discuss strategy with your allies, and as a matter of fact that seems to be a major part of what takes up so much time. I got frustrated by the fact that the enemy could hear what was being talked about and pointed to on the map, so I developed a means of silent communication via dry erase boards. I took a photo of the game board that I found on the web, and in photoshop I enlarged it to the size I wanted and faded out the image to pastel colors so that it would be easy to write over the top of it. I then went to a home improvement store and cut out pieces of thin wooden board to mount the pictures on and covered them with thin clear plastic sheeting I got from an art store. I taped them down at the edges with duct tape and bought some dry erase markers and erasers. This way both the axis and the allies had their own dry erase boards where they could point out areas of concern on the map without being seen by their opponents. I also developed an easy shorthand type of code to quickly communicate to each other via the boards. This made a fantastic addition to the game and made communication easy and private.

Here are a few notes on gameplay which may help your understanding of the game:

-Allies may occupy the same territory. If they are attacked, they defend together at the same time. If they attack, they must attack seperately on each power's seperate turn.

-Sea units can only attack sea and air units (unless it's an amphibious assault, then a battleship may do an initial attack on land as the units are going on shore), land units can attack land and air units, and air units can attack both (the submarine can't shoot at air units, but after the initial first attack can submerge and escape if they weren't destroyed from that first assault).

-During combat you use a "battle board" where the pieces in combat are placed on the board on the attack side and the defense side. Each side shows where the units should be placed according to their defense and attack value. For instance, if you have 3 infantry, two tanks, and one fighter plane attacking a territory, each of those units have different attack values and are placed in different columns of the battle board. The infantry attack value is "1", which means that you have to roll a 1 to have a "hit" on the enemy. You would roll 3 dice for the 3 infantry and hope to get as many 1s as possible. If your attack is successful and for example you roll two 1s, your opponent decides which 2 troops of theirs gets hit in the attack and moves them to the "casualty zone" at the bottom of the battle board. The reason they are not moved off of the board is because technically you are shooting at each other at the same time, and those troops that got hit still will have their opportunity to respond and shoot back. Then the next column is resolved. The tanks attack value is a "3". So you would have to roll 2 dice for the two tanks and hope to roll a 1,2, or 3 to have a "hit" on your opponent. The fighter has the same attack value as the tank. So you could roll one extra dice at the same time as the tanks since they have the same attack value at 3 or less. Then the defenders resolve their troops. The defenders have 2 infantry. The defense value of infantry is "2". Infantry has a stronger defense than attack value (maybe because they are fortified?) So, the infantry needs to roll a 1 or 2 to get a "hit". After all casualties are put in the casualty zones, these zones are cleared, and if there are any troops remaining on the battle board, the attacker gets to decide whether they want to continue attacking or retreat. Each round is resolved this way until the attacker wants to stop or the territory is captured.

-Aircraft carriers can carry up to two fighters, and transports can carry two units.These units can't defend themselves during transport, and the transport only has a defense value of 1, so it is wise to escort the transports with other sea units.

-The game can be shorter by deciding on how many victory cities you want to capture. Or you can play the full game to total conquest, but that takes all day. I've had games where I started at noon and ended at 1 or 2 in the morning and the game was still not finished (almost).

-There are additional "national advantages" that are optional. They are a list of advantages each power can use once during the game. Here are a couple of the Soviet Union National advantages to give you an idea of what these are like:

Russian Winter- Once during the game in your collect income phase, you can declare a severe winter. Until the start of your next turn, your infantry defend on a 3.

Trans Siberian Railway - In the non-combat move, your infantry, anti aircraft guns, and artillery may move two territories per turn only among these territories: Russia, Novosibirsk, Yakut SSR, and Buryatia SSR.

These are two examples of the 6 National Advantages for the Soviet Union. Each power has 6 national advantages they can use. This is for the advanced player who wants to add some more interest to the game.

To sum up - This is a complex strategy game. It's not easy to win. There are a ton of differet ways to approach winning the same game, so the replayability is high. Definitely one of my favorite games, and it's a classic.

I was hooked on this game the first time I played it in 1987. Since then, I've introduced many others to A&A. I'm still amazed, however, by people's reactions the first time I see them play. They really get into this game! Though the game is complicated, it's not too confusing, especially after you've played it once. Most people pick it up after the first two or three turns. Once you're hooked, you'll find yourself playing with the same group of friends and developing your own style of play. Eventually, some people even modify the rules a little (house rules) or even create special scenarios and mini-games. The game gives you many options. With five different countries to play and the new edition's "National Advantage" bonuses, A&A never even comes close to boring. It truly is a masterpiece among board games.

I have had the old Axis & Allies for a long time. There were significant improvements to the new game. The new map, the addition of destroyers, the increased defensive capabilities of armor and the new transport rules made significant changes to the game.

I have only had one opportunity to play the new version of the game since I bought it last month. I was Japan. Japan won. I am still not sure if the new version has been improved enough to allow the Allies to win. (We drew for countries so I did not get a chance to be one of the Allies.) Assuming Japan violates the historical events and invades Russia, help from the Allies will not likely arrive in time to save the Russians. If the Russians are defeated, the Axis will almost certainly win.

The victory cities basis of the game is a little odd. Eight victory cities is too few. Ten victory cities is probably too many. We experimented by playing nine victory cities. This seemed about right.

It is still a great game even if it is skewed against the Allies.

There really needs to be a computer version of this game like there is for the old game.

Oh the stories I could tell about my experiences playing "Axis & Allies" over the course of 20 or so years. It is a game which is deeply gratifying, interestingly rich, and can evoke a plethora of emotions during it's long course of play. Originally meant to be part of a 5-part series of light wargames from Milton-Bradley in the mid to late 1980's called the "Gamemaster Series", A&A far surpassed the other 4 games in popularity and really achieved a life of it's own apart from it's brethren and maintains an intense loyalty from the vast majority of tabletop gamers who have played it over the past two decades. It's a good bet that if you know anyone who plays "Risk" or "Stratego", they've probably got a well-worn copy of A&A somewhere in their game closet as well. The game has a very solid base design and the mechanics work well enough so that it's never a foregone conclusion who is going to win each game.

This review is for the new and improved "Revised" edition, rather than the original version of A&A. Much of the gameplay remains the same and only small detail changes have been made, as well as the addition of a few new units, tweaks to game mechanics, and much needed redrawing of the map to create new zones in which to do combat.

The game board itself is a large world map portraying the world as it was known in the Spring of 1942. Various zones are color coded to indicate where the front lines are, as well as to indicate where a particular country's "influence" is strong (China is colored green for instance, indicating the US's heavy influence there at the time). The game can be played between 2-5 people, but I find that it works more realistically with 5 as the on board coordination between nations isn't as well-oiled as it would be playing a simple Axis vs. Allies 2-player game. Oftentimes whoever is playing the Allies in our matches will engage in quick coordination breaks, which we colloquially refer to as "Yalta Conferences".

The Pieces:

Each nation is given a stockpile of varying types of color coded plastic playing pieces including infantry, aircraft, naval ships, factories, etc. The original game had nation-specific infantry pieces while the remainder were homogenous depicting generic fighters, battleships, etc. In the revised edition each nation is given plastic pieces depicting actual weapons of war used by *that* country. The US tanks are Shermans and fighters P-38's, while the Germans get Panzers and Stukas (which technically was a dive bomber and a pretty poor dogfighter, but it's iconic of the Luftwaffe as a whole, so I'll let it slide). In addtion to this are a number of white plastic factories and AA guns. There are also 6 red "attack" dice and 6 white "defense" dice. I must give credit where credit is due. The pieces are very well made and really add extra flavor to what is already a smorgasboard of a game.

The Board:

If you've played the previous edition of A&A this is where you will see the largest change. The map isn't as bright as it's forebear and zones appear to actually have shrunk somewhat. There are more zones (both land and sea) which were placed in to eliminate some mechanics issues that were quite prevalent in the first edition. Most notable of these is that the Eastern Front has been dramatically reworked. In every single game I have played previous to this the Germany vs. USSR game usually worked into a stalemate with both sides stockpiling infantry and the occasional tank unit. At some point there would be a "Battle Royale", typically with Germany the victor. Russia was the country *no one* wanted to play, although they could occasionally pull off some mind-boggling land acquisitions. This has been overhauled and you'll see that Russia is now much more powerful and not so easy to bottleneck in. Additionally all those islands in the Pacific have now been assigned IPC points, finally giving you reason to invade and take them over. One small detraction I have with the current setup is that the small map blowups of various cities have been removed. This forces you to cram lots of pieces on a zone which has already been marginally shrunken from it's original size and makes it tricky to move units.

The rulebook is nicely laid out and easy to follow. Not like the first edition, which once caused some strife between me and my best friend when we were on deployment to Honduras and almost came to blows over some questionable move he'd made. The end result being that at 2am we were preparing to call Milton-Bradley for rules clarifications on a hotel phone which cost $95 an hour.

Weapons Development has been somewhat revamped, the most notable change (to my group) being the revision of the Super Bombers option. In previous editions this would give the Bomber unit the ability to attack with 3 dice in lieu of one, making for an extremely over-powerful unit given that it attacks on a 4 to start with. This really hit home when a friend of mine from Norway came to visit and utterly obliterated stockpiles of our troops and tanks in just one pass with 3 Super Bombers and a few fighters and then proclaimed the superiority of the Norwegian navy to all other navies in the world. He never knew how close he came to being physically throttled that day.

Much of the gameplay remains the same, albeit you can feel the changes on the Russo-German front almost immediately. Russia (the unfavored whipping boy) is no longer on total defense at all times and can even counterattack and claim Axis territories from both German and Japan. I can't remember a single game previously where Russia ever had the time or resources to build anything but infantry and the occasional tank or fighter. This has changed and most definitely for the better. The addition of Destroyers prevents the secret torpedo attack option made by interloping enemy subs and can even assist with shore shots like their larger Battleship cousins. Artillery pieces will boost infantry attack power and result in their not being used solely as cannon fodder to preserve more expensive units.

Pros:
-Very in depth game, and yet very fun
-The individual pieces really add flavor to the experience
-The reworking of the map helps resolve previous combat issues
-The game feels more streamlined with minor rules tweaks
-Addition of new units makes the game even better than it was

Cons:
-Expect your avage game to last 4-5 hours, not including the setup time
-The map zones are small and cramped making unit movement tedious at times
-Game has a moderate learning curve, and may throw off folks accustomed to games like "Monopoly" or "Life".
-The game pieces do not have containers like they did with the original, which makes for issues of it's own.

I could write many more paragraphs on the game but I will simply sum up by saying that the original game, while incredible fun, was flawed in many ways. Those flaws have been fixed and the game has even taken on extra depth as a result. If you have played the original A&A at any length you will be pleased with this edition!

I play and collect all kinds of boardgames. Axis and Allies is one of the best games I've ever played. There's so much strategy and realism to the game. It's amazing how the conflict setup on the map plays out similar to the events of WWII. Really makes you think, really is a lot of fun. But make sure you have set time out to play or you'll be up till 4am... :P

Axis and Allies is a very playable WWII stategy game. The setup time, which I was told could be as long as 30 minutes, only takes about 10 minutes. As a turn-based game, it can seem a bit slow at first as new players are overwhelmed with a multitude of choices that a more experinced player handles with ease. The replay value is immense, and I have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy this game for many years.

THIS GAME IS GREAT!!!!

But don't buy it from these seller because there charging an arm and a leg for it.

I got mine from Toy"R"Us and only payed $30.

So if your going to get it don't buy it from these sellers.

I love this game, but if you play with the same people it can get repetitive. We came up with a simple house rule that totally changes the strategy and flow: on each round of play, the order of turns is random! We put one of each country's markers in a little (opaque) container, then take turns drawing markers to determine order of play. After all markers have been drawn, they all go back in the container for the next round. Bacause it is not unusual for one country to get two moves "in a row" against an opponent, one must defend very carefully. For example,if the order in the first round is GB, Germany, Japan, Russia, USA the game will start much differently than usual; then the next round comes out Russia, USA, GB, Japan and Germany. Both Russia and USA have then moved twice between Japan's and Germany's first and second move. If Germany and Japan overextended on Round 1, they may be in big trouble by their second move! Anyway, every game is different using this variation.

I requested my ten year old son to write this review:

It's awesome, absolutely awesome! It's probably the funnest game I have
ever played. From what I know it's mainly boys that really like to play with it. I do not why but that's the way I have seen things. I think it's a great game for people who like strategy. When I first opened the box it's like opening a box and finding $1000! It just stunned me for a few seconds. When I first opened the box and saw the attractive, eye-pleasing board something inside me just made me want to play it. If you don't like reading instructions then it's not your day because there are 40 pages of rules. I think it's educational because they put little notes on the side of the instructions and tell you what's happening in the world of World War II. They tell the type of weapons the Axis and the Allies used. The guns that the infantrymen hold sometimes bend, but that's the only thing that might be annoying. The only thing I would hope is that there would be a World War I version of the game some day.

My friends and I have been die-hard fans of the original version for years. We tried the "Europe" version once, and generally hated it. Then a different group convinced me to try the revised edition of the "world" format. It's more difficult, and therefore better after the players reach a certain skill level.