I Lost World War II Today

i-db50172bb0f6e95bd2d622d2965c3a63-PIC_0054.jpg

Continuing our military theme from the other day, I regret to inform you, Dear Reader, that the Axis won World War II. After Pearl Harbour, the US couldn't decide whether to concentrate its efforts in the Pacific or the Atlantic, and ultimately came to play only a minor role in the war. Britain, meanwhile, defended itself well and harassed the Axis in Northern Africa, but it lost almost all its overseas colonies to the Japanese and never gained a toehold on the Continent. After losing two huge battles against the Germans in the Ukraine, the Russian forces collapsed, and the Axis powers divided Asia between them.

David usually beats me at games, and it was no different with my first go at Axis & Allies today. But I had fun, and next time I'll know a little more about what to do.

[More blog entries about , , , , ; , , , ]

More like this

A few weeks ago, Kai gave me an interesting book on a subject of which I am almost entirely ignorant: recent military history. Auf den Spuren des "Elbe-Kommandos" Rammjäger by Dietrich Alsdorf (2001) deals with an episode toward the end of the Second World War, the so-called "Sonderkommando Elbe…
As I mentioned the other day, September 1 marked the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland and the "official" start of World War II. I say "official' because the invasion of Poland marked the beginning of a true shooting war in Europe after a long period of escalating tensions and…
That Myers character has snared me in his net again. Did I say Myers? Sorry, M e i e r. Sid Meier. The Civilization guy. It's been years since I spent any significant amount of time on computer games. The other day, however, I picked up a copy of the 2005 hit Civilization IV cheaply on eBay, and…
I'm always loathe to criticize a fellow ScienceBlogger, but, as the resident World War II buff and tireless debunker of Holocaust denial, I couldn't let this one pass. While perusing the Last 24 Hours feed yesterday, I came across a most curious statement in a slapdown by Greg Laden of an attempt…

A&A is a fun game...with one big flaw. The game in the end often boils down to Germany versus Russia in the Ukraine or Karelia. If Germany can win there, Russia is doomed and so are the allies. If Russia holds on, the Axis eventually gets mopped up.

A commenter on BGG tells me that the 2004 version of the game is "better balanced and more strategically open". Today we played a mid-80s version.

Paul:
The real war more or less boiled down to Russia vs Germany in the Ukraine...

Martin:
David must be good at A&A, since it's quite hard to win as Germany.

Cool! Now I can bring my set over and wreck some havoc. Plus I have an interesting mod - when I bought my set I had two sets of German infantry and no Americans. So I hand-painted all of the extra Germans green. And they look fabulous!

A&A is a great game, but when my friends play, we usually end up um, editing, history. As in, we'll have one guy play the island nations, one guy play the US and Germany, and I always get Russia. It's an interesting re-interpretation, even if it usually end with a food fight and threats of cabbage.

By JustaTech (not verified) on 12 Sep 2008 #permalink