Axis and Allies Armchair General Revue --- February 23, 1998 Greetings, fellow warriors. First, some news that may be of interest to you An interesting bit of information was sent to my by Viper9009@aol.com regarding A&A for the computer. " Axis & Allies Game in the Works --- Hasbro finds computer games to be big business. Hasbro Interactive will publish a CD-ROM edition of Axis & Allies, the definitive mass-market board game of World War II. It should hit the stores this fall. No other details about the CD-ROM version of the game have been released ..., but Hasbro has had considerable success with bringing its traditional toy properties to the computer. According to PC Data numbers, during 1997 Hasbro's computer version of Monopoly was the fifth best-selling PC game, bringing in nearly $13 million in dollar sales. Still, the interactive division, which is only a couple of years old, is a very small part of Hasbro, a spokesperson tells us. Hasbro is about a $3 billion a year company. But even as its interactive division is booming, it seems the company's other divisions are undergoing some belt-tightening measures. The company today said it was planning to shut down a toy manufacturing plant in Rhode Island, laying off 150 employees. " VIPER Hopefully this won't be vaporware. In another piece of news Gamers Annual magazine put Axis & Allies in their Hall of Fame. Mentioned in the article was this club. :) Now for some government news. The government has made their decision in the G I Jim211 and KrnlShultz matter. After hearing from all sides, with both suspended members getting a chance to speak with the government the following was decided. Regarding the 1 month suspension both players received for language violations, a compromise was decided upon with both players suspensions reduced to time served (two weeks). On the matter of the 2 month suspension of KrnlShultz for his log altering, the government decided in a 7-3 vote to uphold this suspension. Also, Havspac@aol.com, the club's Chancellor of the Assembly would like to hear from you on what night would be best for a club meeting. Please send him your choice for what night the club meetings should be held on. Now some news from other members of your government: Greetings from the Law Office... I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for voting for me in the last election. Your strong show of support was deeply appreciated. The winds of change are in the air. The 3rd Edition rules are hot and heavy in the making by Milton Bradley. As many of you know, Larry, the creator of Axis and Allies, has solicited input from members of this and other clubs. From my communications with him, we really have made an impression with the response he received, both in quality and quantity. When these new rules are available they will be thoroughly reviewed and then we as a club will have to decide on where to go from there. Do we keep the 2nd Edition and make select changes? Do we take the 3rd Edition "Carte Blanche?" Start to ponder these question so that we can be prepared to make a decision. I'll keep you guys posted. I have been asked to say a few words about the East and West Panama sea zones. There was a little confusion over the wording of the "canal" counting as a space (as in east to west movement through the canal). When a ship passes through the canal, it doesn't count the canal as a movement point. (ie a ship in West Panama would go 1 to East Panama, 2 to E. USA, not 1 to the canal, 2 to East Panama, 3 to E.USA) For the purposes of game dynamics, the East and West Panama sea zones may be considered to be adjacent. The following question was then asked: Let's say that the US has an aa gun in Panama. The Japanese have a cv w/ 2 ftr's in the West Panama sea zone. The ftr's fly to attack US shipping in the Atlantic. Do the ftr's cross the land territory (and sustain an aa shot/s)? No. Since the sea zones can be considered to be adjacent, then the ftr's entire flight path is over water and as such they don't have to cross the land territory of Panama. A few words about the club procedural rules. (ie when an error is made or a player wants to change his non-combats past the deadlines, or he wants to split his US/Russian turn, etc) Players are highly encouraged to work these matters out amongst themselves. Actually, this is the preferred method by far. The club policy rules are in place ONLY in the event that an agreement cannot be reached between the players on how to handle soemthing. They are not rigid guidelines, nor were they intended to be, on how you MUST "fix" an error or handle "an opponent's request." Any mutually agreeable solution is acceptable. There is really no reason to refuse any reasonable request. Remember, you may need the return favor. Camaraderie, goodwill, and the spirit of fairness is what makes this club so great. I'm proud to be able to do my part as the Chancellor of Law in the pursuit of our goals of fun and fair play. HANDBOOK UPDATES Updates to the Handbook will be distributed in the monthly issue of the Bunker. Only the affected parts will be sent to you so they will be apparent and easy to read. At all times, a complete copy of the current rules will be available on the web site. To assist our internet players, the updates themselves will be enclosed by -- and --. UPDATE #1 **Save Air** - This is the club default combat order. If no specific instructions on an attack are received by the GM, the GM will roll the battle until ALL attacking ground forces are destroyed and then retreat the surviving air units. --The club default of save air does NOT apply to an attacking force consisting of air units only. In this case the default would be KAAC-- Well, that's all for now. We have a lot going on in preparation for the next major handbook revision, policy changes and some more fine tuning in the error correction department and forming sub-comitties to address these issues. Happy Mardi-Gras, it's just around the corner. Perhaps someone wants to mail me a King Cake... Take care and hope to see you at the Battle in the Baoyu! John News from the Net There are several new things to check out on the Club website: 1.A complete collection of all Club sanctionned games is now available in the Archives section of the website. They are organized by game number in groups of 100 for example Games 1400-1499, etc. All games are organized sequentially by number, and zipped (compressed) to speed up the download time. You will need some kind of unzip utility in order to access the text files. Utilities of this sort are avaliable in many places such as http://www.tucows.com. The actual data consists of the complete text log of each game including all GM and player messages, turns and results. 2.Several web-page based newsgroups which function in the same manner as the AOL message boards are now on the website. This area will provide a forum for discussions on strategy, bidding, and other Axis and Allies related topics. While this is especially of interest to our Internet members, I would encourage our AOL members to check out the newsgroup and post as this way all members will be able to read your comments and reply. At the moment I have created three seperate newsgroups --- (Club Issues, Allied strategy, Axis strategy). Each one is from a different server --- let me know which one you like the best for speed, reliability, etc. So check it out and post your thoughts for the entire world to see --- note that unlike the AOL message boards, the World Wide Web can be accessed by anyone so your thoughts will be available to anyone with a Web browser. 3.Our chat room has been functioning for a while now and several good discussions have already taken place. In order to facilitate the meeting of people in the chat room on the web site, a schedule of meeting times is being prepared. At least one member of the government (usually Havspac@aol.com, Chancellor of the Assembly) or a designated host will be present at each meeting. Once the schedule is avaliable, it will be emailed to all and posted on the website. If these meetings are well attended, they will be continued. If they are not, then we will hold them on a signup basis...or perhaps give up on the idea of a chat room. 4.I am trying to get a feel from the membership if having sound on the website would be appreciated or not. So far the responses I have received have not been decisive so I welcome feedback on this or any other part of the website. 5.I would like to find out if there is interest among the Internet members of the Club to look into a method for playing live games amongst non-AOL members of the Club. The method used would be possibly using Pow-Wow (a slow and unreliable server) or IRC/IRQ (using bots to act as dice rollers). I am forming a committee to look into this, please email if you are interested. Best regards, Michael Craggs micwil@sk.sympatico.ca Minister of the Internet That concludes this month's bunker. If you want something included in the Bunker, send it to me at Vampire999@aol.com. I can't guarantee I will include it, but I will do my best. Thanks, Vampire999 Axis & Allies Club President