Axis & Allies Revised Edition: A Review

It’s like the old Axis & Allies…only better! A new map, new units, and new victory conditions give this old classic a much needed, and much appreciated, face-lift. What you get is a game with more strategic options, increased tactical flexibility, and better balance. Axis & Allies Revised Edition is the fourth edition of this classic game. Released in 2004 by Avalon Hill, which acquired the rights to the game from Milton Bradley, the game is a light/medium war game covering the entire scope of the second World War. There are five great powers – U.S., U.K., Russia, Germany and Japan – that are divided into two teams: U.S., U.K. and Russia form the Allies, while Germany and Japan form the Axis (hence the name of the game). Two to five players can play, and a game will take several hours to complete. For those people that are familiar with the original game, this version of the game acts more like a big upgrade rather than a totally redesigned game.

The Details – Components and Appearance – The components are a major strength of the game. In the original game, each country had the same scuplt for the pieces (except the infantry); the only thing that was different were the colors. Not so in this version of the game. The fighers, bombers, tanks, artillery, submarines, battleships, destroyers, transports, aircraft carriers AND infantry are all sculpted differently for each country. A few exceptions apply (i.e. U.S. and British tanks use the same mold) but for the most part they are all different. Not only that, but they are modeled after the actual vehicles used by each country in WW2! The country unique pieces really add to the theme as German Panther tanks battle Russian T-34s, while U.S. P-38 fighers dogfight with Japanese Zero fighers. The only bad thing I can say about the components is that the game doesn’t come with the little styrofoam storage units to keep the units in. This means that you will have to buy a plastic container with sub-sections from Michaels or Jo-Ann fabrics to keep your pieces orderly. In terms of appearance the game is also a noticeable improvement. The map got a face-lift in terms of its appearance. The oceans were darkened, Russia and Japan’s territories were made to be more brown and yellow (respectively) to make it easier to tell them apart, and the sub-sections to place additional units that were on the previous board were eliminated – which gives more room to place units. Furthermore, the rulebook looks great, and is filled with helpful illustrations with captions. It’s very easy to read through and much clearer than the previous one.

Basic Gameplay – I am not going to go over every little detail of the gameplay, but I will give a basic description for those who are unfamiliar with old Axis & Allies. If you are familiar with old Axis & Allies, then I’ll say that the game basically works the same now as it did before in terms of basic gameplay. Basically, you control one of the 5 great powers. The game plays in an I go – you go format, with each great power completing its entire turn before the next power goes. The powers go in a pre-determined order. During your turn you research new technology, purchase new units, attack enemy territories or units, reinforce or maneuver your forces, place your newly purchased units, and collect money based upon the territories you control at the end of your turn – and any territories you captured that turn count towards how much money you make. Managing your economy – the money you make and what you spend it on – is just as important as managing your units around the board and in battle. The combat system is very simple. Each unit has an attack value and a defense value, and a single dice is rolled for every unit during each round of a combat. While there may be many different units, you can group them together according to their attack value (if you’re attacking) or defense value (if you’re defending) and roll the dice in batches, because one ‘hit’ is just as good as another no matter what unit causes it. So in the end combat resolves rather quickly and easily despite great variances in the units involved – and this is and has always been one of the game’s major strengths.

Many of the units have special abilities, and these serve to significantly increase the complexity of the game. For example, submarines can make a special sneak attack that acts like a ‘first strike’ ability, while tanks can ‘blitz’ and move through 2 territories in one turn. Some of the rules might seem clunky, but most of them are basically intuitive for anyone who knows anything about WW2, or even warfare in general (i.e. destroyers negate submarine abilities, bombers can strategically bomb factories, artillery increases infantry attack value, fighters but not bombers can land on carriers, etc.). This makes the abilities and ‘exceptions’ to the basic system pretty easy to remember. By far the clunkiest area of the unit rules are those for transports, which is unfortunate given their relative importance in the game.

New things in this Edition – There are several new things that greatly affect the game. One of them is the rearranged map. The seazones were altered to make it more difficult to cross the Atlantic, while a neutral Sahara desert makes it harder to roll through Africa. But the biggest change in the map was on the German-Russian front, where several new territories were created. This allows the Germans/Russians to play a constant cat and mouse game along the whole front, attacking and counter-attacking, and also offers multiple routes to Moscow. One major gameplay effect of this is that it’s now a lot of fun to play as the Russians!

A second new thing with the game are the new units: Artillery and Destroyers. Artillery cost 4 ipcs (1 more than infantry and 1 less than armor), and act as the perfect bridge between infantry and armor in terms of combat capabilities. They also boost the attack value of infantry, allowing you to counter-attack more effectively (again, makes playing as Russia more fun). Destroyers are a medium fighting ship, better than subs but not as good as battleships, and are priced in-between both. Destroyers also negate the special abilities of submarines. I felt that both new units fit seamlessly into the game and in fact fill vital ‘in-between’ slots that I thought were missing from the previous game. A third new thing are the adjusted unit costs and abilities. In the old game, the ‘expert’, or ‘broken’, strategy was to simply build ridiculously large numbers of infantry and just sit there, daring your opponent to attack you. In terms of unit costs, it just wasn’t worth it statisticly to invest in other units. It also made the game not fun. So in this edition tanks are better on defense, while fighters, bombers and carriers are all reduced in price. That, in conjunction with the new units and new map, encourages building a variety of units in a combined force, and that in turn makes attacking on a regular basis not only worthwhile, but necessary to win (and that goes for everybody, including Russia!).

A number of other changes were made, but none greatly affect the game. A new set of victory conditions based off of key cities rather than capitals seems like a way to adjust the length of the game, but in reality doesn’t change much; the lowest / easiest victory condition to achieve (8 cities) is grossly unbalanced in favor of the Axis, while the middle victory condition (10 cities) is little different from the old victory condition of controlling 2 out of 3 capitals. It seems that the only way to play a balanced but still shortened version of the game is to set your own victory condition of about 9 cities (there are 12 total, including the 5 capitals). Another change that looks like it affects the game but really doesn’t is the directed technology research. In the old game you generated a random technology; in this version you choose what tech you research. The problem is, you are still just as (un)likely to get the technology as you were before, and it is almost always more cost effective to invest in additional troops / gear than it is to research tech. Nevertheless, the ability to research a tech of your choice does open up new strategic options, such as “I’ll try and research heavy bombers and if I succeed, then I’ll start buying lots of bombers”, or “I’ve got a lot of subs that are going to attack this turn…why don’t I research super subs and see if I get lucky so I can get an advantage in this key battle”.

Analysis / My Thoughts – I like this game. It is, in essence, a light/medium wargame that covers the scope of World War 2, with a great blend of strategy, tactics, and luck. Right up my alley! It has far more depth than light wargames like Risk (where all units are exactly the same) or Diplomacy (where all units are essentially the same), but doesn’t try to be too realistic or detailed so that you become bogged down in the specifics. There is, for example, no difference between Britain’s tanks and Germany’s tanks, or between Russia’s infantry and Japan’s infantry; all units of one type are exactly the same for each power. Similarly, the territories on the board represent a variety of real-life areas of different sizes and of varying terrain, with different real-life resources, but in the game they are all the same aside from their location relative to other territories, and their IPC (or production) value. Thus South Africa is worth the same as Australia, while Manchuria is worth as much as Eastern Canada.

Luck definitely plays a large role in this game. Having a mathematically oriented mind will definately help you determine the odds in different battles, and thus help you decide where to attack and with what, but in the end lady luck decides who ultimately wins, so trying to rely on ‘averages’ to flawlessly predict the winner of battles is futile. On the whole, every player will experience a few battles where they got lucky and won (or got lucky and did way more damage than they should have) and also experience a few battles where they they got screwed by luck and lost (or won a Pyhrric victory when they should have won easily). Which battles lady luck decides to mess with may determine the outcome of the game if each side is otherwise equal. Some players may dislike the role of luck in the game. I feel that it is a huge advantage, and is balanced well with strategy and tactics. Better strategy will win except in extreme circumstances, and better tactics will make up for bad luck except in extreme circumstances. What makes the luck so good is that it brings uncertainty to the game. It brings excitement. After all, we are fighting a war here, and much is uncertain in war. In fact, in actual war luck plays a great role, and this game accurately reflects that. Luck serves to make each battle exciting, even hopeless ones, as the underdog still has a chance to succeed or at least inflict some damage and drain the enemy of valuable units.

The game makes you really feel like you are a leader in charge of running an economy and managing a war – the pieces representing your units really add a lot to the experience and the game would not be the same without them. The map and starting unit positions, combined with the mechanics, do a very good job of making you feel like you are fighting in WW2 specifically, and the mechanics of the game will often shape your strategy so that it mirrors those actually employed by the 5 powers during the war. For instance, because of its small economy, immediate threat of invasion, and need for defense, Russia is forced to build infantry, and use it along with artillery, tanks and planes to attack, retreat, and counter-attack against better equipped German forces (much like the real WW2). Likewise, due to its large economy, relative immediate safety, and distance from major theaters of war, the U.S. is forced to build transport fleets, and use them to ship ground troops to Europe, Africa, or the Pacific – just as the U.S. did during WW2. There’s nothing in the game that says you have to do these things, rather, the mechanics of the game are designed so that the players are encouraged to act this way.

Now that is not to say that there is only one way to play, or that there is one ‘optimal’ strategy, because there is not. Aside from the fact that each power offers its own unique set of challenges, and thus its own unique set of strategies and tactics, is that there are a number of viable strategies to win for both the Axis and the Allies. The old version basically had only one way for the Axis to win, and that was to take Moscow. That’s still a good strategy in this game, and probably the best one, but it’s not the only one that works. One of the great things about Axis & Allies is that while it is a multiplayer war game (2-5), because the powers are divided up into 2 teams, it avoids many of the problems that multiplayer wargames tend to have – i.e. kingmaker. Likewise, while the game does have an elimination mechanic in it, it is not a true elimination mechanic in that you can never be permanently eliminated from the game; if an ally liberates your territories you can start producing units again and get right back in the action. The partial elimination mechanic is brilliant in its own way – it encourages each power to fend for its own survival when things get tough rather than work towards the benefit of the team, creating tension between powers on a team that would otherwise act like one big team that is simply sub-divided into sections A and B (and C).

What do I NOT Like About this Game? – It takes freaking forever. If there’s one thing that didn’t change at all from the old version to this version, it was the amount of time that it takes to play the game. Like Risk, Axis & Allies games can take forever, as there is no real end-game mechanic to bring about the game’s conclusion. The game is designed so that the Axis have an initial advantage in board position and units, but the Allies have an advantage in production capacity. This means that the Axis have the advantage to begin with but that over time the Allies will become stronger. So if the Axis are going to win they have to do so early on, and if the Allies are going to win then it will happen later in the game. Now in games where the Axis win the time length for the game may be fairly reasonable – 2 to 4 hours or so. But in games where the Allies win the game takes way too long to play, like, 5 to 8 hours or even more. The other problem with this design is that if the Allies are able to hold the line and cross that threshold where they have the advantage, the game becomes more or less a foregone conclusion and Axis players will often not be motivated to actually finish the game (and who could blame them).

I should also point out that it is hypothetically possible for the Axis to attain equal economic position with the Allies, but in the process lose their initial unit / board advantage, which in turn could cause the game to enter a long jockeying for position phase before one side finally took the advantage back. Such a game would take a very long time to play, but on the flip side it would be extremely exciting. Moreover, I still believe that the game is not fully balanced. I do think that it is more balanced than in the previous edition, but I think that the Allies still have the edge over the Axis. By how much the edge has been reduced will require more playing of the game to determine. One final gripe that I had was that they didn’t include any container (aside from the box) to store the numerous different types of pieces in, effectively forcing me to buy plastic containers on my own just to play the game. So what if the plastic containers cost less than $5 for all three, I shouldn’t have had to buy them at all.

The Bottom Line – For the average person, Axis & Allies Revised Edition is a good, solid game. It’s not a great game, nor is it a bad game. For fans of WW2 themed games and for fans of wargames in general, Axis & Allies Revised is a very good game. For fans of the old version of Axis & Allies (like me) Axis & Allies Revised is a great game, and will bring many hours of enjoyment to you. I liked the old version, flawed as it was, and therefore I like this version considerably more. I also like the WW2 theme, and I enjoy wargames. So I would rate this game an 8 out of 10. The overly long length of the game, the slight lack of balance and a few clunky rules bring its score down. Otherwise, very good. If you don’t like wargames you probably won’t like this game that much (at least you wouldn’t rate it as an 8/10). But if you don’t like war games why are you still reading this review anyway?