Axis & Allies Pacific 1940

As some of you know Tom and I used to do freelance game design / game moderation for Wizards of the Coast's Axis & Allies website. We combined the Axis & Allies board game with the Axis & Allies miniatures game and ran two different online campaigns for Wizards. These were pretty good jobs, essentially we were paid to play a game.

If you have ever played the Axis & Allies board game you probably know that Larry Harris designed the original game in 1981 and since that time there have been many different versions of the game - Europe, Pacific, Revised, Battle of the Bulge, Guadalcanal and AA50 Anniversary. Over the last few GenCon’s I’ve meet Larry Harris in person and had the opportunity to talk to him about his games. Last year we talked about the newest games coming out Axis & Allies Pacific 1940 and Axis and Allies Europe 1940.

Pacific is out now and some of the die hard fans are unhappy – you see WoTC has a very hard time editing their Axis & Allies products, they often have typos in the rules, omit rules, draw the maps incorrectly, use the wrong figure sculptures, etc. etc. Honestly, it’s shameful for a company to consistently make such mistakes. Once, ok – but every product has something wrong.

This time the Pacific 1940 has the wrong battle strip and only 6 of a required 10 Japanese tactical bombers. Here are two very funny videos talking about the issue:




Apparently Wizards is going to send players more tactical bombers and a correct battle strip. The problem is they have not communicated how to do this to anyone. Watch this:




These clips use the now much spoofed bunker scene from the 2004 movie Downfall.  These make me laugh!

Despite all these problems I did just buy Axis & Allies Pacific 1940. Anyone up for a game?