Axis and Allies 1942 Online Review

I have been enjoying Axis and Allies for almost twenty years now. I started with what is now called Axis and Allies Classic, the 1984 edition.

I bought it for forty dollars (plus eight dollars shipping and handling) when I was about twelve. I had played the game at a neighbor's house, and absolutely fell in love with it, obsessing over it and mentally playing and replaying games in my head, trying to understand its ins and outs. I read the strategy guide, looked for opportunities to try new strategies, and even built a custom table for the game, something that barely fit into the cramped room my brother and I shared.

I never became an expert in A&A, at best I am a fairly good casual player and the nice thing about A&A is that you don't have to be a massive board game nerd to enjoy it. The rules are complex, but the basics are easy to grasp.

Once I went off to college, it was years before I played another A&A game, and in that time there had been a couple revisions to the game, most significantly the 1942 edition in 2009 that added a bunch of new units and rules to the core gameplay. There also was a drastically dumbed down variant released, called Axis and Allies 1941 that is so poorly balanced and unfun that I prefer to pretend it doesn't exist. Visiting the Wikipedia for Axis and Allies shows a massive long list of variants, half of which I have never heard of or seen before.

From boardgamegeek, the original
 contents of a 1984 edition

The 1942 variant is superior to the original one in almost every respect rules and units wise, although the presentation suffers somewhat as not only does it does not come with physical IPCs, forcing you to keep track of purchases with a piece of paper and a pen, but also lacks the nice styrofoam boxes with dividers for storing each country's units that the 1984 edition came with.

As far as gameplay goes though, the 1942 variant shines with the addition of new units like the destroyer, cruiser, and artillery and a better laid out map that forces more strategic thinking from both sides.

It truly is a demanding game, that nicely balances the risk of dice rolls with the strategy of picking the right unit combinations and placement. Incidentally, this is why I don't really like classic Risk, as luck plays a massively outside role in it and there are no different unit types. I will say that Risk Europe does a great job of mitigating this problem and I will probably review it sometime.

For the above reasons, I was very thankful to see that Beamdog Software used the 1942 ruleset and board for their excellent adaption that hit Steam this past summer in early access. It started out with quite a few bugs in it, including some major ones with online play, but they have been working hard to fix them.

None of the depth and complexity of A&A has been lost and the translation to computer definitely speeds up the more tedious portions of gameplay, such as counting die rolls and figuring out casualties. Also not having to spend 30-40 minutes setting up the game for initial play is a really nice bonus that might be my favorite feature. Online play against friends across the country is great, and the graphics are nicely done to aid gameplay, without being distracting.

I like the overall interface, and once you get used to how units are moved around its very straightforward to play(the transport can be a little confusing at first, especially with loading units from a different sea space but you just have to remember to move it, then click the units you want to load, then move it to its final destination).

My only real gripe is that I wish you could have a side made up entirely of AI players in online multiplayer as it would be nice to occasionally team up with friends to take on the computer. Right now there must be a human on each side in online play, but hopefully Beamdog adds that feature at some point in the future.

Overall I would say the game is a solid A- and promises to only get better.