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Axis & Allies Miniatures

	Author: Jim Zabek Article Type: Miniatures Game Review Publication Date: 12/14/2005 Developer: Avalon Hill Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Related Categories: World War II, Turn-based, Tactical

High Hopes

Tabletop games (including wargaming and miniatures) and hype rarely are found in the same sentence. Axis & Allies Miniatures is an exception. Never have I seen a boardgame so eagerly anticipated by so many gamers. This summer the word of mouth buzz around this game told me that Axis & Allies Miniatures was on the mind of every almost gamer I knew. It wasn’t the only game we were talking about, but it was mentioned by almost everyone I knew. It seemed the entire wargaming world had heard about it, wanted to know about it, and wanted a copy – if only to see what the game was about.

Gamers can hardly be faulted for their excitement. The Axis & Allies franchise is extremely well known. Larry Harris’ design has probably been played by every board wargamer at one time or another and most gamers own at least one copy of the original game, if not the other games in the old Gamemaster series. The Axis & Allies boardgame is the ultimate entry-level wargame; it is simple and strikes an accessible balance between history and fun. Little wonder, then, that moving the Axis & Allies franchise to a new medium gets gamers’ hearts pumping.

The results of those other transplants of the Axis & Allies franchise have yielded mixed results. The latest attempt to create an RTS game was a flat out disappointment to wargamers. Concessions to gaminess that conform to standard RTS conventions created a PC game that was almost unrecognizable to its boardgame counterpart. But that has never stopped innovation. The hope, for both gamers and publishers, is that sooner or later someone will get it right. The question this time is: did they get it right with Axis & Allies Miniatures? 

The decision to try Axis & Allies with miniatures must have been both easy and difficult. On one hand the minis business has never been better; Warhammer and its sister games are wildly popular. The Mage Knights and Hero Clix games are also very successful sellers. Wizards of the Coast has its own highly successful lines of minis: Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures and Star Wars Miniatures. Miniatures games seem to be successful like little else and appear to be able to hold their own against the lure of electronic games. With Wizards of the Coast’s experience with the genre and the formula that miniatures are popular and a money maker, the decision to try Axis & Allies as a miniatures game seems like a no-brainer – at least from a marketing perspective. But the wargames are a niche market, and not an especially profitable one. Many gamers were curious how the game would turn out.

Battleground of the Middle Ground

Despite owning the venerable Avalon Hill franchise of games, wargamers who measure their gaming experience in decades remember that much of what Wizards is doing with their brand these days bears very little resemblance to classic titles that defined wargaming. Games such as PanzerBlitz, Starship Troopers, and Tobruk were classics from the day they were printed. But times have changed and no amount of grognard lamentation can alter that. Gaming is big business these days and wargame sales aren’t what they used to be.

Realism, and the ability of the old school Avalon Hill to replicate it in a boardgame, was largely synonymous with what grognards want in wargames. To a company trying to make a living creating and publishing games this is a real problem. Publishers are forced to make dramatic choices in game design: publish unrealistic, simple games which appeal to a large segment of the public (and correspondingly higher profits), or cater to a niche market of hard core grogs with at best a modest return on the investment – one which might not even permit game designers to create games on a full time basis. Middle ground is difficult to find.

But Axis & Allies seems to have enjoyed a success that transcends logic. It has been a commercial success for decades and yet is a staple of tabletop gaming. No wargamer’s collection is complete without a copy of it. It has also enjoyed a number of tabletop expansions, including Axis & Allies Europe, Axis & Allies: Pacific, and Axis & Allies D-Day. Starting with a global conflict the choice for expansions was pretty obvious – they had to zoom in on the battlefield since World War II wasn’t fought in space. The first two expansions focused on theater level conflict instead of global. Axis & Allies D-Day zoomed in further and concentrated only on the epic struggle in Normandy.

Axis & Allies Miniatures continues the trend of zooming in on the battlefield that was moved from Axis & Allies Europe to Axis & Allies D-Day. The game is tactical, played on a hex based map. All this sound great to a grog’s ears so far. But what about Triple Point Blank Fire? Hang on there, Private. Let’s get to know the equipment first.