Axis and Allies is one of those games that have been around for a long time and everyone’s heard of it. However, I had never played it or even seen it; all I knew was that it was long and complicated. So I approached playing it today with a fair amount of trepidation.
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Cons of Axis and Allies
First, the downsides to the game.
There are a LOT of tiny pieces that you have to move painstakingly across the board. This isn’t a game to attempt if you have any young children in the house (I would say at all).
It’s a fairly long and complicated game, though not as bad as I was afraid of. We blocked out two days to play it and managed to finish a “short game” (capture just one enemy capital) in a couple of hours. (This is what’s in the video we recorded, which will eventually be embedded below.) However, we kept playing and then had to take a break for the day.
Long, Complicated, with lots of Small Parts
The box is really big and there’s a lot of wasted space. If we decide to keep a copy in our bus, we’ll unbox it. All the little pieces and tokens shouldn’t need a very big bag.
Setup takes a while. Each country starts the game with specific pieces in specific locations, so you have to run through each.
Territorial games can be difficult to navigate emotionally. It’s hard not to take it personally when someone wipes out an entire fleet of yours. I think the only reason I was able to play it at all was because I was playing Germany. However, if you really enjoy Catan, Axis and Allies might be right up your alley.
Axis and Allies Frustrations
Unfortunately, allies cannot attack together, though they can defend together. I understand why they made the game this way (it’s already complicated enough; trying to remember who had already used their attack moves when assisting an ally would be really difficult), but it is frustrating.
Finally, if you’re not familiar with various kinds of ships, it can be really confusing to keep track of your different pieces. It’s easy to tell the infantry and tanks apart, and there are only two kinds of airplanes, so that’s not too bad. But there are five different kinds of ships! To make matters more complicated, each country’s pieces look a little different from the other countries’ pieces. My husband confessed to getting frustrated with me as I had to continually ask what kinds of ships were what.
Pros of Axis and Allies
If you made it through all that, here’s the good.
For WWII buffs or people who love tactical games, Axis and Allies is an in-depth game that they can really sink their teeth into. My husband and son were in their element (though my son struggled a bit when he lost battles).
While the personalization of the different pieces for different countries made the game harder for me to play, for someone familiar with the equipment and war machines of WWII, I’m sure this would be a huge plus. By necessity, any game based on real life will have to simplify and generalize (for example, Italy isn’t represented in the game at all), so maintaining some of the individuality of the different countries is really cool.
Learning Galore!
One thing that I really appreciated about Axis and Allies is that it made it really easy to see the Eastern Front, the Western Front, and the South Pacific arenas. It’s one thing to know that fighting took place in each location, but entirely another to try to balance your forces across more than one area. It’s also easy to see why Germany never bombed the US; their bombers likely couldn’t get there.
Overall, we will probably keep a copy, in storage if not in the bus. It’s a more expensive game to purchase new, and when my son is better able to handle the emotional side of losing a battle, I think he and his dad will have many delightful hours poring over the game. However, I don’t think I will play Axis and Allies again. I much prefer cooperative, logic, and puzzle games.
