Fun fact, in the 1941 version, the US's starting economic points are one short of what they're given on the map, which eats up another hour before we start arguing whether or not to include the missing point.

The problem with a Europe to scale is that it's really difficult to have the territories big enough to fit all those varying units in, yet not have Berlin and Moscow be adjacent territories.

I always assumed that the sizes were weird so people could fit the pieces in the regions, but they probably could have done a better job.

I love this game, but I think this new map makes Europe, the funnest part, too small. A suggestion I have is the Conquest of the Empire board.

I always figured the weird proportions were just a necessity so that some of the smaller territories could actually fit pieces. I'd be a tad concerned for that reason with this board, even if it does look better.

They stretch the map to make geographically small but important areas, like Europe, much bigger, so that you can fit all the pieces you need in the region. No need to be geographically accurate and draw Australia to scale, which is huge but almost never sees much action in the game.

I enjoy your series of "making the map of X better" Really liked your Castlevania video

Ironically, in your attempt to pick a popular version of the game you picked one of the least popular editions of A&A (with people who actually play the game, anyway) to modify lol. Classic and Global 1940 (mash Europe 1940 and Pacific 1940) together are the main two games that people actually play. Global 1940 probably has the closest thing to a historically accurate map (it fixes China being a playable country, accurate colonial holdings, Asia's scrunching, the diplomatic relations of neutral countries like Brazil, etc.), but Europe and Africa are still bloated to unrealistic proportions.

I played this once in college with 4 other guys, each being one of the 5 powers, we were drinking and smoking and it took all night and was a total blast, one of the most fun nights I can recall honestly. I was Japan, being the resident weaboo, my roommate who was this super blond, blue-eyed German looking guy was Germany, our friend Liam from the east coast was the USA, and I honestly can't remember who was playing England and Russia... maybe Henry's other friends, maybe my friend Jon Cross was there, was a long time ago. Anyway, the initial South Pacific conquest went great, even took India lol, and at a certain point Henry and I realized that if we truly pooled our resources in a pincer against Russia, we were nearly guaranteed the game would be unrecoverable for the Allies. Japan won many glorious victories that night : D I think we stopped playing when I started invading the West Coast lol.

I like your finished product. The biggest issue with Axis and allies style games are the amount and size of units being used. most maps are usually scaled atrociously to geographic reality to make space for the big stacks of sculpts being played with on the board. I've made several custom games similar to A&A and resorted to grossly over proportioned continents and nations to make gameplay less tedious

"The best game I never finished" describes basically every board game I ever started.

"I fixed the Aral Sea to its original size" :D

I believe the reason why is because Europe would be too small. Europe is a huge vocal point and that's where most of the action would be so other smaller areas that aren't that big of a deal in the board game get screwed over. Although Europe isn't the best either.

As an axis and allies fan. This is great to see

I’m sorry, but I feel like you’ve missed an important aspect of maps in general. Usability for the designated purpose. For example, subway maps often completely forgo actual geography in order to show relations of the lines that are most important for most riders. The importance is showing the lines and their connections. In war games, a big factor is space to place units. Many map choices are compromises in order to allow for all the units they want in certain areas, in A&A, that’s namely Europe! So, just like projections are a kind of fiction for the function of displaying a globe on a flat surface, distortions and placement of boarders is usually in the service of gameplay. This is not to say the maps are perfect on that front either, just that you might want to broaden the perspective of purpose. ^^

Board Game fan, so love this. Be great if you could do an overview of both 1940 versions, as those are more detailed and include more countries

My sister knew some people in college who had monthly games of Axis and Allies going back to when they were in high school. So about five years when she knew them. Over those 50+ games played, they never once completely finished a game. More than one, the game ended with someone's nose getting broken.

Omg same. I had to beg my dad to play this game with me, and he absolutely hated it but did it anyways for me. I got this board game for Christmas like 8 years ago and it was really expensive, but I absolutely loved it and everything. Wish I had more people to play with me though. It's just sitting in my closet taking up dust now.

Territory proportions were altered to accommodate the game pieces. Some territories were busier than others, and it wasn't feasible to have so many pieces in those small European sections of the board.

Ive been waiting for this video soooo long, glad to see its finally out.

Loved this! Recently started playing this with my dad again after 10 years of not touching the game. The map definitely needs a makeover and this looks really good!

Wow, a game I grew up playing! Thanks for bringing it attention

ok i have to agree at first glance the maps don't look so bad but the more you look at them the more worst it gets i really found this weird

The creator of Axis & Allies made another global WW2 game. The map is circular. Very unique. See what you can do with that one to make it normal?

Actually, I'm working on a map for myself for Axis and Allies! Awesome that you talked about it.

Need to make accommodations for pieces for several zones… part of the consideration in the original game I’m sure.

Have you heard of the board game, War Room? It was designed by Larry Harris, the creator of Axis and Allies. War Room is basically Axis and Allies 3.0. One of the many differences is that it features a round map for its board. You should check it out, and see if you like it better than the traditional A&A maps.

My friend and I started a 1v1 match on the weekend just gone, we went for 9 and a half hours and left it set up on his table, I'm going over again this weekend and we're gonna resume the game.

I made an oversized A&A map a few years back. Had it printed on a 6' x 3' banner with grommets on the corners to hold it in place. Turned out pretty good. I also included an area for upgrades from one of the computer versions. You can pretty much fit all of your miniatures in the proper territory this way. Only cost about $80 to print, but about 20 hours of Photoshop time. Definitely worth it though.

actually thailand wasn't a puppet of japan rather a forced ally

I didn't know you were another Axis and Allies player, but in hindsight, it makes a lot of sense

I never got to play Axis and Allies, so hearing that the board was larger than every dining room table on Earth combined and multiplied times 10 makes me think that the game probably could've allowed for even more divisions of territory.

Siam was a Japanese ally, not a puppet

Lol, what a Timing. Just saw the rise one. :D Nice job, again. 👍

Thanks for the video. Though I can’t agree. The reason the map is so warped is clear to anyone who has played as many times as I have. Europe just has by far the most action. So the territories are blown up out of scale to ensure you have the space to fit everything on and clearly identify what is happening. Places that don’t see much action such as South America, subsaheran Africa, and middle Asia are condensed. I may agree your map looks prettier and is definitely more accurate, but I wouldn’t want to play on it. It would have too much congestion of stuff in the relatively small Europe and tons of wasted space elsewhere on the board. I did think the video was fun and interesting though 😊

Love what you did, though I did want to ask. You are aware that the landmasses being the "wrong" shape is a stylistic choice, right? Also, the borders are wayyy too thin if you're using a colored border to denote cannot-cross

Please do more of these types of videos.

There's also Triplea if you want a cool digitized version with high mod potential. Anyone can fix any map they want.

As a geography and history buff myself, I appreciate the effort put into this to make the map accurate, however the reason why the proportions of regions are so off is to make it more balanced and cleaner of a game

I have not played the game, but I have heard of the inaccuracies of the map. Thanks for modifying it!

I love A&A. I have played all the way to the end on many occasions.

Reinventing the wheel…lots of A&A maps out there

The map in Axis & Allies 1942 Second Edition is the most accurate I've found. U.S. is not lined up, but otherwise pretty realistic.

Never considered of changing the map. But we included new technologies like "women work force - we can do it", thermobaric bombs, nuclear bombs, tank upgrades (tiger tanks), assault rifles (including MG42, Vampire night googles aso), baloon bombs, super carriers, slave workers, enhanced radar, better transportation systems, proximity fuses, self propelled artillery and many many more. It is one of my favorite games. We have campaigns which go over months.

EmperorTigerstar: "Although a name drop would be nice" Axis and Allies: "HAHAHAHAHA...... Wait, you serious?"

1914 axis and allies is scary looking too, hope you have a good couple of days

Mongolia and Tuva were not neutral, they full on helped the USSR...

The advantage of some of the continents sizing and location is because of the fact that in Europe, there is a lot more going on in this game whereas continents like Africa and South America do not need to be as large as there are in real life. For that reason, they shrunk those continents to make Europe bigger. They also edited the Pacific and parts of Asia for that same reason. (I will agree that the maps don’t always look that good, I’m just explaining the logic as a person who has probably put 200+ hours into those games)

I only really grew up playing axis and Allie’s d-day which I think had a decent map but it was also focused on a very small area and those were actually fairly short games

My favorite board game. One that I’ve played but also never finished. Great work here. The 1941 board is pretty atrocious for sure. I love the 1940 boards because the scale on those is so epic

Remember playing dogs of war back in the day, you could pick the teams. The Russia Germany vs everyone was pretty fun.

This game occupied many an hour of my college years--good memories.

urals should worth at least one point of production imo

I love this game.

You've got 2 of the world-conquering games, now time for the third. Do one on Diplomacy please!

Make the next video in the series another Axis vs Allies board game map from a different board, it's fun to just enjoy watching your videos (I don't play Axis vs Allies in General)

I too was not a fan of the original game map ( I still own one of the 1st versions of the game) so I went out to a local store that sold wall maps of the entire world and bought the biggest one that they had. Then with a sharpie, drew as close to the starting borders that the original game map had. I then did things like breaking up Russia into more zones/sectors, dividing up the capture points. That way (for example) instead of capturing the zone on the game map in central Russia and looking like you then controlled over 1/3 of the country, you had to capture multiple sectors in the country to control as much territory.

I just finished up redrawing the axis and allies avalon hill 2004 version. I added Italy and China to the game and painted pieces/territories. China has no industrial complex but can place the amount of infantry equal to half the amount of territories they have rounded up. Anyways there's a few more rules with them but let's get to what I changed. I added 3 more territories in China, Burma, split Anglo egypt into 2, added Finland, morrocco and split Easter Eurpope into 2, South being Poland and North being the Baltic states. I also added NW Europe on western Europe territory and split australia into 2. I added Honolulu and stalingrad as victory cities. I can show you all if you would like reply and I can send you a video of the map. We currently have a game paused right bow after three turns but you will defintly be able to notice changes.

I don't care if anniversery is out of print, It's my favorite.

I only know that game from the video game adaptation (the 2004 RTS one) I played tons as a kid, one of the few strategy games I had

One of my favorite games of AA was when I was playing Axis against my dad. I put a Japanese fleet in the Solomon Islands and he believed I was going for Australia. I was actually going for California. When I took it I dumped all my points into building tanks in North America and basically knocked the US out allowing Germany to focus entirely on the Soviet Union.

The sizes are such that places where many units will be (Europe, Russia, Africa) are larger than the places few units will go (South America)

I wonder if 'War On Terror: the Boardgame' is up next.

This game is awesome. Probably the best wargame in existence. Not too complicated yet layered with depth. I find the map isn't that bad if you use the markers for your units. Worst case with a massive army on one territory, you can use one marker and keep the territory units on the side of the board out of the way.

YES

I LOVE THIS GAME! I have the 1942 one

I'd love to see you do another take on Axis and Allies map fixes Next time, show us the Anniversary Edition. This map makes room to display France, Italy, China, and ANZAC distinctly. Second, please add Dutch Orange as a color to give appropriate territories to the Netherlands as the most interesting and strategically relevant minor power due to Indonesian oil reserves Finland, Bulgaria, and Thailand were each closely involved with the two major alliances but played smaller strategic and economic roles in the war than the powers involved including the Anniversary Edition and the Dutch, so it would probably keep the map clear and looking like a board game to stop with the addition of the Netherlands. On Historical Board Gaming's website you can see the designs for maps based on 1936. Perhaps you would finally include Poland for a little added suspense.

I think I've played one game of A&A (the orginal, never played any of the later editions) was actually finished. Most games we played until we either got too tired or too drunk. 🤣🤣🤣

My Brother has Axis and Allies but he never plays it because he had no one to play with.

That was fun to watch. I love your point of view. But you might want to rethink the spaces on it. It make Russian territory way to easy to move through. Remember the space lay out also determines how troops and ships move. Making Russia only 6 spaces will make moving across Russian territory super fast.

Hi, did you ever look at the War room map? It's made by the lead axis and allies designer Larry Harris and is a spiritual successor to it. It has a beautiful circular map projection. I think it could be worth for you to make a video literally just talking about that map and the pros and cons of the projection. At least just look it up online, for it really is a piece of art :)

We finished all our games, which typically ended with Russia falling to Germany or Japan. I always played Japan, and my best friend always played Germany, we won every game I can remember, mainly because the Allies were always terrible at working together. As far as improving the map and the game overall, Pact of Steel is the best version of Axis and Allies I've ever played. It adds Italy as a third Axis power, fixes all of the map issues, and every power had enough starting materiel to have more than one opening which vastly increased the diversity in play. It's still available on TripleA.

What is the name of the songs used in this video?

The reason the maps look so stroke inducing is to try and conserve space and to actually have room for the pieces. I would say they could have done better though.

You should check out the map of History of the World (Board Game) at some point. The game has some similarities to Risk, but fixes most of the problems, and adds fun Civilizations. The map is... highly distorted for stylization. You might have an interesting time with that one.

Love it. Only suggestion would be to change the ratio and not make it so wide.

Ah my favorite board game of all time, so true how wonky the maps look. The online community TripleA has made a few hundred versions of AnA, some look quite good!

@EmperorTigerstar, very nice map. Could I ask for a copy? Perhaps upload it somewhere in an editable format?

kinda curious as to where you get the map. may I ask where?

I know it's a sponsorship and you have to say that, but whoever wrote that has not idea how often leather wallets get put through the laundry.

Okay so my critiques, whilst I do prefer looking at this map in terms of its shape I think the distribution of territories will have a negative effect on gameplay and I also think having the Sahara and Himalayas be regions like the neutral regions is better as it makes it easier to tell movement at a glance. On to regional specifics, US china I think should be split vertically into an east and west, Eastern europe should probably be split between Balkans, Baltics and Eastern Europe (being Poland and Romania), southern Europe should be just Italy, Norway-Finland should be two different regions, North Africa should either be split into two (Morocco and Algiers) or three (and Tunis), Gibraltar should not have a land border with North Africa, Middle east should be split in two, Palestine (entire Mediterranean coast) and Persia, Central Asia should be split in two Caucasian in the west and central Asia in the east, Siberia should have its Pacific coast line be a new region or be a part of the soviet far east. Have Malaya/east indies be two separate regions, split Canada into three (east, central, west) and finally Have the USA be split into four: The Pacific coast (all the continental states on the pacific coast), the east coast (all states from the Canadian boarder down the Atlantic coast stop at Florida border), the south (all the states on the gulf of Mexico) and the Midwest (all the other states with no sea border). Also place all separate Island chain region in their own sea region.

I really like the 1998 Axis & Allies PC Game map, plus the 1999 Axis & Allies: Iron Blitz expansion pack. Granted, it is software, so they don't have to worry about it spreading out on a table, but it still had great portions for the continents and looked great. I don't like that the newer PC Game "Axis & Allies Online" uses a very bad map.

Please make a video on the map for Diplomacy by Avalon Hill. It looks really nice and realistic, until you notice all the weird details.

I wonder how this would change the pacific since so many islands now share sea zones

Axis & Allies Online is the practical way to play a "full game."

I like the board idea, but RISK already has a better and improved map in an electronic version of the game. I haven't played Axis & Allies online yet, but I think that I'll give it a shot.

mongolia: is neutral Mongolia who sent like 1 cavalry division to japan: I participated

I would really like to see a 1940 global third edition, some kind of definitive version

The reason Europe is as big as it is is because of pieces. Try cramming a ton of pieces into one tiny map space and it’s very hard. I play GW-1936 which is axis and allies on steroids and it is very hard to fit troops into spaces

using your phone to take a picture of the board is a solution to keeping a game going if you can't complete the game in one session

If your going to have a World Map you really need at least a 4 foot N/S tall map. I saw at a Games Convention someone used an enlarged map 6 feet tall

Axis and Allie’s global is lit

Can you do the risk Europe map next?

EmperorTigerstar, try looking over the Axis and Allies 1914 map, see if you can improve that one lol

I think the reason the map is so squished is because people don't have large enough tables to fit the board on without a serious overhang on either end.

Mainly because there are too many units in specific area of the maps and if u make everything to scale, Africa would be empty and Europe would be too crowded

As a A&A fanatic who spent ~300€ on 1914 and other games i am very offended that the worst version was taken. Should’ve done 1940global

Can you add the new textures to the map?

"Thailand was a Japanese puppet" I wouldn't say so.

I never had too much trouble finishing this game, but I was also too young to understand all the rules so I just ignored many of them