Ralph Boerke's Tribute to Axis&Allies

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Disclaimer: Axis & Allies is a registered trademark of Milton Bradley. The use of their trademark 'Axis & Allies' by Tacit Memnos Infinitum and Generals of Waterloo is not approved by Milton Bradley.

Generals of Waterloo [Top]

I created Tacit Memnos Infinitum in November 1993. This company is my personal business which covers my teaching and training, programming, internet, and computer support services.

A career in games is my desire and I decided to use a name that reflects this desire. I created Generals of Waterloo in 1998. The name reflects a few things.

Generals: I am an avid history buff and military history especially.
Generals: This term is associated with leadership and command.
Waterloo: I live in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Waterloo: The site of the famous battle and defeat of Napoleon.
Generals of Waterloo: All of the above. I will be a leader in military and adventure games.

This company will be responsible for all of my gaming projects.

Current board game and card game projects include Geopolitics, Supply, Weather, Large 1942 Map, and Nato vs Warsaw Pact.

Current Internet game projects include: World at War: WWII

Current Computer game projects include World ar Zero and a few secret projects.

To contact GOW send an email to me tacit@kw.igs.net

To order a game go to the Order Form page.

Personal History [Top]

1970's-1992

When I was young I played a lot of RISK. The neighbourhood kids and my dad and brother and I would play all the time. As I got older I still played RISK. Even into my University days. After University while working in Toronto a group of friends of mine and I got together every Thursday to play RISK and watch the Simpsons, this back in 1991.

We got tired of Risk as it was limited in its playability. Having grown up playing RISK we all knew its limitations. To try and make RISK more playable I drew on the map to create a Russia continent, renaming the remnants of Asia, the Orient and the Middle East and having Europe slightly smaller.

1992

This got my friend, Jeff Duffield, thinking; he then started to make a new map of the world which was an excellent rendition copied from old cartographers' work (1500's and 1600's maps). He also got some gromets which he coloured and cut up to make some new units. We now had Infantry, Armour, Ships, Rockets, Land Mines and Sea Mines. My other friend, Dean DeVries, and I worked with Duffy to get the rules down. I was looking for more units and Axis&Allies had some so I bought it. This was in Toronto in 1991. We played A&A and then applied its units and some of its rules (combat) to our game which we called World War Zero.

Another friend, Andy Roberts started to play WWZ with us and I made a number of maps of ficticious worlds and the games were pretty good. I also started to play a lot of Axis&Allies with Andy who prefered it to the World War Zero game because that game never seemed to end; we would play and if someone got too powerful the others would team up on him until another player became too powerful and so on. So my affair with A&A started.

1993

When I moved (back) to Waterloo I brought the game to the attention of some other friends and a new player was hooked on the game. So now I play with my friend Glen Morgan on a weekly or monthly basis. his son is just getting old ebnough to play RISk and in a few more we will get him in on A&A too.

Back in 1992 I bought my second set of men from Milton Bradley and in 1993 I bought my first expansion by Gamer's Paradise (#2). I bought 2 more sets of men from MB for $23 CDN P&H included in 1997.

After dozens of games I was a bit flustered at Milton Bradley's Axis&Allies. I felt that it was too restrictive and did not emulate the real war enough for my tastes. I started to make my own maps. My first map was basically the A&A map with almost every territory split into two. The next map I did the territories were again split or cut into threes. In 1994 I bought Xeno's A&A expansion, the World at War 1939. I was very surprised as Xeno's map looked a lot like one that I had made the only major difference is that it had France and China territories coloured. I started to design my maps on the Computer as I was thinking of making PC versions of Axis&Allies and of World War Zero.

I have seen Xeno's Europe and Russia at War games in a store but were too pricey for me ($70 CAN). With the Internet I have found some more ideas and opinions on the game. The original Nova map of Axis & Allies was larger and had rules that were similar to some of the Xeno Expansion rules.

1995

My attempts at making a PC version of A&A were not getting too far. At the time I was learning C++ and as I learned I was programming for the game. I was learning graphics and sprites and such when I received a letter from Hasbro (owner of Milton Bradley) asking me to 'cease and desist'. I complied. I have also come in contact with a few other programmers who also received letters from MB or Hasbro asking them to stop. I was surprised and pleased to see Dogs of War - a computer game of A&A. I asked the owner of Dogs of War if he had any problems. He thought at the time he did not but time has shown that MB caught up with him and DOW is no longer available. :( Hasbro has just released its CD ROM version of A&A in September 98.

I came up with an idea for adding geopolitics into the game of A&A. Had made a bad set of business cards from a machine at a mall (50 cards for $2.50) and wrote the geopolitical effects on the backs. This eventually led me to my Geopolitics Expansion. Of course when looking at realism you need politics, weather, terrain, morale, espionage, diplomacy, logistics,.... I thought of using cards for adding weather and thus TheWeather Expansion was created. I continued to work on my maps and other games at this time and each project was cross pollinating the others. SupplyTokens was the last of my first set.

1996

My expansion set is sold for the first time. Home made cards for about $30 US, came with plastic chips and rule books. Price wasn't too bad considering you get 3 expansions in the set. I also included a list of New Rules at the time, but after seeing so many out there on the web I decided I would just give them away (some are out there anyways discovered by similar minds). I now post them on my site and still come up with or find new ones occasionally.

I thought that more units (from my World War Zero game) and the neutrals should be included as well. I found the Australian Design Group's the World in Flames and Days of Decision at a game store and have tried to use some of their aspects in the games I am designing.

My WWZ game was also getting underway at this time. Then came the daunting task of programming the databases. I am working on the interface and databases still and all the time thinking of what else I can add to it. I have gone through at least ten versions of maps to get all of the effects that I wanted (convoys, fronts, lines of communictaions, large oceans where ships need to patrol for the enemy, lots of room to manuevre armies,...) and have ended up with a map you will see in "Ralph Boerke's World at War PBEM Game". I have used one of my earlier maps and updated it with new ideas as my Large 1942 Map. About 4 years in development and 1 year of playtesting and will be avilable in a few months.

1997

My programming of WWZ for Windows and A&A for Windows has not been in vain. I always wanted to do my original game World War Zero on the PC. But I do not want to get too heavy into trying to program an AI (fuzzy logic, neural nets, etc.) that can compete with humans. I came across the idea of having human opponents battle each other and that this can be accomplished on the internet. I am programming a database and an interactive internet site that will allow 50 or so players to wage war on a map that is 20 times larger than A&A's. This internet game also has more of everything - diplomacy, espionage, technology, resources, logistics, and more. I purchased www.worldatwar.com and hope to have this game up and running sometime in 1999.

The first scenario will be World War II, but other scenarios are being planned which will include: Napoleon, Rome, WWI, and China. I am a fan of history and especially military history and almost every century has some conflicts that can be (and might be) applied to my game setup.

1998

Revamped my cards and went to a professional printer and made a few thousand sets. No more plasitc chips as the supply tokens are now also thick paperboard liek the cards. Version started to sell in June 98.

I thought of Gamer's Paradise and how they went about enlarging the map (changing movement costs). But I noticed the board was always empty in the South Pacific. I came up with the South Pacific Expansion which renames the boxes in the corner and allows you to make use of them. However now this area is more important and you end up with more units down there and need expansion boxes for the units!

I also bought a new set of RISK. With this version you get troopers, cavalry and artillery which represent 1, 5, and 10 men respectively. I thought they would alter the rules and allow Cavalry to move two and Artillery to fire into enemy zones. I was dissapointed but took my ideas for these units and put them into A&A. RISKMEN expansion was developed. As I can't sell you anything but a piece of paper and you need to buy both A&A and RISK to play this I posted this expansion for free as well. Am working on a reciprocal rule for using A&A men on the RISK board.

One thing in the back of my mind was - what about after the war? I had seen the alternate rules for the "Patton Charge" where its 1945 and the US attacks the USSR. I thought about this as well and decided to continue where history left off in 1945 but war doesn't start right away. This is more accurate and a cold war starts but proxy wars take place and a nuke war could happen. And the NATO vs Warsaw Pact game came about.

Another thing that I found was desired on the web was the need for a large map with good rules. Xeno left me (and others) a bit flustered with the rules and you definitely need 5 players to play that game (USSR is a separate player!). I wanted a map where you can still have two people play the game. Thus the Large 1942 Map came about. Digging into my past maps I revamped one and play tested and revamped again and came up with a brand new map in more ways than one (news to come in the next months!)

My own expansions: Geopolitics, Supply, and Weather are three attempts at getting more realism into the Axis&Allies game. New Rules is another set of options for inclusion in Axis&Allies which is still evolving. I have posted the South Pacific Expansion and the RISK Expansion on this site. I am also working on two new expansions of my own maps called 1942 Large Map Expansion and the Nato vs Warsaw Pact Expansion. These two should be available by early 1999.

1999

Geopolitics Version 3.0 ?
Weather Version 3.0 ?
Supply Version 3.0 ?
Large Map 1942 Version 1.0
NATO vs Warsaw Pact Version 1.0
A&AMEN (RISK Free Expansion) aka RISKMEN Return
World At War Internet PBEM Game Era 1938
Secret A&A Map Project