Axis and Allies

Axis and Allies is a 1998 turn-based strategy video game closely based on the Axis and Allies: Classic board game.

Players take control of one of five world powers at the start of 1942 in WW2, grouped into the opposing factions of the Allies (US, UK, and USSR) and the Axis (Germany and Japan). Victory conditions are set at the start of the game: complete world domination, the capture of enemy capitals, or reaching a set level of economic power by the Axis.

The game is turn-based, with the USSR turn first, and the USA turn last. Each power’s turn of the game is broken into several phases. First is the research phase, where IPCs (a representation of industrial power) can be gambled in an attempt to develop advanced technology, such as jet engines or rockets. The remaining IPCs are then used to buy troops in the purchase phase. Troops are then moved in the combat move phase, and battles resolved in the combat phase. Non-combative moves are then performed in the non-combat move phase, new units are then placed at the powers’ factories & IPCs for all territories the power now controls are collected in the place units/collect income phase and the powers’ turn ends.

A second edition of the game was released in 1999 titled Axis & Allies: Iron Blitz. It added a function to allow the third edition rules of the game as well as new features such as allowing a submarine to submerge instead of withdrawal and having multiple AA guns occupy the same territory. In addition, it included many alternate scenarios, providing for events that ranged from a Western Allied-Soviet war after World War II (Allies: UK/US vs Axis: Soviet Union/(Communist) Germany), to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact being made into a formal alliance, which turns Japan into the Allies (Allies: UK/US/Japan vs Soviet-German Axis.) And, of course, there is the default scenario from the board game (Allies: UK/US/Soviet vs Germany/Japan.)