Important News
After having been running our little business for nearly 30 years, we have decided that it is now time to really retire and devote our attention to the pile of unpainted figures, and enjoy our hobby playing games rather than designing them.
It has been a great pleasure to go to shows and meet players who have supported out business for a long time, and have a chance to chat.
What this means is that A&A will stop operating from the end of 2024, the last day of business being 31st December. We will continue to support our products through this website for some time into 2025, and are looking at options to perhaps archive the site for the long term. If this becomes possible we will put that information here on the site.
Many of the titles authored by David Manley will be passed back to him, and it is probable that they will be available through his Long Face Games, also on Wargame Vault.
As a final thank you, we are launching a "closing down" sale of our products on Wargame Vault, which will start of the 1st November and run until our last day.
Wargames Rules
We aim to develop rules that provide an enjoyable game in 3 to 4 hours on a 6 foot by 4 foot table, where possible without lots of paperwork or record keeping. The rules that the player sees are ‘simple’ but the various factors are based on extensive research into the historical data, whether that be about ships, aircraft or tanks.
All our rules have data listings for as many examples as we can find, so that players can play games in many theatres. In addition, we can provide the game data for any item that a player wants to use, so long as the historical data is available.
We write sets of rules ourselves, but also publish rules which have been developed by other people.
Why 'Engineering'?
When we are writing a set of rules ourselves, one feature of our work is that we spend considerable time researching the equipment that will be used in the game concerned. We want to be able to demonstrate the relative effectiveness of the weapons used by the protagonists, be that by comparing the rate of fire of a gun, the weight of a shell, the thickness of armour etc. Having done that these values have to be converted into a number or factor that can be used to represent this effectiveness. From this information we then 'engineer' the game data.
As a rule of thumb, when we are satisfied with the underlying basic calculations, we have adopted the idea of setting one aircraft, ship or tank as the standard, and all other aircraft, ships and tanks are tuned so that their relative performance appears in the game. As part of the process we now ask ourselves, "which piece of equipment is going to serve as 'The Hurricane' this time?"
This requires the extensive use of software to carry out some of the more intricate calculations in one process. Where possible we also like to have some sort of cost mechanism, so that a game can be fought with balanced "points values". Real life battles were very rarely fought between sides of equal strength; this would be no fun for players though as both sides must feel that they have a chance to win the engagement.
It can be that the final game data may indicate that some piece of equipment, tank, aircraft or ship may not match the player's expectations. It may appear to perform better or worse than its historical counterpart. What is often the case is that the evidence of the relative performance of, say, this or that enemy aircraft compared to my aircraft is anecdotal, reported after the event by a pilot who has just been through combat and has been scared witless, which might colour his perception somewhat. What is more difficult to take into account is the effect of long term use of equipment in action, or the use of less suitable fuel, for example. In most part, these effects can be represented as part of the results of the roll of the dice, representing the randomness of real life. It is also possible in some cases to allow the players to reduce some game factor to represent this sort of thing, but to maintain "fairness" the cost of the item concerned would also be reduced.
Product Support
We support all our products by means of this website. On the individual product pages you will find links to the following features, where appropriate.
- Quick Reference sheets
- Rules Updates and Clarifications.
- Rules Support packages, which incorporate any game templates or record sheets required within the rules.
- New and updated Game Data.
- "Other Stuff"
All the Support Documentation can also be found in our Rules Support Library where the documents are grouped by Type.
Customer Feedback
We always welcome feedback from our customers; it is a vital resource for us because you may well spot something which does not work, and this then leads us to make any necessary changes; sometimes we do this immediately if the problem is actually critical to the smooth operation of the rules; at other times this may be after a while, especially if we get a suggestions for something new to be added, and we need to check that the proposed change will fit into the way the game operates.
Quick Link to our Contact Us page
Quick Reference Sheets
Quick Reference Sheets (QRS a.k.a. “Quick Play Sheets”) for our products can be found on the relevant product pages; in some cases rules have relatively few pages so we do not produce a QRS for that set. We welcome all feedback and suggestions about these sheets and their content. We feel that they should not restate the actual rules, and should not normally be bigger than 2 sides of A4.
When using these, you must bear in mind that the body of text in the “rules as written” always prevails in the case of any difference between them and the QR Sheet. We hope that we do not make too many errors !
Sheets may need to be revised when rules undergo a revision. It is necessary to ensure that there is no mismatch between the content of the sheets and the body of the rules. Quick Reference Sheets are in A4 format, and may be made up of several pages. The pages can be printed back to back to reduce the clutter on the table.