Clever thread title… +1 karma.

Edit (title is completely relevant to your post - sorry, was reading very late at night)

I second Dondolee’s thoughts.  When starting out bear in mind how the game is ultimately won - for the axis, by taking Moscow before the allies can take either Rome or Berlin.  It’s a race to see who holds out longer.

Japan should efficiently grab land in the first two or so turns, build up factories in South Asia (rounds 1-4) and then ply tanks and infantry through India > Persia > Caucasus > Moscow.  Send enough troops through China and Siberia that you’ll have enough to punch through, but sending the bulk of your force on the southern route.  As you play more games, take note of which strategies allowed you to occupy territories faster and get a better flow of troops to russia.

Italy and germany’s role is to stay rich and keep russia poor.  They generally don’t have enough power to crack russia without some early luck, so you just need to treat 'em rough and keep 'em honest.  Never let russia get their 10 IPC objective - this is a death knell.  While you want to deny and pressure russia as much as possible, your main task is to not let UK/US kill you - a tough balancing act of agression/defence.  There are many ways to skin this cat, but piles of infantry and scattering of tanks are the best place to start from a learning perspective.  You’ll soon find the limitation of infantry - while extremely cost effective, they can only be in one place at a time.  It’s hard fighting two wars that are 5 spaces apart. While boats and planes pack less punch for the money, they can threaten a much larger area.  Once you get a handle of the flow of the game, you’ll find many ways that german planes and boats can improve your effectiveness.  As dondoelee points out, this is playing with fire and you expect to get burnt a few times while you figure it out - start simple.

Cheers

I and my friends feel that AA-50 is the best board games we have EVER played , we absolutly love it and will be playing it for the rest of our lives, no kidding!

DAAK has a pretty good LL system for AAR, it would need some modification for AA50 for reasons mentioned above (changed BB CA bombard rules, changes to sub rules)

http://www.daak.de/indexe.php3

I would agrue that for AA50 to BB and CA should fire with the ground forces and subs should only fire separately if no DD present, to reduce the variance.

DAAK use an SBR table where the attacker loses 2-3 IPCs (50% chance for each) per turn, from your starting cash pool (as in AAR bomber loses 2.5 IPCs on avergae vs AA gun [cost $15 in AAR]) and inflict 2-3-4 (33% each) IPCs damge to an IC in a 6+ territory since bombers inflict on average 2.92 IPCs per SBR vs AA gun. If no AA then attacker loses nothing and inflicts 3-4 IPCs (50% each)

Different damage tables handle different scenarios (max IPC caps for terrirory value and also with/without AA firing).

Pretty annoying for F2F games though, I personally prefer LL online but ADS in F2F since the calculations really make a live game drag on for ever and ever.

@Bob_A_Mickelson:

GC is ten times better and can be completed in 2 hours

I like D-day better.

the system is more similar to the classic AA system.

GC has this battlebox I dont like, I dont like the way units move, I dont like artillery sinkink ships etc etc

Just wanted to thank everyone for their input. Obviously, opinions are varied on this topic.

PS. I saw someone messed with my Karma yesterday. I thought my posts were innocent enough.

I have read this thread and I have to chuckle as I think people have lost the purpose of the bid. People are concerned about how the placement of immediate units imbalances the game but who allowed that opponent to walk off with so much cash in the bid.

If I think I can win with the axis straight up (no bid) when why would I bid more than zero? The bid is like “name that tune” where you challange your opponent to beat you with less. I am reading bids of 12 or more and I think that is nuts (who allows someone to walk off with 12 IPCs? I wanna play you!)

As for the play testers, Larry Harris is far from perfect. I know far more complicated systems that let have huge amounts of play testers and even they let some things through.

Over all, I like the bid system for if you really want to play the axis…bid low!

gotta move planes first, then carrier in either combat or NCM.

Sent to your email.  :mrgreen:

@Craig:

@I:

The way I look at it….

When a person has their actual name as their profile name, and still ends every post WITH their name…that’s all I need to know.   :-D

And that is worse than never actually owning up to who you are?

Oh well!  I guess it is habit.  Every other MB I have the name Yoper, so putting my first name helps with identification.

If that is how you judge character, who you like, etc., then so be it.  Seems pretty foolish.

CRAIG

:-D  That was a good response (especially the big red craig), I was just playin’ Craig.  Sorry for getting off topic guys.

@Funcioneta:

Because winning only because of the setup is even worst than winning only because of the dice  :wink: It’s simply too boring playing axis (because their huge advantage), and even if I want win as all the people, I also want have fun

There is something about balance that everyone is wrong about, except you  :roll:

Can you believe that I don’t think you really mean what you’re saying?

If the bid needed to balance AA50 41 is more than revised, then you would win almost every game, there is no one who will play revised w/o bids.

Personally I’d like to win every game I play, but you don’t like to win  :roll:

If you really are serious with this, you also think that all the other PBF players on aa.org would like to lose all the games they play against you, b/c they play allies w/o bids?

I’m close to accusing you of trolling……

Smoke a bowl…

@Woodstock:

Is it a 1 vs 1 game? Or are all nations played by individuals, without discussion about strategies?

Our group usually consists of 5 players (German player gets Italy), and we usually agree on no discussion amongst eachother about strategies. So sometimes stuff like you just described happens spontanously, and then it’s awesome indeed.

Sadly, more often it results in name swearing amongst eachother :P

Assuming no one gets in a fist fight (and probably usually teamate against teamate) that would be fun as hell.  But doesn’t that REALLY favour the axis, componded even more that Germany controls Italy?  Either way it would be fun to sit back and watch chaos ensue.

No, not really to be honest, so I could’ve figured your intention myself aswell…

I will practically never attack the German shores with the UK, if I don’t have some US reinforcements ready to follow up immeditaley after. So yeah, naming the UK and US landings in one turn “the first wave” seems perfectly alright.

Ok to refute the argument on LL is less complex, um, there about the same.

With dice you do what you do praying the dice don’t take a dump on you, sending in more units than needed is still wasteful because the dice could just take a larger dump on you.  With LL I have to be more aware of strafes, as well as cascading dice failure is a huge issue in LL, something i regularly expose my opponents too.  In LL I have true risk management when i send either a DD and a fig at that sub, or a DD and a bomber.  Or 2 inf and a fig to trade, or 2 inf and a bomber against that 1 inf.  2 inf + 1 bomb vs 2 inf in LL can turn into me loosing both inf, I still have your ‘risk management’ to deal with.

With dice I just hope for the best, I have no true control over what the dice will do.  In LL i have to choose to send the extra units to ensure the result, or not to.  I cannot begin to tell you the number of battles that come down to that AA gun hitting, but they do exist.  Or the time when my DD+fig missed that sub and it hit, then sunk a tranny next turn.

They are different styles, and neither is the ‘correct’ one, how about we all stop arguing over it.  Its like watching a political debate.

i was thinking 1942 for that one, 1941 i don’t build anymore