@farmboy said in L24 BM4 Playoff Finals Adam514 (Axis) vs farmboy (Allies+22):
@Adam514 I thought maybe this was a very costly strafe (to deny me the ability to take back territory by removing all my land units) which is why I was thinking I needed conserve a tank or two, but I just looked at everything else you are doing and I’m realizing this is a hail mary. Still will want to decide on the casualties and may conserve a tank or two but likely will just do max d
I guess I should have pretended to have a follow up so that you kill air before a couple of land units.
Good game and congratulations on winning the 2023 playoffs! Expert Allied play. Took advantage of weak German air and got UK rich. My mistakes were not setting up for the Egypt take 1 turn earlier, and letting my Norway stack die. For the Norway part though, I had failed to take Volgograd the previous turn which meant 2 less units for the defense of the West, so I couldn’t send a couple of planes to Norway. Without those mistakes I think it’s a much closer game.
A Adam514 referenced this topic on
@Adam514 good game and thanks for your sportsmanship and generousity as well! There were a couple of key moments where you let me reconsider ncms and placements that might have also been disastrous mistakes (both early on when I set up to retake Egypt and needlessly panicked when I realized I couldn’t land UK air in Caucasus yet and again more recently with the Soviet stack in the middle east). I think I had a few fortuitious battles through the game but that 110 was certainly key. And its not often I get a chance to play allies with that kind of freedom in the mediterranean and off the coast, (especially against you). So although this was a 16 round game the key moment was arguably a scramble decision in round 1. Definitely more to say later
A game fitting for the 2023 championship, and no one expected less
I only popped in here and there but I’ve seen enough to know that I should go through it more carefully to learn Allied tactics much different than my own. And of course I’d learn a lot from the Axis too.
@farmboy is the 3rd player in league history to win 2 championship games, and also the 3rd to repeat back to back years. And the final wins came within 9 months of each other! What a rush.
More congratulations will be posted in the game results thread.
I’m thrilled you two players participated in the playoffs for 2023 and gave everyone a show!!! Well played, by definition, you can’t go 16 rounds against Adam or farmboy unless you play great.
You both already have your 6 2024 games to qualify in January,
Can anyone stop you (in the playoffs) from a rematch next year?
I’m honest, I’m still amazed at how decisive some choices or battles can be right from the first or second round… perhaps too much so.
G1 results are massive
@Adam514 Curious if you had any thoughts/comments on the pacific side of the game. I was quite surprised when you didn’t go for Yunnan. I have seen that combat fail occassionally but never saw someone not bother with it and I had figured, wrongly it seems, that this was something that I could make you pay for. And then I was struck by how much you had to threaten India with J4. My thinking at that point was that I could stack Yunnan and hten I was going to stack Burma and delay your control of India by holding that with China. It became clear after J2 that I would have no chance to do so.
I’m guessing the good J1 and the units conserved from Yunnan helped but I’m wondering if there was anything I could do to save India early. If I had done a better job of stacking India (playing more conservatively with teh British units, getting anzac units in and in bringing the soviet air I think I may have just barely done enough to discourage it for a turn (you would have had 99% odds but with a good chance of losing quite a bit of air). But there were a lot of costs to me in doing that (Among others I really needed that soviet air back on the Europe side). In any case, I was struck by how overwhelming that attack was. For much of the rest of the game I was just trying to do enough to keep Japan from being able to focus entirely on that final VC and I guess I just managed but I felt like things could fall apart at any moment. And I thought maybe you were playing more conservatively than perhaps you needed after India fell.
@farmboy said in L24 BM4 Playoff Finals Adam514 (Axis) vs farmboy (Allies+22):
@Adam514 Curious if you had any thoughts/comments on the pacific side of the game. I was quite surprised when you didn’t go for Yunnan. I have seen that combat fail occassionally but never saw someone not bother with it and I had figured, wrongly it seems, that this was something that I could make you pay for. And then I was struck by how much you had to threaten India with J4. My thinking at that point was that I could stack Yunnan and hten I was going to stack Burma and delay your control of India by holding that with China. It became clear after J2 that I would have no chance to do so.
I’m guessing the good J1 and the units conserved from Yunnan helped but I’m wondering if there was anything I could do to save India early. If I had done a better job of stacking India (playing more conservatively with teh British units, getting anzac units in and in bringing the soviet air I think I may have just barely done enough to discourage it for a turn (you would have had 99% odds but with a good chance of losing quite a bit of air). But there were a lot of costs to me in doing that (Among others I really needed that soviet air back on the Europe side). In any case, I was struck by how overwhelming that attack was. For much of the rest of the game I was just trying to do enough to keep Japan from being able to focus entirely on that final VC and I guess I just managed but I felt like things could fall apart at any moment. And I thought maybe you were playing more conservatively than perhaps you needed after India fell.
I don’t think hitting Yunnan turn 1 is that critical, if the plan is for a big threat on India early. It makes China stronger, but Japan also conserves a lot of land units. With the extra inf there and a J1DOW, it’s not a good attack.
Maxing out India by the Allies might make it a bit above 90% odds, but close to 0 TUV swing. But I think the Allies sacrifice too much elsewhere to get those odds typically.
Japan was busy fighting a stronger China and Russia for most of the game. By the time it got most of that dealt with, the Pacific fleets were reasonably equal. A big delay for Japan was not killing that stack of Russians and instead losing a ton of ground units and retreating, so that delayed the turn I could pivot for the victory cities.
I think you could have liberated France a few turns earlier, if only to prevent the US from further buying out of those factories since the Axis could only win the Pacific.
@Adam514 thanks for the comments. And I certainly realized after this that Yunnan is not as essential as I would have expected. On CHi1 I was thinking I might have a chance of holding Burma/China for a while which clearly did not materialize.
On France, I don’t disagree. and had been thinking about it for a few turns. But I was fairly confident that I could stop you in the pacific and I felt like I needed more US troops to make sure I could keep Germany down. I was also a little worried when you started to go aggressively against Moscow again and didn’t want you to be able to spend much on fast movers or air to support that. And also thinking that more pressure on the West was going to free up the Soviets to pressure Japan.
I’m assuming also that you decided on your gamble at the end more last minute and after I ensured that Moscow was safe. I had thought you were setting up take Caroline islands back at that point and that we might still have a few more turns in the pacific.
@farmboy said in L24 BM4 Playoff Finals Adam514 (Axis) vs farmboy (Allies+22):
@Adam514 thanks for the comments. And I certainly realized after this that Yunnan is not as essential as I would have expected. On CHi1 I was thinking I might have a chance of holding Burma/China for a while which clearly did not materialize.
On France, I don’t disagree. and had been thinking about it for a few turns. But I was fairly confident that I could stop you in the pacific and I felt like I needed more US troops to make sure I could keep Germany down. I was also a little worried when you started to go aggressively against Moscow again and didn’t want you to be able to spend much on fast movers or air to support that. And also thinking that more pressure on the West was going to free up the Soviets to pressure Japan.
I’m assuming also that you decided on your gamble at the end more last minute and after I ensured that Moscow was safe. I had thought you were setting up take Caroline islands back at that point and that we might still have a few more turns in the pacific.
The last attack was decided by not getting top 1% dice in your Russian hit and run and losing the German bomber to the DD.
Farmboy, I know I’m late to the party, but I wanted to congratulate on your back-to-back league championship! What an incredible achievement to defeat Adam’s Axis in the final.
I have to say, after the G1 110 disaster, it seemed like the Allies’ advantage vanished by turn 8 or 9. At that point, I would’ve bet on the Axis. The early Europe play felt a bit sluggish - Egypt was temporarily abandoned, and the first major U.S. landing was to liberate Egypt instead of securing a beachhead. Despite delays, Germany managed to break through Bryansk, alongside with some very expensive Russian blockers that weakened their position.
On the Pacific side, Japan had favorable early dice and took India with relative ease, even with an early British Indian Ocean fleet. Japan’s dominance at sea was clear, though the Chinese-Russian cooperation posed a thorn in their plans. However, with India already taken, that threat seemed manageable in my opinion.
Your consistent, error-free play was impressive. Though cautious at times, it was precise, and you managed to exploit Germany’s weakness in the skies until they eventually collapsed. The subtlety in your strategy was remarkable. I especially liked how you kept ANZAC aggressive, even though Japan was just one victory city away. While not all the island trades seemed efficient, you kept Japan occupied, preventing them from launching a decisive attack on Sydney or Hawaii.
One question, though, regarding the Russian strafe-stunt back to Moscow - did you miscalculate earlier? It seemed like you could have just stacked Bryansk, and the risk of the strafe felt unnecessary to me.
Again, congratulations on a very well-played game! Certainly a game for the books to study on Allies play against Axis giants!
@JDOW thanks for the review!
two quick comments. It was probably a mistake on my part to give up Egypt early. I did it for two reasons. Given the loss of German air on G1, I thought he was more likely to gamble (especially with Italian units). My standard opening is the gibraltar airbase. I realized though that if I did that (and also cleaned up the surviving German naval units in the Atlantic especially the battleship) he would have almost 50% odds on the British navy in 92 on I1. Because I also needed to keep British air in the pacific, he would also have had about 70%+ odd on Egypt I2. I knew though that the loss of that German air meant that he couldn’t take and stack Egypt. So I thought it was a safer move even though it gave Italy a little more room and a little more income early.
And you are right about the strafe at the end. I was just sloppy. I was playing more forward because I thought I could and that doing so would deny him another chance to hold Leningrad or get Moscow. I hadn’t been careful about stacking Caucasus initally. In the correction I removed Soviet fast movers from Rostov. That allowed him to can open with Italy and use a German mech to move there and block a number of my units. It turned a combat that was well above 90% to one that was around 10%. So initially I thought it was safe for me to do and I didn’t realize how the correction I made opened up this option for him. But fortunately for me the one round strafe was still likely still a safe move and it did work out.
