Out of the Box 2nd Edition League Discussion

[gamerman01]

That would be great. I’m diving in now. Will not micromanage, just make eagle’s view observations

[gamerman01]

You went 18 rounds. Clearly you lived up to your rep and didn’t do too much wrong.

[gamerman01]

Well… yeah… 17

[gamerman01]

I’m done. You lost the game on G1.

Everyone does it, but it’s greedy to go after 110 and 111 both, ESPECIALLY when Farmboy put a bid fighter on Scotland. You got good enough dice on 111, but… 110 you got punished. Losing 3 planes and a sub to get 2 cruisers and a battleship is really bad.

Yugo, you took 3 hits to dice. That is not good at all due to the location.

And France… everyone (and I usually used to) relies on all ground. This is why you shouldn’t. But let’s put that aside and I’ll just remind you that a long time ago, you got bad dice in France.

110 bad, Yugo bad, France bad, I don’t need to keep looking. You went 17 full rounds against a champ after that G1? Well done!!

[gamerman01]

It may be time to look for new scriptures. Countless games have been to go after 110, 111, and go after France with all ground to avoid AA losses. It just happens too often. Without any air support, you can lose a lot of ground units in France, and that is punishing.

Oh sure, it would be wonderful to wipe out all 3 fighters on London, and take out the cruisers and battleship at the loss of, say, 2 subs and a plane or 2. And sure it would be great to simultaneously take out 111 plus the bid fighter, for only the cost of a sub or 2 and a battleship. Or get cute and retreat the battleship and leave them a fighter.

But do you know how much luck it takes to get all those 3? Question tradition. Brace for normal or worse dice. Re-evaluate G1. I’m serious.

[gamerman01]

And finally, last but not least, Farmboy did what he should do. Scramble EVERYTHING. Again, a majority would be afraid of the dice and not want to lose every UK plane on G1. Well, you could say it’s hindsight, but… Farmboy won the game on G1 by saying “scramble everything”, and before that, with a bid placement.

With ALL respect to both!

[gamerman01]

I gotta put in one more thing. When people attack Zone 110 without a battleship, every scrambled plane hit takes out a German plane. You don’t want that.

[Arthur Bomber Harris]

I definitely would have sent the battleship to 110 to soak up plane hits instead of the subs. I disagree though that it was a bad choice to do the SZ110 + SZ111 attack: Booper had about a 7% chance of winning this match based on ELO differences so an audacious/game-changing turn 1 is often necessary to change the odds to something better than 7%.

Here is the odds for the net planes lost (10 German vs 5 Allied scramblers)

45% disasterous (-1 relative planes lost)
20% not good (0 to +1 plane outcome)
25% good (+2 to +3 plane outcome)
10% amazing (+4 to +5 plane outcome)

Sadly for Booper, he got -3 plane outcome which made this game a Loss on G1, but I think he would have had a reasonable chance of winning in the 35% of outcomes where he gains 2 or more planes in the exchange, and would have a net increase of his expected win rate on average.

[Arthur Bomber Harris]

@Booper I would master the Cow opener, with more fidelity to his plane. You got almost everything correct on J1, and I agree with you attacking Yunan and SZ62. However, you did not take Borneo which meant your fleet was out of position for a critical extra turn allowing the Allied fleet to give you a bunch of headaches.

There was a risk that UK India could counterattack, but you should have welcomed the chance for him to get diced.

[gamerman01]

@Arthur-Bomber-Harris said in Out of the Box 2nd Edition League Discussion:

I definitely would have sent the battleship to 110 to soak up plane hits instead of the subs. I disagree though that it was a bad choice to do the SZ110 + SZ111 attack: Booper had about a 7% chance of winning this match based on ELO differences so an audacious/game-changing turn 1 is often necessary to change the odds to something better than 7%.

Nope! He had a really bad G1 and went 17 rounds and could have hung on longer than that.

If you can suffer a G1 like that, I mean, it was really bad, and go 17 rounds with farmboy you definitely had a lot >7% chance

[gamerman01]

@Arthur-Bomber-Harris said in Out of the Box 2nd Edition League Discussion:

Sadly for Booper, he got -3 plane outcome which made this game a Loss on G1, but I think he would have had a reasonable chance of winning in the 35% of outcomes where he gains 2 or more planes in the exchange, and would have a net increase of his expected win rate on average.

You left something out. I know it’s blasphemy, but you ignored France. He had to route tanks north and south on G2 - terrible! Aircraft over France instead of 110.

I look forward to playing you!

[Arthur Bomber Harris]

@gamerman01 I looked at the map after turn 5 and it was a very high probability of loss, needing a huge blunder by Farmboy to even have a chance of victory by that point. The victory would have been virtually guaranteed by the end of turn 1 if the Yunnan attack also resulted in disaster.

There is a reason why Farmboy has the ELO ranking he has earned. His mistakes are infrequent and minor, and to capitalize on the errors requires the game to still be close.

There are not too many game-changing battles where luck plays a major portion of the outcome after the first turn. I make the opening as dicey as possible when playing against better opponents like Farmboy or Andrew.

[gamerman01]

Thoroughly enjoyed everything you said, and I hope others chime in, especially booper!

I have an ELO too!

[Booper]

@gamerman01

Thanks guys for taking a look!

After the disastrous G1, against someone of Farmboy’s caliber, my thinking was this game was effectively over. I think overall France was at +7 hits after turn 2, which was ridiculous.

I went full “risk on” for J1, as I had nothing to lose at that point. Got lucky on several key coin flips (mainly attacking the Anzac DD and Transport), so the game continued on!

German was severely hampered though, having lost all art and mechs in France. I think the “avg” outcome is to lose 7 infantry with an all ground attack.

[Booper]

@Arthur-Bomber-Harris

Thx for your comments on J1, will take a closer look tonight when I can.

I’ll also point out a few key battles/moves that stuck out to me, that you may not notice unless you go through the history either a fine tooth comb.

This game lasted over 6 months. It was so tough playing against Farmboy, at times I felt I was working on a problem set in grad school! Normally I play fairly quick and casually, but I tried very hard to cover all my bases as best I could.

[gamerman01]

You will have a worse result than average almost 50% of the time!

[Booper]

@gamerman01

Ha ha, very true.

Btw, I posted this in the game thread, but worth repeating here. After round 2, here are the French dice rolls.

French Combat
1 was rolled 10 times
2 was rolled 9 times
3 was rolled 4 times
5 was rolled 3 times
6 was rolled 1 times
Average roll : 2.259
Median : 2.000
Variance : 3.288
Standard Deviation : 1.813
Total rolls : 27

That’s at least 19 of 27 hits, some of those 3s may have also been armor/fighter hits.

[Arthur Bomber Harris]

Hi Booper: Here was my gameplan against Farmboy last year. He did not have the Scottish fighter which made it safer to do SZ110 and SZ111 but the dice were not very kind in the second battle. He had a very strong defense of Moscow so I bypassed it down to the oil fields of the Middle East. India fell on J6 which was the crucial battle for the Axis. Perhaps you could have had a much stronger focus on capturing India in the mid-game, even allowing China to get out of control strong if that accelerated the destruction of UK Pacific.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/40891/l24-arthur-bomber-harris-vs-farmboy-a-41-oob/226?page=10

[Booper]

@Arthur-Bomber-Harris

A great example - I should have done my homework and looked at your game in more detail. :)

[Booper]

@farmboy

Going to attempt a synopsis from my perspective (Axis). Farmboy, feel free to chime in as you see fit.

G1: - attack both 110 and 111. 111 goes well, but 110 losses 3 German planes without killing any Allied fighters.

• France attack of all possibly ground forces goes poorly, losing all infantry, all artillery, and all but 1 mech.

J1: - Russian bid is 1 fighter, not 2, but still does the Yunnan stack with 5 inf. After the poor G1, I figure this game is lost, so go all-out risk on, and attack all allies with marginal/even odds at Yunnan and SZ6. Overall goes very well Japan, well enough that I felt it offset some of G1, so we continue!

G2: Due to lack of resources, decide not to take Normandy, ends up being helpful as Allies land there, but cannot use the minor complex. Allies do not make significant headway, as German has much better reinforcement pipeline.

G6: 6 inf + 3 art lose to 1 AA, 4 inf, 1 fighter at Rostov. This was 88% odds to win. This happens a couple more times in future rounds.

R6: 1 armor, 2 mech, lose to 1 art in Ethiopia. This denies Russia the +3 bonus, and keeps Axis in the game.

US7/UK7: ***Allies sacrifice 6 transports to land in Norway

• German response is to build transports to land troops in Finland, which stalls future push into Russia for many rounds.

US10: German AA rolls 1,1 on 2 US bombers, providing a bit of relief from the Allied bombing campaign. If not for this, game likely would have ended much sooner.

US11: US Pac fleet able to land ground units in India, making it a lot tougher for Japan to take.

J12: ***Axis makes a mistake, forgetting that there is a Harbor in India, building 6 subs, thinking the US fleet that landed in India can only move as far as the Java SZ. The harbor allows the fleet to unite in SZ55 with reinforcements, and block the subs with 2 DDs. May have been a critical error here, as this build could have been 6 tanks to take down India.

J13: Japan attempts to help Germany with some fast movers, as Germans having trouble against Russian land units with most resources devoted to taking back Norway.

US13: Allies land in Greece/Med

G16: Germans take back Norway

G17: Germany sends all air that can reach to SZ97, in a 50/50 battle to sink a 2 CV fleet, with 5 transports. Allies defend successfully.

J17: Japan eliminates China

G18: Germany again tries to sink Allied fleet with 2 transports, this time with ~60% odds to win, but again lose, resulting in end of game.

The UK air force is enormous, and Axis cannot stop the taking of Rome with the addition of those 2 transports. Japan probably has the land forces to take India, but it will take at least 5 turns to march back down to attack India. Germany will have trouble holding out that long.