@Gibsonrick81 I’m hoping to get around to it soon. Worse case, I may not have it till thanksgiving. Just because then I will have a lot more time on my hands for a few days.
Axis & Allies Stalingrad: Early Review and Balance Impressions
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@Hansolo88 good day.
I am very grateful for your lengthy and complex post re Stalingrad.
Hoping to receive mine soon; am in England. -
@Hansolo88 Saying that G40 (which OOB has something like a +60 bid) is more balanced than this game is quite the statement. From the perspective of someone who was on the playtest team the win rate was pretty close to even by the end of the ~8 months that were spent working on it.
I’d give advice, but without details of what you were doing with Germany (other than being “over the bulk of the learning curve as the Axis”) it’s hard to really give anything beyond vague platitudes. All I can really say is that if the USSR is spending “hundreds of IPC” over the course of the game Germany isn’t being aggressive enough. I will agree that the Germans are generally harder to play than the Soviets though, at least at a high level.
Re: Bids, like NA, bids should have been codified in the rulebook. I’m 99% sure they are, but I don’t have my copy with me right now to check.
Unrelated, but at the risk of breaking NDA I pushed for this to be a Case Blue game centered around the actual objectives of the campaign (getting the oil supply) instead of Stalingrad but was vetoed by the design staff, who wanted Stalingrad specifically (IIRC it was to appeal to the pop-culture understanding of the campaign as “Madman Hitler and his OBSESSION with the city that had Stalin’s name”, but the tests were a while ago so I don’t have the full details).
I’m glad that you at least enjoyed the game despite your grievances (everything other than the balance I actually agree with you on). Hopefully a TripleA implementation comes around at some point so it can be more thoroughly tested beyond kitchen table play.
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Hey thanks so much for the response, I’m especially interested in hearing from the playtest team experience. My opinions in that post genuinely match my experience but I’m not going to lie, I was also poking a little hoping to be proven/shown wrong.
I’m very familiar with the imbalance in OOB G40, which is interesting especially since the current 2nd edition of G40 already had quite a bit of playtesting and balance incorporated into it; just goes to show how tricky and layered balance is for these games. My opinion here is not that Stalingrad is more or less unbalanced overall, simply that G40 often plays fairly balanced between very new players (who don’t know how to break the game with Axis air) while Stalingrad feels like it is typically going to play very heavily balanced toward the Soviets between new players. I think the learning curve for the Axis is very steep, which you seem to acknowledge; steep to the point for me that I haven’t been able to scale it yet. Your statement that the playtest team eventually reached something like parity in win-rate is encouraging, assuming you are talking about both scenarios (as I still think the tournament scenario feels superbly balanced right from the start).
When I refer to the early Axis learning curve I refer to things like:
- Playing with awareness of and trying to take advantage of “No Step Back”
- Gaining some experience on approaching and attacking into the city from the 3 possible options
- Gaining familiarity with the force multiplier ability
- Having played through the scenario at least a couple times and seen how Operation Uranus and Winter Storm actually play out
- Being sufficiently aware of the supply system to take advantage of attacking the Volga ferries on specific turns etc.
- Understanding how to play to the victory conditions
I think part of my dilemma is the Axis success seems very dependent on maintaining a good attack tempo, which in turn depends on getting dice when you need them. Having battles not go well without any replacements can quickly lead to a slippery slope quickly.
As for the Soviets getting 100s of RPs worth of units, I don’t see how the Axis can prevent it. The Axis can’t truly penetrate into the city until Turn 4 at the earliest; by that point the Soviets have already picked up ~50 RPs directly, plus another ~40 from the factories, and they’ll continue to get a lesser amount depending on how the fighting in the city goes. That’s in addition to the easily ~100-150 RPs worth of units from Operation Uranus. There simply aren’t enough Axis units to push through the starting Soviet units, deal with these constant reinforcements, AND garrison the RP spaces so that the Axis can eventually get some RPs of their own.
You are correct that bidding was included in the rules as an optional rule, per page 28. I have not attempted this yet but it’s in theory an easy fix for boosting the Axis starting forces. It just feels wrong to have to rely on it immediately without at least trying to understand how the OOB balance is supposed to feel.
Lastly, your historical comments match my thoughts perfectly. I think the Axis victory conditions do an OK job replicating Hitler’s obsession with holding onto his gains in Stalingrad even at the cost of the larger offensive objectives and flank security. However it does feel like the entire box ix focused on a narrow popular view of the campaign rather than the full picture of what the Axis were trying to accomplish. I guess these type of sacrifices are just integral to the Axis&Allies brand, and I can’t overly fault for it.
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@Hansolo88 said in Axis & Allies Stalingrad: Early Review and Balance Impressions:
assuming you are talking about both scenarios (as I still think the tournament scenario feels superbly balanced right from the start).
Assuming you’re calling the “Operation Uranus” scenario the “Tournament Scenario”. That was not the intent by the staff. “Race to Stalingrad” is the full game that is expected to be played. The Uranus Scenario is supposed to be a teaching/tutorial scenario for a quick game.
I don’t claim to speak for the rest of the staff, but we actually spent far more time working on the base scenario Vs. the Uranus one. If anything, the Uranus one is an afterthought. I’d be alarmed/surprised if Gen Con and the other “powers that be” are promoting it as the “official” scenario. IMO USSR is better there, but there is a lot of variance due to the cards.
Playing with awareness of and trying to take advantage of “No Step Back”
This one is critical for German success, which you already seem to understand.
Gaining some experience on approaching and attacking into the city from the 3 possible options
Gaining familiarity with the force multiplier abilitySpeaking strictly from a High-level, I would generally recommend picking 1-2 entry points max and not all 3, since Germany will get its forces spread too thin otherwise.
Being sufficiently aware of the supply system to take advantage of attacking the Volga ferries on specific turns etc.
Another point about supply that I see potentially being overlooked (from what little I’ve watched of others playing the game, anyway) is the rules nuance that each ferry only supplies one section of the city (color-coded), and that you cannot draw supply from a ferry to a different point, even if there is a clear land connection.
Understanding how to play to the victory conditions
This could potentially be a trap if Germany is aiming for something like a minor from the word go. If they can’t be aggressive and actively deny the Soviets their IPC-producing spaces in the city they’ll just get drowned (like what you are experiencing in your games).
I’m going to throw in a few (again, general high-level points since there is no TripleA plugin I can use to illustrate and I don’t like “backseat gaming” too much) other points of interest that I see get overlooked:
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Germany needing to know when to sacrifice its air ball (or at least risk sacrificing it) to break down a position on the city map.
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Making the supply drop via air to the cut-off territory (I forgot the name sorry) on turn 1 to ensure (or almost ensure) a win there.
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Not overstacking the river IPC territories on the north flank of the map (and just using the once-every-two-turns INF to bolster the numbers there).
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Not attacking into the Soviet reinforcement zones on the Don map (since, if they are not contested or occupied, they can only produce one unit per turn).
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Abandon normal A&A high-level concepts like slowly INF-pushing and pursuing a mobile war where you race to get on top of some of the IPC tiles in the city as quickly as possible.
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OOL timing being much different for Germany Vs. what you’d expect from A&A. I was typically going Minor Axis (since they can’t force multiply) -> ART -> STUG -> INF -> MECH -> TANK.
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Abusing the fact that the other player must attack in contested territories during their turn. This means that attacking into INF-heavy USSR territories can ultimately work out in the long-term as they are forced to attack @1 during their half of the turn.
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Intentionally contesting territories to deny the IPCs to the Soviet player.
@Hansolo88 said in Axis & Allies Stalingrad: Early Review and Balance Impressions:
As for the Soviets getting 100s of RPs worth of units, I don’t see how the Axis can prevent it. The Axis can’t truly penetrate into the city until Turn 4 at the earliest; by that point the Soviets have already picked up ~50 RPs directly, plus another ~40 from the factories,
40 from the factories? In 4 turns USSR would have 2 ART and 2 TANK, for 20 IPC. Minor nitpick but that might make a big difference if you were missing that detail.
and they’ll continue to get a lesser amount depending on how the fighting in the city goes. That’s in addition to the easily ~100-150 RPs worth of units from Operation Uranus.
If Germany is playing properly they should be able to properly layer blockers outside of the city to make the Uranus forces irrelevant with regards to the fighting inside the city. How exactly they go about doing that would vary greatly based on the game state, of course.
There simply aren’t enough Axis units to push through the starting Soviet units, deal with these constant reinforcements, AND garrison the RP spaces so that the Axis can eventually get some RPs of their own.
The reinforcements from the Soviets take ~3 turns to reach a relevant point in the city, if not longer depending on where the fighting is happening:
1: USSR buys units, places them in Krasnaya, and moves them onto the ferry (at a rate of 1 INF per turn before the river freezes later). Also note that ONLY INF cross the river.2: The INF unloads in its relevant rally point. If any of these territories are going to be contested by the unloading then Germany is probably doing very well.
3: The INF move up.
Even then, if Germany doesn’t go overly wide in their attack, speaking strictly about reinforcements, only 1-2 Soviet INF per turn should be able to actively make it to a relevant area in the city in the first few rounds of the game. The TANKs from the tractor factory are a strong point for the Soviet player, since they have 2 Movement and good stats, but in the initial, critical turns where Germany is trying to get its foothold in the city there will only be two of them. Additionally, if the German player is targeting the factories (another point of interest; once a factory is lost once, it’s gone forever).
My point with this wall of text is that the IPC counts you’re referencing do not reflect the full reality of how the game actually plays out if Germany is not playing a conventional, slow-but-steady INF push strategy.
@Hansolo88 said in Axis & Allies Stalingrad: Early Review and Balance Impressions:
You are correct that bidding was included in the rules as an optional rule, per page 28. I have not attempted this yet but it’s in theory an easy fix for boosting the Axis starting forces.
Reducing/Boosting the Axis starting forces is actually very delicate. Given how small the IPC count is across the board (14 in the city, 4 on the outside), if Germany takes even 6 IPC off of USSR you will see that they begin to completely collapse across the board due to lack of reinforcements. The Uranus forces are extremely powerful (the general idea is that, if Germany can pressure USSR to blow their Uranus deployment early (round 5/6), then Germany will be at a huge advantage going into the late game, but if USSR is able to defend well enough to deploy on the last possible turn (round 7), then Soviets will have the edge unless Germany somehow racked up a huge IPC count for Winter Storm.
@Hansolo88 said in Axis & Allies Stalingrad: Early Review and Balance Impressions:
. However it does feel like the entire box ix focused on a narrow popular view of the campaign rather than the full picture of what the Axis were trying to accomplish
Two Last/minor points: Even though I defended them from a balance perspective in another thread, I do wish the Minor Axis pieces had something else to them to give them more flavor (beyond being yellow for Romania, anyway). They were actually added pretty late in development and there was a desire this time to avoid making the game feel overly bloated with minor/one-off rules (since the complexity level of North Africa was divisive).
There was also some discussion to make the starting date earlier, as the in-game start date reflects a point where the Germans already took a surprisingly large number of casualties by attrition (meaning the battle was basically already lost), but that was also sacrificed because the feeling was that the game was already running long (which was apparently the correct call, since F2F cons are apparently talking about using the shorter scenario for tournaments with the game as-is).
Happy to keep discussing if needed. I apologize that I keep generalizing but I generally do better with this sort of thing when I can have TripleA open in front of me to show specific moves/battles/probability calculations.
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Oh, one last point about balance/playtesting, etc. Especially compared to the older games like G40, etc.
From what I understand, playtesting pre-Renegade was done by some combination of Larry, his private staff/team (most of whom went on to form Nightingale Games and are now working on War Room, Imperial Borders, etc.) and internal Hasbro/WotC staff. I don’t know the names or skill levels of any of those people, or how the names/faces changed over the years, but I think that may be part of why you saw games like 42SE, G40 and 1914 (which all seem balanced enough at a low level but becomes lopsided once you start playing more seriously) come out over the latter part of that era of A&A.
Currently, Renegade open-sources its play-testers. Most of us are pretty hardened players with a lot of experience but that may be why, at least in this case, the experience from the casual/entry-level point of view doesn’t reflect the experience from people racking up 50+ games each.
There’s actually a sign-up thread on this very site ( https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/40917/open-call-for-play-testers-for-renegade-a-a-games/13 ) if you’re interesting in trying to help make a difference for future games. They ask a few basic questions about experience level with A&A, etc. but generally as long as you’re willing to put in the hours + contribute to discussions they’ll be happy to take you.
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@DoManMacgee said in Axis & Allies Stalingrad: Early Review and Balance Impressions:
From what I understand, playtesting pre-Renegade was done by some combination of Larry, his private staff/team (most of whom went on to form Nightingale Games and are now working on War Room, Imperial Borders, etc.) and internal Hasbro/WotC staff. I don’t know the names or skill levels of any of those people, or how the names/faces changed over the years, but I think that may be part of why you saw games like 42SE, G40 and 1914 (which all seem balanced enough at a low level but becomes lopsided once you start playing more seriously) come out over the latter part of that era of A&A.
There were also external playtesters, many of whom were very skilled, beginning with Revised in 2004. This was no different than it is now, other than perhaps not quite so wide a net being cast, as the communication among the community was not as well organized as it is today.
The philosophy was that the games should be balanced at a low level, as that’s where most of the players are. Doing otherwise would present a barrier to new players that would turn them off to the game. Players at a high level, of which there are fewer, tend to participate in the online community and can obviously use mechanisms such as bidding to balance the game at that level.
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yea can’t really design it for the Olympians and the Beginners both. You’d have to have different setups/scenarios to do that :)
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@Krieghund If you don’t mind me asking, was there turnover during the years between Revised and Zombies (the last game pre-renegade)? Revised and AA50 (42 1st Edition as well to a lesser extent, although that game is barely talked about these days) are highly regarded as among the most balanced games in the series, even at a high level, while everything after that point (2009) began to see issues in higher-level play (starting with P40 and continuing for the rest of that era).
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@DoManMacgee There is always playtester (and staff) turnover between projects. That is not the reason for this issue. I can’t comment on what the reason was, other than to say it was not the playtesters, and I’m saying this much only because I don’t like to see them unjustly criticized.
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@Krieghund Fair. The desire for the Renegade playtest staff to not be unfairly criticized is why I’ve been replying to these threads in the first place (like I said before, I don’t like back-seat gaming for others in most cases, as I think strategies/metagames should develop naturally as folks experiment).
Like you, I think there are other reasons that the current batch of games are seeing reports of issues with balance/etc. from new/low-level players, and I am privy to keeping my opinions to myself (probably for the same reason(s), if I had to guess).
EDIT: fixed some grammar flubs.
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