Playing axis&allies by msn ZONE

So, Italiansarecoming!!, you posted this thread back in April/May. What actually happened? You ought to have reported on this by now.
My prediction is if the Axis player knows what he is doing he should have won. In the early part of the game the Axis can win. If the game goes on a long time then the Allies will win.

You can’t possibly attack Rus with Japan in 4 rounds… If you have optimal results with the axis it still takes you 3 turns to get to novo! You can’t bring enough inf to think of taking Rus on round 4…

For your plan to buy airforce or ships with germany, its doomed… Russia walks over Germany with ease, because the UK will keep wiping out German ships, then the US keeps dropping inf in Eur… => Game over!

For your other question about going 2 trans 3 inf as initial buy for Jap:
You need cannon fodder and inf provide just that. You can’t take Russia with just tanks… Give a mathematical example here. 2 tanks take out one inf, 3 inf take out one tank on def => Russia spends 9, Japan 10. So you gonna lose a lot of value with just buying tanks.

I think a bid of 12-15 was enough for RR. Because you don’t lose ukr and Manch on round one, so 12-15 is sufficient…

My optimal Ger 1 move with RR (no bid) would be:
Lab sz: tran vs fig (WEu)
UK sz: 2 trans, bb and a sub vs 4 fig and a sub
Gib sz: BB vs 1 sub and bomb
Jor sz: sub vs tran and bb
Egypte: 1 inf and 1 arm vs 3 inf and 1 arm.
Then pray you only lose 1 fig, its the best you can hope for…

@ncscswitch:

Russia?  WORST possible move in the game.  Sure, build a Yakut IC, defended by your consilidated INF and tank from the Eastern territories.  That is 5 less INF that Germany has to chew through the round after Russia buys it, and perhaps more later as Russia places some units at the new IC to defend against recurrent strikes by Japan… not to mention the free SRB run Japan would get to destroy an addiitional 1-2 Russian INF’s per round.  Not to mention that, no matter what Russia does, Japan WILL take that IC in Yakut, and then start building westerward bound forces to use against Russia.

As always, it depends on the situation……A not often used resource for the allies:

A Russian ic in Yak can be a nice tactical resource at the start of the tech war. In case Jap gets heavies (maybe a lucky last resource), its nice to build that Rus ic in Yak (and move the aa into Yak). Now Jap has the tough choice to take it or not. If they take it, they are vulnurable to allied SBR runs. If not, than Jap can get huge cash flow problems.

In some case (but less often than the Rus Yak ic) UK can do the same trick in Ind. Since both UK and Rus were already in range of Jap SBR runs, it wont make a lot of difference.

My guess is that debater__ lives somewhere near NJ. Just a thought.

Thanks for all of the info :D . I welcome any other posts that anyone could give. Thanks again :D !

Thanks for all the great responses. I can see that storage options for the pieces are high on everyone’s list, followed closely by greater denominations for tokens.

It’s a shame that tooling custom plastic pieces is so complicated (and costly). I would love to include snapping boxes (like RISK used to have).

I thought was an interesting observation about the similarity in the brown pieces. I’ve never encountered any confusion, but I can see how it could happen.

(dezrtfish, I know what you mean about storage options. For AH’s ASL, I keep my pieces in hundreds of film canisters that I got from a giant film processing company in town. They work great…but are too small for A&A. Maybe empty peanut cans or large baby food jars would work.)

(Maybe, Thoes.)

Thanks again everyone!

Pete

I have been trying to get in contact with the author of Dogs of War for ages and no luck. Anyone know this guy?

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My advice, fight the Eastern Front to contain the Russians outside of Eastern Europe, forcing them to choose between defending between Karelia or Ukraine if you need those 3 extra IPCs to end the game. Use the rest of those forces to protect WE and Africa. Remember a D-Day can ruin the Axis attempts at an EV. I’m interested in hearing your calculations on how to do it.