Nominations for A&A Pacific Strategies

@Haacon:

Hi, I am a fan of the “normal” Axis and Allies and play int since several years. Now a friend of mine has bought the pacific version, we played it a couple of time and I must say, I’m quite dissapointed. Maybe we play it in the wrong way, because we`re used to the other version, but in non of our games the allies had even a chance to win the game.
During the first turn the Japaneese player kills much of the allied fleet and in round two he owns all of the Islands in the south western pacific. The british have enought to do with protecting their capitols, and even if they manage to do so, Japan has 10 to 15 Victory-Points, at the moment the US-Player has a new fleet, that is big enough to be dagerous for the Japaneese ships. From that point on the allied can start to conquer back their territories, but its quite impossible to do so fast enough, to prevent the Japaneese player from winning by victory points.

What goes wrong with us?

The Out of Box rules for AAPacific are heavily slanted in favour of Japan.  Equally capable players will see that Japan will almost always win.  To even our the game, give the Allied players 12 extra IPCs to spend (one time only) at the start of Allies 1.  The Allied player allocates these extra IPCs among India, Australia and US before J1.  This is in addition to the convoy money that is split between Australia and UK.  Finally, have Japan play to 24 IPCs.  Leave everything else the same and you will see that the game is well balanced.

SS

I’ve been playing pacific for about 3 years,a my first stratagies were too take India for the Japs to win and and to take Hawaii for a good offensive base for my attacks on the Dutch East Indies and Austrailia.It was a great stratagy till my friends and I figured out SBR’s and after that you Bombed pearl then ran away from there as soon as possible.

I have played quite a few games of the original A&A, but not as many as I’d like to have played. Not sure if my game is some type of 2nd edition as it’s not nearby. I’ve only recently played Pacific, on my third game all against the same guy who had never played before. He did Japan first and it was over early. I did Japan and won, but there were touchy moments. I’m about to lose as the Allies after making a bad choice. So far I see some decent possibilities for variation in games. Just as in the original version I think that if a few critical battles and/or just different losses go one way or another then the actions by both sides often are forced to change. The reason I like A&A so much is the variation in what happens, so different from Risk which I’ve played tonnes of growing up, but not overly complex that a novice can’t have a good go at it and fun the first game. In all the games of original A&A I’ve played while there has been the natural similarities one gets with playing on the same board with the same victory conditions, I can honestly say I’ve never played a game that was the same as another. Always something different happened to make that game a little special. I hope Pacific works out that way, and I can see that happening, especially with more than one enemy player. So far I’m enjoying it.

alright, i might try it next time i play as the allies

if thats true, that gives japan even more of an edge…

No. China is played like a completly different nation with the same turn as the US. Since the Chinese have no income there is nothing to take away.

It’s been posted before, but may be relevant to these latest modification suggestions: a relatively simple mod to balance things is to move japan’s VP counter at the end of the whole round instead of at the end of Japan’s turn. Thus to keep its gains, Japan has to think even farther in advance.