Turn one attacks that must not fail

@Marshmallow:

Well, if your opponent messes up or his luck goes sideways too, the game could easily be salvagable. On the other hand, with average results and no major errors on your opponent’s part, do you really think you can recover from these failures?

As I said in my first post…of course I think I can recover. I have before. “No guts -no glory” Right?  :wink:

From your examples, France is really the only attack I can see that both must be done and that I would consider game ending under most circumstances.

From that alone we can say that some portion of games are going to be lost on dice alone. It’s just the nature of probability.

That said, most people who think they lose to dice simply don’t understand dice. Yes, you lost a battle you “should have won”, since you had a 90% chance of winning, and it cost you the game. But if you fight a half dozen critical battles at 90% that will cost you the game if lost in a particular game, you’re going to lose half the time outright.

I generally think people who go into France light are insane for this reason - sure, you’ve still got 90% chance of winning but that means you’re going to lose 1 in 10 of your games on the first battle. That’s insane. But most people don’t consider that a “real” loss, despite the fact balancing minimizing your risk vs reward of spreading yourself out is literally the entire point of the game.

But this is also why I don’t think the other battles are strictly game enders if they go poorly. When the board is against you you simply up your tolerance for risk. A 10% chance of winning a Hail Mary that will decide the game now is entirely preferable to losing with certainty in a few more turns.  A 90% chance of in a game deciding battle is entirely too low if everything is going your way.

I have played many games in my life, and many times, I’m the one with the advantage.  I’m the oldest of my friendset and the owner of almost all the games.  I’m the GM or rules-explainer.  My opponents then have to fight uphill against me for 3-4 more hours, fruitlessly, sometimes for YEARS.

It seems really unfair then that when I take a knock, or bad luck, or a “worst” outcome, that I would just give up, ever.

I’ve had the advantage so many times, I’ve just realized that its much more fun and more fair for me to play out a losing game.  Winning is fun, but it would hypocritical not to let other people enjoy the advantage that experience usually offered me first.

C1 on Yunnan & UK1 on SZ96 - Yes. In both cases, particularly the first too much damage is done.
J1 on Yunnan - no. Not at all. Not a little bit. What are you smoking?
G1 on SZ110? Without bringing in the BB, if the UK scrambles you would expect to lose 3+ planes. Strange comment.
G1 Paris? Perhaps. I’m not so sure about this one. If you take out 1inf 1art 1arm it becomes about 97%. Perhaps if you lost that you would be looking a bit poorly.

@Marshmallow:

Re J1 Yunnan attack, if this fails you are not taking India by land. It’s a major setback. Game loser? Only if you were planning to take India to win.

I will not lose a plane to take the territory and suffer no real ill effects if that happens, other than not getting to kill a couple more Chinese J2/C1. What is the problem you are talking about? If you do lose planes and still withdraw?

My issue with LL is that it changes the game balance in ways I don’t completely understand, particularly for small, air supported battles.

For example: there are 3 infantry are in a province. I know I can send just 2 units and sufficient aircraft to land 3 hits, always be successful and always take the province. Depending how important both winning and taking the province was, without low luck I might have to send 3 or 4 units. This will be especially problematic in amphibious assaults, because knowing I only need to send one transport can make a huge difference.

I think this will further tilt the game into Axis hands. Germany and Japan both have large starting air forces, take part in many small battles, and guaranteed outcomes will free up Japanese transports for other tasks. Maybe it’d even out elsewhere, but I’m just not sure what all the ripple effects will be.

If you build the MiC in FiC, or Malaya, or the naval base on Yunnan, more reserves can be brought up by J3, easily.

Its just another way of saying that if China gets 20th% lucky and gets 6 extra dollars C1 rather than dying by J4, Japan quits because the road wasn’t standard level easy.

I understand the feeling of being screwed after a bad dice role. But does it not reflect what happened in the real battles? Not some, but quite a few war changers happened against all odds! Just one example is the battle of midway where Japan traded 3 carriers for 1 US carrier. I can imagine Japanese admiral blame an other: that is why you need to play low luck!
In my opinion you should be able to handle some unexpected outcome. For me that is part of the game. Even if that causes to loose in some cases. Some other time you have more luck and you win. Nothing in this world is 100% based on skill!!!
I do agree that a bad first round has a big influence on the rest of the game. Much bigger than any other round! But that is part of the dynamics of the game!

:-D  The Imperial Japanese Navy actually lost or ‘traded’ 4 aircraft carriers (Akagi-Kaga-Soryu-Hiryu) to only 1 aircraft carrier for the United States Navy (Yorktown). FYI!

@Gen.Nehring:

:-D   The Imperial Japanese Navy actually lost or ‘traded’ 4 aircraft carriers (Akagi-Kaga-Soryu-Hiryu) to only 1 aircraft carrier for the United States Navy (Yorktown). FYI!

Quite. And in a 4 on 3 battle. Although the USN was reading the Japanese code and knew they were coming. They also successfully timed the attack to when a chunk of the Japanese planes where in the air on the return journey from ground pounding Midway Is.

They didn’t have many planes on Midway AIUI and some of them were level bombers - not much good against CVs.

Hmm, according to wiki, it was 127 land based aircraft and 233 carrier based aircraft on the US side vs a few more carrier based aircraft on the Japanese side. Looks the US carriers were also carrying more planes per CV.

I don’t remember the land based planes making much difference though.

Yep.  I think that combat (and its subsequent depiction in movies) partially inspired the Trench Run in Star Wars.  Most of the stuff in Star Wars space battle and theming seems inspired by WW2…

so we just need some special house Midway rules;

CAP Interdiction;  if you attack with at least 2 tactical bombers without a fighter of your own, and the defender has at least one fighter, roll the bombers separately.  If the first bomber misses, roll for the defensive fighter.  If the fighter hits, remove one of the tactical bombers; the other hits the Carrier of your choice, automatically.

j/k

At work, don’t have time to read the whole thread right now but I had a thought -

Not tested, not well thought out mind you, just a thought:  What if you strafe Paris with Germany and let Italy clean up on purpose?  Might be a good way to let the Italians rebuild some warships after a Taranto meanwhile, if you strafe decently, Germany should be able to save the 19 IPC worth of units, maybe.

Just thinking…as I said, I really didn’t think about it overly hard, I was just pondering the option, which occurred after the OP mentioned it was 100% necessary to win with Germany round 1.