Larry Harris Semi-Official Tournament Game Patch

That would be nice, but hes my tourney partner  :-)

We do have a lot of people to play against but unfortunately they’re all good.

I’m thinking about using the planes on the CV to support ground assaults for the UK rather than the US. Too difficult to get US troops across the Atlantic in reasonable numbers.

OK - look forward to hearing what happens then  :-)

@innohub:

My humble opinion is if your J strategy’s top priority is about capturing India, consolidating J Navy is perhaps a better option than PHGL so that you have 100% focus on Middle East.

Looking forward to your battle report :roll:

Thanks innohub. Good to hear that I might be on the right track, as you always wonder whether your “lessons” are just blind alleys created by basic newbie errors elsewhere.  :-)

Just to register the value of Pearl Harbour light, I can imagine playing it if G has control of the N Atlantic. BM probably uses PHGL because he always achieves that. Then there is value to reducing the US fleet that will challenge G.  Plus there is a little more time for J to get to Moscow before the Allies get across the Atlantic. So not given up on it yet, just trying to place it within the strategic “map” of the game. :|

@MarineIguana:

Hi Dave,

This is Andrew, and I participated in last year’s Kublacon tournament.

I agree that the tournament plays very differently, and that Axis has a major edge. 15+ to allies seems like a reasonable range. By far the most important VC is Karelia because it’s the most contestable. France, Phillipines, and India are also considerations.

I’m having a hard time thinking of a tie breaker that i’d feel satisfied with. It seems undesirable to establish tie breakers that alter the immediate game. How about just giving out two prizes without a winner? Short of that, i suggest just rolling a die.

My specific issue with your 4 suggested options is that all favor either the allies or axis.
#1 if both players are strong, the allies will seek to preserve 7 VCs while the axis seeks to capture 1 VC to go from 6 to 7. If one person wins as allies and the other wins as axis, the axis player will come out ahead per this rule.
#2 IPC totals favors Allies heavily, net captured favors Axis heavily
#3 same as #2
#4 heavily favors allies

Even in a single elimination, when you have two strong players against each other, somebody loses and probably too early in the tournament.

For #1, this is how standard tournament rules work. 7+ VCs and you win.

In a timed format, one side or the other will have an advantage. A bid is there to even out those chances. In this format, bids to play the Allies might need to be very high.

I think I’m going to go with:
First tie breaker: total VCs
Second tie breaker: captured territories (not your starting territories)
Third tie breaker: coin toss

I’m also going with 2 finals matches: a game for 1st/2nd and game for 3rd/4th. Anybody left over will be invited to play for fun. Maybe top 4 get prizes? 1 picks before 2 picks before 3 picks before 4.

I’ve played about 30-40 games, and won against some other pretty experienced players. Axis is favored on this map. My personal view is that a bid of around 7-11 is fair among experienced players. This is a newer game, so it’s not surprising that people haven’t come up with an exact amount.

Among beginning players, this bid probably needs to be bigger because players don’t recognize deadzones and leave pieces in the open. Germany has many more offensive pieces than Russia, and Moscow is at serious risk of falling early if Russia loses a stack. This is less true if Germany loses a stack because 1. germany starts with more pieces (compared to Russia), and 2. UK and US aren’t a threat until round 4.

There’s already great threads on bid placement to have the most impact. I won’t go into depth, but inf in cauc, karelia, egypt ; uk sub off egypt or india are likely have the most impact per IPC bid. Among beginning players, I would probably give uk 1 inf in egypt and ~6 infantry for russia in moscow. That’s my suggestion for a dynamic game among beginners of approximate skill.

I find the concentrated bomber strategy very interesting as an approach for the US, for the reasons outlined here - the cost of getting US infantry into the action is incredibly high, so much so that Air power compares much better vs. land forces  for the US than for other nations.

How many bombers is too many? I was picturing maybe 2 US bombers on US1, but for the purposes of strategic bombing, the early IPCs denied will be magnified throughout the game, so perhaps a US1 buy of 3 bombers makes sense?

Unless Japan was posturing in range of a US attack, I imagine I would build the bombers in western US and then send them directly to the UK for use in SBRs vs. Germany (or sinking/deterring a German fleet). Would you agree?

Similarly I’m looking for 1940 Global map to print.  Anybody?