Allied Bids - What are the common rules on placement?

@groskopf said in Losing as the Allies every time!:

@AndrewAAGamer , No bid.

Well that is a major issue right there. It is generally accepted the Axis have a major advantage in Global 1940 OOB. Bids of 30-50 are typical and I have seen them and played them higher than that.

Check out our Tutor Game below where there is a discussion of where the bid should go and why.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/35254/tutor-game-andrewaagamer-x-vs-trulpen-and-everyone-else-a-50-oob/367?page=15

I would not be G40 boxed set for a new rulebook or even for new French unit sculpts. However, I would buy a G40 boxed set for some combination of two or more of these changes:

1. Long standing balance issues were resolved officially instead of with the house rule hodgepodge we use now.
2. Historical inaccurances (Scapa Flow, Iceland, Sierra Leone, etc) were corrected on the map/setup (for instance, Iceland was occupied by the US on July 7th 1941, but the map shows it as a UK territory from the start).
3. There were cool new sculpts for multiple powers, and cleaned up sculpts for units that look too similar (ANZAC cruiser vs destroyer for instance, or corrected the 9 ft tall ANZAC infantry unit).
4. New map! For instance, eastern Russia is vast and would have been a Japanese sinkhole that brought no benefit, but in the G40 map those territories all actually produce income. The Global War map is a much better representation – combined German/Japan strategies that work on the current map would not work on Global War map.
5. Map supports faster setup – MICs and setup bases pre-printed, for instance.
6. Rule changes that allow the US to build bases on other Allies territories.
7. Rule changes to fix unit issues (cruisers!)
8. Separate control markers for UK Pacific vs UK Atlantic

Basically, a couple of big changes or a bunch of small changes make the investment worthwhile IMO.

Fixing NOs could be part of #1 – giving the UK an additional NO of no German navy in the Atlantic other than sea zone 112 would probably help the balance issue. Also, giving Japan an NO that costs it money if it DOESN’T control those islands once at war with the US might help the balance issue.

Marsh

@Marshmallow:

I use black chips for 25 units. It helps with the swaying red chip stack!

Marsh

lol

I’m curious which statements here are differing from what you’ve seen in the league? Do you feel that this NO is playing differently or is more relevant in the league?

I suppose its important to realize that any statements you read here on the boards are largely anecdotal. It comes down to how much of what you read accords with your own experience. And of course results will differ depending on what conditions you typically play with. For example, I noticed just now you mentioned the Russian bomber in another thread. In G40, and in other prior A&A games, many people have used additional Russian aircraft as an expedient alternative to the open pre-placement bid. An Extra Russian fighter in AA50 for example, or a Bomber in G40. In G40 specifically, that option is preferable to me, than an open bid for UK. Its the sort of set up change you really have to force though, because given the option most people would take that same bid amount and instead throw down 4 infantry or 3 art units in separate territories to spread the advantage, or a pair of subs to break a naval battle. Anyway, the point being that if you are using a Russian bomber in your games regularly, then chances our you’ll be seeing different results from people who try other balancing options. Beyond this, there is also the No Tech aspect, or things like whether or not players are using standard dice rules or low luck rules. All this stuff can skew the results in a given set of games, or provide somewhat different play-balance results from the games of people who play other ways.

I will say this about G40, if you play standard dice, there is a fairly substantial swing potential on sz 110 and sz 111, not to mention with casualties in France. This can be a pretty big deal for an opening battle that sets the stage for the whole game. The results there can be a lot more consequential than say Classic/Revised when a transport hit, or a destroyer dudded out was in the opening round. The old German battleship headache comes to mind. Or take for example how in Revised the swing on the W. Russia battle could really effect the whole game in a massive way, such that some players would just quit outright in the opening round, if the dice didn’t go their way. Something similar can occur here (though perhaps not quite as extreme) with sz 110 and 111. If the Luftwaffe trades well in those battles it can be a huge boon for Axis. If they trade poorly it can be a small nightmare for G. Low Luck can control for that to a certain extent, but what you gain in consistency by using LL during the opening round, you lose out on in dynamism during the endgame. This is why I tend to prefer dice since they are so unpredictable for the endgame, though I appreciate the place for LL and understand why so many are fond of it. Still even a small bid disrupting either of those battles, or the battles in the med, can take it from a risky swing to a clear and obvious choice, especially under LL conditions.

So all that is just to say that the conventions in your playgroup, the typical bid, what sort of rules you option in or out, can really affect the patterns that emerge.

You’ll probably have noticed as well, that because A&A uses a very fixed set up and involves a number of scripted first round battles, that players often use a technique that you might call mirroring. Where players tend to model their strategies and opening moves, on things that they’ve seen stronger opponents do. Adopting the strategies that beat you last time, we might call it. This happens a lot after a board first comes out, or especially with players who are new to the game. So what happens is a kind of gameplay evolution, that selects for the best opening plays and weeds out the poorer ones over time. So right after a new board comes out everyone is excited, since the playing field is leveled, and nobody really knows how to exploit the map. Very quickly though, players start adopting standard buys and standard openings, until at some point (after a year say) someone hits on a strategy that is very dominant, which never remains secret very long. Soon variations in it get more popular, until eventually it becomes a scripted move (something everyone does.) Its usually at this point, if the advantage is clearly going one way, to one side over the other, that people start seriously examining bid solutions.

Whats interesting about all this, is that if you are playing with someone who is inexperienced, and does something totally batshit crazy, that you wouldn’t expect anyone to do ever, sometimes that sort of game can actually get entertaining as well as challenging. Since you really don’t know how to predict the erratic behavior of the newb. These games can be fun, since they force all sorts of weird decisions on you. Like wow, he built that? I guess I have to go destroy it now, and do something I wouldn’t usually do haha.

I agree though, from an archival standpoint, its nice to have a league and a way to track what sorts of things are happening in games (what sort of bids are being used for example, and what opening moves.) The overall tally Axis wins to Allied wins. But even there, the nature of the dice can be pretty nuts in providing different experiences.

All this is just to clarify something that it might have been worth saying at the outset. When I talk about game “Balance” or “Balance by Sides” what I am really referring to is the ‘feeling’ or ‘sense’ among both players that the starting conditions provide a roughly even shot for either to prevail. There’s no way to be really absolute about this, since as soon as you roll the dice in a single round of combat, you shoot off into so many different variables that its probably impossible to say anything with certainty… eg. whether a bad roll somewhere can be recovered by an amazing one somewhere else, later on. So really what we a striving for is the sweet spot, where the feeling of balance is the same for both players at the outset. Where one person isn’t constantly grumbling about how the odds are totally stacked against them from the get go, or how if they don’t win battle X, “its basically all over!” I’m not sure how much you could learn from seeing my games in an after action, since I’m perhaps not as cut throat as others, and I like to experiment a lot (often with game mechanics.) I don’t mind losses and haven’t bothered to keep a running tally on anything.

If I’m in the lobby and I have more time to play, I also almost never concede defeat, at least until I see the deep endgame ;) Since that’s the one that fascinates me most in A&A games! The deep endgame, for those unfamiliar with how I use the term in A&A, is how things play after capitals have already fallen. So in Classic or Revised or 1942.2 the Deep Endgame is when you are down to just 4 nations. In AA50 when you are down to 5 etc. Another way to think about it is the gameplay when W. Allies can take over Russian land directly because the capital has fallen.

Pretty good at grinding it out, since even a losing game can be entertaining, and it teaches you about the production spread and the importance of the center ;) But now I’m just rambling.

Is it the general premise of this thread (that Russia’s NOs are too weak, and virtually pointless) that you find problematic? Or the proposed solution as a bid alternative? I guess I’m just a little confused where you think we’re running off track. Most of the results posted in that league forum for g40 games (at least for the last several months) show Allies being bid out consistently, often at above +10 ipc. So I feel that it supports the general position of game unbalance in favor of Axis. I’m not sure what bearing any of those games would have on my proposed solution right now, since those games are virtually all using pre-placement bids. What I have suggested here is a standard income modification for an NO as an alternative to what people are currently doing, which is bidding pre-placement. Does that make more sense from the perspective of a bid replacement/balance perspective?

Good question IKE.
That would be very true to the difficulty of playing allies: Giving up London or Egypt is the dilemma, what will the allies choose… I don’t know what’s best but I think both strategies can work.

Much depends on what happened UK1 and IT1 of course, so lets assume ‘Taranto’ happened (a rather standard move, especially with an allied bid). Without aid of the German luftwaffe (they will be massing against London), Italy cannot safely approach Egypt. Thats 1.

2: After Taranto and Germany pushing through for SL, London is very likely to fall but it is also very likely that it will be a pyrrhic victory for Germany. Russia will be a monster and the USA just needs to destroy the kriegsmarine.

If ‘Taranto’ did not happen UK1 I guess the situation does not change a lot if Uk2 still goes for it and stop Italy in the med… But in this case Uk2 also has the option to superdefend London, indeed possibly giving up Egypt in the long run (but only for a short amount of time if London survives).

I’ll not talk about the the possibility of the USA liberating London, as that also depends on what Japan is doing (and thus, how much investments the USA must make to prevent a pacific sudden death) but the USA should definately have enough ground and naval forces left to prevent Italy from breaking through.

I dunno, knp, why not Eastern Russia or SE Asia?

I like the salvage question, but I would say roll a d6 for each mech or armor destroyed by Chinese forces, on a roll of 1, that unit is now Chinese.  It’s same odds as SBR getting killed by AA Guns so there is some limited precedent for that target number.  It’s horrible justification, but best I could do on the spur of the moment. lol

@Ohmss:

If a new territory is taken during combat phase can AA move to it during noncombat phase of that same turn?

(1940 alpha rules please)

Thanks in advance.

yes, and this is valid for OOB or really all versions previous.  The only exception would be if the AA gun was on a transport that was used for an amphibious assault that turn (can’t use a transport during both combat and noncombat and AA guns can only move during noncombat).  In previous versions AA guns that had been used for rocket attacks would prevent movement during noncombat, but as Airbases have taken that tech niche, I can’t think of any other way an AA gun would not be allowed to move during noncombat.

The only units that cannot end their noncom move in a newly captured space are aircraft.

@Boyardee:

Is Mr Harris suppose to publish an up to date version on the rulebook in pdf?

WotC (Wizards of the Coast) generally publishes a pdf available to download some months after the release of the game.  I would look there, but not until the release of the 2nd addition.  Until then, you’ll have to use to the OOB rulebook in conjunction with official FAQ/Errata and the Alpha 3 rules.