The cheezy retreat from Yugoslavia to Romania on G2

@superbattleshipyamato said in The cheezy retreat from Yugoslavia to Romania on G2:

@nishav
What’s the wall of transports?

In the original Classic (2nd Edition) and Revised rulesets transports defended at 1 and could be taken as casualties. Thus with a large enough fleet of cheap transports it was almost impossible to attack them. This was changed with the Anniversary Edition ruleset, and later Global 1940 ruleset, that removed both capabilities.

@superbattleshipyamato Your transport question was already answered above but I will say that every group is different and thus every house rule set has to have different bounds. While I grew up playing Age of Renaissance, Hero Quest, D&D, and Kingmaker our longest tenured player is 70+ and doesn’t adapt to significant rule changes quickly. So while I’m perfectly down for World in Flames or Battle for North Africa many of our house rules have to remain within the bounds of Axis and Allies. There was an old Xeno Games expansion/alternate ruleset for A&A called World at War that was quite fun you might want to look at. Had a rule for Germany to assassinate Hitler that I always loved.

@nishav said in The cheezy retreat from Yugoslavia to Romania on G2:

Had a rule for Germany to assassinate Hitler that I always loved.

Yeah, you had to roll a 1 or 2 if I remember correctly and if the assassination attempt failed you lost, what was it, 2 infantry and an armor? If you succeeded you collected $5 more each Turn.

@nishav

Interesting. Thank you for responding!

@andrewaagamer

Nice gamble.

@andrewaagamer 1-2, you killed him and got permanent $5 bonus, 3-5 you failed nothing happens, 6 you failed and you have to remove 2 German Infantry and 2 German Armor.

@nishav said in The cheezy retreat from Yugoslavia to Romania on G2:

@andrewaagamer 1-2, you killed him and got permanent $5 bonus, 3-5 you failed nothing happens, 6 you failed and you have to remove 2 German Infantry and 2 German Armor.

Which was funny because that was better odds than any other actual attempt. There was really no incentive not to try it.

@squirecam timing was everything. You could maximize your income by trying turn one but you also had to get Poland and France turn 1 so losing a 1/4 of your army would be problematic. You also had to make the attempt during the purchase units phase of the turn.

By your logic every retreat would be bogus because let’s say your infantry want to retreat but ooops they already moved their 1 movement space into combat

And most experienced players hit Yugoslavia Germany t1 ping pong into Romania and let Italy mop it up

Mop it up = Lip Locks !

@burgh-gamer-67 the logic holds, they march forward, then they retreat back, the problem that people have with this abstraction is that the units “retreat” forward

@nishav

Except they’re not, they’re retreating back to another space (remember that one unit from Romania needs to come in). And what is your definition of “retreating back”, anyway? If you mean that you or someone else wants units so they can only retreat to the territory they came from, then the logic holds (I do not support this).

@superbattleshipyamato when 2 armies approach an opponent from opposite directions, engage in battle, and then retreat, the opponent does not open his lines to allow one army to join the other in retreating in one direction

@nishav

Well, due to how strategic the game is, the armies might have linked up.

@nishav there are sub forums for house rules. You are welcome to have as many rules as you want to improve gameplay and/or realism. This isn’t the right place to be discussing it.

@arthur-bomber-harris The game is improved by people providing constructive criticism, as it was when transports were made defenseless, battleships stopped by sunk by the same amount of damage as a submarine or destroyer, and addressing the vast distances of Siberia and China dwarf those of Europe.

As I’m not addressing any kind of house rule, simply the flawed logic behind the existing rule in the game, this would seem to be the correct place to discuss it by default. Unfortunately, there is no separate “review” section of the forums to have this discussion.

@nishav

I agree. I believe that this is unlike the other examples you mentioned, and therefore does not need to be fixed.

I reiterate my position that this is not a problem.

@superbattleshipyamato I respect your difference of opinion. While I do disagree with you, in that i feel this is a problem in the game, I do concur that it is not of the same severity as several other opportunities the game has experienced and continues to experience.

@nishav @seancb @SuperbattleshipYamato

Most of us call this move a Strafe. The Yugoslavia strafe is canned into the opener, but there are occasionally situations where you can use the same rule to move your army into a new position when it happens to be attacking from two or more different directions. Sometimes, these moves will be dependent on the dice (you may have intended to take the zone, but need a backup plan to consolidate the attackers and incoming defenders need to join up when you dont).

It also plays into territories that need to be taken and blocked (to prevent a blitz) vs territories that need to be cleared or reduced (to destroy potential attackers).

Since the game doesnt have a logistics element, nor should it, these moves simulate kessels, salients, hit-and-run tactics, flanking and things common in other zoomed up tactical wargames.

It makes the game way more chesslike–it would be very odd to state that you think castling, en passant, or forking, the rule that prevents you from just moving your pieces back and forth to stalemate etc, are illegitimate moves in chess. Perhaps you dont like those rules, but they evolved for a reason to keep play dynamic, they are part of the canon of modern chess, and there are literally hundreds of other chess variants you can play that dont use those conventions.

As others have pointed out–there are far cheezier things that acutally add more moves–if you land fighters on an allied carrier, it moves two, then on the next turn those fighters can move 4 again, extending their range from 8 to 10 across two turns. That may seem cheezy but its done to facilitate the use of planes on allied carriers and since its unusual to move in a straight line with all your units, its difficult to exploit this rule.

The Axis and Allies online version doesnt allow you to land on allied carriers–for a variety of reasons. That also means that Axa Online based on 42.2 is somewhat different than 42.2.

If you look at all the versions of Axa put together, the designers tried different rules, and different treatments for each type of unit. That means that each game remains unique, and eventually many of their brainstormed ideas and solutions ended up in published versions. The different treatment of AAA or transports in different versions make the game a bit more confusing, but they also show a 30 year process of testing, development and creativty that I appreciate.