L23 2nd Ed OOB AndrewAAGamer (X) vs farmboy (Allies+60)

the axis attack on yunnan is a no brainer in a no bid game, it is also a no brainer as long as bids are not placed here or to support yunnan. Yunnan should not be attacked by axis if bid 2 fighters and and 1nf, 1 fighter and 1 inf is also questionable

i ask of examples where allies should make a stand at 10 or 20% chance elsewhere (not yunnan) I agree making a stand is a good move, but I am unsure about 10-20 % chance. Of course if this means disaster elsewhere I 100% agree. Can you pin point examples? i am just curious!

1. The only place where I would make a stand at 20% chance or lower would be Moscow, Egypt, India, any China stack, and a key blocking place in the Middle East where you are defending in depth so the weakened stack won’t be able to continue the charge very far.

2. agree with the 3 art bid the soviet far east. It has rendered Japan very weak in Asia.

3. do opponents actually allow you to do the inf in NG bid?

4. 13-23 is good for yunnan stack depending on the strength of the opponent. More bid for a weaker opponent who might yolo it.

5. I like having another 10 bid for ground units to help out in Africa as the game is a L if the Allies get diced on UK1. Happened to me even with a big bid.

@oysteilo In this game, in round 5 I keep Yunnan stacked despite Andrew having about 90% odds. The reason is because in winning, on average, he loses half his air and all his ground units in South East Asia. Even if the roll is above average for him, its a heavy loss that he can’t afford if he wants to take India or keep the US fleet out.

In my experience, the allied player (including myself) has often retreated, because we get too nervous about odds like that and miss what the implications are for the game.

As the game goes on, I give him more options either in Yunnan, Burma, India, or Manchuria and Jehol. Sometimes the odds are closer to a 100% and the TUV exchange is closer to 0, but there is nothing he can go for which, even with a positive tuv exchange doesn’t actually put him a weaker position. He is either losing scarce land units, or trading air for inf and both benefit the allied position in the game.

I don’t know if that helps concretize it. And sorry this may not be anything new. Its been something I’ve come to what I think is a much better understanding of in the last few months and so I’ve been a bit excited about it

And just to clarify the odds, when i give the axis 90% (or better) odds, the goal is to create situations where there was allied pressure somewhere else and, if he went for it, he would always have traded units that he was going to need elsewhere. The point is not only to rely on your opponent’s playing conservatively but to create conditions where in the context of the whole board, victories are pyrrhic. In the pacific the Japanese player often is relying on a tonne of air, but lacks ground troops, an outcome is that they often trade the land units they need to hold and take territory on the mainland, or lose air that give him the edge in those battles and help keep the US fleet on the outside.

I think this is one of the major keys to beating Japan - it has very limited production capacity and few starting land units. Japan doesn’t have enough units to do everything it wants if the Allies force them to fight for every bit of land. An early example of this is the Allies taking Sumatra and Java on the first turn. It prevents Japan from walking in with just an Inf. It is also why I’m a fan of keeping the 20 Russian units in the east - to pin some Japanese units in the north.

Looking at this more, I think the Allies can hold Yunnan through J2 with a bid of 13 - if China builds Inf instead of Art and the Russian starting tank & mech move there.

@farmboy said in L23 2nd Ed OOB AndrewAAGamer (X) vs farmboy (Allies+60):

@oysteilo In this game, in round 5 I keep Yunnan stacked despite Andrew having about 90% odds. The reason is because in winning, on average, he loses half his air and all his ground units in South East Asia. Even if the roll is above average for him, its a heavy loss that he can’t afford if he wants to take India or keep the US fleet out.

In my experience, the allied player (including myself) has often retreated, because we get too nervous about odds like that and miss what the implications are for the game.

As the game goes on, I give him more options either in Yunnan, Burma, India, or Manchuria and Jehol. Sometimes the odds are closer to a 100% and the TUV exchange is closer to 0, but there is nothing he can go for which, even with a positive tuv exchange doesn’t actually put him a weaker position. He is either losing scarce land units, or trading air for inf and both benefit the allied position in the game.

I don’t know if that helps concretize it. And sorry this may not be anything new. Its been something I’ve come to what I think is a much better understanding of in the last few months and so I’ve been a bit excited about it

j3(1).tsvg

Here’s another example from a game I played with ABH. We traded Yunnan the first turn. I stacked it on turn 2 knowing he would kill it, but it had to be done. If the Japanese stack makes it to Burma, India is finished. The Chinese and Russian land units took one for the team. Japan “won” the battle by 33 TUV, but the threat to India was eliminated.

Let me just say how excited I am about this discussion. My interview with Andrew has spurred higher Allied bids across the site. This Yunnan stack and the artillery in the Soviet East have breathed new life into OOB.

1. A strong China is slowly, but surely a defeated Japan!
2. A strong China begins with Russia help turn 1.

This information will spread and influence play, just as Gibastion has transformed the Med/Atlantic strategy. I’ve always thought Japan should be priority 1. Easier to trip up.

All that being said, Andrew you deserve kudos for a stout defense. Even at the end, a false move by Farmboy might have led to Allied defeat in the Pacific Ocean. Granted, at that point the Chinese were so strong that getting back on your feet would have been difficult. Extraordinary game people!

@crockett36 I still don’t think the Allied bid should much exceed 50. Andrew is starting to face stiffer opposition which is figuring out the weaknesses. Yunnan being able to hold on J1-3 is a killer economically for Japan. It isn’t possible to accomplish without such a high bid that can be spent in the Pacific instead of necessities such as a Scottish fighter, additional sub(s) in the Atlantic/Med, and a little bit more to hold onto Africa.

Being able to combine the strong-China plan with a strong Russia in Siberia is so challenging for Japan. They need to abandon any hope of holding onto China and focus on capturing India as soon as possible, and then winning the map in Europe. This is a radical change from any strategy in a non-bid game.

@govz I had given up all hope of a victory in the Pacific for Japan in that game. With so much effort to win on that side of the board, I knew the Axis would inevitably win in Europe.

@oysteilo I realized after I posted that you asked for examples other than Yunnan. Apologies. I think this happens most clearly on the pacific side of the map with China and India and so Yunnan is pretty central to it. But there were a couple of turns where he had better than 90% on allied units in Burma and India. And here because I had a combined UK/China stack in Burma, he couldn’t attack and hold India. And although he would likely defeat the allies in Burma, it meant losing most of his land units and a significant chunk of his air. Later in the game, he also had options to attack Soviet/US/China stacks in Jehol and Manchuria. But again, there would be a significant cost and it meant pulling away from Southeast Asia.

You can also, often, offer better odds on the US fleet as well if Japan is reliant on the carriers to land air. Since in those situations, the odds actually depend on Japan sinking the carriers and hence crashing the planes that could otherwise have a landing zone.

In Europe, you can sometimes set up the same dynamic as in China and dare Germany to go for British or American units in Western Europe, and if he does, the soviets can have more room to maneuver.

I’ve also had a couple of games now where due to a miscalculation, I gave my opponent an opportunity to attack my allied fleet with German air. It wasn’t planned and in both cases, the loss hurt, but it also meant my opponent lost a lot of German air which they actually needed to project power elsewhere.

I have been bullying Andrew earlier in my match, knowing he won’t take medium-odds battles such as a weakly-held Yunnan or the ANZAC fleet on turn 1. I would definitely have used my bid differently if I knew he was more willing to roll the dice. Probably best not to announce your play style so transparently as it can be exploited. I also reviewed the recent games against Oysteilo and others to find tendancies.

I do take gambles on attacking the Allied fleet as Germany when playing against a stronger opponent. Those naval battles are very dicey so outcomes can deviate dramatically from the “average”. I managed to sneak a win against Axis Dominion once, not because I was the better player, but because I gambled in a strike off of Normandy. You have to accept those offers when your odds of winning the entire match is slim because the opponent is significantly better.

@arthur-bomber-harris said in L23 2nd Ed OOB AndrewAAGamer (X) vs farmboy (Allies+60):

@govz I had given up all hope of a victory in the Pacific for Japan in that game. With so much effort to win on that side of the board, I knew the Axis would inevitably win in Europe.

That’s why I’m so intrigued by this idea. If it can keep Japan from overrunning SE Asia into the mid-game - and it seems like it can - then that frees up 70+ in resources that can be used on the other side. I was already buying a fighter R1 to use against Japan so that cost is a wash. The sub in 39 is replaced by the Inf in Yunnan. The ships in 98, 71, & 72 stay or move toward the Med instead of India. Being able to Gibastion would totally change the balance of that game.

You can also, often, offer better odds on the US fleet as well if Japan is reliant on the carriers to land air. Since in those situations, the odds actually depend on Japan sinking the carriers and hence crashing the planes that could otherwise have a landing zone.

I want Japan to attack my fleet. If the IJN wants to leave the safety of a port and get closer to the my US bombers, please bring it. I also probably have some subs in range for the counter attack. Plus ANZAC is around to clean up any leftovers.