Allied Playbook - G40 Collection of Essays - Compiled by jacobgeo24 Nov 18-19 2023

@freh said in Bids for allies - 60???:

Wow, I’ve been away from the game so things must have shifted and strategy must be evovling. I just can’t imagine losing with the opportunity to put $60 worth of allied units before the game starts. Are there any patterns to bids? Does it get concentrated in one nation (defending UK against initial German attacks, or giving Russia some more offensive bite) or is it spread out?

As I said my gaming group in Seattle has gone up to $60. I am not sure that is true for the general community. The placement of the Bid depends on the Player. Sometimes it all goes in Russia, sometimes it all goes to UK Europe. Personally I think that is six of one half a dozen of another. Bid units in Russia protect Moscow so the Allies do not need to help Russia defend their capital. Bid units for UK Europe assist UK in defense of London and in taking out the Italians much faster which allows them to assist Russia either with direct unit intervention for the defense of Moscow or intense pressure on the Atlantic Wall. The end result is basically the same. Either the UK is strong and gets help to Russia fast or the UK is weak and struggles but never has to send help to Russia because Russia is strong. Personally I like a 50-50 balance between UK Europe and Russia. Best of both worlds. :)

One constant is that normally at least 80% up to all 100% goes on the Europe side of the board versus the Pacific side of the board.

Hi Stormtrooper,

Thanks for the compliment, glad you liked them.

They are supposed to be printed on A6 (quarter of A4), although they are designed on A5. But that was for convenience during the process of creating them.

There are some minor errors though, which I will be correcting:

The German title Oberfellherr is non-existent and will be changed to Feldmarschall or Generalfeldmarschall, depends on the length of the line. The 6 IPC text of the Chinese NO has the same color as 5 IPC text on other cards. Some pictures are strechted to the edges of the paper and have to be aligned to the maximum margins and the white border has to be cut off.

BTW use them anyway you like, the original files are included as well (www#mediafire#com/download/zcjf495wirizjrb/A&A_NO_odt.tar.gz and again replace # with .)

chrz

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.

J1 DOW is strong. I won tournament games with it and league games. It is unbelievable against those who have not seen it before. You end up winning in the pacific by turn 7 or USA is full pacific trying to stop you while Germany and Italy wins in Europe.

Thanks for explanations IL.

@Entek:

AFAIK in league you can’t add any units to China or to France with a bid, and you can only add units to territories or Sea Zones that already have units.

The Chinese bid is perfectly legal in the Global `40 league (unless it just changed).  Strictly speaking it is also legal to bid Chinese units which they cannot buy in the normal course of a game, but that probably will be changed if it hasn’t already.  There has been plenty of discussion on that topic.

Placing a French bid in Paris should also be perfectly legal.  I don’t think doing so would be that helpful since at best maybe you’ve delayed the German attack on S. France or Normandy by one turn, which i don’t see as having a lot of strategic impact on German play.

when UK needs USA to stave off Europe disaster or 2) once China and Aussie and UK-India are able to contain what’s left of Japan

zhukov sums up the KJF strat scenarios.