@Eqqman - I don’t mind if you edit your posts. But you gotta understand sometimes I’ll be writing responses to stuff you edited out or whatever. Like how Imperious Leader addressed your saying Germany buys a carrier and stacks Norway to threaten invasion of London, and now I think you edited your statement about that out.
@Eqqman said in How does Russia stay alive in KJF?:
@aardvarkpepper said in How does Russia stay alive in KJF?:
Jesus.
Still classy, I see :).
Ha ha. But seriously, you got your choice on what you wanna focus on - what I say or how I say it. If I were representing a company or whatever I’d be circumspect. But then my agenda wouldn’t be actually answering your question - it would be to play public relations.
How’s this answer sound? “You’ve clearly thought things through, and I have to agree there just isn’t an answer”. That’s your standard PR BS right there. You don’t have to think things through, I don’t have to explain them, and there’s zero progress. If you want to do that, there’s no shortage of posters that want to play diplo all day. It’s an easy political win. But me, I go numbers and resolutions.
What do you want to focus on?
@aardvarkpepper said in How does Russia stay alive in KJF?:
Thread title should be changed to reflect the topic is KJF in 1942 Online specifically. Seriously.
You need clear and realistic strategic and tactical goals in the KJF, and criteria to determine when you’re moving from one phase to another.
That’s real talk. Look, some posters are so wrapped up in their egos they take anything as an attack, or an attempt to “neg” or whatever. But if you don’t have a defined plan and criteria, you’re just lost.
If you had all the answers, you wouldn’t need to ask, right? So when you ask, and someone gives you an answer - if it’s not an answer you LIKE or an answer you EXPECT, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good answer. When I say you need to provide the specifics, maybe that’s not the answer you wanted or expected, but it IS how it is.
@Eqqman said in How does Russia stay alive in KJF?:
Since I haven’t played you in a game I stand by my statement. Presumably there is a drawback to this strategy or more people would be willing to try it.
Usually when you write something like “I stand by my statement”, you’re affirming your commitment to a statement others are disagreeing with. But explicitly, I say yes you should send Japanese air force to Europe, and I’ll say here I expect most human players don’t do it. So where’s the disagreement? If you want to stand by your statement, you’ll have to stand by your statement with someone else because I agree with that much.
As to “presumably there is a drawback . . . or more people would be willing to try it” - straight up, I think most players in the 1942 Online meta are bad. There’s no live defender decisions, you can’t use allied carriers (supposedly that’s going to change but it certainly hasn’t yet), those are major major changes. To top it off there’s bugs, plus no rewind or board state editor - and on top of that you can’t record games to review phase by phase. Even the supposed War Diary doesn’t tell you defender casualty allocations, it just says what went in and what came out - and knowing casualty allocation decisions shapes your understanding of your opponent’s risk preferences. Way I figure it, all the serious veterans gave up on 1942 Online and are sticking to TripleA - where they’re playing 1940 Global anyways. So pretty much the ones that did go for 1942 Online are the ones that didn’t mind a bunch of compromises, and of course you’re not going to get sharp commentary off that.
Though if you’re going to get ANY sharp commentators on the Axis and Allies org boards for 1942 Online, I’d say probably you already got your answers off Black Elk and Imperious Leader. Black Elk I’d say has the experience and has thought things through - though I don’t know that he’d break everything down numerically. Imperious Leader also has a chunk of experience, though I’d say for him it’s probably really more he speaks from intuition. I mean, if Hobbes would comment that would be great but I haven’t seen him around in years so eh.
Anyways @Eqqman you can post details and we can go from there. Or you can NOT post details or whatever. Your call.
I don’t object to sharing my thoughts - unlike Certain Posters That Want To Keep Game Plans Secret (wink wink) - but seriously we can’t be having a discussion without details.
eqqman: G1 buys Baltic carrier
aardvark: Allies go KGF, not KJF, and win
eqqman: G1 attacks Egypt
aardvark: Germany is dumb, Allies win again
eqqman: Japan ignores India
aardvark: lol, Allies win
Seriously, that’s the level of discussion without those important details. And again, this isn’t me trying to “neg” or whatever. Take Baltic carrier for example. Think about the details that you didn’t provide - but that I’ll fill in.
Imagine Germany buys a Baltic carrier. What’s the board state? Let’s assume LHTR setup (UK battleship is accompanied by UK destroyer and other changes). Since we’re discussing 1942 Online specifically - as you mentioned in your second post in this thread - that’s appropriate, as LHTR setup is what’s used for ranked games. Also you don’t get a bid like you do in other setups which bears mentioning. Let’s also assume all players are competent. Anything to object to so far?
Don’t get me wrong, if you feel something’s wrong but you can’t put your finger on it - that’s fine. But you have to understand if we’re going to discuss things in a productive manner, we have to write about what we CAN talk about, not what we CAN’T define.
As the players are competent, we know the R1 open did not have particularly bad dice. Because if R1 DID have bad dice on that level, then Germany would have done tank dash. Also it’s likely that Russia didn’t park fighters on Archangel - and that has some implications for how Russia wrapped up Ukraine / Caucasus, but we’ll just ignore that (though we shouldn’t really) for simplicity.
So now what happens off G1 Baltic carrier buy? Preserves the German Baltic transport for invasion threat - which is going to be what, one infantry, one tank, and four fighters? UK has a higher defender count if it literally does nothing.
You can screw with the numbers to push Germany’s attack higher - but EVERY such action must be paid for in risk or position one way or another. And that’s something that a lot of bum posters on Steam and Discord refuse to get into. They say with their mystical mumbo jumbo reasoning that XYZ does this . . . but ALSO does that.
So let’s look at this a bit closer. In the LHTR setup, if you want moderately good odds against the UK battleship / destroyer / Russian sub, you must send two submarines, two fighters, and something else - typically the cruiser, but if you’re okay with some risk and counters maybe a third sub. But that means UK’s destroyer off East Canada lives, as does US’s East US fleet. And if UK’s East Canada destroyer lives, that gives odds-on for UK to blow up any German subs that survived the G1 battle, plus the UK transport can move over a tank from East Canada (even though I think usually that’s not necessary).
So the first question you have to ask is - Germany has to commit to buying a carrier before knowing the outcome of any G1 battles. So exactly how much did Germany leave itself open to dice? If Germany tried a load of crazy things and lucksacked into the wins it needed, then sure, we can address that situation. But you need to SPECIFY that you’re talking about that situation, because normally if Germany tries a bunch of attacks that aren’t odds-on, some are going to fail - and that’s going to leave Germany open to counters.
Since we’re specifying details - let’s say Germany decided to hit with 3 subs 2 fighters and lost no fighters. I think that’s reasonable enough. We can’t say that’s the case for all games, but it should happen a reasonable amount of time. You’re free to disagree, but if you do, remember you have to say what happened specifically instead.
And why 3 subs? Because if you don’t have at least a cruiser at Baltic, you risk Russian sub submerging then having an odds-on attack against a carrier and transport. Even carrier plus cruiser is not great defense against a sub - I’ve won that battle twice with the Russian sub.
So this in turn means that UK probably destroys all German subs in the Atlantic by end of UK1, and US can use a destroyer block against the German battleship / transport in the Mediterranean. I don’t say that’s the best line. But let’s just say it’s an option - and from here, I won’t be qualifying things; I’ll just say “assume xyz”.
So - four fighters. Why not five? Well that’s where things start to be a problem. Say Germany captured Gibraltar. Germany knows US can destroyer block. So why does Germany capture Gibraltar? So it can threaten a larger invasion of UK? Sure. But also to threaten a unified G2 fleet off France. That’s the real reason.
But then what? If Germany moves its battleship to Gibraltar, it’s vulnerable to attack from the UK cruiser, the UK destroyer (from Med) and the UK bomber. So did Germany move its battleship to Gibraltar? Probably not without at least trying to whack the UK cruiser. And there’s only a 33.3% chance a lone German fighter (sourced from Germany) survives that attack. And even if it does survive the attack, Germany has to fortify Morocco - well, I won’t get into that here.
You could say there’s a German bomber too, but I say the Russian objective in Ukraine is the German bomber. When it’s dead, Russia can retreat. Which for whatever reason in the 1942 Online meta isn’t the norm, though I think it WAS the norm for the board game meta.
Or you could say Germany doesn’t push for a G2 fleet off France. But then what? A UK1 sub build threatens to destroy any underpowered German fleet at low cost. And UK can afford to do it too - especially if Germany can’t even escape (and it shouldn’t be able to).
What about the G2 invasion threat? How can UK afford subs if it’s defending India AND UK? But it’s not much of a strain. US1 build fleet, US2 build air and move fleet wherever, UK3 drop fleet, US3 move fleet southwest of London. If Japan didn’t invest heavily in J1 bombers then it can’t really stop this, as the UK3 fleet drop can include escorts too - even if UK’s using 9-10 IPC a turn in India, it still has the income for a sizable fleet.
But if you’re doing a UK3 fleet drop, ideally you want 3-4 transports, with a 5th transport coming in on later turns (whether surviving from Indian Ocean or from southeast of Australia). And that’s used for - whatever, there was a paper on overbuilding UK transports in Revised. Old stuff but still applies.
So what does THAT mean? That means that probably you want to build up to 4 ground on UK by UK3 anyways because you need to build those units to be there to fill the 4 transports you’re building on UK3. Ideally you don’t build those ground units until UK2 until after you see the G1-G2 commits and outcomes, but if you see a G1 Baltic carrier, there you go.
Returning to the German battleship in Med, so maybe you say Germany does . . . whatever. I don’t care. But probably you’re going to tie up at least one German fighter in Africa or SOMEWHERE. And as Imperious Leader wrote, if you’re tying up German fighters to threaten London, that means those German fighters are NOT in range of other important targets in Europe - especially Ukraine, from where Russia can threaten a good range of territories for the trade.
Sure, you can say this is a thread about KJF. But if Germany’s dumb and leaves itself open to a big obvious KGF, then what? Especially since UK1 and US1 happen AFTER G1, so Allies can decide to KGF after seeing Germany’s moves. It’s not at all out of the question - in fact it’s exactly what Allies SHOULD do.
And if you want to say the Axis have the obvious counter - but they don’t. The onus of proof is on the Axis to present their case, because UK and US have the advantage of combined income, combined defense, timing, and logistics. They ALL favor the Allies. Like what, Germany piles fleet at Baltic? If a German Baltic fleet tries to push towards Med, it has to go into the face of US builds that were built a turn LATER at Eastern US. Plus if Germany’s piling navy, then Russia should be pushing for territory, and Russian income translates into units near the heart of the area of conflict. So the “default” there is Allies win.
If you want to argue master level plays - sure. But you can’t just take that level of play for granted, and that’s a very detail-laden conversation. If you just go G1 Baltic carrier without a plan, the German buy gets cut off and destroyed, it’s a total waste of IPCs.