Best posts made by Argothair

I think the purpose of the playbook is to come up with a basic, solid overview of strategies that work in general G40 play. Discussion of how to exploit a specific bid (“Oh, man, put 3 fighters in Amur and then you can pick off Japanese transports!”) is out-of-scope because not everyone will play with a 30 IPC bid or allow the whole bid to be stacked in one territory. Discussion of how to win with the Allies given some kind of general compensation for what most (but not all) players acknowledge as the imbalance of the game – without specifying whether that compensation is a bid, or Balanced Mod, or Taamvan’s reduced Axis NOs and Tankograd, or whatever – is in-scope for this thread. It has to be! Otherwise the thread will degenerate into a debate about whether it’s “possible” to win without a bid, which isn’t nearly as interesting and which has plenty of other threads already.

With all of that in mind, taamvan raises a really good point: sometimes Germany attacks Russia G1, building tanks and bombers with the idea of conquering Moscow on G5. I’ve outlined how I would respond. How would others respond? What other defenses do the Allies have available for that opening?

If you have no beachhead at all, and you still want to fight in a region, then you need to send at least one transport full of actual land units. A single transport could cost 60 IPCs, and you’d still have little choice but to pay that price if you wanted to occupy a region that’s cut off from your forces by sea – although there are plenty of weird exceptions. Items like paratrooper technology, sub convoys, and strategic bombing become more important as the relative cost of transports rises.

As soon as you’re able to deliver one transport to your target, though, then the usual cost-benefit equation goes back into effect. Do you want one loaded transport plus 10 planes? Or five loaded transports? Or something in between?

@taamvan Maybe another way to get some value for this thread out of your perspectives and experience would be to ask you what you consider to be appropriate compensation for Moscow.

Like, let’s say Germany takes Moscow on G5 with 5 tanks and 10 planes remaining; let’s just say that’s a given. What would the Allies have to own in the rest of Europe at the end of UK5 for you to feel that the Allies still had an even or better position? Would North Africa, Rome, Normandy, and Norway be enough? If not, what would theoretically have to be added to that list? I say “theoretically” because I’d love to get your take on what the territories are worth even if you think it’s not practically feasible to seize them by UK5. I’m much less interested in what you think is possible or impossible, and much more interested in what you think would be adequate or inadequate.

As far as the UK only earning $28, when playing Balanced Mod I routinely get up to $40 with the UK. $26 base + $3 for original territories + $3 for Malta/Cyprus/Crete + $3 for no enemy subs in Atlantic + $4 for the basic territory value of Iraq and Persia + $1 for Ethiopia is already $40, and it can go up even further from there if you wind up in Greece and Sicily, as is often possible after Taranto. This makes it possible to build 6 units in the Middle East each turn and still have a meaningful budget to spend in the Atlantic.

I see your point about the UK’s most efficient role based on turn order being the provision of fighters for defending recently-captured land territories…but if you adhere rigidly to that principle of efficiency, that might be part of why your German opponents are able to send everything to Moscow without needing to defend against the western Allies in the opening. If Germany doesn’t build any boats or airbases, then the UK should be able to sink the German Baltic fleet in the first three turns, after which a UK invasion of Norway or even Normandy becomes much harder for Germany to respond to in a way that allows Germany to obtain favorable TUV exchanges. Yes, Germany has more land units and more income, but they can’t be everywhere at once, and the British navy can.

Brilliant, thanks!

SiredBlood has rules for a combined UK economy that work pretty well; basically there is a 20 IPC/turn spending cap in India, and otherwise you just combine the entire UK + Canada + India + South Africa into one economy, with ANZAC remaining separate. If you don’t like the 20 IPC/turn rule, you could replace the major IC in India with a pair of minor ICs, one in India and one in West India.

ANZAC is interesting as a separate power because ( a ) they have a core cluster of facilities & 2-IPC territories of Queensland, New South Wales, and New Zealand that are far enough away from Japan to be defensible, ( b ) they have economic interests like Java and New Guinea that are close enough to Japan to make for immediate conflict, ( c ) they can realistically get up to 20+ IPCs in many games, which gives them options beyond just sitting and turtling, and ( d ) they are a convenient ‘junior partner’ for the US Pacific Navy, which allows them to punch above their weight.

None of these are true for Canada except for ( a ). It’s easy to defend Ontario and Quebec, but Canada doesn’t have any economic interests that put them into immediate conflict with any Axis powers, they have no realistic path to get to 20+ IPCs, and the British Atlantic navy isn’t strong enough in this version of the game to need or want a junior partner. It might be possible to radically adjust the starting setup so that the English-speaking countries have a larger total Atlantic navy that is split up less favorably among UK & Canada so as to preserve roughly the same level of power, or to have a larger Canadian navy that serves as a sort of Allied bid, but you can’t just split Canada off as its own power without tilting the power balance further in favor of the Axis. Even if you do fix the balance issue, it’s not obvious that Canada is a strategically interesting power on this map. I am very pro-Canada and have great respect for Canada’s historical wartime contributions, and I think thematically it would be a lot of fun to play a Canadian power, but I don’t think it’s a realistic goal mechanically for this map and setup.

I’ve got a “Balanced Mod” for Anniversary in the House Rules forum that tries to “backload” the Allied national objectives so that the Allies, especially the USA, will have a booming economy in the endgame if the Axis aren’t able to shut it down. That way instead of “Allies have more income, can the Axis catch up, yes, they can, they did, ok, great, now the Axis win” the story becomes “Allies have more income, can the Axis catch up, yes, they can, they did, but eventually the Allies will mobilize for total war; can the Allies rebound successfully before the Axis get so huge that even the extra national objectives won’t help, maybe, they might, it’s a really close call.”

Playtested it live for the first time a month ago, and it seemed quite fair to us. Axis roll and I have also played it online with decent results.

@taamvan Agree with you re: infantry.

This is very nitpicky, but disagree on blocking east Poland – there is only one Italian tank in Romania, so if you block Bessarabia then either it blitzes through East Poland to attack Bessarabia (in which case you can just go through West Ukraine to get to East Poland) or it blitzes through East Poland to occupy West Ukraine (in which case you can go through Bessrabia to get to East Poland).

Well it’s not the one-shot rule that anyone is complaining about; I think everybody here agrees that BBs and CAs should only get one round of bombardments per battle. The question is whether an infantry that gets hits by that bombardment should be allowed to return fire.

And as far as CA & DD in pairs, again, that ignores the way that BBs can soak a free hit.

Let’s say you buy 6 CA & 6 DD to attack me, and I buy 5 BB, 1 DD, 2 SS to defend. You can expect to inflict an average of 5 hits, and I expect to inflict an average of 4 hits. As you say, a slim attack advantage for your fleet – but only on the first round of battle. After the first round, 4 of your DDs are dead, but all of my ships are still in the fight.

Now you have 6 CA + 2 DD = 22 pips of offense, against my 5 damaged BB + 1 DD + 2 SS = 24 pips of defense. Suppose you roll slightly above-average and score your 4 hits, and I roll average and score my 4 hits. Now you have 4 CA left, against my 4 damaged BB. Clearly at this point my fleet outclasses yours, and you should expect to lose the battle if average luck continues.

Pairing CAs with DDs might be the way to get max value out of CAs, but that certainly doesn’t mean you should routinely purchase them – the maximum value you can get out of a CA is still noticeably less than the maximum value you can get out of other ships.

@TheDesertFox I agree with you, and I’ve been designing my mods accordingly. My Balanced Mod for the Anniversary (ww2v3) map has three explicit Russian lend-lease objectives for Archangel, Persia, Vladivostok, and their respective sea zones, and they don’t incorporate any xenophobia that cancels the objectives if the Western Allies have boots or planes on Russian soil.

I’m expecting my latest map, WW2v3 Deluxe, to come out this weekend. It’s inspired by some of vodot’s hard copy map changes, and it includes direct ‘gifts’ of specific Russian units (artillery, tanks, and AA guns) based on control of the lend-lease routes.

More broadly, do keep in mind that the Soviet Union can’t be reliably powerful enough to beat Germany all on their own if you want a competitive game. If the Soviets are a match for the Germans, then the UK is certainly a match for Italy and the US is a match for Japan, so the Axis will lose essentially every time. The Germans have to be able to kill the Russians in most 1v1 matchups (maybe not easily, and not all the time, but at least most of the time); otherwise the game stops being balanced.

@simon33 (Allies +0 BM3) over Argothair (Axis) after a failed G2 Sea Lion, an utterly Pyhrric Japanese attack on Amur, and a failed Italian attack on the combined Allied Western Mediterranean fleet.

There was also an entertainingly failed American attack on Norway, but with only 3 German units left on the board for the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe combined, Russia was able to just walk in and claim Norway anyway. Good times.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/33036/argothair-axis-0-v-simon33-allies-bm3/67

@taamvan Due to cutbacks in the judiciary’s budget, the Loser’s Privilege will be adjudicated by arbitrators from now on. Arbitrators will be selected at random from a panel of the players’ wives and girlfriends, and will spend their customary 30 seconds considering every aspect of the situation before finally and conclusively disposing of all parties’ rights in all matters related to or arising out of the damned game in the damned living room.

Players who are under the mistaken impression that they did not consent to this form of arbitration are advised to consult the TripleA license agreement, paragraph 243.

@Black_Elk said in Argo's Middleweight Map for 1939 & 1942:

So my eye darts around from Sweden to Arabia to South America etc, because that is where the highest value contrasts are occuring.

Ohh! OK, now I see what you were getting at. Yeah, you’re right, land vs. sea is an important place for contrast, and Axis vs. Allied is an important place for contrast, and relative to that neutral vs. impassible vs. owned is not a very important place for contrast, so it doesn’t make sense to use white for neutral or black for impassible or a greyish blue for the sea. Better would be grey for neutral, beige for impassible, and a very light, crisp cyan for the sea. Easy enough to fix!

I’ve never understood why people get so excited about attacking Tobruk. It’s worth 0 IPCs, you’re not destroying any enemy planes, the units in Tobruk aren’t immediately threatening to attack anything except Alexandria (which is also worth 0 IPCs), and in general if you can kill the Italian ships (and you can) then the Italian units in north Africa will be stuck there doing nothing important for the entire game. You can go the entire game without ever actually needing to kill those units. I don’t understand why people would want to kill them on turn 1, let alone why people would want to place a bid with the idea of killing them.

I suspect people just like recreating the Second Battle of El Alamein, or they feel itchy about having enemy units near what they see as “their” turf. I really can’t see any strategic purpose.

@wizmark I don’t know if “take over the Middle East” counts as a cunning plan, but I’m sure having fun with it! :)

I’ve made a deckbuilding game with a friend that’s set during the American Civil War where you play cards from your deck to move different types of army units around the map, but it’s pretty specific to the Civil War – I don’t think it would port well to WW2.

You might try Quartermaster General; it’s a bit lighter than A&A, but it’s a game about making very efficient use of each card in a relatively small deck to win World War 2 by moving armies around a map.

Early draft of unit chart. Note that artillery does not boost infantry, flak is not limited to non-combat move, transports are not defenseless, subs do not submerge, etc, fighters do not escort or intercept bombers – unless explicitly mentioned on the chart, special unit rules will not apply. This should help simplify the rules and allow newer players to enjoy the game even though there are more tiles and more unit types compared to Revised.

@Pinch1 Meh. It takes 10 seconds for you to tell me to give it a try; it takes 10 hours for me to test your ideas in one game of Global, and even then, if I get crushed, you could call it a fluke. I’ve never met you and I have no reason to trust your judgment. If you really want other people to give it a try, why not respond in detail to my concerns? If you don’t care very much, then that’s fine; we can agree to disagree – it’s just a game.

Percival’s still getting smoked in southeast asia, man. You gotta replace that guy.

@vodot Yeah, zeroing out Siberia is another one of those hard design choices that you have to make at this level of complexity. On the one hand, it’s cold and snowy and thinly populated and you want the map to reflect that in a way that’s clear to new wargamers. It’s no good having Yakutsk generate more income then, e.g., Yugoslavia.

On the other hand, the Soviets did relocate most of their industry to the Urals as the war went on, and much of that industry was fueled by mines and workshops in Siberia. They didn’t put all their millions of prisoners in the gulag just to be cruel; they were also mostly doing work vital to the war effort, I believe.

If you squint you can say that Moscow + Urals + Kazakhstan together cover the cities like Kuibyshev and Perm and Chelyabinsk where all that Ural manufacturing was taking place, but it seems to me that at least some of that industry was really in the Siberian part of the AA50 map. Perhaps more to the point, if the Axis conquer Moscow and Stalingrad then there is really nothing important left in the Soviet income, which is very ahistorical. In real life something like 40% of Soviet economy was in Moscow/Stalingrad and points west, but on the AA50 map it’s closer to 80%. Zeroing out Siberia would make that even worse.

So I’m running into some difficulty, and I’m open to advice. At this point the map file is a .png file, as required for the TripleA map editor utilities; it’s not a vector file. That means that I can’t easily expand the size of the map (in pixels) while keeping the borders one-pixel wide, as required by the utilities.

Unfortunately, many of the smaller territories are not wide enough to accommodate even one or two unit types – the units are 35 pixels wide, so even though the map as a whole is several thousand pixels wide, smaller territories like Greece, Malta, Denmark, Kiev, etc. are just not capable of displaying a mixed army without spilling over way into other territories in a horrible mess. It’s not just one or two territories, and if I merged all of the smaller territories then this map would no longer faithfully represent my vision.

How have other map designers tackled this problem? Anyone have any creative ideas? I could start from scratch with a new vector file, but I would lose dozens of hours of work, even if I used this map as sort of a sketch to guide me.