Back from the holidays. Just in time. Please add me to the OOB tournament.

Rest in peace Trulpen! It is always a joy to have players who will compete with anyone at any time. His love of the game is unmatched.

I had an unusual game where the Axis captured Egypt early. The Americans focused heavily on the European operations and the Allies were steadily making progress on that side of the map. I built up the Japanese air force and sent it on a suicide attack into Moscow around turn 8. Stripping off 15 infantry Allied units in Moscow can change a battle from a 95% chance of losing into a 95% chance of winning when the Germans get their turn. It also means that Germany will keep their air force intact, allowing them to reclaim any European victory cities if necessary.

The best part of this strategy is that the extra Japanese planes can hold the Allies at bay for several turns, forcing India to cower and Anzac + USA to be more conservative with their fleets. All of the planes can raid Moscow from a base in Sichuan, meaning that only one turn is required to setup the pivot from Pacific to Europe.

Of course the Russian AA’s shot down half of my Japanese raiders and the German tanks had their turrets pointed backwards, leading to an abrupt and unhappy end to a genius strategy.

@trulpen yeah, BM is much tougher for the Japanese in China. I waste way too many men trying to suppress the rebellions. I hate it when an American bomber knocks off the lone defender and a Chinese soldier pops up in Tibet.

looks like it is my turn to lose to Andrew.

@crockett36 Normandy should be left completely unoccupied by the time the Allies have a sizable landing force. As you mentioned, there can be considerable devastation to any Axis force situated in that territory and it cannot be reasonably defended without diverting from the main goal of crushing Moscow or heading into the Middle East/Egypt. Normandy or Norway will fall, it just is a matter of on which round and whether the Axis will be able to retake it with a counterattack of ground units supported by planes. France is the best place to have the Axis counterstrike infantry/artillery. Mechanized units can help counterstrike from W Germany. Usually, though, a wave of UK fighters add enough defensive might to Normandy or Norway to ensure that the Axis are unable to strike back.

Aircraft carriers and subs are the best investment for the US as they have dual purposes of defending the fleet and attacking/convoy raiding. Build enough destroyers to prevent German wolfpacks from roaming the Atlantic

With the release of Elo rankings, I could identify BM4 League games between two high-level players of similar talent (no more than 100 elo point gap in skill level and greater than 1700 average Elo). I eliminated a few games which had a player surrender due to personal reasons, and analyzed 17 games from the last three years.

The following graph shows the magic cutoff point of a 20 point Allied advantage after turn 10 which guarantees victory or defeat. This is a useful threshold to calculate which territories you want to hold in order to ensure victory.

Interestingly, Moscow and India hold for a much longer time than in the “old” days. This isn’t surprising as the balance mod gives more income to Russia and handicaps Japan. The improvements of Axis gameplay has allowed them to eventually overcome Allied defenses despite territory advantages that previously would have marked doom.

@Myygames redo the whole Japan turn then including builds and combat. I don’t think it is appropriate to win because of a rule misunderstanding.

Normally I get victory via superior luck.

There is a sub-forum for house rules. You are free to change the game however you like when playing with your friends. I personally enjoy naval and air bases. They enhance the strategic options.

@crockett36 I am missing something in your suggestions. For players who don’t have time to dive in deep to the game and understand the current metas, the OOB version is sufficiently balanced enough to play without any modification at all. The German player will inevitably build too much fleet in the Atlantic or forget that Berlin is the capitol, not Frankfurt. The Russian player will spend their income on tanks, while the American player decides to take the long-march through N Africa instead of launching a successful Normandy invasion.

For more experience players, we need a modification to make the game balanced. Either we can do that with fixed additional units/income, an adjustable bid, or a full-on balanced mod. We have empirical data that a majority prefer the balanced-mods, while a sizeable fraction enjoy OOB plus a bid, and virtually nobody can agree on intermediary house-rules. Out of the 221 matches last year, how many players could find agreeable custom-rules / modified bids? It has been a long time since I have even been offered anything different. A few players prefer low-luck, but I will only accept that against an inferior foe as I need dice to have a chance to beat players like Farmboy or Gamerman.

I am very happy if a subset of players champion a set of house-rules and demonstrate that they are both balanced and enjoyable. If you see something catching on and think a majority would support general adoption as default, let us know. I would suggest that we could have a League-wide vote on adoption of changes if it has been successfully demonstrated by a sizable percentage of League games. I don’t see anything that even raises to a couple percent adoption right now, but don’t let that stop you from advocating for variations in the matches that you play against opponents as you are free to negotiate any rules you want.

One hit. Casualty choice?

dice are not kind in this game :(

disaster in Tobruk. :(

hit with the fighter. Will edit

[dice 2d6<=3]

glitch in Shan State: my planes did not roll dice. Attacking round 1. Let me see if my syntax is correct
2 fighters :dice 2d6:
1 tac :dice 1d6:

full scramble, max D

@The-Captain if people are experienced, but not masters, they can complete two games in a marathon game day (15h or so). The game takes about the same time for 2-5 players.

Highly experienced people with careful battle calculations will take more time per round and play 3x more rounds before the outcome is decided, but it is rare to find high quality opponents.

non-com UK India edits

sorry, had to do some careful planning as this is such a close game. I will be going on vacation for a week, starting on Saturday. I won’t be able to do turns during that period.