Posts made by Avin

Bid is 3 inf EE, 3 inf Libya. gl/hf!

Replied by PM (I think) to avoid thread hikacking as you suggest. ;)

Glad to see you’re still around; I had been checking in daily to see if there were any updates both on the game and the videos.

Regarding the new video, it does feel much better to only have one uninterrupted video so thanks for getting that to work. Nothing was new or surprising content wise with what you presented which doesn’t surprise me given that Classic is really the only version of the game I’m familiar with, but I’m looking forward to the next few where you go into your take on openings then.

Possibly my only comment is that in most of my online games, I’ve rarely if ever gone for weapons development. A lot of my games have ended by the losing side conceding rather than meeting one of the victory conditions - for the losing side to suddenly recover with a fortuitous Weapons Development roll would feel awfully anticlimactic so when I’ve been on the losing end, I’d rather just concede and move on to the next game than have the dice be entirely responsible for my win. Experienced players can generally tell who is going to win a game, barring a huge upset of the dice, and again I’d rather not let that sort of factor change the outcome of the game. As you note, when the Axis surpass the 74 IPC mark several rounds in a row, it’s often inevitable that they’ll be able to hit 84 eventually, but it may take a few rounds for the logistics of their war machine to be able to secure that, and if both players agree, then it’s over and you move on. On the other hand, if Axis fails to break the 74 IPC mark, then even if they’re holding steady for several rounds, usually the Allies will be able to turn the tide eventually but it also may take several rounds of play, especially when both sides have large infantry stacks on all the right places.

DizzKneeLand, since it looks like your game with AcesWild is on hold for possibly a couple months, would you be interested in a bid game of classic with me?

I’d love to follow that game if it happens, certainly.

As I said the bulk of my online play was in the mid 2000s (specifically, 2004-2007), a few years after Don’s essays. I played mostly on DAAK.de where players are ranked on a ladder (and looking it up now, it looks like they do still maintain an active ranking for “2nd edition”), but also played informal forum games here and I think one or two other places as well that had similar ladders. The highest ranked opponent I ever played was then ranked 2nd in the DAAK ladder, and he absolutely crushed me with Allies against my Axis bid of 23 IPCs, and it felt like I had almost nothing I could do to stop the impending doom against Germany.

One thing I note is that the prevalent strategies at the time at higher levels was no one ever built any extra ICs or AA guns. Which is also a difference from Don’s proposals since he advocates an IC for the UK at least I think. I don’t know what may have evolved in the past decade or so. I haven’t been keeping up and now am only browsing around because I started playing with my kids who are now old enough to appreciate the game themselves, and it’s been stirring up fond memories. But I’m very intrigued by your assertion that you’ve played a game where all the ICs were bought out within the first round of play, because in my opinion that seems like an utter waste that ought to slow down both sides. I had been quite convinced that good transport play is in every circumstance superior to ICs. I’m now probably a much humbler player than I was at the time I was playing more actively and more open to hearing that I’m wrong, so I’m very interested in seeing a different style of play than I’m familiar with.

Will you be posting an update here when the next set of videos are up?

Thanks for putting these together; I’m looking forward to seeing the rest! You certainly make some strong claims but I’m very interested to see if you can back them up.

I have a few suggestions:

1. You give your background early in the first video but I’m particularly curious to get the level of the opponents you have played successfully, particularly when matched up with your claim that in your experience the Axis have been stronger, which as you indicate you are aware goes directly against the experience of most other players. In the games you have played online, have you actually played against highly ranked opponents in the various organizations or leagues that are playing A&A classic? And still found your Axis strategies to be successful? And that’s without Russia Restricted or any other handicaps given to the Axis? I just find that hard to believe - I haven’t really played in over 10 years but I used to play a decent amount online and in person before that and just would like to get the measure of how much weight I can actually give your claims.

Note that you reference Don Rae’s essays, which were published something like 20 years ago, and I know that the level of play in many of the online communities has gone far past that, even when I was more active over a decade ago. If there are still people actively playing A&A classic, then I’m sure that the level of play has developed even further. As evidence of that, I think I remember hearing that without any other changes such as RR (Russia Restricted), at the time Don’s essays were published typically bids for Axis were around 15 IPCs; in the mid 2000s when I played most the typical bids were around 22 IPCs.

So basically I think it would be helpful and lend support to your arguments if you were to provide some sort of attestation not just to the amount of games you have played, but the quality of your opponents as well.

2. Why is your video broken up into two segments? And there is no direct link from the first video to the second, so I had to find it by looking at your channel, which is further inconvenient. There is certainly no length restriction for a YouTube video that would have prevented you from posting both videos as a single video. But if you really do have a reason for wanting it in two videos, I would suggest that you should find a better way to cut the video in half, as currently your video is split in the middle of a sentence! Fortunately I’m familiar with everything you’re talking about, otherwise such a split would be very difficult to follow.

3. Just a minor note really, but at the end of the second video when you are giving the recap notes, you can’t read the top line because it’s above the camera.

4. I am assuming in subsequent videos you will talk about why the specific rules you describe actually matter as far as the balance of the game is concerned? If so there might be legitimate reason to say that online players generally feel balanced is skewed particularly because players are usually asked to specify an Order of Loss ahead of time for any complicated battles and the assumption usually is that all dice for a particular round of battle are rolled together to save time and back and forth discussions between players who might not be online at the same time. I can see why that might slightly favor Axis if played correctly, but I do not think that this is such a strong factor that it would be sufficient to even balance the game from the perception of most other players who think that Allies have the advantage.

Hi all,

Been a while since I’ve frequented these forums. I rather miss playing Axis and Allies. I was talking with one of my coworkers recently though and he mentioned that he also used to enjoy playing Axis and Allies, and we ended up scheduling a time to play A&A face to face.

Now I have the feeling that especially the first time we play I’m going to massacre him. He’s never played online, and the last time he’s played at all was maybe 10 years ago. So I was thinking that ideally we could play two games even. Both our wives are going to be out of town so we’ve got plenty of time. But it’s a long game to play face to face so I was thinking of ways to speed up the gameplay. One thing I figured that might save us some time is that for battles that involve more than just a couple units, instead of rolling dice we could enter our units into a dice server to have it resolve the battle for us. I’m not sure what the threshold would be for time savings, but I figure that definitely for battles involving at least a dozen units having a dice server resolve the battle will be much quicker than rolling multiple combat rounds manually.

So I went to DAAK and Flames of Europe where I had accounts to see if I could just enter individual battles into their respective diceys, but I couldn’t find that option - in both places it seemed I had to create a full game, against at least one other player who was also registered for the site. And I don’t want it to manage the whole game for us, because we can keep track of everything else easily enough on our own, so that wouldn’t be worth it. But I really thought I remembered that somewhere there was a place I could go to just enter the units and have the dice server roll for me a round and automatically handle casualties. Does anyone know of such a site? Note that we’ll be playing 2nd edition rules, since that’s the physical board I have, and furthermore I’d like to play LowLuck dice as well.

Axis and Allies

• This website.

Settlers of Catan

• Seafarers sometimes
• Cities and Knights sometimes
  Carcassonne
  Puerto Rico
  Caylus
  Dos Rios
  Scotland Yard
  Mafia/Werewolf
  Spades
  Alhambra
  Ra
  Tigris & Euphrates
  Modern Art
  Mare Nostrum
  War of the Ring
  Blokus
  Boggle
  Cartagena
  Viktory

• BoardGameGeek for all of the above. Yes to all questions.

Diplomacy
-A couple different diplomacy sites. Don’t contribute or visit anything regularly.

It’s not really possible to refute solipsism. It’s the philosophical equivalent of closing your eyes, plugging your ears, and going “NANANANA I CAN’T HEAR YOU.” No reason can overcome it, because any such argument is external to the solipsist.

Most epistemological systems are really “closed” in the sense that they cannot be “refuted” in the same way an argument can be refuted or a mathematical theory can be refuted. What if your epistemological system allows contradictory truths to be true? Any argument that would seem to refute it could easily be accepted without any trouble to the holder of such a system.

I visit BoardGameGeek quite frequently, as I play Euro games quite often - much more often than Axis and Allies which is now only confined to PBEM since I haven’t found people interested in playing it offline.

Likes: Diversity of games, rating system, diversity and mass of community.
Dislikes: Clunky interface, as has been mentioned. Very geeky feel, which of course is a given when you consider their name.

In response to the interface dislikes that others share, FYI I hardly spend any time on the front page of their site. For the longest time I could never make head or tail of it. What I’ve always done is do a search for a particular game I like and start from there, browsing the forums for that game, and sometimes following links to other games. In order to find a new game I might sometimes scroll through the top 100 or top 200 rated games on the site, but it’s rare that I’ll find a new game that way - most often I’ve heard of the game before I look it up on BGG.

I also see no point for all the badges and gold, but I figure it’s the equivalent of things like forum avatars, post counts, and custom titles here, which I equally don’t care about (I have avatars disabled, and would disable titles if I could). When I ran a forum in the past, I would ban people who would post about their post count. Guess quite a few people here would be gone, then ;)

This question is like asking: What should America do if Japan is trying to invade the west coast. Assume you have Europe.

Actually, worse. Russia pushing west isn’t uncommon, but naval and African dominance for Germany certainly is.

Of my plays of AAR, I still prefer the gameplay of Classic. But also all the reasons rjclayton mentioned.

I know this is long past, but out of curiosity, what categories were you voting for this site on? Personally I wouldn’t vote for it against BoardGameGeek despite the fact that Axis and Allies is about my favorite board game ever … but this site only covers A&A whereas BGG covers A&A PLUS thousands of other favorites, such as Settlers and all its variants, Puerto Rico, Carcassonne, Caylus, etc. No wonder the majority of the winners on the results are skewed in that direction - obviously it was mostly the BGG community that decided the results and they have thousands more active members than this site. Congratulations to everyone who contributed to the A&A:Revised Historical Edition though - that’s probably about the only way we got something in; a niche that Axis and Allies can fill more easily than the Euro games that dominate the BGG community.

Caylus is great! I don’t own it, but a friend does and we’ve played it a few times with them. Some people prefer it with more players, but I think it works great as a two player game because it’s a zero sum game with perfect information / no chance moves, giving it excellent potential for move analysis. I’ve also played it online at BrettSpielWelt, a german Boardgaming portal.

For help with the game, try this page:

http://boardgamegeek.com/game/18602

C. Same as a land retreat.

What’s going on here? Why is Maddogg a guest user now?

4-5 even is more than I’d put on it. I’d maybe get a couple, but focus my defense on mainly bombers and transports. Since I usually already have the transports sitting around (because I always get at least 6+ transports for Japan before ever building an IC), I can just focus on buying bombers. If the US has spent several rounds of purchasing on a west coast navy, not only will Germany be doing quite well, but they will be hard pressed to get anywhere near my transports, because if they do then I send off my transports as cannon fodder and use my airforce to do the heavy hitting. It may take me a round to replenish my tranports but in the meanwhile my expanded airforce is still useable. Or if the US keeps out of range of my transports, then I say let them use that huge expensive navy to island hop while I press towards Moscow, with less US forces helping Russia defend.

Jennifer, what is the point of “proving” that you are going to lose? I already know you are going to lose! It doesn’t prove anything to assert that if you do X you are going to lose, and then do X yourself. You’re not proving anything.

If you wanted to prove something, then prove that if you DO attack Karelia, you win. You have yet to show this given that in our last game, I was ahead before losing two fighters. As I said even then, if you had wanted to continue but adjust that single battle, I would be perfectly happy to do so. If you’d like to give up the current game and go back to that game and let me reroll UK2, I’d rather do that. Or if you’d like to do a new game with LowLuck so that neither of us has cause to complain, let’s do that.

As you can see, Hamar’s purchase is perfectly fine for A&A classic. I did quote his exact line in my previous post - you were the one taking the word “bunker” out of the context he posted it in and taking it to mean a noun when it was clear he was using it as a verb, as the parallel to “go out in a blaze of glory” indicates. All of this, what, to make it seem like he didn’t know what he was talking about? As I said, it’s pretty clear that if your argumentation rests on such weak leaps of logic rather than refuting his strategy that you are the one without much to stand on.

ROFL

purchase: depends on how russia did.  maybe 10-11 inf and bunker, or maybe 6arm and go out in a blaze of glory. 4inf, 4arm is a good purchase for moderation

He also said to build a “Go out in blaze of glory” by that standard. I don’t recall any “Go out in blaze of glory” units in any version of Axis and Allies. He clearly must be playing a different game than the rest of us!

If that purchase described above does not sound to you like pure A&A classic, then I would like your opinion as to what game you THINK he’s playing, based on those purchases. They fit perfectly fine with A&A classic to me.

Jennifer you’ve got to do better than being overly literalistic if you want to make your point. I’ve never seen Hamar play on these forums but from what he’s posting, he sounds like he’s very familiar with A&A Classic play, more so than you at any rate.

edit - furthermore, I just noted that Hamar has posted exclusively on the A&A Classic forums, never on the forums for any of the other editions. So it looks like the majority if not all of his experience is with Classic, anyway.