Best posts made by DoManMacgee

@domanmacgee

Bombardment got a hit in Egypt (your coastal barrage got 2 of my INF). German INF dead OK?

@Krieghund If you don’t mind me asking, was there turnover during the years between Revised and Zombies (the last game pre-renegade)? Revised and AA50 (42 1st Edition as well to a lesser extent, although that game is barely talked about these days) are highly regarded as among the most balanced games in the series, even at a high level, while everything after that point (2009) began to see issues in higher-level play (starting with P40 and continuing for the rest of that era).

If Renegade is limiting themselves to WW2, then a purely Japan Vs. China game would be an interesting one. Most WW2 games focus on USSR Vs. Germany (or the European theater in general) and the few that don’t usually devolve into USA Vs. Japan unless it’s on a huge scale.

@JuliusBorisovBeamdog

Just wanted to poke my head in and say that the lag issue I was experiencing a few days ago is cleared up. Life’s been busy so I haven’t been able to post in a bit, sorry.

Only gripe I can think of at the moment is the issue with the FTRs not sinking alongside their Carriers, but that’s already been addressed/acknowledged so there’s no point beating a dead horse.

@the_good_captain TripleA wants a casualty selection for Bombardment before resolving the rest of combat but I can’t find anything in the rules that mandate that you need to select the casualty before the rest of my attacking units fire. I’m just going to tentatively select the German INF and do the rest of my roll. If you want the German INF alive after the dust settles we’ll just fix it in edit.

@Hansolo88 Anyway to give one last anecdotal addendum if you’re still out there, I busted out my own copy of the game yesterday and gave it a run. I haven’t touched the game in about a year so I’m pretty rusty, but I still remembered the basic strategies + all the rules enough to play at least a mid-level game.

I do agree that USSR is the much easier side to play, as they won. However, the game was a decent enough toss up that I felt it could have gone in Germany’s favor if I hadn’t botched some key decisions (mostly, I failed to heed my own advice and had Germany trying to break into all 3 city entrances instead of just focusing on 1-2 in-force. This left Pitomnik underdefended, which let the Soviets surround the city early (I had captured all but two territories in the city, those being the two factories). Once Germany was cut-off, they quickly burned through their supply crates and stalled out afterwards, letting the Uranus forces walk into the city and clean things up.

I’ll play more and hope I can get a better grasp on Germany in case others come asking for advice later.

UPDATE: In a second playthrough, I was able to win a total (although it took until about turn 12 to close the game out because some Soviets kept running around in the RP territories making me play whack-a-mole). I would generally recommend the following:

• All Optional Rules - OFF (basically all of them benefit the Soviets IMO).
• Have Germany focus on the northern flank of the city to rush towards the Tank/Artillery factories. If those can be shut-off quickly (turn 4/5/6) it shuts down USSR’s ability to effectively fight in the city.
• To that end, in the initial stages of the game, use Germany’s air to target the northern ferry and/or any stragglers you can find in that portion of the board. If USSR isn’t building Artillery on the river, you may also want to make a point of killing the one they start with to reduce their AA odds long-term.

Hi all, just confirming that if/when this starts up again I’d be down to give it a try. I’m not the greatest/most studied at Classic (compared to highly-skilled/veteran players, anyway) but I’m down to participate to pad out the roster for sure.

I think the issue here is less the being able to place units you buy, and more the exploits that become possible by buying a unit you never intend to place.

For example, if I buy a CV on a UK turn, I can hypothetically fly a FTR from Moscow to attack a German Navy in the Baltic Sea, even if Karelia/Norway/Germany/Poland/Baltic States are all German-owned, because I can hypothetically land those FTRs in the SZ adjacent to the Baltic Sea and UK during NCM. However, as is, I can carry out this attack even if it’s a blatant suicide mission, because as soon as the FTRs are dead I am no longer obligated to place the CV I bought earlier, meaning I can save placing it for next turn, effectively giving UK 14 free IPCs towards their next naval purchase and denying Germany a chance to pounce on a vulnerable CV for free value.

EDIT: Thanks for the clarification @JuliusBorisovBeamdog. Glad to see you and the team are still working hard at making improvements. The game has come a long way since launch quality-wise and I’m sure everyone here appreciates the continued dedication.

EDIT #2: I guess what I’m saying is that the purchase system should be left as-written in the rules. Players should be punished for bad tactical decision making. Otherwise all games would just come down to a combination of luck, basic knowledge of the map being played, and which side the map being played is biased towards. It’d be more of an exercise in optimization than an actual game.

@The_Good_Captain LMK if that’s good for you and I’ll pull the trigger on the attack.

You don’t buy them, they represent the Minor Axis Divisions (Romanians/Italians/etc.) that were with the 6th Army at Stalingrad. You just use the ones you get at the start of the game.

@Imperious-Leader is correct in his assessment that they are meant to be useless nuisances. They are meant to impede Germany, not to help them.

@VictoryFirst It was already made. https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/41503/2025-classic-tournament/. Wins/Losses go there. This thread has the link to the bracket buried in it, which is here for reference:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bl9ZgBWBZMZhybNTT6CUEiTC_QA6k949IWDZeYY_Qrc/edit?gid=1557325169#gid=1557325169

1st forray into ranked went something like:

R1: 7 INF 2 ART 1 TANK Vs. 3 INF 1 ART 1 TANK

Defender wins with 1 ART and 1 TANK remaining.

Thanks game. Love you too.

@the_good_captain No, I forgot to edit the “Political Relationships”. Try setting those as needed and you should be okay. It’s on the “Edit” Tab.

@djensen gratz. This site’s always been a big part of my life (lurked here for years before finally joining) and this site is literally the anchor that keeps the whole community together. Here’s to the next 20 years.

@Martin Yes the “miss” on my part was using Japan’s bomber offensively when it could have at least NCM’d from Manchuria -> Germany to give one more HP to the units there. That might have made some level of difference in the final fight but in hindsight, once the UK air got as many kills as it did it was unlikely that Germany was going to survive.

Good luck to you as well!

Copy/Pasting this from another thread where I complained about it but was ignored:

tldr: Column Rolling is the way combat was resolved in Classic. You roll your "1"s first, then opponent assigns casualties. After casualties are assigned, you roll your "2"s, and so on. Normally, you’re supposed to roll all of your dice before your opponent assigns their casualties.

Longer Explanation including the reason why this should not be a thing:

As long as we’re talking about the combat phase, I just remembered a gripe I’ve been meaning to bring up for a while now:

Why is Column “Lane” Rolling ( where, during combat, you roll the dice for each column and assign hits in-sequence, rather than rolling all dice before assigning hits . Ex. If attacking with 3 INF/1 TANK, I would roll my INF dice for “1s”, then my opponent would take hits as needed, then I would roll for my TANK) in-place in this game? I thought Column Rolling literally only existed in Classic 2nd Edition (maybe 3rd too, I don’t remember completely).

I bring it up because, although it really hasn’t impacted any of my games yet due to the whole “asynchronous play” thing. I can see it being an issue when you’re attacking another territory and are squaring off against a large number of enemy units that have a diverse range of combat stats. Something like:

I attack with 2 SUBs, 1 DD, 1 CV, 2 FTR

Opponent defends with 3 SUBs, 1 CV, 1 FTR

I do my roles, blah blah.

Opponent rolls for the subs, miraculously gets 3 hits.

Because of the way AAO works (column rolling), I need to pick who dies to the subs before the opponent rolls for the CV and FTRs.

This creates a tough situation for me. Do I lose the SUBs and DD, hoping that the CV and FTR won’t kill my carrier, do I lose 1 SUB/1 DD/1 CV to try to keep my Submarine alive, assuming at least one more hit (which would be assigned to a FTR), or do I lose 2 SUB/1 CV to allow my FTRs to get off one more round of hits, ensuring that the enemy navy is sunk even if it means sacrificing the FTRs (assuming they can’t NCM to safety).

In a normal game, a conundrum like this would not occur, as the defender would roll all of their dice before I assign casualties. Column Rolling adds a level of strategic depth/risk-taking to the game for sure, but it’s not a 1:1 recreation of the rules of 42SE.

Unfortunately, you don’t get the cruiser bombardment.
You have to bring the transports + escorting naval units into the SZ during combat move phase, unloading only if the battle in the SZ is successful. You can’t choose whether or not the Cruiser participates so it can get a bombardment.

More importantly, this also means that you cannot bring the transport from SZ13 (south of France) to aid your Sealion attempt, as the UK Navy off Gibraltar (SZ12) still blocks it.

That drops your odds of success to basically zero.

Even if these rules weren’t the case, I wouldn’t hedge my bets on a first-turn-kill that only has 30% of success (estimating on the low end because your battle to clear the waters around UK also needs to succeed and I’m too lazy to run this scenario through the battle calc). It’s low odds to succeed and even if you win, one of two things will happen:
1. UK can retake London B1 via its surviving fleet + the Tank from Canada (it’s unlikely you’d have many ground troops in London unless you got extremely lucky).
2. If UK fails, US will surely succeed in liberating London A1 with its starting units.

This strategy also gives USSR a free round to reorganize its forces and collect a good chunk of its income compared to a normal start. Additionally, UK’s fleet off Egypt, along with most of the Egyptian forces will have a turn to evacuate ahead of I1, allowing them to march towards more strategically important areas of the board (India, Caucasus, etc.).

You can Sealion in the 41 scenario for sure, but it takes a bit more setup. Try buying a Carrier G1 and landing some of your starting FTRs on it, for starters.

@the_good_captain That’s fine. The dice added up over the course of that Rome fight so it’s about time for me to give this one up anyway.

@leemorrison I am ready to start our game when you are. PM me your opening bid if you are ready.

@JuliusBorisovBeamdog Please see the edit to my previous post for a potential compromise here. I understand the frustrations of adapting the rules 1:1 from a board game, however if ranked play is expected to be taken seriously the basic rules should still be enforced when possible. I can see things like pre-determined order-of-losses and not being able to land planes on Allied Carriers being necessary due to the programming constraints involved with asynchronous play, but loss calculation is something that only impacts the turn player, and no one else.

Furthermore, you’ve already added a beginner-friendly option to combat resolution. There’s a button in the bottom-left of the combat screen that lets me just use my defense profile to assign casualties if I want. Inexperienced players are already accomodated to with that, I’d imagine.

I understand that retooling the combat screen would be time-consuming work, so I’m not requesting that this be done immediately. Just something to consider for the next “major release”.