Best posts made by DoManMacgee

It’s a popular strategy in games like Classic/Revised where you actually have a Chinese Territory that’s worth 2 IPC.

In this version, not so much. It takes way too long to get your units setup and with the pitiful rate of reinforcement of 1 Unit/Turn Japan can really eat you alive whenever they want.

Normally, you use a few Russian units to help beef up the Chinese defense, but in this version the Soviets are so weak OOB that they really do need everything (bar maybe 1 or 2 INF) to keep the Germans at bay.

@Conni_Hu This is a different sort of thread, but there have been instances of user of this site using A&A as a teaching tool before, here’s some actual answers to your questions:

@Conni_Hu said in Learning History With AA Europe (1999):

My question is this:
When you play the game, how do you feel?

Depends on the faction:

• Germany: Powerful, but boxed in and on a time limit to win before the full might of the Allies overcomes you.

• Soviets: The old saying “trade space for time” applies here. You are desperately weak, and need to stall for time until your allies can help you build up enough strength to resist Germany.

• British: In this game, you feel like a minor partner, constantly in-danger of losing the homeland to a potential German invasion and not particularly able to do anything of importance right away. By time the threat to the homeland is gone, you feel like your presence is irrelevant compared with the Americans and Russians.

• USA: Weak initially, but with unlimited potential due to its economy not really being threatened by Germany in any way. However, you feel like you are on a very strict time limit to win, as Germany will overpower the Soviets quickly if nothing is done to defeat the Nazis.

Second question:
Do you think it makes strategic sense to invade the Soviet Union at the beginning of the game (as a German) and to do a D-Day Reloaded as an American/British?

As others have said, the entire point of this game is the “Operation Barbarossa” campaign of Germany Vs. USSR. Attacking the British is not recommended.

General Points:

• Europe 1999 is not a very balanced game, but that should not matter for your use of the game as a teaching tool.

• This game may only cover the 1941-1945 period of the war, but the game board does contain fairly accurate 1930s borders for Europe. With this in mind, you can create your own starting setups for this game to simulate earlier periods in the war, or even the prewar period, with players like France, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Poland, etc. It won’t do a good job of handling more minor incidents like the German seizure/re-militarization of the Rhineland or the affairs over the Sudetenland, Danzig, etc., but it’s better than nothing.

• The geography of the map does a good enough job of showing why the UK/France had dismal prospects of actually following through on their commitments to guard Czechoslovakia, which was totally landlocked and in central Europe, and Poland, which was surrounded by the hostile Germans and even-more-hostile (at the time) Soviets, with the only naval access point requiring passage through the German dominated Danish Straits.

• There is a “successor” of sorts to this game which begins with the Battle of France in 1940 and includes Italy and France as playable characters in addition to the four from this game. The title is, as you may have guessed, “Axis & Allies: Europe 1940”. As with other games in the series, the swastika/imagery of Hitler are not depicted, so you should be able to import it into Germany without issue. One point in 1940’s favor is that the earlier starting date gives all of the players more flexibility in deciding their overall strategies. Specifically, a German attack on the British Isles is feasible in this version, although it can be countered by a UK player who knows what they’re doing.

• The trade off for the Europe 1940 game is that, for the most part, individual countries are no longer explicitly given their own territories on the map. Some of central Europe and the Balkans are compressed in this way, with Austria/half of Czechoslovakia becoming “Greater Southern Germany”. and Romania/the other half of Czechoslovakia becoming “Slovakia Hungary”. Additionally, a full map of the Middle East, Africa and South America are included in addition to Europe/North America/European Russia/North Africa. This can be distracting, but could also help illustrate the massive colonial empire the British and French had, as well as highlight the importance of the North Africa campaign.

• One last thing: This is beyond the scope of the initial question, but there is another game in this series that covers World War 1 that isn’t very well known. The title is “Axis & Allies: 1914”, and it boasts a very detailed map of Europe/North Africa for the World War 1 period. For example, “Germany” is broken up into “Berlin”, “Prussia”, “Silesia”, “Munich”, “Ruhr”, “Alsace” and “Kiel”.

EDIT: Added some more info about the Europe 1940 game and another game you may find helpful. Hope this information helps.

@vodot Funny coincidence. Revised is my #1 and AA50 is my #2 (so I just voted for AA50 in the poll). The real crime is no Classic representation though as that seems to be the 2nd most popular version other than G40.

You’ll find that the best approach to the Allies is a slow burn. The Axis start off with way more stuff than you, and the 41 scenario just takes that divide to the extreme. It’s best to stay back and slowly accumulate advantage before making your big push. In most cases, defense is stronger than offense in A&A (i.e. INF attack at 1, but defend at 2, and FTRs attack at 3, but defend at 4), so try to use that to your advantage when possible.

One more note for USA. Rather than go straight for Japan’s jugular, try parking the fleet in the SZ that contains the “Solomon Islands” Territory. It’s a nice territory to camp out in with your fleet, as it:

• Puts you within 2-moves of Australia, New Guinea, Borneo, Dutch East Indies, and Philippines, the Pacific territories that are either worth a lot of money, are part of NOs, or both.

• Keeps you within 2-moves of West US, your spawn point for new units, so new reinforcements will always be on the way and you always have a safe point to retreat to if Japan is too strong for you.

• Keeps you more than 2-moves away from SZ63 (Japan’s spawn point for new units), so Japan will never be able to send a large amount of units your way without first spending a turn moving their units towards you (and thus, giving you a hint that Japan is planning on attacking you).

Just food for thought. Of course, Japan has ways to play around you basing your fleet in the Solomon Islands, but that mini-game of fleet positioning is part of the fun of A&A’s Pacific Theater.

This was fun last time (AAZ), so I’ll throw my hat in the ring again:

• How hard was it to get WOTC’s blessings.

• Was Larry involved in any capacity?

• Will there be online tournaments?

• Is the setup the OOB setup or the LHTR (from ~ last year. The one with the Bomber in Ukraine, etc.)

• If the setup was the OOB, is bidding or some similar system included to account for the massive imbalance towards the Axis?

• If the setup is neither OOB or LHTR, what is it?

• When is the bloody Early Access starting? It’s been like 10 days since the announcement.

• Are there plans to adapt other versions (Classic, Revised, Anniversary, Global, Zombies, 1914, etc.) a la TripleA? TripleA has no support for 1914 and Zombies so I’d kill to be able to play either of those against AI or online.

@Imperious-Leader said in All the Russian openings: For Begginers:

Don’t like taking UKR, Rather i hit and run. I value the 3 tanks et al with more value to USSR then killing a German Fighter/Bomber.

I don’t like taking Ukraine either in a F2F game, but in AAO most people stick with the default “defense profile” which means you kind of have to take the territory if you want to kill the Bomber. Killing that Bomber impacts a lot more than the USSR Vs. Germany front, so I think losing the Tanks is worth killing the Bomber for.

I’ve already argued with you in a different thread about Karelia. Since we’re talking about LHTE/42.3/AAO/whatever, I agree with you that attacking Germany’s fleet with the FTRs/attempting to defend Karelia is pointless.

@Imperious-Leader said in All the Russian openings: For Begginers:

Exactly. and the sub does not stack with the UK fleet. Germany wont buy a Destroyer early in the game and that sub can do alot of damage…Latter

I do actually stack the sub with the UK Fleet, I just have it submerge and avoid combat so it can potentially pick off the Cruiser Germany leaves behind or Transport in SZ5 (if Germany didn’t buy navy G1) later.

@theskeindhu said in All the Russian openings: For Begginers:

The point for Germany being that with 2 Bombers and the luck to never lose one, and 2-3 from Japan, they can completely destroy Russia’s income. This takes away any opportunity to counter strike, or build a big stack on West Russia as with both Japan and Germany knocking at the door of Moscow and no money, they crumble fast.

I don’t agree with Japan doing SBRs. If you’re committing your Bombers to that they need to be based in one of the Chinese territories, which puts them too far inland to pose a threat to an advancing USN. I see a lot of Allied Players making the mistake of sending the USN directly towards Japan. They really should be camping out in the Solomon Islands, then striking at Borneo/DEI/Philippines. That way they can drain Japan’s income and potentially land in India to bail out to UK if Japan’s stack in Burma is getting too big.

I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing here (if you’ve gotten far enough along to be in Northern Italy and USSR hasn’t died yet, you’re probably going to win no matter what you do), but for the sake of argument, I’d vote for US to take the factory. US has 40+ income for the entire game, so being able to build 4 FTRs immediately on the front lines every single turn is way better than anything the UK can manage. The US also has the much longer supply line to reach the front lines, so it’s more beneficial for them to be allowed to seize a factory that’s closer to the action than it would be for the British.

I’m at work at the moment, so I assume the Early Access is still not out.

Is there an alternative method to access the game at the moment, or is it invite-only (for folks like djensen and whoever else the Developers have given access to)?

Use a battle Calc before committing to big fights. You can find one on this site at http://calc.axisandallies.org/

That being said, I’ve been burned tons of times by AAO’s RNG. I lost a 98% chance to win battle for Moscow the other day, having to retreat after the defenders basically got 100% of their units to hit me.

I am aware of GW36-39, but thanks anyway. While I’m a fan of that line I’m looking for something a tad more basic (less reliant on tech, optional rules, etc.). You know, something that can be played in a day instead of a weekend.

I wasn’t aware of de Gaulle’s ruleset though. That’s some interesting stuff, there.

I doubt this community would take it well if they went after TripleA lol. That’d be essentially taking an ax to all of our leagues.

@dylan64 Are you playing with the original (Out Of Box) rules, or with the Larry Harris Gen Con setup? The original setup of this game is seen almost universally as very Axis-favored, which may be why you are having issues finding success with the Allies.

For the Larry Harris setup, go to this thread: https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/29339/larry-harris-semi-official-tournament-game-patch?page=1

You can also play with this setup in both TripleA and Beamdog’s official client for 42SE.

If all of this is irrelevant to you, here’s some generalized UK tips:

1. Turn one build should be either 3 INF (to India) + 1 DD/1 CV (to a SZ bordering UK)- OR 3 INF + buy nothing (idea is you save the money and build a large fleet on UK’s second turn).

Alternatively, you can ignore the Atlantic altogether and just buy 3 units a turn in India. If doing this, focus on more expensive/mobile units like FTRs.

2. Try to build ~3 units a turn for India until you reach a point where it is no longer sustainable to hold it against Japan’s advance. If Japan is going to successfully take India, withdraw to Persia and then either try to retake India or retreat further to Caucasus depending on how things go.

3. Long term your plan is to either build an Atlantic fleet and save USSR/defeat Germany OR build up in India and fight back against Japan on the Asian mainland. You cannot do both simultaneously unless your opponent is playing poorly.

As for your specific issues:

@dylan64 said in Help-Cannot play with the UK:

I am seriously struggling to either stop advances from the axis on Africa
Generally speaking, US is the one who has to relieve any pressure on Africa + kill the German Mediterranean navy. UK doesn’t have the resources to stave off a dedicated German attack on Africa and trying to build ICs to do so is not feasible as they are too slow to get going.

the middle east
The Middle East in 42SE is just Persia and TJ. These are not territories that should be seriously fought over until you reach a much more stable point in your game. They can probably be retaken if you end up either retreating from India or stabilizing the situation there.

or even Britain itself
UK should never fall. You can just build 8 land units anytime you see Germany beginning to build navy. Additionally, if Germany is building navy then Allies should win the game easily via USSR winning the land war in the Eastern Front + sending US naval assets to prop up UK.

can almost never hold India for more than a few turns
Unfortunately, if Japan is making a dedicated attack against India as their core strategy, you are not going to be able to hold it. You will need to withdraw to Persia and then further to Caucasus (alternatively, you can send the fleeing Indian army to Africa to wipe out the Germans there).

any attempt to build a Navy is swiftly dealt with by German bombers etc.
The turn 1 builds I gave at the start of this post should help with this. If Germany is adding a second bomber on their first turn you probably need to go with the option where you buy no fleet turn 1 (saving IPCs) -> building a larger fleet turn 2. That being said, if Germany is buying a lot of air units to threaten your UK fleet then it means that they are not building as many land units to send against USSR, which makes it easier for them to stabilize their poor starting position and eventually start striking back against Germany.

This is probably a longer post than you were expecting but I tried to be thorough. Let me know if I can follow up on anything.

Taking the time to reply to this because it’s a well thought out reply to what I originally commented and goes into other areas I see as great opportunities for this new, digital edition of A&A.

@Black_Elk said in Grand Plans, 3rd Edition?:

1940 was the last scenario to offer something substantially new in a while.

IMO Zombies and 1914 both brought a lot of new things to the table, but the community despised the whole “Zombie” thing and never really gave it a chance. I’m not sure why 1914 wasn’t well-received but I’d probably agree with you that the non-WW2 setting means the game loses one of its core audiences immediately (WW2 buffs).

Agreed that 42/42SE are just poor man’s revised clones. At least 42SE tried to be different by changing the map, but really that just resulted in making one of the worst-balanced games in the franchise.

I don’t see any reason though why we couldn’t take a board on the scale of 1942.2 or AA50, and have that as a more universal starter board that can be built into something more impressive with expansion materials. Or even with a starter board closer in scale to Global, but modular so that you can stage in the complexity.

I agree with this 200%. I think this where the most potential lies with the new online platform. They can add new maps and tweak the IPC values, borders, etc. of existing ones to improve balance in a way that simply isn’t possible with a physical board game.

When you combine the Europe and Pacific boards you end up with a map that has like 4 times as many game tiles as Classic or 1942.2. To me having more game tiles (a bunch of additional tt and sz) doesn’t really necessitate all the baseline rules complexity we see in 1940. What I mean is that you could surely find a way to make a more limited and much faster 5-6 man total war scenario, still with a larger game map more on the scale of global, and it wouldn’t be that much harder to learn than 1942.2 is currently.

Agreed on basically all of this. The trend I’ve seen with other playgroups’ House Rules is that they add more rules/units/etc. to the existing G40 Baseline. The others in my playgroup can barely keep up with the baseline rules of something like AA50, so G40 is simply too overwhelming for them (even though it’s not really that complex compared to “”“real”“” war games).

Again though, I think that whole franchise model would be way way easier to develop if it was done digitally in tandem. Again so that everyone can be on the same page, and the testing and feedback, and dissemination of new materials would be easier to coordinate.

I didn’t quote the rest of your post because, to me, this is the meat of it. The logistical nightmare of creating a “starter edition” and releasing different expansions for said “starter” edition is easily solved by using a digital platform instead. TripleA works because of basically this principle. There’s just the core A&A Rules Engine and the capability to add custom maps/scenarios. In the hands of a professional developer with (presumably) WoTC’s Blessings, it should be (relatively) easy for them to eventually get every edition of A&A made available on this new platform and create new maps/scenarios as needed. Community mod support would be nice but is probably just a pipe dream.

“It Depends” is the best answer I can give you.

If we’re talking strictly OOB, no bids, Anniversary is the more balanced game any way you split it.

However, far more work has gone into developing G40 into its current state than has gone into AA50. AA50 is balanced by the community simply by adding bids for the Allies (varying by scenario and whether you play with NOs turned on/off). G40 is balanced by the community by developing entirely new rulesets and altering entire mechanics to create what is essentially a completely different game to what you buy in a store. Despite these efforts, the Axis still are seen as having a massive advantage in G40, and most ways to play AA50 see the Axis in a similarly dominant position, with the Allies needing large bids to compete.

NOTE: Take what I said above about G40 with a grain of salt though, I don’t play G40 competitively. However, most members of the community would probably agree with me. Just because a game is more or less balanced than another does not speak to the amount of fun you can have playing said game. G40 is the most popular version of A&A for a reason.

In my opinion, if you want a balanced scenario, play the 41 Scenario of AA50 without National Objectives. This should give a fair challenge to both sides, as the Axis need to make the most of their massively superior starting forces to narrow the absolutely massive gap in production between the two sides (Axis: 58 (G: 31, J: 17, I: 10) Vs. Allies: 113 + “7” (R: 30, B: 43, A: 40, C : “7” (recall AA50’s odd rules for placing new Chinese Units))). The Axis might have twice the starting punch of the Allies, but without NOs its going to take quite a bit for them to make up the 50+ IPC difference (that’s ~25 IPC of territory they need to capture).

@Panther We seem to be on slightly different wavelengths, but ultimately hoping for the same thing.

I program for a living (although nowhere near the video game industry) so I understand how difficult/time-consuming dealing with technical challenges/implementing rules can be. I don’t expect to have all the functionality that’s been developed piecemeal in TripleA over several years available immediately. I’m just hoping that Beamdog doesn’t stop after 42SE.

This is a huge opportunity for A&A to have a wider audience/appeal. It would be a shame if the only version of A&A the wider gaming community knew was 42SE, that’s all.

I forget what the appropriate Board for Tournament AARs is so apologies in advance. @Panther just move this wherever it needs to go. I don’t mind.

Intro Junk - Feel free to skip to the next section if you just want the game information.
I had the opportunity to go to Gen Con this year to play in their AA50 tournament (dubbed the “”“World Championship”“” by Renegade, even if such a grandiose title is a bit absurd IMO). It was a very nice experience as I haven’t been to a IRL convention since 2023 (and haven’t performed well at one since 2018, when my local convention stopped hosting A&A Events). The players I met were polite/good sports, even when the dice started going sideways as they tend to do. As with the AARs I once did for the Revised Tournaments I performed decently at in the past, this post is going to be a series of AARs breaking down the various games I played with a decent amount of detail.

This is also an attempt to preemptively explain/defend my own strategies/decision making process for my games in the event that other coverage of this tournament misrepresents them.

DISCLAIMER: This is purely meant to be a review of the games I played for data collection and/or reflection purposes. No harm or insult is intended. If you were one of my opponents and something I said here rubs you the wrong way DM me (or post here) and I’ll edit this post to accommodate.

Tournament Format/other notes - Feel free to skip if you just want the game data.
The tournament ruleset was (roughly) as follows (a more comprehensive rules list can be found on the TO’s website: https://headlesshorseman2.com/gen-con.html):

-Game: AA50
-Scenario: 1942
-Intercepts: On
-Dardanelles: Open
-Tech: Off
-NOs: Off

-Battle Calculators: Not allowed, but you are allowed to write-out battle forecasts by-hand and attempt to reason out the odds for yourself.

-Time Limit: ~5:30 in theory, but in practice varied greatly. Players were expected to self-police how many rounds would be played. Games only end at the end of a full round (i.e. USA/China’s turn). Games can never end in the middle of a round, even if the 5:30 time limit technically expired. Generally, this means that games are expected to last 6 turns, but this is not a guarantee, as you will see in this report and in other coverage of this event (particularly the final, which I understand only lasted 5 turns).

-Entry Cap: 32 entrants, but technically up to 64 players can enter. Players are highly encouraged (but not required) to form 2-person teams. Players who elect to play alone may be highly encouraged by the tournament staff to partner with another single player to form an impromptu team for the sake of creating an even number of participants.

-Tournament Format: “Single Elimination, but after the first round some losers are allowed to advance to the second round via random selection in order to make the number of players in the second round a Power of Two (i.e. 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.)”. This is to ensure that no player/team ever receives a bye.

This year, 2 teams were “revived”, meaning the total number of participants was 28 Teams (2 solo players + 26 teams = 54 entrants, a very large turnout for an A&A event to be sure).

These two above points were personal sour spots given the tournaments official designation as the “World Championship” for F2F play. Past conventions I attended were purely 1v1 and used Swiss style preliminaries to determine the top 4 players for the playoff. This I would argue was a better format given the luck factor A&A is notorious for (doubly so given that the ~6 turn time limit will force many medium/large scale battles to be taken at ~60-70% odds, as there is not enough time for either side to build sufficient forces to take ~99% decisive victories unless one side played extremely poorly). If single elimination must be used as the format for whatever reason, I would at least advocate that the “advancing losers” be chosen via VC count (as in, a team that lost a 9/9 tie has priority to advance over a team that lost a 12/5 blowout or an outright concession).

That being said, the TO should be the one with final decision-making authority, as he runs tournaments for almost every edition of A&A in-print alongside the “world championship”, so I imagine at least some of these seemingly-questionable decisions are made as time-saving measures more than anything else. Additionally, Renegade are the ones who created the “World Championship” designation, rather than the TO, so keep that in mind.

The match schedule was as follows:
-Day 1: Round 1 @ 4PM Eastern
-Day 2: Round 2 @ 4PM Eastern
-Day 3: Quarterfinal @ 9AM Eastern, Semifinal @4PM Eastern
-Day 4: Final @ 9AM Eastern

The requirement to play two games on day 3 (and the requirement to wake up early for the first one after a late night on day 2) made for an interesting experience, as it took a physical toll on the players involved. This will become evident in the report, as both sides in the semifinal make a fair number of mistakes to the point where, as the chess saying goes, “the winner was the one who made the second-to-last mistake.”

Now, with all of that out of the way, the actual game reports:
(1/6)

@JuliusBorisovBeamdog That’s similar enough to what was done in AAC, the “Russia can’t attack on their first turn” rule. Basically, it gave Germany a turn to get their valuable Tanks and their irreplaceable FTR out of their indefensible positions in Russia. This change gives Germany a stronger initial force, which snowballs, as it takes Russia/UK longer to kill Germany, which in turn gives Japan more time to gobble up IPCs on their side of the map.

For 42SE, giving the Allies a turn to not die saves:

• The USSR IC in Karelia, which means it could be a feasible point to hold for a few rounds.

• The entire UK Fleet, which speeds up the UK/US’s deployment to Europe/Russia/Africa.

• The US Atlantic Fleet, as some German openings favor sending a sub or two after the US East Coast on G1.

• The US Pacific Fleet, as no J1 attack on it is possible.

• The US FTR in China, which can be redeployed to either help the Soviets or link up with the Pacific Fleet.

Great idea. Hope to see it implemented in-game.

@PainState While I agree that you can’t just go slapping rules from one game to another haphazardly, it’s a bit disingenuous to disqualify all discussion of the idea. People have house-rule’d G40 to hell and back over the years. There’s no reason why examining the ideas presented by another game can’t be beneficial to communities that want to spice up their game.

This is a bit off-topic, but while I disagree with the concept of limited turns for a WW2 Game (neither side in that conflict would have accepted a truce, especially not the Allies or the Nazis), I do enjoy the extra dynamic of “racing against the clock” that it adds to games. Face-to-Face Tournaments for Axis and Allies games impose a time-limit, which usually roughly equates to 5-6 full rounds. This results in strategies being employed by both sides that are noticeably different than “standard” play you’d see in an online league where games continue indefinitely. IMO, the time limit works great and ensures that more unique or “gimmicky” strategies have the potential to be viable.

Interested to hear more about WiF’s end-of-turn mechanic, if you don’t mind. I haven’t played that game before so I’m interested to hear your take.

EDIT: Typos.

@JuliusBorisovBeamdog
Changing the OOL on a turn-by-turn basis is a huge improvement. Naval Battles and Capital Defenses in particular can sometimes warrant unusual decisions for OOL. For example, some players may want to lose Bombers ASAP during a Life-or-Death Capital Defense, and you may want to lose Fighters before Carriers (or vice versa) in some naval battles Vs. others.

Thanks for putting in the extra effort on this one. You may want to post this information in another thread, or make a new one to share the news. I’m pretty sure the fixed OOL was a point of contention for others (I didn’t really care one way or the other, but I appreciate the extra effort).

@MasterMark26 said in Kill Italy First - An Alternative Central Powers Strategy:

I really like the strategy! It seems very well thought out, and would probably have a pretty high success rate. Its very logical to go after the weakest Ally power. I have one concern, Russia. My question is how would you deal with a Russian army that has been strengthened by 3-4 turns of buys. I would expect that Russia has also already attacked Austria or Germany, severely weakening that defense force that was sent on the first turn. That would be my only question about the strategy

See my response to @jonathan-meyer84 . Most if not all of Germany/Austria’s buys from round 1 on are heading towards Russia, so it’s not just that first batch of guys trying to hold off Russia all on their own.

I always forget that we have Mr. TripleA himself ( @redrum ) here. It’s like having royalty among commoners. You really deserve more credit for keeping the A&A community alive for all these years via TripleA.