Posts made by DoManMacgee

I don’t quite understand your point. Land units typically don’t get to shoot at the boats, do they?

Or are you saying that the bombardment rules were revered to the Classic/Revised style, where bombardment casualties are removed before the main battle begins (i.e. the units killed by the bombardment don’t participate in the main battle at all)?

If the bombardment rules were revised, it may be worth looking into whether the retreat rules for amphib battles were also reverted to the Classic/Revised styles.  IIRC (I don’t have a rulebook in front of me so I could be wrong on this), in Classic/Revised, non-amphibious land units COULD NOT retreat from an amphibious assault (in later additions non-amphibious units land units COULD retreat, leaving the amphibious units to their fates).

Sometimes people just drop the “theater” bit I guess. Ex. “North Africa”, “Russian Front”, “The Pacific War”, etc.

I was also under the impression that “theater” was common knowledge, though.

Europe 1999 was my first A&A game. I spent hours back in the day making my own custom scenarios for it (super-easy because they had every country from interwar Europe as its own territory on the map).

Terrible for balance, but a fun intro game and even more fun for wacky custom scenarios (Making Italy its own faction, NATO Vs. Warsaw Pact, etc.)

It’s not a matter of liking zombies or not it’s a matter of not having a complete mental breakdown and crying like a 5-year old because mean-old Wizards of the Coast put zombies in a board game.

I don’t have my copy yet but I imagine Japanese troops are treated as neutral.

Closest comparison I can think of is this hypothetical, from G40:

USSR has a navy in the same SZ as UK navy.
Germany is at war with UK but not with USSR.
I’m 99% sure in this situation the German navy fights UK navy and USSR navy sits out the fight.

So for Zombies, the Germans fight the Zombies and the Japanese sit out.

This is like the 8th rage thread about this game can’t you just post one of those instead?

Japan wins eventually, as others have said. But all this accomplishes is delaying the inevitable. The US’s superior economy and Japan’s inferior tactics will eventually lead to an Allied victory. Probably just at a later date and at a higher cost of human life.

@Argothair:

I would love to read a post with credible and specific arguments showing how/why Japanese admirals sabotaged their own army at Khalkin Gol – and I would love for it to be on another thread that’s not this one. So I care, at least.

Not Narvik but the tl;dr is “something something Japanese Army and IJN absolutely hated each other”

Slightly longer answer is that the WW2-era Japanese government was a hot mess where the separate armed forces branches had a strong political pull, but were also largely autonomous of each other. That’s more-or-less why the war for Japan was so heavily divided between the China/SEA theater Vs. the Pacific. Others can probably explain it in more detail than I can, though.

@CWO:

And to take the argument one step further, note that the concept of any nation’s tanks “driving anywhere” poses problems.  Tank mobility actually involves three kinds of movement: strategic, operational and tactical, and only the third one – also called battlefield mobility – invariably consists entirely of a tank moving on its own.  Tanks as motor vehicles are tricky creatures: they’re optimized for movement over rough ground (which is achieved by their caterpillar tracks), but at the penalty of being more complicated than wheeled vehicles.  This means that they’re less fuel-efficient, more complex to drive, more prone to breakdowns, more complicated to repair when they do break down, and more demanding in their requirements for spare parts.  (That last element is often overlooked when tank performance in WWII is discussed.  It was one area where the American Sherman and the Soviet T-34 had a huge advantage over the German Panther and Tiger tanks: not only did the US and the USSR have a larger number of operational tanks, they also had generous quantities of spare parts available for repair jobs.  The Germans, by contrast, were so short-numbered in Panthers and Tigers that they tended to use their parts to build complete tanks rather than keeping them in reserve as spares.  As a result, broken Germans tanks sometimes had to be abandoned for lack of spare parts.)

Driving a heavy vehicle like a tank on caterpillar tracks (especially over rough terrain) puts a lot of strain on the suspension, the transmission and the treads themselves.  Tank commanders try to avoid “marching” their tanks overland for long distances because the attrition rate due to breakdowns becomes more severe as the distance lengthens.  Whenever possible, long-distance movement of tanks is done by railroad, by truck (if the tank is light enough), by air (again, if the tank is light enough) or by ship (if applicable).  When roads – especially paved roads – are available, these help make autonomous tank movement more practical.  This was particularly true for the Sherman, which – owing to its Detroit origins – was automotively a very good vehicle; I think it could even be fitted with rubberized treads for optimal paved road movement.  This proved particularly suitable for the area when the Americans were operating, Western Europe, where good roads (including paved ones) were more common than in Eastern Europe, where the T-34 operated.  My assumption is that the Siberian half of the USSR was even worse off than the European part of the Soviet Union as far as the existence (let alone the quality) of roads is concerned.

Huh. Never knew the logistics in moving Tanks around was this big of a challenge. Thanks for the lesson.

The subtle implication that people who are going to play AAZ are mentally handicapped in some way is funny coming from the people foaming at the mouth over veterans allegedly being disrespected by plastic zombies in a board game.

Considering neither of my actual favorites (Revised and Anniversary) are listed, I’m going to do the mature thing and vote for 1941, the worst game in the series.

I think Jeffery ‘The Dude’ Lebowski from The Big Lebowski said it best:

“That’s, like, your opinion man”

@CWO Mark I can’t speak for others, but I was mainly focusing on increasing British Naval/Air presence in Singapore (to prevent Japanese amphibious operations on the Malaysian Peninsula and surrounding waters) , not necessarily a massive increase in army presence (I mentioned an increased presence but I didn’t imagine the British sending their whole land army to Asia). The UK didn’t have enough manpower to wage much of an effective land war against Japan (as the Burma campaign proved). Plus, to your point, the British would have to keep the vast majority of their ground forces in Europe to deter a possible (although extremely unlikely) Sealion.

Your point about the UK needing to retain a strong enough presence to deter a German truce-breaking invasion is valid though. I elaborated on in a bit in more detail in the post before yours, so I won’t repeat everything I said there, but in-short the UK’s hands would be tied until Germany commits to Barbarossa, which would require 100% of the Germans’ attention. To me, whether Britain reinforces Singapore in time comes down to how early/late Hitler pulls the trigger in the east.

@Argothair Others already brought up the US prewar Naval Doctrine so I’m not going to beat a dead horse on that one. Only other thing I wanted to discuss was:

@Argothair:

I think it’s an interesting question whether a Prime Minister Halifax would have actually ordered a massive redeployment of modern fighters – the primary instrument protecting the UK against an otherwise triumphant Germany – to Singapore, which is literally at the opposite end of the globe. That seems like a ballsy move for a relatively conservative man.

I guess that decision comes down to a few extra factors I hadn’t though of before, such as:
1. The deployment of German forces in Europe - Would a British-German armistice/truce/ceasefire accelerate Germany’s plans for Barbarossa? Surely the UK wouldn’t attempt to support the Greeks (or Yugoslavians, but I don’t recall if they had any direct help from the British) while trying to pacify Germany. Would a lack of British support for Greece facilitate the Italian invasion? Even if Italy still failed miserably in Greece, would Germany still be willing to delay Barbarossa to help Italy without the fear of the British sending forces to the Balkans/using Greece as an airfield to bomb Romania?

I bring these points up because as soon as the Nazis enter the Soviet Union it basically gives the British a green light to redeploy their resources to Asia, even if they distrust Germany’s intentions. It’s just a matter of whether Barbarossa kicks off before Japan reaches Southeast Asia, IMO.

2. Does Italy call off its war with Britain/Egypt? And, if they don’t, does Germany withdraw the Africa Korps as a sign of good faith to Britain? This thread is about a UK/German (temporary) peace/ceasefire but we’ve never gotten into the terms of said hypothetical surrender. If it’s just a ceasefire that’s one thing but as eaerly as August 1940 the North Africa campaign is already underway, and by mid-September Germany is already in Libya propping up Italy’s lackluster efforts.

I bring this up for two reasons:
A: If Britain was forced to cede Egypt to Italy (and probably Jordan and Sudan as well, to ease Italy’s supply route to Ethiopia/“Abyssinia” and for Mussolini’s PR stunt of “recreating the Roman Empire”), it would seriously hamper the British supply route to Asia, since I assume the Axis would not allow the UK to freely move resources (civil or military) through the Mediterranean/Suez Canal. This would mean reinforcements bound for Singapore would have to waste valuable time circumnavigating Africa, which brings back memories of Russia’s debacle at Tsushima in 1905.

B: If the war in Africa continued, the UK would not be able to send 100% of its free resources to Asia, as they would need to go out of their way to cripple the Italian Navy (Taranto would probably still occur here) and defeat Italy’s armies in North Africa/Ethiopia to end that war. As pathetic as the Italian army was in North Africa, mopping up would still be a time consuming process that may take long enough to allow Japan to strike before adequate British reinforcements reach Asia.

As for everything else, I think we can agree to disagree on the more minor points since our general conclusions are similar. Thanks for the good discussion.

If your opponent is seriously just building mass tanks as Germany and sending them East there’s a handful of tools available to you to put up a fight:

1. As USSR, forget about trying to hold Leningrad and concentrate your forces in West Russia. Your objective should be to trade Ukraine lightly (as in, send 2-3 of your Infantry + air support to kill 1-2 German Infantry) each turn while waiting for either Germany to make a move or for help to arrive from the UK/US.

2. If Germany just pushes their entire army into Ukraine blindly, you can pull off a “strafe attack”. Basically, you send in several ground troops you have available + air support, stay for 1-2 rounds, then retreat to either West Russia or Caucasus (where your surviving forces will be reinforced during NCM by fresh troops from Moscow + newly built troops.  The idea with a strafe is that you’re trying to do one of two things:

A: Remove all or a large portion of the German Infantry from their stack. This will make Germany’s follow-up attack on your forces more cost ineffective to them, as they won’t be able to assign losses to expendable Infantry anymore.

B: If Germany is seriously just building mass tanks, then you’ll be trading Infantry for Tanks in your strafe attack. Even if you take sizable losses there’s no way Germany can take 2:1 IPC value losses for an extended period of time. It’s suicide.

I can go into more detail on strafing tactics if you want, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

3. Fly Fighters from UK -> West Russia (or Moscow if the game gets desperate enough, but you’ll need to by a CV to do that).
4. Have the USA focus on the Pacific. UK stands absolutely no chance against Japan alone and you need to clear out the money islands ASAP to stop Japan from becoming a monster and winning by itself.

5. Don’t just spam amphibious landings in Europe. Small landings are too easy for Germany to repel. Instead, focus on building a large fleet as the UK and threatening to land troops in Europe. This will force Germany to divert an increasing number troops from the Eastern Front to guard Europe. If Germany ever leaves a territory empty, just land one Infantry there to collect the fre IPCs and force Germany to waste effort retaking it on their turn.

6. Your main landing target should be Norway/Scandinavia, in case you weren’t aware. Germany can’t defend that part of the board reliably so it’s a good boost to the British economy (which they’ll need since more often than not Egypt+Africa will fall to the Germans for a large chunk of the early/mid game). Plus, a healthy force of British troops in Scandinavia forces Germany to commit forces to defend the factory in Leningrad, lest they allow the Soviets to reclaim it.

7. Never commit a large invasion force to France unless you’re certain it can survive the German counterattack. If you’re going for a last minute desperation play to save the game, land in Karelia (Leningrad) instead. It’s worth less IPC, but is:

A: Farther away from Germany’s centers of production
B: A Factory for the Soviets, who can stick two extra units there on their turn to help hold the territory.
C: An immediate threat for the Germans in Russia, who will need to waste a turn or more attempting to dislodge the landing party before they can finish off Moscow.

Your friends (and the other posters in this thread) aren’t wrong, though. 1942SE is a terribly balanced game to the point that Allies basically can never win in a no-bid game when both players are experienced, but I don’t think your opponent is playing particularly well as the Germans, so I believe that you can turn the tables on them.

You also may want to look into the Larry Harris Tournament Setup, as taamvan suggested. It’s a lot more balanced than the regular setup and it might be easier to sell your friends on the idea of a “cool new scenario on the same map” than it to sell them on a bid system.

I’ll respond to your arguments one at a time because I feel like I did not make some of my points clear enough in my initial post.

@Argothair:

DoManMacgee, I think there’s a real possibility that a British fleet near Singapore would simply have been sunk by Japanese aircraft, much the same way that the HMIS Prince of Wales and the Italian fleet at Taranto went down.

I neglected to note that the lack of a war in Europe would free Britain to move some elements of the RAF and land reinforcements to Asia as well. Assuming UK made peace with Germany shortly after the fall of France, they would have over a year to work out the logistics on this and presumably no U-Boat threat, so I’m certain they’d be able to reinforce Singapore by time Japan made their way down there.
@Argothair:

Until the great powers learned the importance of providing air cover for their fleets, it doesn’t much matter how many battleships you send to guard a port; the battleships just become so much scrap. Besides, most of the invasion of Singapore was overland, using troops carried by bicycle along the Malayan peninsula.

You neglected to mention that the Japanese invasion of Malaysia was accomplished via amphibious landings in Thailand, which gave their attack a greater surprise factor and speed (Thailand surrendered to Japan in 5 hours). A stronger Royal Navy may have allowed UK to intervene on Thailand’s side in the event of the Japanese invasion, which may have bolstered the Thai will to fight. A long, drawn out Thailand campaign would probably devolve into a stalemate with moderate gains for Japan a la Burma.

You also neglected to mention that the UK’s Fighter Squadrons were miserably outclassed and obsolete, in addition to being outnumbered almost 2:1 by the Japanese Air Force. Again, I apologize for not mentioning the possibility of an increased RAF presence in British Asia as a possibility in addition to the presence of the Royal Navy, but my point is that throw a couple Spitfire Squadrons in Singapore and suddenly the fight becomes a lot less one-sided.

@Argothair:

Possibly the Japanese would have diverted enough of their carriers from Pearl Harbor to Singapore that the Pearl Harbor attacks would have been delayed, weakened, or cancelled. I’m not sure how that shakes out in practice – the US starts the war with another 4 battleships, which are marginally useful, but maybe they’re slow to learn the importance of building carriers, and they lay down a bunch of battleship hulls instead of carrier hulls, putting them at a disadvantage in 1943.

I don’t buy this explanation. The USN already at least somewhat grasped the importance of Aircraft Carriers, as they had already laid down the hulls for Lexington, Yorktown and Saratoga in the 30s. Just to give a few examples.

@Argothair:

If the battleships get sunk by the Japanese air force in 1942, then Japan might wind up doing better than its historical par, not worse. I still don’t think it’s enough for Japan to come anywhere close to winning, but it might be enough to put a real crimp in the US’s willingness to ship supplies to Kamchatka.
If Japan winds up able to successfully maintain a naval base in the western Aleutian islands and park a carrier there, for example, then I don’t see much Lend-Lease getting through to Russia. Kamchatka was in many ways a less convenient port than Archangel or Basra for shipping Russian aid. If Britain is technically out of the war, does Persia still wind up getting used as a lend-lease conduit? Maybe Russia takes over all of Persia, with British acquiescence?

If there was no Pearl Harbor attack and the IJN had to use a large portion of its navy to sink the UK Fleet off Singapore (something I argued would probably not happen but I’m assuming your scenario here), I can’t imagine that they’d also be able to swing that navy back to the Northern Pacific, destroy the USN at a Midway-esque battle with a larger disparity in force than they had historically and broken codes, and then proceed to take and hold the Aleutians.

Additionally, the US was able to ship Lend-Lease to the Soviets because Japan and the USSR were neutral and the Japanese feared provoking a Soviet invasion of Manchuria. Unless they USN was completely and totally eliminated I doubt Japan would have made any real effort to interrupt the flow of supplies to Russia.

Even in the unlikely event of a UK surrender to Germany (assuming in 1940, shortly after the fall of Paris), what of Japan?

Does UK no longer needing to field troops and a navy in the Atlantic free its hands to defend its Asian colonies from Japan?

Could the presence of a large portion of the Royal Navy in and around Singapore possibly have prevent its capture by the IJN in 1941?

IMO, If Japan fails to capture Singapore it in turn would fail to hold Indonesia, the Philippines and Indochina long-term, due to the presence of an enemy fleet in close proximity. If Japan struck out that badly in 41 I believe it would have greatly accelerated the end of the Pacific War, especially if you consider how rashly the IJN began acting when it was losing the real war (I’m specifically thinking of the Philippines campaign in late 44 here).

With Japan eliminated, the European Axis now have to deal with the full attention of the US/UK, who would definitely rejoin the war in the ETO, even if they had exited previously.

The Soviets would definitely have ended up in worse shape than they did originally without UK Support, but American Lend-Lease would still be entering the USSR from Alaska -> Kamchatka, as it did in the real world. I can’t see the Nazis pulling off a win against the Soviets, assuming in your scenario they’re employing the same strategies, tactics and genocidal behavior that they did in real life. None of Germany’s mistakes on the Eastern Front (aside from pulling forces out of the army that was going to attack at Kursk (Operation Citadel), I think) were due to pressure that the UK in particular put on Germany.

@Caesar:

I however did ask them to pitch two AnA games I like to see: one on Korea and another on the cold war, something like Allies vs Soviets.

Interesting. Hope they listen to you because A&A Cold War would definitely be a way to keep a “fun factor” in A&A in a way that would probably be less divisive. I mean, who would say no to Nukes in Axis & Allies?

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.

I actually thought of this same possibility when the Zombie Rules were first getting announced.

If you use the zombies offensively like that, you can essentially create an impenetrable barrier of zombies on the Eastern Front by abusing the zombie mechanic.

Of course, from what I’ve seen, a few of the Zombie Cards can move stacks of zombies, so this kind of gamey strat might backfire too.  I’d have to see the distribution of cards in the deck to be sure.