Posts made by DoManMacgee

Four points I guess:

1. I usually stack Ukraine with Russia. Trying to attack the Central Powers will lead to what actually happened in World War 1, Russia getting steamrolled and politically collapsing.

2. It seems to me like your France isn’t playing aggressively enough in the face of Germany focusing on Russia. You didn’t mention the French once if your report, when it seems to me like you could have made a serious push for Ruhr, which would have either crippled the German economy or forced it to actually send units West.

3. If Russia is proving a challenge for you, you can always march troops from India -> Persia -> Sevastapol to keep the Russians alive. Even under tournament rules there’s nothing stopping the UK from dumping it’s entire income in India and rampaging across the Middle East. The Ottomans shouldn’t be able to put up too much of a fight unless you’ve got a really strong Ottoman player. This gives you free reign to either wipe out the Ottomans or prop up the Russians long enough for the Americans to win the game for you.

4. If the Italian front is stalling and Americans aren’t needed in France, you can send the Yanks to Italy instead. If you’ve established Allied naval dominance and the Austrians aren’t putting up any serious fight in the Trieste/Venice region, a steady line of Americans will probably be enough to ruin Austria’s day, or at least force them to divert troops away from Russia.

@chr1stophe:

@Doucheman

@DouchemanMacgee:

Minor imperfections but you have the gist of the strategy down. Good job.

I forgot to mention in the post that Japan did take out the Flying Tiger squadron.
What else would you change in Japan’s turn one?

Let’s see.

You did the following:

@chr1stophe:

Japan - Built a bomber and 2 subs and a transport. Took out the American fleet around Hawaii, took out the British fleet around India, and landed all his fighters and bomber in Burma and prepared to take India the next turn.

I would have bought a factory (instead of the bomber + swap out 1 SUB for an INF to make up the 15 IPCs) and placed it in either FIC or Manchuria depending on what the rest of the powers were doing.

Other main thing I would have done differently would have been to avoid Hawaii altogether, instead consolidating my IJN in and around the Philippines/FIC SZs (SZ 50, 36, or 37, take your pick) to further increase the odds of taking out India J2. This also allows you to bring the FTR from the CV near the Solomon Islands to Burma to join the rest of the air force (SZ51 -> SZ50 -> SZ36 -> FIC -> Burma). Letting the starting US Fleet go is annoying later but your goal is to get as much of your starting forces to Russia as quickly as you possibly can to overwhelm the Soviets before the Western Allies can do anything to stop you.

Historical accuracy has never been A&A’s strong suit… A common complaint from the traditional wargame crowd over the years.

At least in AA50 rules it mentions that the Dardanelles being open/closed is something you can toggle, if memory serves.

I might as well take some time to reply to the guy who wrote a match report, too.

@chr1stophe:

I just played the game as the Axis against a skilled opponent who frequently bests me. In a compromise, we played with open naval passage at Dardanelle but also with national objectives.

Not much of a compromise, NOs on and Dardanelles open are both majorly advantageous to the Axis.

@chr1stophe:

Round one:

Japan buys a factory and a transport. They ignore the US fleet at Pearl Harbour and China on the mainland. Japan does attack the British fleet in the Indian Ocean.
The factory goes in Burma and 3 fighters + a bomber land there. Two more fighters are on a carrier next to Calcutta (all within range of Eastern Ukraine).

Minor imperfections but you have the gist of the strategy down. Good job.

@chr1stophe:

The USSR buys an assortment of land units and a fighter. They attempt to take back Eastern Ukraine and Ukraine. They conquer the latter but get unlucky in Eastern Ukraine.

This already sounds like its boding badly for the Soviets. They needed to focus on East Ukraine to save themselves later…

@chr1stophe:

Germany buys mostly tanks and a battleship. They conquer Karelia and the Ukraine. At sea they take out the British fleet off Ireland. They also take 2 guys from Morocco and ferry them over to the Ukraine. Finally they reinforce the tank that survived in Eastern Ukraine.

While I’m not fond of the Dardanelles being open, in this case I don’t think it made a terrible impact on the game one way or the other, at least not yet. A Battleship buy, though?

@chr1stophe:

In their opening round the UK buys a factory and some ships. They take out the German fleet in the Black Sea. Facing pressure from the Japanese in Burma they decide to consolidate in Trans Jordan and leave 3 men + the AA gun in India. Their factory goes to South Africa.

I guess a “middle Earth” kind of strategy (the one that’s used in G40 to control the Middle East with UK Europe/Pacific coordinating heavily) could be valuable here to get the Japanese out of India, but it would take a dedicated effort from the UK/USA.

@chr1stophe:

The US opts for a Pacific purchase; a carrier, fighters and a transport and rallies at Wake Island. On the European front they regroup off the coast of Brazil.

I don’t have an AA50 map in front of me (I’m at work), but wouldn’t the Solomon Islands be a better staging point for the USN, so it can threaten the money islands?

@chr1stophe:

Round two:

This is the time to move the Japanese fighters to Europe. Japan tries to kill two birds with one stone by giving air support to secure India (en route to Eastern Ukraine). The AA gun rolls snake eyes; both planes crash and burn, leaving only four planes to secure the front near Moscow.

The USSR reacts with a defensive purchase but goes on to attack the Japanese fighters and German land units in Eastern Ukraine. They take heavy casualties but manage to capture the territory. There are no more Japanese fighters in Europe.

Soviets are dead with that mistake. They overextended too heavily.

While I’m an advocate for a more aggressive Soviet game plan than most others (who prefer to just have the Russians sit in Moscow and wait to die), that attack on East Ukraine would probably have gone better if it were a strafe (clearing out the land units and maybe a few FTRs, specifically) than an outright attempt to take the clay. The result of that attack just left the USSR totally hollow in terms of available troops, which plays perfectly into the Axis game plan that this thread is all about.

–--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The rest of the game is just mopping up by the Axis at this point.

Thanks for the report! It was an interesting illustration of how the Japanese FTR presence in Russia can cause Allied players to panic and lead themselves to ruin.

@Krieghund:

OK, I see now that there’s an “intro scenario” in the back of the Rulebook that’s only 6 rounds long, but there’s no round limit on the standard game.

Are you allowed to share the contents of the rulebook with the rest of us, or are you prevented from doing so by a pre-existing agreement with WOTC. If you’re not allowed to comment on that due to a NDA that’s fine too, I’ll just accept silence as a substitute for “can’t share that info.”

Honestly I think capping the game at 6 turns, with victory determined by the Axis reaching a certain economic threshold by the end of the time limit, is a much better victory condition than anything we’ve ever seen before, “Intro Scenario” aside. It finally actually puts a time cap on games and allows for interesting plays by encouraging something other than stacking. I hated on the Zombies earlier for encouraging super defensive play, but if Germany has to play aggressively to reach an income threshold that changes the entire dynamic of the game by forcing the Soviets to play differently to deal with German aggression + zombies spawning on their front lawn.

Thanks for the clarifications on my other questions, taamvan, I’m more excited (wouldn’t quite call it “hyped” though) for this game than I was before. Will definitely give it a spin in October/November/whenever it drops.

Your account seems different than the accounts given by the people who were at Origins. Have they changed the game since then?

New things I noticed are:

• You say Axis (Germany in particular) seems weaker, people at Origins said Axis were extremely overpowered.

• The “Zombie Dice” were said to just be aesthetic before, but you’re saying they have something to them that makes them mandatory. Are they not 6-sided?

• Finally an answer on the dimensions of the board! If the board’s as big as 42SE I don’t think anyone would complain. Spring 42 and 1941 (and possible Revised/Classic) are the only games I’d consider “too small”

• What’s this about not having to kill all Zombies on a territory to take it?

• The 6 Turn Limit is something that was not mentioned by the reports from Origins (those reports claimed the victory conditions were total Allied/Axis victory, or Zombies win if they get 25IPCs). This limit sounds interesting to me. How is the winner determined once 6 turns have passed?

A China/Asia Theater of Operations game could work, as a different take on the usual PTO game.

Factions:
Axis: Japan
Allies: Nationalist China/UK-India
Communist: Communist Chinese

Idea would be that Allies and Communists are fighting Japan as their primary objective, but can also fight each other. Once time expires, whichever Chinese faction holds more IPC/Victory Points/whatever in China wins. Japan wins if they can take certain objectives and hold them until time expires.

It always sort of bothered me that China in A&A is portrayed as this perfectly unified anti-Japan fighting force when in reality the Chinese were led by two main competing factions (along with several local warlords that I’m not going to bother getting into) that had only begrudgingly put their Civil War on hold to deal with the Japanese invasion.

Still in the middle of listening to it (about an hour and a half in).

I’m a fan of hardcore history, but it takes me forever to get through his podcasts because they’re just so long. I’d just have them on in the background as noise while I do other things, but what he says is interesting enough to demand my full attention most of the time.

Interesting read so far, although I have not gotten through the whole thing yet (the site is huge!). Thanks for sharing.

I’ll bite. Please bear with my sarcasm. If you need me to modify my post over jokes that may/may not go too far PM me about it.

My questions are based on my questions list in the other thread, which was directed at people who played the game at Origins earlier this year and were shilling on this board: https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=42227.msg1783600#msg1783600

also based on questions of mine that were unanswered last time we did this: https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=41546.msg1742432#msg1742432

• After AAZ, should we expect to see more Axis & Allies games in the future? Will they be serious, “zany,” or a combination?

• Are the Zombies optional (can you play without them)?

• Do you surrender your IPCs if Zombies seize your capital?

• I understand that the map itself is bigger than 1914. But what are the dimension of the map? The 1941 board is pretty small, which causes it to be cluttered

• More details on combat with Zombies, particularly the “Zombie Dice” (TM, Copyright Wizards of the Coast 2018, all rights reserved)

These two I think were answered previously but I’d like an official explanation:

• Can Zombies coexist with an army in a territory, or does combat with Zombies last until one side or the other is wiped out?

• If Zombies can coexist with an army in a territory, what happens when another army enters that territory? Ex. My Soviet stack is in Ukraine alongside some Zombies. The Nazis attack Ukraine. Do the Germans attack the Zombies, the Russians, both, or do they get to choose?

• What steps (if any) were taken regarding game balance?

• Any update about the “1939 Setup” that was alluded to in the last article https://www.axisandallies.org/p/axis-allies-zombies-questions-answered/?

• Are there other victory conditions than the currently known ones (total victory, Zombie Apocalypse)? I can’t honestly see how they can list a gameplay time of 3 hours if there are no other ways to win than these.

• Any update on the “tablet” version of A&A that was hinted at in this rolling stone article from last year
  https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/how-the-company-behind-dd-magic-and-avalon-hill-innovate-w514703?

Apologies for hurt feelings:

• Will there be something in the manual where the game designer apologizes to the people on this forum who are unreasonably offended over the whole Zombie thing and/or something where the design team say some kind, respectful words about the veterans of WW2?

@smo63:

If you disagree with AA50 not being the most balanced of the games, please enlighten us why?

I am complete agreement with Squirecam…there is no OTB AA game that is more balanced…

To clear the air, AA50 42 with NOs turned on is a mess and Axis stomp every time. AA50 42 scenario without NOs is well balanced, and what I will be discussing.

Revised and possible Classic are more balanced than AA50 42 scenario w/o NOs. I say this for two reasons:
A: Japan’s starting position in the 42 scenario is incredibly powerful. You can stack Burma with enough force to take India whenever you want and constantly be threatening to dump your entire FTR Stack on East Ukraine if and when Germany decides to seriously stack it.

B: Italy’s starting fleet is strong enough that it can stick around for a few rounds. In a tournament setting, this will usually allow the European Axis to hold on long enough for Japan to sweep India/Australia and run out the clock.

Classic and Revised have their own issues as well, but I personally don’t see them being as much of an issue as the points I mention above.

I’ll stress that all three games (AA50 no NOs, Classic, Revised) are all very well balanced. It’s just my subjective opinion that Revised is the most balanced version overall.

@Imperious:

In my experience AA50.42 is pretty balanced, But Milton Bradley is probably more balanced… but that’s not practical as a tournament option with Germany getting a healthy bid

The problem with Classic compared to other versions is that you really don’t know who’s winning after just 5-6 hours, unless someone makes a huge mistake or both players are playing extremely quickly.

Germany is very smart for going the Italy route. You might have trouble there.

Generally, France can hold off Germany 1v1 long enough for the Americans to start shoveling reinforcements into Europe starting turn 4. France should survive as long as you don’t waste resources on unnecessary offensive adventures.

As for the UK, their best best would be to focus on destroying the Ottomans ASAP. It takes one of the CP Economies out of the game permanently, takes pressure off Russia, and gives the Allies a back-door into Austria and Germany via the Balkans, which will force them to divert resources from the Western Front, which will inevitably win the game for you.

If Germany is going all-in after France, I’d recommend Russia put pressure on Austria and the Ottomans. Their economies are relatively small, so the slightest bit of pressure on them may be enough to save Italy from Austria (because Austria will have to divert resources to dealing with Russia) and accelerate the destruction of the Ottomans by the British, as I mentioned above.

Basically, play France/Italy as if they were Russia in any other A&A game, and play the other Allies more aggressively, picking off the weaker Central Powers before taking on Germany.

I mean, you’re not wrong about the thing being a cash grab. I doubt anyone disagrees with you on that. I mean, Activision’s been putting “nazi zombies” into Call of Duty for like 10 years now.

I guess I just have thicker skin/care less. If I want to honor veterans I’ll volunteer at a VA center or watch a WW2 documentary. To me, A&A is just a board game set in a certain historical time period, not a means of honoring anything.

To be fair to WOTC 42 and 41 are trash, 42SE is mediocre, and 1914 is a disappointment from a purely gameplay perspective. Additionally, Larry didn’t have a ton to do with Revised, which is one of the better entries in the series. And that’s not even getting into the depressingly bad spin-offs from the early 2000s (Bulge, Revised, Guadalcanal).

That being said, he deserves most if not all of the credit for bringing us A&A (both Classic and the franchise as a whole), AA50, and G40 (which as I said a few posts up is basically his masterpiece, war room be damned).

Re: Sales. I have no sales data to back this up, but I seriously doubt A&A, other than the original Gamemaster Edition, has ever been a serious needle-mover in terms of sales figures. It falls into an unfortunate grey-area of being too complicated for casual gamers (think stupid young people who will only play on their phones, or folks who think Risk is “too hard to understand”), while being too abstract for the serious wargaming crowd (i.e. people who play A World at War, Advanced Third Reich, etc.). Additionally, other than the abysmal 1941 edition (and possibly the Gamemaster Edition, but I don’t remember 100% so don’t quote me), the game has only really been sold in dedicated hobby shops and online, which definitely limits its marketability.

A&As main niche is WW2 history buffs, which is a relatively small one in this day and age. I’m not making excuses for or defending the poorly thought out decision to put Zombies in the game, but there’s a clear reason why the decision was made. If you don’t like it, just don’t buy the game. There’s always War Room (Larry’s project, due out later this year, although I’m not sure you’ll be able to get a copy if you didn’t back the kickstarter) and the Global War line. Both of these have their own sub-forums.

42 will give you more of the “typical” A&A scenario (Germany starts deep in Russia, Japan is at its historical apex, etc.).

41 will give you a new experience, where the Axis haven’t really started expanding yet, but are tremendously strong compared to the Allies.

If you’re all around the same skill level, play 42. If you have a mix of stronger and poorer players, play 41 with Objectives Off and have the stronger players take the Axis. Axis are stronger in AA50 but harder to play, so the learning curve should be enough to keep the stronger players on their toes.

Good luck with your game!

@Charles:

I had a lot of hopes and dreams for the possibility of A&A being continued without its legendary creator, but those were smashed with bloody zombies.  Although I won’t be quitting A&A anytime soon, the lack of fresh appeal in the franchise is slowly taking away my game players.  Alternate setups and house rules help but take too long to perfect to keep the less interested crowd from leaving after they’ve tried every strategy they wanted to.

I don’t get angry often or use such foul language but�

���� you WotC.  ���� you.

To be fair, G40 was Larry’s love letter to the fans and basically the peak of what Axis & Allies can be without becoming overly complicated (GW1936) or a proper War Game. I doubt the franchise is going to go in the “bigger and more in-depth” direction for a while, if ever again.

If bigger and more in-depth if what you want, we have an entire sub-forum for the Global War series, which is an evolution of A&A built to be more complex, with more nation-specific rules/details, special events (Spanish Civil War, US Entry into the war), etc. I’m not shilling or anything (I don’t own any GW products myself), but it might be the thing for you.

@robert:

Personally, I think this game has gone as far as it can within the price and size restrictions of the market. Adding more types of units and enlarging the board bring it into the tabletop miniatures wargame sphere.

Didn’t they already try a line of A&A minis? I swear they did back in like the 2008-2012 time period and it did badly.

@squirecam:

Look on page 23 of the manual. NO’s are optional. They are NOT part of the basic game balance.

I’ve never played with NOs in any A&A game, but I never knew they were optional in the rules, thanks. Do they even run tournaments for AA50 with NOs turned off?

@squirecam:

I had this same issue with Greg when we previewed AAZ. He wanted to play with the “special” card text, which adds alot of special happenings. I did not. I wanted to see if the base game was balanced first.

If NO’s are not balanced (I dont play with them honestly), then its that issue that needs fixing, not the base game or changing setup, etc.

I’ll have to try playing a round of AAZ with the zombies, but given everything I’ve heard so far, I’ll probably house rule either them or the Zombie Cards out of the game completely. It’s mostly the cards I take issue with. A&A is already very luck-intensive (Yes I know LL exists), and I accept/appreciate that aspect of the game, but I feel like adding another layer of luck on top of that would be overkill.

@squirecam:

I dont get this sentiment. By FAR the most popular COD modes have always been the nazi zombie modes. This isnt a new thing. Zombies have been added to WW2 since….forever…

I don’t understand the rage either, but if you spend 5 minutes going through this sub-board you’ll see endless waves of posts by thin-skinned folks complaining about the zombies, so I figured I’d throw them a bone.

@squirecam:

Basic 1942 AA50 is balanced. If NO’s are a problem…then its the NO rules that are the issue, not the base AA50 game.

In either revised or AA50 42 (sans NO’s), the bid is still 1 unit, which is pretty damn good.

IIRC NOs are a built in part of AA50, and turning them off is a house-rule. I’ve argued that G40 would be more balanced if NOs were turned off there as well, but the community/metagame/balance mods have developed around NOs for like 6 years now, so there’s no sense trying to change things.

I disagree on you regarding AA50 42 scenario’s balance, but that’s pretty far off topic and we can both agree that AA50 42 is more balanced than the likes of 42SE and G40, so I’m willing to drop the issue.

@smo63:

Guys,
 
I see your point about a game that needs to be introduced between 41 and 42…I will pass the word along.

If you have any sway with WOTC, please advise them to not do an overly gimmicky game again for a while. At least not in the next A&A release (assuming we get a next release…). This whole Zombie thing, while I (and most others) personally don’t mind it, has been a huge “base-breaker” in our community, with several members of the forum threatening to boycott the game over it.

Their main gripe can basically summed up as “The game offends me because my relative was in WW2.” I imagine this can be smoothed over a bit by having someone involved with AH or WOTC either:
A: Do an interview with someone and explicitly state that they support veterans, and apologize for any perceived disrespect that may have resulted from the inclusion of Zombies in the game.

B: Have a statement in the instruction manual/box for the game that states something similar. For comparsion’s sake, refer to the passages Larry included in the manuals for just about every game he was involved with.

@smo63:

And IMO, there is no game as balanced as AA50…!

I consider Revised to be more balanced than AA50. AA50 (41 scenario, Axis are too strong in the 42 scenario OOB) only becomes balanced if you turn NOs off, otherwise Axis win easily without a pretty sizeable bid, in both scenarios.

Gripes aside, AA50 is still my favorite version to actually play on. Small enough to be finished in 4-5 hours, but big/optimized enough to not fall into stale, super dead-zone-heavy strategies after turn 1 (except in Russia, but that happens in just about every A&A game).

@smo63:

And after playing 2 more games than Squirecam, I am not so sure the Axis are favored.  Here again, it all comes down to the level of players you are playing against.  Once we get enough games in, we will know more about the game balance…

I think it will take more time for a meta to develop. IIRC people thought Allies were overpowered in G40 for a while before people figured out the Italian Can Opener -> unstoppable German drive to Moscow strategy.

@smo63:

As for the board, playing AA on the Zombie board might be the answer you guys are looking for, for a version between 41 and 42, and playing without the Zombies?  But need to look at that as well… :?

What you said is what I personally am hoping for, at least for the more casual group of friends I’m trying to play with.

@Narvik:

What I loved the most with A&A was you had to calculate and figure out what units you needed before next turn. To purchase the right units at the start of the turn is what separated the skilled player from the beginner. Now it gets too simple, you do combat and move units around, then have a look at the map and see what you need, and then you do purchases. Its getting too simple, man

If they had to change it, I would have had purchasing and placing both came at the beginning of your turn, to encourage holding territories Vs. being rewarded for making over-extensive land-grabs. The new system further encourages poor plays like sending a Tank to blitz through two enemy territories and leaving it to die, confident that the IPCs you gained from the briefly occupied territories will translate into a net IPC profit for you.

Way off-topic, but what you said, along with the apparent rule-change for turn order, reminded me of a house-rule system I tried creating one time.

Basically, instead of each country performing its turn in a vacuum, each country took a turn playing out a phase. So you had something like this:

1. USSR buys units.
2. German buys units, after seeing what USSR bought.
3. UK buys units, after seeing what Germany bought.
4. etc.
5. USSR Combat Move + Resolve Combat.
6. Germany Combat Move + Resolve Combat, after taking a beating from USSR.
7. UK Combat move, after seeing what Germany did.
8. etc.
9. Same deal for NCM and placing units. I made up these rules for Revised a long time ago, so I never accounted for things like the new Strategic Bombing Rules, convoying, etc.

My idea was to keep new players engaged by letting them play more frequently, and it sort of worked, since I now play normal A&A with them whenever we get the chance.

/endrant.

@squirecam:

I’m not sure how balanced the game is. Taking out the zombies might make things worse.

You’d have to try pretty hard to make a game less balanced than 41.
Or 42SE OOB, for that matter.

Even G40 OOB is better than these two, and everyone on this forum should know the nightmare it took to get the game where it is today (which, after all this time, is STILL heavily Axis-favored).