Best posts made by farmboy

I had a couple of suggestions for playing allies since I think (especially given the hefty bids) that you can win with them.

First, its good to ‘know your enemy’ and plan the bid around what they do. There are some axis players that mix it up, but quite often they have a default opening that they rely on. So you can bid for that. Whenever I play a game now, I check out the last 4-5 games my opponent has played as axis in order to plan my bid. I often see the same opening in all the games and if they adjust their opening as a result, you’ve at least made the choice for them, and they are probably not playing how they prefer.

I’ve mostly played BM since I started playing A&A here, and I’ve played a lot more and become a better player since making the switch. So, I’m rusty on OOB and it is worth taking this all with a grain of salt (and I’m relearning what a challenge the allies are in the one OOB game I’m playing). But, I think the principles are sound and apply across both versions.

I haven’t followed Andrew’s games too closely (since I play BM) but it looks to me that he prefers a J1. This is what I understand is probably the optimal strategy in OOB.

Knowing that, my bid is going to try to make that more difficult. Being able to hold Yunnan early as Oysteilo suggests is key so that Japan has a problem containing China. And you can very cheaply help out India as well.

I’d still prioritize the UK fleet over spending more on the Soviets. More Soviet inf might delay the Germans a turn or two, but it won’t allow the Soviets to alter Germany’s advantage over the Soviets. If the UK gets control in the Atlantic and the Med, it forces the Germans to spend to counter that, and it allows the allies to set up a pipeline moving allied air to Moscow. The sooner that happens the better. If it happens soon enough, you can actually delay the Germans from getting Caucasus and Volgograd, which is huge.

The allied player also needs to be less risk averse. You should still try to avoid risky attacks, but you should be more prepared to offer them to the axis, especially when you know that your opponent plays to avoid risk as Andrew (rightly) does. So for example, in the bid that Oysteilo proposed, he commits a bid of two Soviet fighters to Yunnan (+ the bid of an additional Chinese inf) because, I presume, that is the amount necessary to bring Japan’s chances attacking Yunnan below 50%. But with the bid of an inf and just one Soviet fig (along with the soviet fig and tac in Moscow), Japan’s odds are 51% (with a 5% chance of a draw) if Andrew goes all in (which is harder to do on a J1). Is Andrew going to attack Yunnan with those odds? Probably not, but even if he does, you are forcing someone whose win percentage is about 90% to gamble on a battle that has basically a 50% chance of setting Japan back.

A problem that allied players often have (and I certainly still struggle with it) is understanding that you can often get away with offering these riskier combats to the axis. For a long time, I played the game such that when my opponent had better than 50% odds of winning, I retreated. This is not the right way to play. It will sometimes be better to defend even when their odds approach 80-90%. Just because they have better odds of winning, doesn’t mean the battle is advisable. And Andrew has made clear that his approach to the game is risk averse. I absolutely agree is the right way to play, but that does create an opportunity for the allies to play a bit more forward and aggressively.

When Japan can threaten India you can think about this the same way. Japan may have very good odds of winning, but if the trade is India for a substantial portion of Japan’s airforce, it is probably better to defend India and dare them to attack rather than retreat.

So one reason to offer up these riskier battles is because the axis player will not risk them and in retreating you are conceding territory that don’t actually need to. But there is another reason too. A feature of the game is that both axis powers usually have the ability, when optimally played, to overwhelm the allies within a certain sphere of territory. When, for example, the Japanese fleet and air are stationed in FIC, and 35 or 36 sea zone, they can keep China back from Yunnan, the British out of Burma, the Soviets out of Manchuria, and the American fleet away from the money islands or Japan. But they can’t win the game there. What they need to win is outside that sphere, and as soon as they go for it, they are no longer able to protect much of it. So if India is defended, and Japan goes for it, apart from the risk that they are trading air for inf, it can often mean that Japan is out of position to counter the allies in the Pacific and in Korea. If the British do retreat, than Japan doesn’t need to move out of position to take it and the allies remain on the outside everywhere else.

There are circumstances where even 100% odds on India are not advisable, because it forces Japan out of position and the US is ready to pounce. But you need to set it up so that the allies are ready to pounce (I’ll note that this is probably harder to do on a J1 since Japan can often take India before the US is ready).

This logic also applies to the European theatre too. If the allies are ready, it is hard for the Germans to threaten Moscow without exposing territory in Western Europe and if they do go for Moscow, their air are definitely out of position to defend France and Norway.

This doesn’t mean you should never retreat, but it does mean that you shouldn’t automatically retreat because your opponent’s odds of winning are better. It’s often better to dare them to attack as long as you have set up the groundwork to push them elsewhere on the map.

@crockett36 Its not so much that you should anticipate being a loser in the tuv comparison but that you offer combats in which the axis player has better (but usually not certain) odds (which would mean that if they went for it the axis would indeed, on average, have a better tuv outcome).

One example of this is a game I played with trulpen last year. In Round 3 the German air could attack the British fleet with about 80% odds. He went for it, rolled above average and won the battle. He lost 5 planes, but I lost 5 planes, a carrier, two cruisers and two transports. The TUV exchange was 54, double the average expected. Its a big defeat for the British navy but despite the TUV exchange (which I admit I worried about at the time) it probably lost him the game. He needed his 5 air more than I needed that 54 tuv and he also had to land most of his surviving air in Algeria. His air is either destroyed or out of position and he no longer has the ability to push the Soviets out of Bryansk and can’t reach Volgograd or the Caucasus.

The right move for him was to ignore my fleet because of the risk to his air which was needed elsewhere. So it was actually safe for me to offer those kind of odds.

If I’m worried about offering that 80% odds than I keep my UK fleet back so its putting less pressure on the axis. He then can’t attack the fleet but he also doesn’t have to worry about it and can focus on the Soviets,

I’m up for a game, either OOB or BM. Andrew you can PM if you didn’t get your game yet. I’m rusty on OOB, but trying to shake that off.

I think you are all right by the way. All games are, in a sense, made up. But OOB is the original and the one that was designed ‘professionally.’ And the second edition was nicely done despite the balance issues. Its more universally played, at least outside here, and going to be understandably what some people prefer.

But sometimes the professionals do get it wrong as gamerman notes. And occasionally the fan made house rules are actually an improvement on the original, even when the original is good. That is rare, but that is how I feel about BM. As much as second edition fixed things, I do like the changes in BM and I think they are an improvement over the original. Obviously a very subjective position and open to debate.

Epic game. Congrats to Andrew for the win and to both of you for the excellent play.

@andrewaagamer because I’ve mostly played BM (and my thinking around allied strategy really developed while I was playing BM), its not a move I have a lot of experience with. BM gives the soviets and Japanese more of an incentive not to declare war on eachother and gives the axis more of an incentive for a later Japanese DOW.

So others might have a better sense of what happens when that move goes south for the allies. I knew it wasn’t a risk you typically go for and had checked out a couple of the games you had played where the allies did do that, and saw that you didn’t attack. So I thought it was pretty likely you wouldn’t go for it.

I was also fairly certain you would go for the British Battleship (and I think it may have been a mistake not too) and so that removes at least one bomber.

It is definitely bad for the Soviets to lose that air. And I’m definitely replacing at least one of them so that means the Soviets are also down 3 land units. But because I only need that air after the Germans invade in round 3 (or later when they reach Moscow), I do have time to make that up. My strategy for defending Moscow is always about allied pressure in the West and in making sure I have a ton of allied air that can reach from the Middle East (if not also from Greece and/or Norway) and so I would try to make sure a bit more allied air is going to be available for that. And knowing I have a weaker Japan makes it a bit easier to direct more resources to the Atlantic

And because Japan loses that air in a J1 DOW, its going to be immediately felt. I haven’t really looked, but I suspect it will mean, as Govz notes, I can stack Yunnan, and India, the US fleet, and the Soviet stack are all going to be a little safer.

But I’m definitely going for it in large part because I’m fairly confident my opponent isn’t going to attack, and its not a move I would necessarily make against a weaker player, precisely because they are more likely to go for it and let the dice determine the game. If Japan does go for it, and the dice go their way, the allies are in trouble.

@oysteilo I realized after I posted that you asked for examples other than Yunnan. Apologies. I think this happens most clearly on the pacific side of the map with China and India and so Yunnan is pretty central to it. But there were a couple of turns where he had better than 90% on allied units in Burma and India. And here because I had a combined UK/China stack in Burma, he couldn’t attack and hold India. And although he would likely defeat the allies in Burma, it meant losing most of his land units and a significant chunk of his air. Later in the game, he also had options to attack Soviet/US/China stacks in Jehol and Manchuria. But again, there would be a significant cost and it meant pulling away from Southeast Asia.

You can also, often, offer better odds on the US fleet as well if Japan is reliant on the carriers to land air. Since in those situations, the odds actually depend on Japan sinking the carriers and hence crashing the planes that could otherwise have a landing zone.

In Europe, you can sometimes set up the same dynamic as in China and dare Germany to go for British or American units in Western Europe, and if he does, the soviets can have more room to maneuver.

I’ve also had a couple of games now where due to a miscalculation, I gave my opponent an opportunity to attack my allied fleet with German air. It wasn’t planned and in both cases, the loss hurt, but it also meant my opponent lost a lot of German air which they actually needed to project power elsewhere.

I open the league tab and the first 7 games I see are all being played by Roboto. And I think I see that you are in at least 5 more games!

You are single handedly rejuvenating league play!

@gamerman01 I’ll note here too that in most of my games with Adam, I feel like the dice have favoured me and I lost despite having some great luck. And in the one game I did manage to win, I have never have had such consistently great dice and it was a very near thing.

@MrRoboto thanks for all the work on this.

One concern. I like the idea of capturing a players’ current strength. But because we play a small number of games I would worry here that two or three games would have too much weight. So if a player that was tier 1 (with 5 games played) ends up beating 3 tier M players in a row, that is pretty good evidence that they are at the same level and they are going to be a top player according to either the existing scoring or the ELO. But if a tier M player (with 5 games played) loses 3 games in a row to other tier M players, with the current scoring they that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are no longer tier M and I am worried with an ELO, the drop might be more dramatic. So for that reason I like that the current league scoring that averages over a year.

One suggestion. This might be onerous, but could you score a year of play so that we could see how this ends up? That would both give us a sense of how well this works and also what might need to be tweaked.

I did do feb 2021 and sent it to Roboto in case anyone else was going to work on this

I think we should stick to 8 as well given the time issues. Its been pretty common even with 8 for the final (and sometimes more than the final) to not get finished until the following year.

I would just add that while I was concerned too that longer term rankings might not capture what has happened in the year, I’m being won over. And regardless, I think its worth trying this out and seeing how it plays out. As Roboto has explained, there is room to fine tune it if we do run into the issues. And once we see how it plays if over the next year or two, we can still revisit.

@gamerman01 thanks! It was a great and very fun game. And while I think the dice probably balanced out too there were certainly moments if the dice hadn’t gone so badly for you where you might have gotten it early (And of course I’m referring to Bryansk here).

I hadn’t had a lot of time to consider Germany’s next turn but on my brief look, I was debating between going for Moscow the next turn (and conceding Normandy) or keeping the allies out of Europe and delaying Moscow by a turn or too.

I thought I was in a strong position in this game the last few rounds, and that I should be able to win it if I could avoid major mistakes or dicings. But I felt that the dice in G17 also made that more likely. I picked battles that were safe to win, but there was lots of room for strong defensive roles to really make me pay and put the outcome more in doubt. I was lucky the dice went my way there too.

Your allied play was a amazing. Very creative and solid and I had to be very careful.

Glad you are in the tournament again!

Have to run, but more to say later.

Happy New Years!

I think @JDOW provided a pretty good summary of our game. (thanks!) I had some random thoughts below.

One point worth noting is that while the axis had better odds in the first Bryansk battle, it was less risky for the Soviets than it appeared. For one, the odds were close (38-62). Secondly, a Soviet win was likely game winning. Third, the balance of forces was such that I would lose more high combat value units early (defensive inf vs offensive inf so a good first roll could change the odds dramatically and the Soviets could retreat if not). Fourth, even if I won, the most likely outcome was heavy attrition on both sides. And that probably would have favoured the allies as I wouldn’t be able to take and hold Volgograd and Caucasus given the allied pressure from both Moscow and the ME.

Instead, the first round went great for me. Round 1 I hit 1.33 less than average but two of my hits were from 3 AA roles and you hit 8 under. Round 2 and 3 were closer but both rounds favoured me. So while at the end of it, we were both diminished, the Soviets were far worse off than expected (down about 15 units more than I was and 2 of those were air rather than land).
So going for this was not as much of a gamble as one might think. I do think a mistake here may have been the decision to continue after the first round. And there was a second battle of Bryansk that was a similar situation that I think was also a mistake (at least after the first round) as once the battle started to go south, the Soviets were losing units that were more valuable to Moscow’s defense.

I’ll note here too that given the risk, it may also have been better for me not to create the opportunity. But I felt if I didn’t go for it then, I would not get another chance at getting Volgograd and Caucasus, and so not to do it would be game losing as well.

An alternative to the attack on Bryansk was to use blockers to delay the Germans from getting Volgograd and Caucasus forcing me to move the stack South if I wanted to take and hold them. I had a small Italian can opener available, so the cost of blockers would have been higher, but the Soviets (and the British) had units to spare. I haven’t perhaps thought this through enough, but I thought that was the other option here and one I might have tried for instead in your shoes.
I also didn’t try to take Moscow or India early because I simply couldn’t. There were a few moments where I might have had decent odds, but nothing certain and I felt more confident that I could get the game economically and those would come later. That certainly became the grand strategy. At the end of the game, I was in a position to take Moscow with 100% odds and I think was perhaps a couple of turns away from putting similar pressure on India, but it took quite a while.

Your allied play is quite challenging. Efficient and I always felt lots of pressure from multiple directions (and often that pressure wasn’t immediately obvious so I had to be very careful).

One critique I had though was that a lot of resources in the pacific were caught up in land units defending Honolulu, Sidney, and the Caroline Islands. That does make those more of a challenge to take, but I thought a lot of those units ended up being wasted. I always had the naval superiority to keep the US on the outside of the pacific but there were a couple of moments where it was somewhat close. A couple of more carriers or 5-10 more subs might have made the difference and so I wonder if that would have been a better use of resources.

The dice went back and forth but might have helped me when I needed them more. I suffered a bit in round 1 but Bryansk 1 went great for me and 2 favoured me too, if not as much. The Japanese air attack on the Chinese inf stack in round 2 also went as well as could reasonably be hoped. The game might have gone very differently if the dice had been different in any one of those.

@axis-dominion I’m sure it will come back to you quickly. Just remember that the Germans should ignore Moscow and focus on London and all players need to prioritize buying cruisers.

Can’t commit to one yet but definitely down the road.

@gamerman01 actually I believe they can. I remember this coming up before and getting this clarified. A quick google search brought me this answer from Krieghund. THis is specific to pacific but I assume applies to global too.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/11100/china-question-re-uk-territories

@gamerman01 it is a pretty significant thing though since China goes before UK. You can hide the fig there or help stack Burma before the Japanese declare war or without waiting a turn for the UK to declare war. I was definitely quite surprised when I learned it was an option.

@Adam514 there is the odd error through there. I was intending to help out by slowly going through and double checking but haven’t had much chance to do that as of late. Can go in and fix this one now.

@gamerman01 Its going to happen and you were noting the need for a second check from the beginning. I managed to go through a few months but its been a busy year and that has fallen by the wayside.

I did the correction but used my actual initials (RT) instead of my username by mistake.

@axis-dominion I think it is the issue that you are not at war so Japanese subs are not enemy ones. But since there are enemy subs (German or Italian) that could hypothetically reach before one is at war with Japan, the text could be clarified. But I’m sure Adam can confirm/correct what I’m saying.

@dawgoneit really sorry to hear. My condolences to you and family.