Best posts made by farmboy

this was an interesting game to follow. And I don’t think I’ve often seen a game like this. The stats are worrisome for the allies. But Germany is denied Caucasus and volgograd and the soviets are pretty strong. Japan is dominating but there is no real danger of a pacific victory any time soon. Congrats to both of you and looking forward to the final!

@Arthur-Bomber-Harris I don’t disagree. And as I noted, I can certainly appreciate why players won’t agree and it is against the default. I’m playing more BM though where bids are scarcer relative to OOB and I’ve generally decided that it is more useful for me to spend the 3 elsewhere. The benefits of british subs or an inf in Yunnan, for example, seem greater to me. You don’t see the benefit in the concrete outcome of getting an NO earlier or in not having to expose a transport, but I think I get more benefit from the constraints those other bid placements place on the axis. So I’m less opposed if someone else wants to do it. But because it is a rule breaker, I’d be more hesitant in a playoff game.

Just an update on the dice issues. A few days ago I went into yahoo, made marti a contact and prioritized a few messages from it. Since then I’ve been getting the dice.

@farmboy said in League General Discussion Thread:

Like a lot of people I ran into trouble with my dice email a couple of years ago. I was using gmail and I found that most of the emails weren’t coming through. I switched to yahoo and that worked great until the last few months. I still get all the emails but most come in several days late. Curious if others are dealing with the same thing and if there an email service that is avoiding these issues.

@gamerman01 @Jacob16 worth noting to that Chinese units (including the fighter) can move into Burma and Hong Kong before the UK is at war with Japan.

This is belated but I didn’t have the time to really respond before. As others have noted, Booper lost this on G1. That is partly that I had great dice, but also that you had spread yourself thin enough that with the scramble, I could do real damage.

I’ll pretty much always scramble on 110 if it makes a modest improvement in the TUV exchange, and if the battleship isn’t there. There is some risk of the dice going south but in most cases, I will hit some German air and I’m willing to trade against them at a loss. Another reason to scramble is simply that you get the reputation for scrambling and your opponent thinks twice before going for both 110 and 111. So in a certain sense the odds of this are even better for the allies than ABH identified.

This being said I felt that despite that G1, I was in tough and that I was one mistake away from losing for much of the game. A couple of mistakes on my part contributed to that I think, but booper’s play was great. Very hard for me to get meaningfully into Europe.

As I mentioned in our chat, I think you had an earlier chance to take India, but lost it by focusing on China. This gave me a chance to move allied air (and ground units) to India in time to shut that possibility down. Had you gone for it, it might have changed the outcome.

thanks all! It was quite a tough and fast paced game. As always against Adam, I was lucky to get the win.

@simon33 in our game last year, Adam had a similar axis approach but he did both 110 and 111. I believe he still won both, but I had good dice and forced him to trade 7 air against my 4. My dice were certainly above average but it wasn’t an implausible outcome either. I think it is usually the right move to scramble the UK if it improves the TUV exchange for the allies and gives at least a small chance of winning. My guess here is Adam didn’t want to risk a repeat of that and opted for a safer attack.

The last time, he also avoided doing Yunnan. The extra China inf makes that a more difficult combat if Japan wants to do a J1 and hit the UK Battleship. In addition, he ultimately conserves Japanese land units. He still gets India J4 with pretty overwhelming numbers. and chases China away from Yunnan fairly quickly as well. In the end, in BM, the allies get 3 art instead of 4 inf and maybe an extra 4 to 8 income. Definitely useful but not game changing.

The US cruiser is a big swing first because if the Germans win outright they knock out 19 tuv. If they lose, they lose 6. They also convoy on the US and it denies the UK its BM bonus of a sub free Atlantic. Delaying Brazil by a turn also delays the entry of those 3 inf by a turn too. And in BM it also means the US can’t grab 5 with a landing in Morocco. And generally it will set the allies back by a turn in the atlantic and it probably mean they have to spend more on the atlantic early to compensate. Thiis also gives Germany more time to make landings in Europe difficult and reduces the early US spending on the pacific. These round 1 combats often have a larger impact throughout the game and if you are going to do a J1 anyway, its a good move in my view.

This is the third time I’ve beaten Adam’s Axis. But its the first time I’ve won where I feel that the dice didn’t do most of the work for me.

@AndrewAAGamer travelling right now but will comment more later. But good game! And I feel I should acknowledge too that some good dice were a factor in my win here too.

there was definitely some luck in all of these wins.

@gamerman01 said in Post League Game Results Here:

The top 4 entries in the Balanced Mod playoff were titans.

It’s a farmboy back-to-back… no.

It’s a THREE-PEAT

That’s farmboy for 2022, 2023, and 2024. Can you call that luck? Of course not.

Well. 2022 was maybe.

🔥🔥🔥🔥
▄︻デ══━一💥
ᯓ ✈︎

Bask for 3 months, and then we expect a 4th crown from you next year!

Two questions.

1. Is there a way to change the font in chat. I just tried to send a message to someone and had to change the skin in order for the font colour to stand out. I would rather change the skin.
2. And is the list of active users in a thread telling you who is currently (or very recently) online?

And also a huge thank you to Djensen and anyone else doing the work. The new site looks great and I really appreciate all the effort that has gone into keeping this going and improving the experience.

One of the great things about this site of course is that it gives us plenty of opportunities to play the game how we prefer so nothing that follows is meant to begrudge your preference to play low luck.

But I don’t agree that the game becomes more tactical with low luck. I think you play exactly the same way except that with dice: 1) probabilities become a factor in game strategy to consider, 2) you lack certainty of the outcome of particular moves and so you also have to play to mitigate risk (as Andrew noted earlier) and 3) adapt your play to the sometimes unexpected outcomes provided by the dice. In most games, at least in the long run, these unexpected outcomes tend to hit both ways and so, to some extent, even out.

When you play with dice, they are almost always a factor that shape the outcome (even when dice feel fairly balanced there is variation across combats and some combats will be more significant than others), but its much rarer that they are the primary factor. Superior play can usually compensate (at least if one is playing to minimize risk), although of course there are exceptions. I know I’ve won a couple of games against superior opponents because of consistently great dice, but I don’t think I have ever lost a game where I can point to the dice as the key reason (even if I’m sometimes unhappy about the dice I roll).

@myygames said in Low Luck explained (& advertised):

@farmboy I think the dice make the tactic in that game have less impact. Your fate will not only be ruled by skill but also by a random factor. In that sense my opinion is that it becomes more tactical if played on low luck. But as you said, everyone can play the game he likes. And as my gamemate says: Playing with odds and being able to judge them correctly is also a great skill…

Looks good! And thanks for all the work on this. This may be more trouble than its worth, but I’d be interested in a point by point explanation of the rationale for the changes. Both the unit and rule changes but also the specific map changes. I also always worry how games might get too complex. That might be unavoidable, and I know will be preferred by some players, but curious on any thoughts on that.

@gamerman01 Thanks for the update and for all your work in keeping track of this.

Figured it out. It was just a capitalized letter that caused the problem.

@Panther Me as well but I just donated at the end of December so I assume it might take a bit

I certainly don’t mind if folks want to add in another optional NO, but I would probably prefer playing with the bid since I like the variation provided by bid placement. A stronger USSR is also going to narrow the Axis options early which may make the game more scripted. And I think Ksmckay is right. A heavy focus on Moscow makes Germany vulnerable to the allies in the Atlantic. Attempting to preempt the allies in the Atlantic, makes the USSR more dangerous. That creates a nice tension I think.

lol. I was about to press send on basically the same message when yours came up. But yeah, I went back and checked and that is definitely it.

@dermmanninderhochburg On G1 its pretty standard to attack 110. Probably 111 and 106 are hit too. That doesn’t impact on the Gibraltar move. The navy that goes to Gibraltar is from the med and the cruiser in 91 and the destroyer in 109. The bid effects this too as it may mean there are more British ships that can join. An airbase is built at Gibraltar and UK air is landed there as well.

The advantage of this is 3 fold. 1 you contain/threaten Italy (without sacrificing ships) and discourage an early attack on Egypt. 2 you discourage a G3 sealion and threaten a landing in Normandy, etc. 3) you have a waypoint that allows you to shuttle air quickly from the Atlantic towards the mid east and then Moscow. And you have 5 air that can make the move there on the next turn.

The strategy that you describe works sometimes but will probably run into trouble when you play people with more experience that can anticipate it. If you don’t win the game by G/J5 you have probably lost it. And the US can afford to lose WUS for a turn and if Japan forgoes the money islands it will soon find itself being dramatically overspent and pressured on all sides. So I think this can sometimes be a fun strategy to try on an unsuspecting player, but not one I would rely on.

@axis-dominion said in 2 vs 2 tournament: A&A (G40, BM3, PtV):

@farmboy and @ksmckay, I think you guys would make a great team!

This would be a lot of fun and Ksmckay would be a great teammate, but unfortunately I have to keep my commitments here limited for the next while and so I will have to restrict myself to the peanut gallery.

Looking at it now. If I don’t get to it in the next hour or so it probably won’t be until Thursday that I can do the Germany turn. But just to take away the suspense. I’ll be checking again, but its fairly unlikely for me to go for it. I had around 73% odds I think, which is too much risk I think given our overall position.