Posts made by General Di Caro

PAK-40s would wreck that army.

Please excuse my Math error.  It is a 37% chance of rolling three 6’s on 18 dice.  So for 13 dice (The Croc’s short range attack) you would be talking in the 25% range of probablity for roasting an enemy tank.  Which is still very low.  I haven’t played a huge number of games either with or against the Crocodile.  If I do and see the same problem I would be open minded enough to change my mind.

I just think there are ways around any units strength.  How about the Panzerfaust?  A couple of them in the same hex as a Croc could do a lot of damage.

There are always weaknesses to exploit.

No one may decide to expose his rear defense.  It’s up to you to make him do it.  Force your opponent to make a decision by placing several of your units in range.  In the game I recently played, I had three T-70s surrounding the Sturmpanzer from all directions.  One was guaranteed to get a rear shot. Meanwhile my T-34s occupied the Tiger and Jagdpanther.  Unfortunately, my dice rolls were lame and soon they’re were no more (of my) tanks left on the field.

Most German tanks have average rear defense… in the 3 to 5 range, so I always try to use mobility get behind or to the side of them.  If my tanks are going to take fire, I’d rather it be in an aggressive posture.  However, one can only do this with initiative and defensive terrain to block LOS while getting tanks into flanking position.

Well, the game was designed for fast and furious combat.  Maybe protect your tank with some PAK-38s or PAK-40s on the back edge of your map side.  That may deter a rush.

My last post doesn’t deal with the Crocodile, just the Marines M2-2 flamethrower.

Again, I still think the Croc isn’t as dangerous as its being made out to be.  An Allied tank with Range 8 is at a severe disadvantage to a German tank with range 10 or 12.  And if your opponent parks the Croc on the objective, flank it!

Maybe you could reduce the flamethrower’s special ability to attacks in the same hex, meaning range 0.  I can see a flamethrower frying a tank in close combat, but maybe not from a range of 50 to 100 meters (the rule book states that each hex is 100 meters from side to opposite side).

Either way, the odds of throwing three sixes on seven dice are low.

Re: a house rule to account for a flame-thrower blowing up when hit by opposing fire, probably not necessary considering only 4 successes disrupts, 5 destroys it.

I think most house rules are stupid and unecessary anyway.

I think “house rules” as listed on many of these chat boards re: all the Axis and Allies games are mostly stupid.  You can’t expect total realism from a board game that uses dice to resolve everything.  And you also lose some of the playability when you burden the game with too many rules.  That was the problem with the old Avalon Hill games, the old tile games.  Every time I made a move I had to consult the rule book to see what the heck I was doing.

On the other hand, I have used house rules from time to time… just to tweak things a bit.  One of my “house rules” actually became a rule change. (but not because of me).

In Axis and Allies Europe, I changed the destroyer shore bombardment to 2 or less, down from 3 or less.  This rule was actually written into the Axis and Allies Pacific rulebook and I believe the revised Europe rules.  Beforehand, my opponent never invaded Normandy.  He just used destroyers to blast my German infantry divisions at 3 or less.

I also contemplated allowing defending infantry to hit at 3 or less in amphibious assaults, which was also made an optional rule in Axis and Allies revised.

I think a hide rule in Axis and Allies Miniatures would bog down the game.  You actually have some secrecy already, because you don’t know what army your opponent is going to have as you select your own units.

Now, another point.  World War II would have been a lot less bloody had the warring powers used dice to decide battles instead of real bullets.  For instance, Rommel and Montgomery would meet at the center of the battlefield and throw dice on a small table… never mind…

The Polish were not fools.  They were just not prepared to defend themselves against a modern army.  Neither was France, Belgium or any other nation on mainland Europe in 1939.

If your opponent has four jeeps loaded with flamethrowers chasing down a King Tiger, you can protect your tank with machine guns or infantry, and stop the jeeps with defensive fire.

An M2-2 flamethrower throws 7 dice at close range.  The odds of rolling three sixes are very low.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t be ready to strangle a nun if I lost my main tank to a 5 point unit, but there are many ways to stop that from even becoming a possibility.

The Sturmpanzer has rear defense 4, I believe.  My usual opponent owns the piece, so I have no card to look at.  It has speed 3.

We played two games… Soviet versus German tank battles.  The Sturmpanzer survived both games.  It so good against infantry but not very good against tanks, so I didn’t feel like my tanks were threatened by it.  I used my heavy tanks to go after my opponent’s Jagdpanther and Tiger, leaving the Sturmpanzer to my light tanks and Russian infantry.  Sigh.

As I mentioned, I flanked the Sturmpanzer with T-70s, and would have blown it away.  But lady luck did not shine upon me.

Actually, superior armor is not useless.

It forces the enemy to fire on a single unit with many of his own units.  I can’t tell you how many times my opponent would have damaged one of my tanks with one throw of the dice (which would bring it one hit away death during that phase) had it not been for superior armor.

So, as a result, my vehicle received only a face-down disruption marker, instead of disruption and damage.  That forced my opponent to use another heavy tank (if he even had one in his 100 point army) on my vehicle, needing another good role of the dice add on another hit, and a very good role of the dice to score two hits.

Of course, had he scored two hits with his first attack, he would only need one more hit to send my tank to heaven, with the other tanks that had only normal armor.  SUperior armor has saved me many many times.

When your soldier units are in the same hex as the enemy vehicle, use the vehicle’s rear defense.  You can find that in the rules.

I would like to disagree with all of you.

I have no problem with the three 6’s immediately destroying a tank.  There are easy ways to protect a tank from getting into a vulnerable position to begin with.

The game has also been well researched.  I don’t think the designers are way off on this.  And… if you roll 18 dice, you have just a 16% chance of rolling three 6’s.  So, you do the math when you are dealing with fewer dice.

And I’m sure most of you are capable of preventing a flamethrowing unit from getting that close to a tank anway.

I read Keegan’s Second World War.  An excellent book, of course.  At first I found it surprising how great a role horses played in transporting guns for the Wermacht, but then again, they are cheaper than building vehicles and require no…. oil.

In the book, there is a photo of German soldiers whipping horses that are pulling an artillery piece in Poland 1939.  The caption reads Most german artillery remained horse-drawn until the end of the war.

How many german horses died in Russia??? I can’t imagine.

The real useless piece is the tankette.  You don’t really need reconnaissance in a game where you can see all the enemy pieces.

No argument here, but it’s speed of 2 (1 while damaged) and limited range makes it easy to get behind and attack.  And the Germans have some decent close assault infantry like the Panzerfaust that can take advantage of it’s 6 rear defense (5 while disrupted).  However, it does take a lot of fire power to destroy this, unless you can damage it early in the game with a good throw of the dice by a heavy German tank. I once had this happen, and the Crocodile was useless for the rest of the game from an attack stand point because of all the penalties that come with being damaged.  However, it did survive the game wounded.  They just couldn’t finish it off.

Yes, Yankee Slayer.  You are right.  It is all about the objective.  It is a helpless feeling having to charge the objective with infantry.  Especially if the enemy troops are SS-Panzergrenadiers.  I just played a 10 turn game using the Soviets.  My opponent placed a single SS-Panzergrenadier on one of our two objectives, a forest hex, about 4 turns into the game.  He was still there at the end of the game.  I shouldn’t have decided against including the Soviet Sniper in my army.

However, if you can hunker down in cover in range of the objective with soldiers as your tanks maneuver out in front, flanking the opponent’s tanks and tying them up, then the objective won’t be so hard to attack.

The siG 33 is devastating, but can be destroyed fairly easily because of its light armor.  The Sturmpanzer assault gun is ridiculous!  Front armor 7 to go along with its disregard of cover makes one hide his soldiers far away.  I tried to flank it with T-70s, but lady luck was not on my side.

And the unit’s stat card doesn’t say “must score beat defense by two successes to damage it.”  It says “must beat defense by two successes to score two hits against it.”  And again, that’s for each individual throw of the attack dice each faze.

Just think of every attack in terms of hits, not “disruption, damage, destroy”, and add up each attack individually.  It states it pretty clearly in the rules.

1000 point games???

You are crazy.  The map isn’t big enough!

I have played 200 points.  My friend and I recreated the battle of Kursk.  German versus Russian tank battle.  I find if there are too many pieces on the map it cuts down on maneuverability.  Speaking of which, the Soviet T-34, Guards T-34, and the T-70 have great maneuverability.  If you can flank those German tanks they aren’t so fierce anymore (rear defense).