This is where your big brother Germany can help with supplying fighters to defend the sea zone from the air base that Italy builds on Gibralter. Italy really can become a pain in the keister to the allies which makes it so much fun.
I’m really new to this as well but I say that you should NEVER build any sort of base that is certain to fall to the enemy. An Air base in Gibraltar is a gift given to the Americans on a silver platter.
Okay so on China Turn one, if Japan has closed the Burmese Road they cant buy artillery right? Im asking because the rule stating that china can buy Artillery is in there national objective. this is confusing because wouldnt it mean that china would only be able to buy artillery on its second turn anyway because it would need a complete turn with the road open to buy the artillery?
Is it worth it for Japan to close the burmese road turn one if they want to hold their DOW until a later round?
@CWO:
I’ve never used the Low Luck system, so I don’t have any opinions on its merits relative to standard dice…but one element of this discussion caught my eye: the general issue of “result predictability” versus the potential for having a good strategy ruined by bad dice. Although I never really developed the idea beyond just a rough concept, I’ve sometimes wondered whether a variable-risk dicing method might be interesting to use in an A&A context.
I got this idea from a subject area that has nothing to so with wargaming: possible ranges of investment returns (both positive and negative) based on the riskiness of investment types. Financial institutions sometimes offer investors various types of pre-packaged investment portfolios which contain mixtures of stocks and bonds, in different proportions, and in varying ratios of domestic versus foreign holdings. Here are three simple (and completely fictitious) examples of what I’m talking about. At one end of the scale, you might have a very conservative portfolio that consists entirely of domestic guaranteed government bonds; its upside is that it’s very safe (you’re virtually certain never to lose any money), but its downside is that the rate of return is very low. At the opposite end of the scale, you might have an aggressive portfolio consisting entirely of foreign stocks in high speculative and volatile sectors of the economy; its upside is that it has potential for generating spectacularly high returns, but its downside is that you could end up losing all your money. In the middle of the scale, you might have a balanced portfolio which distributes your money among many different asset classes, and therefore which offers a mixture of safety and risk and a mixture of low and high returns.
How might this apply to A&A dicing? As I said, I never really worked out any details, but the idea would be that a player who’s about to enter a round of combat would choose one of three dicing options: low-risk, medium-risk and high-risk. These options would, I imagine, work either by using either different dice types (4-sided, 6-sided, 8-sided, etc.) or by using standard dice combined with some sort of interpretation table. The low-risk option (represented, let’s say, by 4-sided dice), would offer a narrow and hence fairly predictable range of outcomes, which would translate into only modest gains or modest losses. The high-risk option (represented by, let’s say, 8-sided or 12-sided dice) would offer a much wider and less predictable range of outcomes, with potential for either spectacular gains or spectacular losses. The medium-risk option would fall somewhere between those two extremes.
The point of the system would be that each player would have to decide on a case-by-cases basis whether he wants to use a low-risk, medium-risk or high-risk dicing strategy in a particular round of combat, rather than being locked for the whole game in either a Low Luck mode or a standard dice mode. In principle, this would have two advantages. First, it would mean that each player would have to make a new type of “command decision” during the course the game, which adds to the thrill of being an armchair general or admiral (which is part of the whole attraction of wargaming). Second, a player who decides to use a high-risk dicing strategy and who ends up losing big won’t be able to put all the blame on the bad dice: he’ll have to take responsibility for having chosen the high-risk dicing strategy in the first place (which, again, is something that a real commander has to live with in a real war). Conversely, the player who decides to use a high-risk dicing strategy and who ends up winning big will be able to congratulate himself for pulling off a gamble which succeeded spectacularly. Yamamoto (who was an avid poker and shogi player) was definitely a commander of the “high-risk dicing strategy” type, and he’d probably have agreed with what James Graham, the 5th Earl of Montrose, said during the English Civil War :
“He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all.”
Lets get a system like this up and running! It sounds nearly perfect and you are very wise to try to make a compromise between both parties! I say that this system would nearly double the Great fun of playing as Military Commander and I fully support it. It might as well go into the next A&A edition if we can create a smooth version!
If you guys really want to speed up the “crazy long” “boring” gigantic battles, get four separate boxes, a whole lot of dice and roll into each box all within a matter of seconds. do you have 20 units at 4 20 units at 3 and 20 units at 2, throw your 20 dice into each separate box like you’re some filthy rich man makin it rain :mrgreen: gigantic battles are fun and exciting so quit your complaining and have fun! Someone has to take the dramamtic losses sometimes and I really think people are over-reacting to losing or winning.
Thanks Gamer, I guess that I am over-concerned about Italy :| So really in most games for you it really is just a bland country to play? Any other good tips I need to know?
One way I find to help Italy is for Germany to take S France and dump ships in the med with the extra France income. I see how this diverts attention away from Sea Lion but really if Italy can get a deep setup in Africa, it will pull US attention away from Mainland Europe. have you ever tried this or are there any problems with this theory?
What makes a J2 Dow better than a J1? Dont both of them just allow US to have a Strong Gibralter raid of the Med? The UK wipes out Italy First turn anyway so why not jsut pull US troops to the Pacific asap?
what if you took an air craft carrier to Alaska along with maybe a sub as well? I’m starting to feel as if J1 just dosnt work because it always give the US the upper hand. Is it possible to take Hawaii J1?
I’ve been really studying the J1 attack strategy and ive found that by landing a tank+infantry transport on Alaska you prevent the US from getting an additional 5 ipc NO. bringing the total NOs down to 15 if Philippines are captured as well. You may have to divert the caroiline island transport to the Phillipines or just put in more planes. I feel that taking alaska J1 would really distract US and draw more attention to the pacific, giving Italy more wiggle room. Any faults with my logic? :?