Posts made by KaLeu

You’re right about the paper IPC’s - they’re missing from the Spring 1942 edition and I also use the IPC notes from my second edition game.
I don’t recommend using the technological advances from the old game in the 1942 edition. Apart from A&A being better without tech anyway (imho), the second edition advances are really unbalanced and tend to disrupt the natural course of play, to some degree even turning it into a game of chance rather than skill.

If want to sell the second edition game after all, you may want to try http://boardgames.startpagina.nl/prikbord/

Check this thread to download the rule book: http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=16910

You’re lagging!  :-D

I’ll fill in the gap for a bit.

On December 23, 1940, Churchill broadcasted a personal appeal to the Italian people, reminding them of their alliance with Britain in World War I, and pointing out that it was really only Mussolini who had led them into a war that would ruin them. And he had a point, because the Italians were faring badly against the Brits in North Africa at the time.
Around the same time, German bombers heavily attacked the city of Manchester.

On December 23, 1941, Japan finally won the Battle of Wake Island. It was a costly victory though, and Dec 23 was their second invasion, needed to finally overcome the much smaller American force that held the island.

I’m posting this not because I have a whole lot to say on the topic, but simply because at some level it feels wrong that we’re filling one page after the other on the demise of an evil dictator, while not a single word has been said about this truly great man.

Václav Havel was a man of extraordinary courage. Armed with nothing else than his thoughts and words, he stood up against the oppressive regime that ruled his country for decades. He paid a heavy toll for his struggle, but ultimately emerged triumphant in the 1989 revolution that toppled communism.
The world has lost a true champion of freedom.

Let’s hope for a better future for the North Korean people. I’m not optimistic though, with the “Great Successor” coming up.

After extensive postwar rebuilding, it looked quite a bit different from the original:

That’s impressive, thumbs up for your Dad!

And so it seems that we’ve already established a 74 years age difference between active A&A players.

@jiman79:

Well basically a UK bomber can hit its target in 1 round a US bomber is active one round later. Whereas US navy at least can do something usefull on their first round (unload in Africa). So I am not sure I follow your long range vs short range perspective for the air units.

You’re right about that, but I don’t think that buying bombers for the explicit purpose of doing strategic bombing raids is a good plan at all. It’s just that if I would do that, I’d do it with the US rather than with the UK. And I’d do the sneaky thing by building them in the Western US (from where they can still land in Britain) to make Japan feel uneasy - at the very least they need to be careful if they plan to unload troops in Buryatia.

As for the UK naval strategy, I generally agree that it’s a better choice than bombers, but I don’t see a specific reason to wait for the US navy to arrive first. The UK can afford to build, say, an aircraft carrier and a destroyer, and put a few planes on the carrier - or land US planes on it. Put it all in SZ2 and it’s basically out of reach for Germany. Or put it in SZ8 and add the US cruiser to it.

@special:

@Fishmoto37:

@special:

Who would be the oldest member? (not me)

It is I!

Leclerc?

Anyone who understands that answer is certainly not one of the “youngin’s”.

One of today’s world’s ails: “managers” being put in charge of experts. It happens all the time, and in this case, even when lives are involved. A sad affair.

I wouldn’t recommend a British strategy based on doing strategic bombing raids. In the fight against Germany, the UK holds a major strategic advantage as compared to the US: it’s a lot closer. So if you start producing ships and land units early as the UK, you’ll be able to either threaten German-held territories early, or reinforce Russia early. Because an amphibious assault from the UK can reach many areas in Europe, Germany will need to spend resources on defensive measures - resources that can’t be used against Russia.
Also, the UK initially has the money to build up a significant force - later on, it may be more difficult to them, as they tend to lose income during the early turns of the game when they lose African and/or Asian territories to the Axis.

By contrast, bombers are (a) expensive, and (b) long-range. So if you want to use an approach based on strategic bombing raids (and I’m not saying that’s a very good idea in the first place), then do it with the US, which can more easily afford to buy bombers. Basically, it all comes down to using the nearby Allied IC (UK) for short-range units while using the far-away IC (US) for long-range units.

I agree with you on the India IC - it’s too vulnerable, and while it may be used as a part of a KJF (Kill Japan First) strategy, I don’t think I’ve seen many KJF enthusiasts on this forum.

Answering in an extremely non-political way:

A) It does. The typical, average web site / paper / television coverage. But it’s one of many items, there’s no special emphasis. My “area” being the Netherlands, btw.
B) No. I generally don’t believe in far-fetched explanations or conspiracy theories. That’s not because they couldn’t be true, but because I’m convinced that human stupidity is a determining force in world events past and present.

@SS:

To bad Dec. 7 is coming early this year.

It’s roughly around the same time as in other years.  :-D

As for me, I suppose that I’m expected to work that day.

ZDF broadcasted an interesting documentary on Rommel, which can be seen here in its entirety. While Rommel publicly displayed the optimism that was required to upkeep the morale of his troops, he expressed himself very differently in private. His adjutant Winrich Behr (at about 24:45 in the documentary) relays Rommel’s sentiment as follows:
"Er war ja kein komplizierter Philosoph oder Denker sondern er sagte ganz einfach: ‘Das schaffen wir doch nicht mehr, und stellen Sie sich doch mal vor, und die Leute sagen das und das, nun sehen Sie mal hier, da is eine Infanteriedivision eingesetzt und die haben kaum Geschütze, und wir haben auf zwei kilometer, haben wir eine Batterie stehen.’ "

which roughly translates as:
"He wasn’t a complicated philosopher or thinker, but he quite simply said: ‘We’re just not going to make it, and just imagine, people are saying all kind of things, but look, an infantry division has just been deployed and they hardly have artillery support, and for every two kilometers, we have a single battery.’ "

That was before D-Day, when he was still preparing for the upcoming invasion.

(edit to update the translation)

The problem with the original question is, of course, that there wouldn’t be a non-nuclear war. So the third option, “nobody wins”, seems to be the most accurate.
And with the nukes, Russia “wins” even without any help from either Europe or the US. It’s way ahead of China in nuclear capacity and missile technology, and has the strategic advantage of having a bigger country and a more dispersed population.

You may well be right. It’s all highly speculative, of course. But the Czechoslovakians themselves apparently weren’t too optimistic - they chose not to resist.

But I’d say it would be highly uncertain whether those allies would really have come to the aid of Czechoslovakia. France, for sure, wouldn’t: they had just concluded the Munich agreements, so would they change their position just because Czechoslovakia would decide to fight when Germany took the Sudetenland, which it didn’t do in reality?

Romania’s position would be crucial. Would they live up to the treaty to the point where they would indeed go to war with Germany to defend Czechoslovakia? And also, would they allow the Soviet Union to send in their troops across Romanian territory? All of that is very uncertain.

Those 23% Germans…. well, they did live in the area that would be the primary target of a German invasion. And later on, NSDAP membership was high in the Sudetenland, so the local population could well have been supportive of the German effort.

No.

I also can’t see a credible scenario here, but I voted that Russia would win because I can’t see them losing. If China would invade in force, the war very quickly would become nuclear, and Russia is way ahead in that field. I know that “a conventional war” is a premise of the poll, but that’s just not how things would work out.
I can’t see the Russian army occupying all of China either, but they could sure turn the country into a radioactive wasteland.
In the end, nobody wins.

This scenario, known as Fall Grün, is described in some detail on Alternative History. Czechoslovakia’s trouble would be not only that they were facing a much more powerful opponent that held a large strategic advantage in being able to attack from several directions at the same time, but also that there was very little help coming their way. The Germans were also helped by Hungary, which grasped the opportunity to invade from the south.
I generally believe the version presented on Alternative History to be rather credible, so my vote went to the “prolonged war” option.

Saruman, I’d say. Like in KJF, he led his forces not against the strongest opponent, but tried to take out a weaker foe first and failed at doing so. And the IC he built was captured by the Ents. Plus, he’s so British.