@anzacguy That is a big question in a little sentence. I will try to answer as concisely as possible, but it is impossible to answer in specifics.

First, Italy.

Italy is the only Axis power that depends totally on the actions of the Allies to decide its course of action. If the UK does things right, Italy has very limited options.

Assuming the UK does things right, Italy can and should provide ground forces to free up German resources for the destruction of Russia. After defending itself, Italy should position itself to help with the defense of West Germany, Southern France, and Normandy (assuming Germany or Italy was dumb enough to take Normandy).

Second, Italy should annoy the heck out of the UK by depriving it of its NO for as long as possible, maximize its income, and force the UK to try to neutralize that income. The best options for doing this are taking Cyprus if you have a surviving transport – this is very difficult for the UK to recapture without costing it extra resources. Taking African territories works only in the short term.

Finally, the Italian fast movers should move in advance of German forces to clear blockers and also allow German planes to land with the German stack that moves into the territory captured by Italy. The presence of defensive fighters can make a German stack feasible in circumstances where Russia might have odds of 50% or better when attacking the stack.

If the UK does things wrong (or just gets really unlucky)…

Italy might have navy play. Boost your income as much as possible and keep the UK tied up by taking its territories and forcing it to fight in Africa instead of reinforcing Russia. Keep can opening for Russia. With your boosted income, you can also keep building ground forces that can move to Europe or invade Africa.

Now, for ANZAC. Like Italy, it’s sucking hind tit. It has to support the major powers that keep it alive while not dying and thwarting the enemy as much as possible.

There are two schools of thought here – that ANZAC should turtle and that ANZAC should fight for possession of the Dutch East Indies. BOTH are true – ANZAC should do everything possible to not die while fighting for the DEI. To do these things, it needs US support. US fighters can reach Queensland from Hawaii in a single move. ANZAC ships can strengthen the US fleet to make it safe from Japanese attacks. The US can can open for ANZAC transports to let them take territory.

A major factor here is when Japan makes its move – with J1, ANZAC has less options than with every other Japanese opener. With J1, ANZAC should activate Dutch New Guinea on J1 for its NO. Without J1, ANZAC typically activates Java for income and possibly ferry fighters towards India via Java while building more defenses. (Whether or not to do this also depends on what’s showing for J2.)

A major limitation on ANZAC is factory capacity – there is one IC, and it is not in the best location. Some folks will tell you to build an IC with ANZAC, but timing is everything – too early, and your income will never support the enhanced capacity. Too late, and you’ll be giving initiative to the Axis powers. Also, the right blend is important – too many ground troops and you can’t help much. Too few ground troops and you’re a liability to the Allies.

A general rule of A&A combat is that fighters are sexy, but infantry holds off hits on more expensive units while they kill attackers…the more infantry you have, the longer your fighters live.

So, if you send a fighter off to India, it needs to be replaced but you also need to keep the infantry up. Combined with you factory limitations, this typically means you might build something like a fighter and two infantry, or a transport and two infantry, or a destroyer and two infantry.

Both of these minor powers require great skill to play properly – they both depend on balance and judgement of the enemy. Properly played, they can and have turned the tide of games.

Have fun!

Marsh

@Alex-Phillips said in OOB or BM3:

@AndrewAAGamer I’ll be baited. Unfortunately I think there’s a lot of arrogance displayed by some of the more serious/veteran posters like yourself, Gen. Manstein, etc. It puts me off joining any league on here. I like to post the occasional snippet, read interesting strategies, but that’s it, thanks.

With all due respect, I think you’re misunderstanding Andrew.

I’ve played with him many times and lost many times, having won against him only once when his partner made a massive mistake in the Pacific that cost the US catastrophically.

Three other times I’ve come close to beating him:

Once he and a friend took the Allies against me as the Axis in Global. I threw the script away and launched a devastating mechanized attack against Russia (which appears to be me to be the basis for Andrew’s current Axis plan, albeit with some refinement). The question, “How are we going to beat him?” was asked and the answer from Andrew was “I don’t know.” In the end, I made a bad attack and beat myself.

The next time was Anniversary again, and three players against Andrew (running the Axis by himself I believe). The US and Russia did their parts, but the guy running UK was a horrible player who liked making questionable attacks. He did not want to do anything that his partners needed. At the end, the attack on Moscow would have never happened if the UK had killed just four more German infantry.

Once he and his buddy ran Axis in Anniversary, and I was on a team with two other players. One of the players was very new and a very good player who made Russia look interesting and easy, but at the end despite the fact that Japan was beaten in the Pacific Germany took Moscow. Japan was beaten but standing (and it would have taken many more turns to crush it completely). US fighters, a whole darned stack of them, were one more turn away from Moscow and that would have ended the game definitively in favor of the Allies, with Germany having no chance of success in Europe and Japan having no chance of success in the Pacific. The new player had refused to take a UK fighter in defense of Moscow in order to keep his objective. That resulted in a 50/50 battle that could have been like 35/65 in favor of the Allies. The dice came up against the Allies. With Russia defeated, we felt there was no way to achieve victory unless we risked defeat in the Pacific.

Andrew doesn’t believe in luck. He believes in hard work and patience, and he works harder at this game than anyone else I’ve ever seen or heard of. I’ve never heard him complain about getting diced (although I have seen him lose games because his opponent got lucky with the dice). He just waits til he has the best possible chance of success for an attack. He practices constantly.

He’s proud of his skill. I don’t think that’s arrogance. He works harder than any other player I’ve ever met to improve his play. There’s a difference between pride in your effort and arrogance.

Yes, Andrew is a serious player. He’s not a better player because he’s more gifted at strategy. He’s a better player because he works harder, period to understand the mechanics of the game and how they will play out. That’s not arrogance – that’s determination.

He’s not a better player because he blames other people for his mistakes. He accepts responsibility when he makes a mistake. That’s not arrogance – that’s honesty with himself, something many, many people in the world should consider taking more of.

I’m probably a better instinctive player than Andrew, but where I come up short is determination. Me, I spend my time on city government, running a D&D game, working on a book, and learning two different languages while juggling my day job and pondering graduate school. Why does he beat me? Because he practices harder and longer. Because I’m not as patient as he is.

Playing against him has made me a better player. He has always been willing to offer advice without judgement and to help me get better. He has taught me new things about the game both with and without trying to do so.

So, with respects, reserve your judgement and get to work. When you win as much as Andrew does, you’ll have the right to decide whether or not he’s being arrogant.

Your first turn build is being spent trying to psych out the UK, forcing them to spent their entire build reinforcing the UK rather than anywhere else.

For the record, I love the psych-out. I once won a game entirely by psyching out my opponent on turn one. When his teammates finally convinced him I was full of <bleep>, it was too late for Japan to build properly.

But I digress – back to your note.

You start behind Russia on total infantry. You build ships, and this allows Russia spare room to build tanks and artillery. By the time you start building for the Russian invasion, you are a full turn behind Russia in deployments.

You use those ships for Novgorad. So what – the ships don’t land and are a liability that you have to protect now. Without an air base to cover them, you have to build either an airbase (locking down your planes) or more navy (which ALSO don’t get you anywhere) and in the mean time Russia is building MORE ground forces. You will never catch up.

In the mean time, the survivors from the 8 or 10 units you were able to land can now be crushed by Russia (which had an entire turn to stack Belarus and Bryansk with pretty respectable stacks). Even if you swap unit for unit on your defense roll (you won’t), Russia comes out ahead here. Your ground offensive stalls out.

Solution: Stop wasting your money on ships that don’t actually get you anywhere. Alternately, use the ships to get troops to somewhere they can be effective.

@dazedwit said in Red Skies:

@AndrewAAGamer

are you dumb? 37 is not 42

3 bombers = $36

1 bomber, 10 inf = $42

1 bomber, 10 inf = $42

1 bomber, 9 inf = $39

Yeah, magical mystical sub can to to SZ125

I spent every Germany dollar on tanks and SB’s, and nothing else until G5 (which some inf thrown in with any extra dollars). Buying a sub to send up there takes one tank off of Eastern Front. I played Germany as ferocious offensive juggernaut to see if Red Skies could hold them off. And I went cobra kai so ignored Baltic/East Poland.

Luckily I was able to destroy the 2 year old I was playing against. He was way better at the game than you.

@dazedwit Your ad-hominem attacks are not appreciated. I know @AndrewAAGamer and he’s an amazing player, probably one of the best in the world. Before you get moderated before these personal attacks, I just wanted to warn you against them.

Marsh

In my experience, the most common loss/victory is through surrender, typically following a bad defeat. For example, if the US or Japanese fleet were caught in a death trap and annihilated due to careless play, the corresponding player would probably give up. I’ve seen this many times.

Only once I have actually achieved victory conditions (and I did it in six rounds). Even then, my opponent surrendered rather than play the rest of the 6th turn because he had no realistic hope of freeing a victory city.

No, anyone in our local area playing the Axis would have conceded long before that happened.

Marsh

Also, I have yet to actually receive a 60 IPC bid from Andrew.

“Let’s eat Grandma”

“Let’s eat, Grandma”

COMMAS SAVE LIVES.

@tchenao If you control Normany, the German battleship should have repaired in the G2 purchase phase.

Since you can’t move it into the Med unless Italy took Gibraltar on I1, it would be better to move it to sea zone 112 where it can have air cover.

Marsh

@tchenao We once play a game where the French were the most effective minor power on the board. They could do no wrong on defense. At one point my partner (who was running the French) responded to the player running Germany saying, “Two guys and a plane should be enough” with “Are you sure? They’re French.” and the other player winced visibly. The French in that game killed more German units than the UK…

Fun day!

Marsh

On the other hand, if you drop fleet into sea zone six (two carriers, with four fighters from southern carriers on top of them, and maybe a battleship too) , if he does bring in the bombers you can kill a lot of them with your six fighter scramble. It’ll cost a lot, but cheaper than losing the game by conceding the skies to him. You’ll still need to build a lot of replacement planes.

If you go this route, you’ll need to keep that blocker in sea zone 16 to keep his ships from coming in. You’ll want to kill as many planes as you can at once. If you go this way, you definitely have to consolidate your fleet in two turns if he doesn’t hit sea zone 6 on his next turn.

If he goes for Iwo, then your combined fleet can kill his fleet or target his bombers.

No matter what you do, you have to kill most of those bombers. It’s gonna be expensive.

If he’s going for Japan proper with it all, then consolidating your fleet is still necessary because you can’t let him land anything with that bomber stack backing it up. That being said, I would still pump some more ground forces into Japan too.

Have fun.

Marsh

@FranceNeedsMorePower said in Japan Tricky Situation:

@MarshmallowofWar WOW! Thank you for all your help! I guess I mis-understood the threat, it really was not that large.

Also the U.S. has 4 transports fully loaded 2 Cruisers 3 Carries fully loaded a battleship and three subs. Plus 11 Bombers.

I’m just worried about all of the bombers.

I was only looking at the fleet. That is a lot of bombers.

The good thing is they can’t hit Japan. The bad thing is they can hit sea zone six. The naval build probably isn’t the best build there.

The good thing about your enemy having 11 bombers – once you kill them, he’s toast. The bad thing: you have to lose fighters to kill them. He’s coming for your main factory with 11 bombers, and once he shuts it down you’re toast. You won’t be able to build in sea zone six. He’ll take Iwo Jima or Korea (either works, and if it’s Iwo you won’t be able to attack the bombers on land without risking your carriers) and you’re hosed on that unless you can kill those bombers. If you can’t attack where they are, you will need to kill them with interceptors. Better start building fighters in Japan so you can intercept them.

Marsh

@barnee So it will.

That’s a tiny US fleet. I stand by my assessment.

Marsh

Without being able to enlarge the photo to see the actual size of the US fleet, it’s hard to say. My initial assessment is that Japan is in a winning position here. The US fleet looks awfully weak and I don’t see any follow-on forces coming.

It looks like Japan still has a sizable air force. It also looks like Japan has three fully loaded carriers, including at least one that has planes that can reach sea zone 6 on Japan’s next move. This is a sizable fleet, although it is badly distributed and separated in violation of Mahan’s principles.

First, Japan has a blocker in sea zone 16, which means that the US can’t actually attack Korea on its next move. That means Japan has time to gather its fleet in or around the Philippines and regroup it’s air force for a joint strike on sea zone six. Regrouping the fleet is a good idea no matter what.

Japan’s next build should include at least a destroyer for sea zone six, to ensure that the US has to do combat in the sea zone and providing the option to scramble if the US fleet is as weak as it looks. That in itself might deter the US from moving into sea zone 6. At the very least, it would prevent the US from moving into the sea zone with a non-combat move without risking its valuable planes to clear the sea zone in combat movement (the blocker in sea zone 16 prevents the US from using ships).

If I’m reading the situation correctly, I would actually build a carrier and two destroyers into sea zone 6 this round, landing two fighters on the newly built carrier and leave the air cover from Korea and Japan in place. I would build enough infantry that the US can’t actually take Japan (should it miraculously clear the sea zone). I would move the transports back within range of Japan so that they can pick up infantry built this round (I would build more next round along with some fighters to fill the carriers I temporarily emptied).

That combination of builds and movements stops the US from threatening Japan, forces the US to risk it’s air force to clear sea zone 6 even to move into the sea zone in non-combat, positions Japan’s fleet to regroup, positions Japan’s fleet and air force to destroy the US forces should it be dumb enough to actually move into sea zone 6, and sets you up to provide critical ground troops that you can transport south as reinforcements.

(EDIT: If the US realizes the futility of threatening sea zone 6, the carriers positioned off the Philippines can move west to tackle India with the new reinforcements coming from Japan.)

Again, this is all assuming I’ve read the very small photo correctly.

Marsh

@shadowhawk said in In how many hours can you complete a G40 game:

4 color dice. So each combat round can be rolled in 1 go.

I have never seen this actually speed up any game. Usually the person doing it is a proponent of the method, trying to convert others, and wastes an enormous amount of time trying to perform conversions.

Also, they take a lot of time counting out the appropriate dice of each color.

Finally, they insist on sorting them in the box after the roll is complete.

Yeah, never seen this actually make a difference.

Marsh

In my experience, the most common loss/victory is through surrender, typically following a bad defeat. For example, if the US or Japanese fleet were caught in a death trap and annihilated due to careless play, the corresponding player would probably give up. I’ve seen this many times.

Only once I have actually achieved victory conditions (and I did it in six rounds). Even then, my opponent surrendered rather than play the rest of the 6th turn because he had no realistic hope of freeing a victory city.

@dazedwit said in Red Skies:

Yeah, his last post to me was that I was playing against a two year old. Yeah, that’s not a pa.

Apologies, I missed that and shame on him. That doesn’t mean that you should resort to the same thing.

Marsh

@dazedwit said in Red Skies:

I’m sorry, why are you ignoring his PA’s on me. He’s been a complete dick to me in multiple threads. I’ve ignored him up until now. I’m just trying to have fun convos about the game we all love.

I would be shocked if @AndrewAAGamer had actually made a personal attack against you. You, on the other hand, have shown a deep immaturity and lack of experience in the game.

Disagreeing with your ideas is not disrespect. If he is disagreeing with your ideas, it’s because of the depth of his experience has taught him that your ideas are probably based on what works against inexperienced players.

And don’t worry, since he didn’t accept my challenge to a game and acted like a dick again (and why I finally hit him back) I finally blocked him. He and one other guy seem to be following me around and acting like dicks for no reason. I’ve ignored them both until today. I’m surprised the other guy hasn’t shown up yet.

I have no idea why he would accept your challenge. Inevitably he would defeat you and then you would almost certainly insist that you got “diced”. However, so far the only person I’ve seen acting disrespectably is you.

If you want to play a top tier player, improve your play. A good start to that would be listening to their opinions.

Marsh

@dazedwit said in Red Skies:

@AndrewAAGamer

are you dumb? 37 is not 42

3 bombers = $36

1 bomber, 10 inf = $42

1 bomber, 10 inf = $42

1 bomber, 9 inf = $39

Yeah, magical mystical sub can to to SZ125

I spent every Germany dollar on tanks and SB’s, and nothing else until G5 (which some inf thrown in with any extra dollars). Buying a sub to send up there takes one tank off of Eastern Front. I played Germany as ferocious offensive juggernaut to see if Red Skies could hold them off. And I went cobra kai so ignored Baltic/East Poland.

Luckily I was able to destroy the 2 year old I was playing against. He was way better at the game than you.

@dazedwit Your ad-hominem attacks are not appreciated. I know @AndrewAAGamer and he’s an amazing player, probably one of the best in the world. Before you get moderated before these personal attacks, I just wanted to warn you against them.

Marsh

Who doesn’t love a Russian strat bomber or two?

Spending the equivalent of 20 infantry on five strat bombers is insanity if you want Russia to live until turn 10 or so. Every single infantry matters.

I do see advantage to Russia having a strat bomber – combined with a fighter, it could actually slow down Germany’s approach to and assault on Moscow by using strategic bombing against German-held ICs in Leningrad and Ukraine, forcing Germany to spend extra money to build units there that can be pumped into the offensive against Moscow.

If Germany tries to thwart this strategy by positioning fighters to protect those ICs, Germany then has to spend money building those fighters so as not to deplete the air cover for Western Europe. (Wait, you say, Russia has fighters – true, but if Russia loses them they can’t afford to replace them.)

There are two problems with this idea that I see:

• The US and UK are far more able to afford a spare strat bomber or two to be based in Russia. The UK is also probably sending fighters to bolster the Russian defenses, so those fighters could actually allow this
• Germany is probably going to build those extra fighters anyway to bolster the eventual attack on Russia.

Personally, I would stick with the infantry. A UK bomber can be escorted by UK fighters that have a meaningful chance of either forcing the German player to just accept strat bombing damage or to potentially trade German fighters for UK fighters (always a good deal for Russia).

The UK can’t reliably get infantry and other ground forces to Moscow. They CAN reliably send fighters and strat bombers. Infantry are better produced locally, and by buying strat bombers you’re weakening the very core of your Russian defense.

Marsh