Posts made by mateooo

ild hold off on saying navies are irrelvant as well.  Every side but Russia has been given more boats to play with, and if used well, many interesting things can be done with them. Also the 2 hit Battleships really give you a feel of having and protecting your capital ships

while it is disappointing to me that india becomes such an easily conqured territory, unlike in the first, that doesnt mean that it doesnt become an important territory that often exchanges hands.

revised offers many more strategies than 3rd edition, and makes the Russia/Germ, the Atlantic, and the pacific theatres much more interesting

personally, ill never go back to 3rd edition

i personally love the idea of luck.  this makes Axis and Allies great, because it changes every single game.  If you are Axis, and you manage to take out the british BB by gibralter and get to keep your sub, wow, suddently you have more options.  If Japan gets really unlucky in pearl harbor, it gives the US more incentive to hang out in the pacifc. 1/12th of the time the jap transport by KWA kills the british destroyer and lives, suddenly expanding japans options. While every game, disregarding bids, starts the same, by the first roll of the game each game becomes unique.  Each lucky or unlucky battle changes your opponents’ response, and your counter response.  Without luck, we would have chess, where strategies have been mapped out and analysed to the 20th move.  luck evens out in the long term, but it also guarantees that each move will have a different outcome each time.

Luck is also great because it salvages pride. "Man, I only lost because of that one horrible roll I made when I invaded x and you rolled 9 1s. 
mateooo

lets try not to be too harsh to eachother. In the past I have been guilty of the “the only possible opening is x, otherwise y happens and you die” mentality.
This lasted until I played someone outside of my normal gaming group, and they infused new ideas and possibilities which shattered our “inside the box” thinking.  Im sure this has happened to other people before.

Similarly, I see how everyone plays AA classic with 20+ bids, while I have never played AA classic with bids, and was able to win both sides, seeing it as an even game.  Of course, I have always played with the “Russia can’t attack first turn” and often the “Jap gets super subs, Germany gets Air power” special rules, and so it never occurred to my gaming group to ever use a bid system.

Its important to remember that rules and strategy you might take for granted, other people are not even aware of.

for example prior to playing here, my gaming group did not play with reinforcing newly conquered territories on the same turn, in classic we always player that units killed by BB bombards did not get a retaliation (just seemed to make more sense), in classic we allowed airforce to retreat separately from amphib assaults (also makes more sense), in classic we let newly placed planes be placed on AC… etc. We also used the sub submerge rule when they had nowhere to retreat to.

we made changes to the game that made sense , even though they werent in the rule book (we also completely ignored any reference to “economic victory”.
Were we wrong to? well, we made the game more fun for us,  and a lot of those changes were eventually made rules in the revised game.

mateooo

I really like the idea of the national advantages.  While a lot of them are unfair (kaitan subs? great, just when you though subs REALLY sucked, now they automatically die), they do completely change the dynamic of the game, requiring strategy adjustments and getting away from the "I am playing a tournament game against player X so I have to open with Russia buys X INF and then GER has to buy X INF 1 AC…

I have a lot of fun playing with my friends with the NA, when we just say, “you got faster carriers? you get to reroll, but then when i get kamikaze planes, I get to reroll”

Playing as Germany with Uboat interdiction or wolfpack and you might actually buy a sub.

Changes i would make would be

1. Kaitan subs, attack at 2 still, but get to choose their naval target
2. same with kamikaze planes
3. fast carriers? make that fast carriers and battleships
4. Jap inf defending on Islands at 3? make that 3 and immune to bombard
5. lighting attack for jap? can make up to two separate drops in one turn, one inf here, one arm there…
6. german wolfpacks? make that 2 subs attack at 3… when was the last time you saw three german subs together?
7. jesus, someone needs the Abomb! US gets 1 time attack, bomb kills d6 units in one territory, or perhaps 3d6 IPC SBR… whichever
8. someone needs to fix what happens when a capital falls… perhaps the conquored nation still gets to collect income for its remaining territories, but cant purchase until they get their capital back.  This stops the lame "i cant get money from conquored allied territory until my enemy takes it, and then i take it back.  It also prevents possible abuse by purposely losing territory so that allies can grab all your territories.  I also dont like the idea of one nation taking out a nation, getting all their money, and then the next nation takes that first country out, collecting everyones money… doesnt make sense.  perhaps if a nation takes out one nation, then they are still able to purchase and collect money if they are subsequently taken out (basically, all you need is ANY capital to keep going on).

No one should ever have ANY reason to try to stall before taking out a capital… it just doesnt make sense. Of course, the Soviets camped outside of Warsaw during the warsaw uprising and watched the Germans crush the polish resistance movement when they could have intervened… but that’s completely different! And the US did the same and let the Soviets take out Berlin in order to avoid US casualties… hmm… maybe i need to rethink this.

of course, sending transports with your battleships and aircraft carriers in order to take hits also doesnt make sense in a real world sense… but we all do it anyways. I dont seem to remember battleships hiding behind transports…

oooh, quite the rant… gonna have to catch my breath
mateooo

i question whether there has ever been such a clear cut war of "not evil " versus “more evil.” (dont want to condemn all Germans, Italians, and Japanese, i am directing this comment toward the leaders… and in exchange, I dont want to be blamed for George Bush’s actions. Also hard to lump Stalin into the good.

Though the war of 1812 is close, when we got a chance to invade those ne’er do well Canadians.
mateooo

yeah, well, its been a long time since the US has been fought a war to be proud of, so we all like to focus on WWII.
Vietnam? Iraq? sorry, sir, dont know what your talkin about.

mateooo

yeah, makes me wonder why people still play 2nd edition. Having played both, I see nothing about the first that I like more than the revised.  and subs equally suck in both.

Mateooo

i signed up for DAAK and am looking for opponents, but everyone who has challenged me wants to play 2nd
after playing revised, i cant imagine wanting to go back, everything is better
whats your opinion?
mateo

wasnt the French fleet sunk by the Brits?
dont remember the name of the battle, but it really pissed off the french
mateo

lets say you attack a fleet with your two FTRs and an AC.

those FTRs have only one place to land, that AC.

lets say you attack 8 transports, and you score one hit and the transports score one hit

are you able to put the hit on the AC? thus suiciding the FTRS who, if you win the battle, will crash as they have no where to land.  Or do you have to save the AC for last, as you are not allowed to send FTRS into combat who are unable to land?

mateooo

james makes a good point.  The more confident and possibly “better” players might feel that they can win with a smaller bid, lets say 6, while the less confident, and possibly less skilled players would be more likely to bid higher, maybe 8 or 9 and thus be outbid every time.  The better player ends up playing the axis every time, and thus the appearance of axis advantage at 6 bid.    The best way to decide this would be to have a tournament with a standard 6 bid, and alternating sides.

mateooo

you make a good point
mateo

how bout one sub in the Atlantic, and all the other subs hiding out in the baltic

werent the uboats the terror of the atlantic? and yet they have to hide out with the destroer and transports

one time for fun, with the original AA, we played where if a plane attacked a sub without any attacking boats, the plane had a -2 to hit (bomb hit with 2, figther with a 1.  It was actually very fun, and made subs useful to be sent out on their own to try to pick off lone ships.

gave them a littlot of longevity against planes, which I think is a major flaw in the game (how easy it is for planes to kill subs).  In real life, fighters didnt go by themselves to hunt subs, they required coordination with destroyers who would scout them out.

just my two cents.

mateo

@balungaloaf:

how does that transport get killed.  do you guys have a different turn cycle.  that never happens with me and my buddies because the person who built A&A thought the first turn cycle for the countries was bull.  He stated that for more realism you should have america go first, then germany, USSR, Japan, Britain.  You can move that transport.

I usually play in the standard turn order, where Uk is before Jap
mateooo

an important thing to realize is that the game creators are not omniscient.  While perhaps a dozen playtesters perform playtesting for probably months or even a year before selling a game, there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of players perusing the rules trying to use them and the board placement in order to gain an advantage. To think that we should stick blindly to the rulebook in the face of a situation that doesnt really make sense or one that is blatently unfair is kinda silly.  Its like that annoying dude who plays D and D and is constantly pulling out lame and obscure rules in order to do something that just doesnt make sense and makes him overpowered.Â

For example, isnt there a way that Germany can spend all his or her money on weapon research to get long range aircraft, and then have a 90% chance or whatever to conquor England on the first turn.  To respond to this, wise gamers made the stipulation that research techs only work at the end of the turn, or that players could not invade capitals on the first turn, or they simply stopped using research techs. The designers did not make these rules, the players did.

If the BB situation was stretched out to its extreme, 100 british battleships would still be unable to bombard because of the production of one sub a turn, and that just doesnt make sense. Battleships are already too rarely purchased, and any arbitrary rule that discourages the use of combined arms and a wide variety of units should be scrutinized carefully.
There are already too many units that are not often used in competitive games.

honestly, do we really need another reason to no buy battleships.

Not to say that it wasnt a VERY CLEVER idea, its just one that needs to be looked at and a fair ruling needs to be made.

As intelligent gamers with free will, we should not be constrained by nonsensical situations that occur because the game designers did not foresee every one of the million possible scenarios that can occur with AA.

mateo

I have to say Im a huge fan of AA, I grew up playing the original, and see the revised edition as a huge improvement.

just wondering what other people dont like about it, because one thing really bugs me.

that is the unprotected japanese transport in z59

it is the only transport in the game positioned in such a way that it gets killed with every opening strategy.  There is a single UK transport that could theoretically be attacked by a single german sub, but it is usually left alone,  but all the other transports at least get the opportunity to do something before they get killed

it serves no purpose other than to encourage absurd moves like sending a AC and DD into the middle of the Japanese empire to be a distraction.

i think that if the transport was either moved ot protected with one of the other ships, it would completely change the dynamic of the Asian theatre and encourage the UK to maintain their India ocean fleet.

and it would give japan more mobility and perhaps even out the sides enough where a 6 bid is no longer necessary to make the game more balances

what are your thoughts? or any other gripes?

mateooo

personally, it seems like a clever, but ultimately cheesy exploit. 
mateooo

also, one more question

Lets say I have a situation where i have fighters on a AC
i want those 2 fighters to be involved in a naval combat 3 zones away, and there is no land they can land on

now lets say that AC is in a fleet, and can move closer to the naval battle so the fighters can land on it, but there is an enemy fleet in that sea zone. This enemy fleet should be easily defeated, but here is the question

can those 2 fighters go to the naval battle knowing that, if in the rare situation that the AC fleet loses its own naval battle they wont be able to land anywhere?
possible solutions
the fighters can not fight, knowing that they dont have a definite place to land
the fighters can, but crash if the AC doesnt get close enough for a landing

mateooo

gotcha
just to confirm, is this the ruling on tournament play?

actually, on a different post in the GAMES section, i got a reply to the same question from Nix saying you can NOT reinforce newly conquered territories with AA or any other units.

is there someone here who has an “official” response to this question? Not to say i dont beleive you, but i have had conflicting responses

when I looked at the AA website, it said you can move units “through” newly conquered territories (which i originally though was not correct) but mentions nothing about reinforcing. also, if you are allowed to reinforce, does that mean you can also reinforce with AA?

Also, when I was reading the official AA FAQ, it said you could not place newly built fighters onto previously built AC in the adjacent sea zones, but you could place newly built fighters on newly built AC, and you could place old fighters on newly built AC.

Basically, that ruling seems dumb… if you can put old fighters on new AC, why not new fighters on old AC
seems convoluted

what are your thoughts?
mateooo

ok, next questions

can you move an AA gun into a terrirory you just conquered?
in fact, can you ever move anything into a territory you just conquored?

I just read through the rule book, couldnt get a clear answer, but its always been my understanding that you can not move additional troops into a territory you just conquored… i may be wrong

also, can a tank move one space, get picked up by a transport, and then get dropped off in the same turn?

mateooo