Posts made by maverick_76

The number one tried and tested rule if you are Russia, or anyone for that matter: when in doubt, build infantry. Load up on men and make sure to save your expensive “heavy hitters” like armor and fighters, never leave them without “fodder” to soak up good dice rolls. I have yet to play AA50 but I know that any other game of AA I have ever played, when in doubt, mass your men!

In all actuality it was almost pure luck that Russia did survive the war. If Hitler had not split his massive Barbarossa force to attack South, Moscow would have surely fallen. I think the best way to make the game a little more fair is have it start in 1940 or 39 like the new AAE40 will do. Starting at the beginning of 41 like AAE does highlights the ineptitude that Stalin had by not strengthening his front lines and purging his army in the 30’s by killing I believe 70% of his officers. If we are given control in 1939 the German force would be smaller than the Soviets (had the largest army in the world: equaled all other armies tanks put together and had more planes than all others combined), but the Germans have a stronger economy. So the Russian player is given time to move his forces (albeit outclassed forces) into position for a massive offensive by Germany. We could right Stalin’s mistakes and Hitler’s as well (he attacked Yugoslavia right before Barbarossa, killing 6 precious weeks of good weather that would be needed for the Russian offensive). But at the current state the game is pretty accurate, if there is a determined German player and a non-cohesive allied force then Germany will win 90% of the time. But if the allies work together (UK helping out Russia while the US does its thing to invade Europe) then the game swings to a very balanced game where dice rolls and a little luck is what usually wins the day, or a little mistake by either side, which is how the game should be IMO.

Those are some good supplemental advantages there. i have to admit that has me thinking about employing some of those in my next game and thinking up some for AAP as well.

I would say classic is the one to break people in with, then move on to Europe and then Pacific. The rules have gotten more complex since classic which was pretty simple and had few “and/if” rules like Europe and Pacific have. I know personally that after playing AAE and AAP it is hard to go back to classic because it is so simple, so you might just try and have them watch you play or they play a game with you but you help them out the first game or two, like tell them when to do a SBR or why it is important to build infantry only for Russia, simple strategy like that. I have learned to keep noobs interested you can’t own them their first game, or they will just quit and never want to play again.

The apes in accounting don’t think that advertising will offset the costs incurred, thus allowing less money at the end of the day for bananas.

Option 3 sounds the best, but I think the incomes should be kept seperate like they are in AAPacific.

I say they increase rolls of infantry and artillery by one, and cost 6. But to make the number of blockhouses needed accurate, they can only boost two units (any combination of infantry and artillery) and can be destroyed. Now, should the units they are boosting die along with the blockhouse or should they survive it’s destruction? I’m thinking survive it.

Those are just rough estimates, a good game I have 8, worst case there is one per turn, but one thing I love to do is send my bombers over to Russia for counterattack potential. What I try to do is take away any possibility and force Germany to focus on Russia, with the combined income of UK and Russia against Germany it is a fair fight. Then with US sending transports full of troops to either Africa or mainland Europe the Germans usually don’t have many options. I mean if some battles don’t go your way, yeah the Germans can still be successful with the tank push but with this I find I turn a 90% assured German victory in that game into 70% allied favored victory chance. There might be some better strategies but this seems to be pretty accurate historically and works pretty well for the most part.

Sounds good to me but I think that blockhouses should only be able to boost one inf. and one artillery, or any combination of the two. I think that better simulates real life, in reality not every troop will be holed up in a blockhouse. That is just my thinking though, loved the airborne idea, sounds very good.

Also, if Japan does a good job and is able to capture the ANZAC for instance, it would then have plenty of money to apply to a bomb program against the US. I feel that it should only be used as it was in real life, to put an end to an pretty much won war with less loss of life (for the winning team) and hassle. Yeah I admit the VP thing does cramp the time table, but AAP40 should have no problem.

I usually do boardgames.com but I’ll wait and ask for the pacific one for Christmas I think. If it comes out before that then I will order it immediately, not making the same mistake as I did with AA50. I think as long as these are less than $75 a piece that is a fair price to pay.

@murraymoto:

@maverick_76:

What I have found is the game is not broken at all. If you lend UK fighters to Russia (they can send two every turn!) it becomes very hard for the Germans to bust through.

the only problem with the UK sending 2 fighters per turn is if they can’t afford them due to the loss of Africa and their convoys.  If all that the US/UK are doing is planes, they aren’t buying ships to clean out the convoys.  Germany doesn’t need the Middle East or Africa for a Tank Push in general, but purely fighter builds will often give Germany easy access to those areas.  Moving Fighters to the Middle East then weakens Russia’s defense.

But that is what the US is for! In my games I usually consolidate my navy around UK or in the middle of the Atlantic and just overwhelm the Axis with battleships or cruisers. And usually the US has plenty of money still to buy transports to move men over to Africa and make that a lost cause for Germany. Also if the German player farts around too much with Africa and the Atlantic I’m going to go offensive with Russia. Granted for about four turns that is not possible but after that I have 8 planes, bombers (from US and UK at the start) and tanks and plenty of men.

The reason that I would have it that expensive is to really replicate how much manpower and money went into actually making it all happen. It is a luxury that only should be available to a country that really would have the money and time to actually pull it off. I think a three turn process to get it and of course to start it off you would need to winning dice roll. I think you could have it this way so the game wouldn’t become an A-bomb-a-thon, more like a faster way to finish a game off, to capture a heavily fortified capital for instance. Again I say this purely for historical purposes.

Well I’m glad that I got that covered. I was going to try and get a refund or replacement but I just forgot but since it seems all the games were shorted in some way then I guess I’ll just bear it.

Are you kidding me! Five feet by 32 inches! I’m going to need a bigger table to play on now, Jesus….oh and my two cents from the wording of the preview, China will have many more units, but I understood that as infantry. ANZAC will of course fight Japan but I do admit the wording was a little off, they should have said and ANZAC supported by England.

Yeah I have had this game for like two years now but when I first got it and set it up I was short like 3-4 pieces so on the reinforcement card I had to remember that some of the empty spots were actually occupied. Any one else get their copy with a short stack per se?

I think that with the A-bomb you have to have a process that is time consuming and expensive, just as the real thing was. I think like three stages of breakthroughs, not to mention you would need tech like rockets or heavy bombers to deliver the payload. As far as cost is concerned I think it needs to be from 25-50 IPCs, it has to be the most expensive thing in the game. And as far as implementing a strike, I think you just roll a die and whatever it lands on is how many units get destroyed. Then I think that you would need some sort of a moral system to stop people from just buying one every turn and unleashing it, maybe have lingering radiation poisoning effects that if you go through that territory kinda like AA guns you roll a die for every unit and if it is a 1 then that unit gets destroyed from radiation poisoning or something.

My first games were also guilty of butchering the rules. Instead of reading the rules carefully, I saw that the battle-board told you the values at which the pieces rolled for hits. What I missed was they were attack values, not defense values! So basically when we played our first games attacking infantry were killed only if you rolled a 1 (defending infantry were if you rolled 2 or less, lol!!). Lets say that after a week I was thinking this game was crap because subs could own battleships and infantry attacking could bitch-slap tanks, planes, anything actually. I then actually read the rules the whole way through and you would have thought that I had just won the lottery, it all made sense after that.

Bold plan there, but as someone else said that was very lucky. If the AA scored a hit I think you would have lost. Good job though and I’m pretty sure that those guys were pissed, lol.

What I have found is the game is not broken at all. If you lend UK fighters to Russia (they can send two every turn!) it becomes very hard for the Germans to bust through. Also not consolidating your forces into one large heap is the best too. I found a two-headed approach with either builds in Stalingrad or Leningrad depending on where the German player is focusing, and if things get hairy to start building in Moscow exclusively. But I have rarely had that happen because of all the planes that USA and UK can send. Also if the US sends over a load of guys to Africa to start off the game that usually discourages the Germans to even think about the oil fields in the Middle East. I found that once you do that you naturally have set up the Italy invasion along with the Normandy invasion as well. As long as you hold the Germans to under 45 IPCs they will not win, think about it……24 for Russia and 24 from UK (the two planes you “lend” to Russia) every turn equals 48! That extra three IPCs every turn starts to add up once turn 6-8 comes around, and if Germany isn’t attacking by turn 2 I can 95% of the time guarantee that they will lose. And that is not even counting the 35-40 IPCs every turn from the US.

I always read on here on the TP about holding until turn 4 and then unloading, yeah if the UK doesn’t ship planes over that will happen but if they do then the Germans will only able to match from then on out because by then the US is in Africa milking 3 IPCs from Germany every turn.