Posts made by OutsideLime

About landing planes:

Air units have only their movement point allowance (Fighters 4, Bombers 6 ) to spend during the entire turn.  Planes do not have to land back in the exact territory (or Carrier) they came from.  When you move a plane into combat during the Combat Movement phase, you must remember (or use the included Flight Markers to indicate) how many points of its movement it used to get there.  Then, during the Noncombat Movement phase, any surviving planes must use the remainder or (or as much as they need of) their movement points to move to either a friendly Carrier (Fighters only - Bombers can never land on Carriers) or a friendly territory that your side has controlled since the beginning of your turn.Â

You must be able to prove that such a safe landing spot exists during the Combat Movement phase (or that such a spot will exist once you move any Aircraft Carriers into position during your Combat Movement or Noncombat Movement phases) in order for the plane to legally fight in the combat.

For example, if I fly a fighter 3 spaces to fight in an enemy territory, I have only 1 movement point left for that plane to get to a legal landing spot.

EDIT: I put Bombers movement as 8, fixed it to 6

~Josh

That would be a very powerful NA for Japan the way you play it, btw!  Just imagine the possibilities!  :evil:

~Josh

I think you misunderstand movement.  A transport doesn’t get a combat move, then a noncombat move.  It gets either or.  Once a transport has unloaded its units, that’s IT for the round.  No more movement.

Lightning assaults allow you to break that rule slightly, but they don’t allow you to make a second full combat move.  They allow your transport to unload in two locations while still under the normal constraints of their combat movement.

For example, a Japanese lightning-transport (JLT) with 2 units aboard could sail to the seazone between Japan and the mainland, then unload 1 unit into Japan and 1 onto the mainland.  Normal transports cannot do this.

OR, a JLT could sail one space south from Japan, drop a unit into Kwangtung, then, still during the same Combat Move, sail aother space further south and drop a unit into French Indo-China.  Again, a normal transport couldn’t do this.

~Josh

Yeah I know… it’s obviously not the best or most conservative strategy, but it sure is fun and it opens up a nice range of interesting new possibilities for Germany.  I’m not even serious about IL including it on his list, unless he reeeally wants to.  Russia can still be handled (I’ve managed it once or twice) but it will certainly be more difficult as you are down 3-5 land-units.

~Josh

I have yet to do the Art-heavy purchase with Russia, because I like the movement of armour.

I am always surprised when people say “buy 8 inf with Russia”.  It’s a losing strategy.  Your offensive pieces will be gone two rounds into the game, and your stacks of Infantry will do a great job of slowing down Germany slightly.

8 Inf = Off. Punch 8, Def Punch 16.

5 Inf, 1 Rtl, 1 Arm = Off. Punch 11, Def Punch 15, plus you get the movement versatility of the armour.

Multiply those numbers over three rounds and you have put  33 points of offense on the board compared to “all-inf’s” 24, with 45 points of defense compared to “all-inf’s” 48.  YES, you have put three fewer units on the board overall, but you have also been killing a lot more German units than you would be able to with Inf only.

I’ll take that trade-off.

~Josh

Lately, Russia.  I’m exploring different options to the Inf-max purchasing plan.  Russia is the key to Allied victory - if you lose it, you’re on a sinking ship.  I like the challenge of trying to do more than just “hold out till somebody saves me”.

~Josh

8. Build an Industrial Complex in Western Europe and shake up Atlantic UK/US pre-calculations.

You haven’t really lived until you’ve blockaded an Allied navy into the Baltic!  :evil:

~Josh

I agree.  Pearl2 is not an option, it’s a necessity.

The fine line for Japan is in judging exactly what forces to commit to that battle.  A lot of that decision comes down to what Russia and the UK did on R1, B1.  One of my primary motives as Allies in round 1 is to try and give Japan a lot of tough decisions to make in J1.  You can’t take very much Japanese territory before J1, but you can put them into position to lose alot if they don’t do something about your impending invasions quickly.

~Josh

I like to sometimes put a nice fat Industrial Complex down in Western Europe on G1, plus an Aircraft Carrier in the Baltic and a few ground units back home.

Gotta stock WEU with troops to defend the IC, but you should be doing that anyway.  Now you’ve got a way to pop up 6 defensive units there in no time, plus that single factory gives you naval placement options (4 seazones, including one in the Med) exceeded only by the UK (5 SZs) and matched only by Australia.  All of a sudden you can throw down all sorts of blockade ships to hamper Allied sea movement.  Or coordinate more-surprising naval expeditions that your opponent won’t see two coming from two rounds away.

Give 'er a try sometime, it really opens up the Atlantic for Germany.

~Josh

I’m only joking around.

That’s the problem with email/forums is that they don’t do the best job of transmitting tone.

If you’d like though, we can settle this very important issue with a duel.  I suggest Heavy Bombers at 10 paces.  :-D

~Josh

PS - If you show up at my house piloting a B-52 it will be my own damn fault I guess.

Ha ha

nice emphasis  :-)

BUT, that post was an incorrect reference to the original post about SZ63.Â

Baghdaddy brought it up first, as the subject of a new rant (focussed on the un-reality of it reaching Canada, not its general uselessness)

and later on (in the post you are quoting) Mork Far mistakenly thought that Baghdaddy was referring to its general uselessness.

So HA!  :-P

~Josh

He never said useless.  Sorry to nitpick, but he didn’t.

~Josh

You can only research one type of technology per round, though you can purchase as many die rolls as you can/want to try and get it.

page 9 of the rules, in bold:  You can choose only one development each turn

~Josh

He’s not saying it’s useless… he’s saying it doesn’t make sense for it to border on the north shore of Canada, which is realistically choked with ice and, even if an invading force could get to shore, extreeeemely difficult (like, crossing the sahara difficult) for land forces to travel down through the rocky snowy freezing expansive tundra to strike at civilized areas.  It’s over 500 miles to the nearest road.

~Josh

So then you agree luck is a deciding factor.

No, not at all.  I agree that luck is a factor, yes.  Not the deciding factor by a long-shot.  Advanced players at this game will beat inexperienced players (players familiar with all the rules and basic strategies) every time.  This is not because they are luckier or not, but because they are better at adapting strategies to the luck they get.

Don’t get me wrong - I too have found myself staring in horror at three out of three bombers exploding suddenly over the skies of Berlin before they had a chance to drop their payloads.  But I have also cheered when my single unescorted transport knocked down two fighters and lived to continue service.  Luck is a big part of the emotional heart of the game.  I wouldn’t ever play low-luck or no-luck, but that’s just me.

And you can’t ever say “given average results for the remainder of the game”.  There is no such thing.  Averages are an artificial construction used to help make predictions, that’s it.  Let’s say we are flipping four coins.  The average result of the series, if you were to run 1000 series (the accepted minimum standard for generating statistical averages) will be two heads, two tails.  That’s easy enough to calculate.  Now try it.  There is actually only a 37.5% chance that you will get two heads and two tails.  (6 permutations out of 16 possibilities.) You are almost twice as likely to get a result that defies the predicted average, than the predicted average itself.

And this is in a simple game with only four coins with two states each.  Now apply it to a complex game with hundreds or thousands of dice rolls, with six states each.  All of a sudden, the “average” result becomes an entirely impossible thing to actually achieve.  It is good as a guideline for determining general strategy, but we are not playing 1000 games and determining the average.  We are playing one game.  We have the entire range of possible outcomes to potentially occur.

There will always be variations in any game of any complexity that deviate from the projected average.  It is the task of the player to manage the non-luck-related aspects at his command in order to benefit more, or suffer less, from the impacts of that variety.

Adaptibility, flexibility, fluidity.  This stuff wins wars, my friend!

~Josh

I think it’s pretty close-minded and pessimistic to state that you’re going to lose the game because a battle or two at the start of the game goes sour.

Luck goes both ways.  If you give up because things don’t go perfectly your way in round 1, that’s going to be an awfully short game every time, especially if your opponent feels the same way.  One of you is likely to feel that their battles were less than optimum in round 1…

~Josh

When is the best/your favourite time to invoke Russian Winter?

Saving it for your last-ditch defense of Moscow is a common choice.

Invoking it on R1 definitely throws a different flavour into the game…

Something in between, perhaps?

If you can coordinate it so that it helps you substantially at the same time vs both Germany and Japan, you’ve maximized the impact of the NA.  Making the most of your NAs is key to victory in NA games.  I am in the middle of a FTF game where I called Russian Winter at a very ineffective juncture for Russia, so will probably lose Moscow and the game shortly… so it’s on my mind…

~Josh

Your whole game has all kinds of troubles if you aren’t working the TRN situation right.

~Josh

PS - Except for Russia.  Russia should be just fine.

Unit placement space?  What the?  We always thought that was a square ISLAND!

~Josh

PS - Excellent for strat-bombing those pesky IC’s in the Belgian Congo!  :-D

An AA Gun only fires once per combat - in the opening fire step of the first cycle only.  It has been this way (with different terminology sometimes but essentially unchanged) in Classic, Pacific, Europe, and Revised, both OOB and LHTR.  Never any different.

~Josh