Posts made by SgtBlitz

Ok, yeah, went off the handle a bit there, but I hadn’t seen much new stuff about the TripleA shutdown, and its still the same ol’ status quo there.  What pisses me off the most is that TripleA IS essentially the PBF game, just in a much more simplified and streamlined program (also no dice roll typing errors), and that an easy-to-use/learn interface is what will get new players into the game and keep old players interested rather than scare them away.  Which also means that MOST TRIPLEA PLAYERS HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT OR WILL POSSIBLY BUY A BOARD COPY OF THE GAME IF THEY ENJOY PLAYING TRIPLEA ONLINE.  Which new players most certainly won’t if they don’t know the rules, have never played it before (TripleA is kinda a trial version of A&A for free), AND are presented with a $40 price tag at the game store with no incentives other than “Hey this game looks cool I’ve never heard of A&A before guess Wizards doesn’t advertise it…”

$40 price tag at the gameshop and seeing 40 other variants out there for almost the EXACT SAME DAMN THING is going to make A&A lose a lot of potential new players… Maybe this is Wizard’s plan to make A&A like Magic the Gathering… have a new box set out every 3 months that trumps all the other sets, except that buying a new “booster pack” is gonna cost you $40-50 a throw instead of $3.99.  HEREIN LIES WIZARDS OF THE COAST’S INSIDIOUS PLAN… :-o

@runyan99:

Looks like China might finally be big enough to prevent a Japanese invasion into Moscow….

You’ll need to buy the AA50 Europe Version for that, son.  For only another $50!  Plus the AA50 Europe/Pacific Global Theater Expansion, which combines the two giant board sets into one asstarded monstrosity that you’ll be lucky to fit into your living room, much less store it in your garage.  Wait for the AA50 variant, “Mother****ing everything but Kitchen Sink Galactic Milky Way Universal” Edition coming out in the next 3 years!  You can be the first person on your block to possess a board game that requires its own zip code and a forklift to operate!

@Imperious:

I’d be curious to read their financial statements and see if Avalon Hill even makes a profit, and I’d also be curious to talk to their marketing directors.

Financial statements? I think the idiots write it on the back of all the bags of Taco Bell drive thru while they fart in their cars on the way back from a 3 hour lunch break. That is if they are not too bothered to stop reading the latest D$D fictional novel about some idiot wizard or memorizing what saving throw to make for a spell they might be conjuring. They must be a team of total misfits and malcontents and government chain gang furlough types based on the asinine methods they run the business.  I would have them all fired on the spot and no severance pay.

Heh, another non-satisfied customer statement non-withstanding, I’d say we agree on this issue!  WoTC IZ TARTED!  FO REELZ!  BOYCOTT HASBRO AND WoTC FOR THEIR ASININE BUSINESS PRACTICES!!!  (Though I very much doubt they’d even care listening since it seems their main objective is to bankrupt the A&A franchise anyway).

Also, I think that defending infantry get TWICE the firepower regular attacking infantry do already.  Yeah, I know artillery balances it out, but it still isn’t as cost effective, at least defensively.

Also, NO BLOCKHOUSES.

NO, Blockhouses (forts) would be a terrible idea.  One of the reasons the blitzkreig did so well against the KW/Maginot Line was that the French and the Belgian forces relied heavily on border forts, which were made only to defend from one direction, which were in turn easily seized by paratroopers attacking from the rear (look up Fort Eban Emael).  I’d say the Germans gained more from the Allies’ dependence/resources/time spent on building the forts than the Allies did defending them.  At least during WWII.

Just let there be regular dices.  (Or maybe have the French tanks attack at a 1, if we want to be accurate, in terms of mobility and range on a tank of gas.)

LOL.  ANOTHER A+A variant(s)!  In under 6 months from the last one!!!  WHEEE!!!  SHELL OUT EVEN MORE $$$CASH$$$ FOR ANOTHER BOARD GAME(S)!!!  (HEY KIDS!!!  You’ve got nothing better to do!  C’mon, buy nineteen copies!  We’re even making a new Pacific game which is essentially the old AA Pacific map with its old Revised ruleset now replaced with the new AA50 ruleset!  BUY IT NOW!!!)

While if one tries to independently make a computerized form where you EMULATE all the different board games, IT’S THE END OF TEH WORLD!!!  CEASE AND DESIST ORDERS EVERYWHERE!!!  Even if 50 people in the entire world use it at any given time, from all over the world, and it’s the only way they can play it with real lives and busy schedules!  Wait, I’m not talking about PBF games on the Axisandallies.org website, I’m talking about the freeware TripleA…

Actually, the fact the Hasbro DID sell out ALL its AA50 copies makes me wonder why they NEEDED to go after TripleA.  It’s not like they were losing any business since ALL the copies printed sold out.  Sounds like inefficient business practices to me.  Yet somehow they are shutting down ANY form of electronic competition while churning out MORE and MORE schlock box editions with slightly tweaked AA50 rulesets.  You’d think making/sponsoring an electronic form of A&A with its greater ease and flexibility would be in their best interests, but no…  Boxed sets it is!  Who cares if it’s 2009?  And the fan bois out there will eat this up, you know they will.  WHY NOT JUST RUN A REPRINT OF THE ENTIRE REVISED SERIES OVER THE NEXT TWO WEEKS FOR $40 A POP???  NEW AA50 MANUALS $10 EXTRA.  EACH.

Great way to run a business.  RUNNING IT INTO THE GROUND.  See ya for Axis and Allies: October 1935 - The Second Italo-Abyssinian War!  I won’t be there.

Hey, Deathtwinkie (apologies to gamerman01), welcome to the A&A forums, where veteran players will gleefully tear your strategies apart but hopefully offer good advice in exchange.  Lots of good advice out there about Allied bombing strats.  Personally I disagree with the consensus that SBRs aren’t so bad, as the cost of bombers is lowered in AA50 and the HB tech is inevitable by end game since tech is so cheap now.  Britain and the US also start with a hefty supply of ready bombers and extra IPCs to build them, where the Axis does not.  Allies have it especially good as Britain is an excellent bomber base and can hit any German or Italian fleet SZ as well as Germany and Italy.

You did have a bit of advantage at the start of the game though, many players DREAM of getting HBs round one in a tech game, so you’re at fault there for not exploiting it.  1 bomber a round if you can afford it as germany gives you a lot of flexibility.  Main thing you need to learn is how to cope with other strategies and revising your play, it sounds like you got stuck in tunnel-vision mode in Russia and just couldn’t find a way around the Allied bombing campaign.  Captain Crunch gave some great advice there.  If nothing else, learn to exploit the enemy’s strategy and not just grimly fight against the damage; that’s what the enemy wants.

A and A is one of those games that sucks you in and doesn’t let go, and the dice aspect of it is really harmful in that you can have the best strategies in the world and still LOSE, so don’t feel bad about it happening.  The trick is to playing the game so that losing any particular battle doesn’t lose you the entire game, so you must keep your strategies OPEN.  Don’t continue on the same path that’s losing if you can help it; try getting to the objectives some other way.  Axis must really push hard early in AA50 41 games to get a favorable Axis/Allied IPC balance, but it’s still a lot easier than the 42 scenario, or hell, even Revised.

If you enjoy quick games I suggest giving TripleA a try, its pretty good freeware, and you can find plenty of players to cut your teeth on.

You forget about the Royal Navy and the fact that Germany had no navy up to the task of protecting an invasion fleet. A large part of the German Navy was lost or damaged in taking Norway

Germany had bombers and definitely paratroopers which could have filled some of the holes missing from a naval invasion, especially if they were only facing civilians and a just broken army recovering from Dunkirk which had lost most of its equipment.  They would have needed an invasion fleet eventually to finish the job, but more importantly Germany missed out on quite a few opportunities to expand its navy for free.  Germany really screwed up finishing France off; they virtually lost the entire French fleet at port in Algeria, a British raid destroyed it at port (Mers-el-Kebir) before the Axis could get anything out of it during the surrender negotiations.  The remainder of the French fleet at Toulon wasn’t touchable until 1942 when Germany invaded Vichy France, and then it got scuttled.  Spain was also a blunder in that Germany and Italy couldn’t get Franco to invade Gibraltar, if he had been persuaded to do so, Italy might have been able to get its fleet out of the Med.  The Italian fleet was so bogged down fighting the Brits in the Med it couldn’t be available to help conduct Sealion; if things had been coordinated correctly, BOTH the Italian and the majority of the French fleets could have been used IN ADDITION with whatever the Germans had left to invade Britain.

Definitely.  Also if Germany had decided to ONLY go against the Soviet Union at the very beginning, I’m sure most of the Western Powers would have been just fine to let them go right at it!  The USSR wasn’t very well received amongst the rest of the world in 1939; in fact, it took WWII to raise Russia to a world superpower from the outcast backwater it was in the 1930’s.

Moot question.  Japan DID attack the USSR TWICE in minor border flare-ups in Korea (1938) and Manchuria (1939) already before Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa was launched.  Japs got their asses handed to them by coordinated tank and infantry assaults and lack of communication between air and land forces.  After losing both times, mostly due to lack of armor on the Japanese side, they decided to pick a fight with someone they could whup up on in the ocean, the U.S. in the Pacific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Halhin_Gol

(This is also the battle where Zhukov earned his stars and let him to become one of the top soviet generals against the Germans in '41)

If the Japs actually DID attack the Soviet Union in 1941 in measurable numbers, not sure how well they would have fared since air/naval battles were their specialty and they STILL had huge deficits in armor, compared to the Soviets.  The Reds had the best tanks in the world for the first couple years of the war, and their production capacity would have overwhelmed any newcoming designs (German Tiger/Panther production was pathetic throughout the war, the only serious contenders to the Soviet T-34s and KVs, which were unmatched in their time).  Chances are the Japs would have bogged down somewhere in Mongolia or Vladivostok and had another stalemate with superior Soviet forces holding the line, which I bet even with overwhelming Jap numbers and German attacks in the West would have held the line.

Meh, I just don’t like the thought of sending bombers and fighters to their certain doom attacking UK/US fleets.  It is certainly more viable in AA50 than in revised when all you needed were transport stacks to defend fleets, but it still hurts when you lose all your starting air force.  Much rather build a few subs or land the fighters on japanese or italian carriers and let the allies knock those fleets out, sub fodder hits for the win.

Just thinking about this, considering the new rules to SBRs, where they end up limiting production to the ICs they hit, it seems Axis MUST increase its production capacity or end up building sub-optimal (i.e., not infantry) units from their starting factories.  (For Japan this issue is a non-starter, since they usually build in India or East Indies anyway, question is WHEN).  Germany can earn up to 53 ipcs with NOs from a good G1 start and there’s simply NO WAY they can turn all of those IPCs into units with the limited 10 production base from the capital.  If you don’t turn that extra money into another factory its just going to be gobbled up in SBR damage on germany; whereas an IC in France or Poland can spread the damage around a bit, especially when you’re not required to repair the factories which was a necessary part of Revised.

Most of the games where I’ve seen Germany/Axis win they either went all tanks with the 50+ipc income and Britain and the US didn’t do a damn thing to stop them in Europe (seriously, that game went to Round 4 with Germany building all tanks every round, sending everything east, and NO European invasion by bad US/Britain play), OR they built a factory in France or Poland that allowed them to turtle with inf to victory by Round 6-7 with Japan taking Russia.  Some people would argue that building another IC helps the Allies by giving them potentially a lot more IPCs to destroy through SBRs, but I haven’t seen a victorious entire-game-SBR-campaign yet.  Only time SBR really helps is when you’re trying to finish an opponent off, (OR YOU HAVE ROLLED HBs) and they have no other options except to repair the capital factories.

Also you guys are forgetting that STALIN was Hitler’s opponent.  Stalin was as slavishly enamored to Hitler as Hitler was to Mussolini.  Stalin approved a purge of the Soviet military in 1937 that got rid of like 90% of his capable generals; he was so paranoid of his own people he destroyed most of his military power before the war even began.  Tales of Soviet idiocy from their ill-fated invasion of Finland in 1938 tell volumes.  Stalin also believed and trusted Hitler; he completely ignored German troop-build up warnings by his general staff and continued sending supplies by train to Germany across the 1939 polish border the very DAY Hitler invaded Russia.  Stalin also had a complete mental breakdown after Barbarossa was started and wasn’t even available to lead for the first two weeks following the invasion.

Heheh, if somehow an assassin’s bomb/bullets had taken out Hitler and his top generals early on in the war, Germany could EASILY of beaten the Soviet Union.  Most of the problem with beating the Soviets was Hitler’s insistence on running EVERYTHING, coupled to many terrible strategic decisions and blunders he made (trying to hold EVERY inch of ground gained in a country 1/4 the size of the planet).  The head of the SS Himmler was no help either, his SS divisions were the main reason why partisans sprang up everywhere after the Germans rolled through; initially many Russians welcomed the Germans as liberators.

Hell, though, I HAVE lost a game to Allied players where I pulled off a successful Sealion as Germany round 2…  So I guess America probably could liberate Britain and turn it around…

Yeah, Battle of Britain pre-dates all of those other options.  IF Germany had won the air war, Britain would have been a sitting duck as most of its military equipment was left at Dunkirk retreating from France; there was talk in England of arming local citizens with hunting rifles in event of an invasion.  If Britain had been knocked out of the war early on there would have been no El Almein, D-Day, hell most of that stuff wouldn’t have happened/been necessary.  Not sure if USA would have had the political will/means necessary to liberate Britain by the end of 1940/beginning of 1941 either.

Hehe, you people never seem to realize entirely that Hitler, while a political genius and mastermind, totally let power corrupt him once he had it.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Hitler was definitely the man in charge in 1941, failures in taking Moscow non-withstanding.  It was inevitable that he would of declared war on the United States in 1941; for him jumping the gun early was always better than later.  In his mind everyone really was after Germany.  “Rationality” was not a word in his vocabulary, “Teppichfresser” (carpet chewer) was endearing nickname the press gave him once he became Fuerher.

Britain and the “West” were totally cool with Hitler mucking up the territorial boundaries of Europe as long as he provided a buffer state against World Communism; the Munich Agreement cooked up by Chamberlain ceding the Sudetenland to Germany was hailed as “Peace in Our Time.”  The Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in 1939 let him wage complete war with absolute safety against the West in 1940.  Which he then used to launch a surprise invasion of Russia in June 1941.  Somehow he believed he could switch alliances on or off again with complete abandon; even his generals believed this to some extent, Goering was trying to work out a peace deal with the Western allies in the end days of WWII.  So to him declaring war was no big deal, he would of forged some new treaty/ceasefire somewhere along the way to patch things up, with his deluded thinking.  His forces were stuck in Russia too by this point, and knowing he was in for the long haul, he probably expected some help from the Japanese if he joined in their war.  (Of course which the Japanese had no interest in, and had just signed a non-aggression treaty with Russia earlier that year…)

Man, looks like this thread is pretty much dead.  At least the TripleA lobby is still up and running.  aabigdog44 could you put that info about the electronic rights to axis and allies belonging to Atari on the TripleA development site?  I’ll link your post on the forums to it.

Testing

Rolls: 5@2 3@3; Total Hits: 45@2: (6, 1, 1, 3, 3)3@3: (2, 5, 2)

What is the best way to go about playing Axis and Allies on these forums now that TripleA has been shut down?  My first opponent is SouL, his member link does not have an email address; so I’ve sent a private message.  Can anyone help me with this?