Best posts made by simon33

@crockett36 said in We need an allied playbook.:

I’ve always found it restricting for air units traversing back and forth between India and Egypt. It’s also 2 more bucks in the British pockets per turn.

It’s only 2 more bucks if you also activate Persia. Are you sending both the SZ98 & SZ39 TTs to SZ80? And air from India - that has to land in Trans-Jordan. I think there are better things to do with India’s planes, and I’m nearly certain there are better things to do with the SZ98 Cruiser.

It’s also not much of a restriction for air. Air can attack UK2 with ground troops and then there’s no more restriction.

Good call. Was really, really, hoping to kill that fighter.

@aequitas-et-veritas You can always edit PUs before every purchase. Or use combat move 1st.

The SZ98 cruiser normally either does Taranto or participates in a SZ92 stack. The SZ39 one has more latitude.

Thoughts? ok.

This game bucks some of the conventional wisdom. Normally, with a J3 DOW you don’t expect Japan to get out of control but they did. Obviously my focus on the Atlantic with USA was a large factor here. Also, with a ftr bid in Scotland, I expected only SZ110 to be attacked but you attacked both fleets pretty successfully. The other unexpected outcome was I did a SZ92 stack but still lost Egypt early. I suppose there were some other options here. The most obvious option would be Taranto. One option I didn’t really think about was keeping the CV in SZ98 but using the DD and one of the Cruisers to block. In this way you might be able to do a SZ92 stack UK2, although you do need to keep Gibraltar. Losing Gibraltar is a real problem so you may need to use the UK SZ109 TT to land troops to defend it which means its vulnerable to the Italian sub attacking it; then you may want to use the DD to defend it which means it can’t attack the sub in SZ106. It’s quite a weak option to move the CV through the Suez IMO. Having it join a fleet in SZ39 is an option but I don’t know how strong it is. I also wonder if it would be a good idea to stack up Sudan. That way you can’t corner Egypt with the Tobruk and Ethiopia forces.

I’m not really sure but I’m inclined to think that Taranto is a better option than most of these, even though I don’t like the idea much. At least only one Italian transport should survive. Just has a pretty high chance of a pretty nearly game ending failure.

I really disliked leaving Syria to go Vichy but I calculated that I couldn’t spare the mech in Egypt without leaving a blocker in Alexandria, which I also didn’t want to do. Not continuing the battle in Iraq proved to be a mistake but I was really keen on the idea of Iraq going ANZAC, I just don’t really know why because I saw that you were positioning for a possible early ANZAC crush so building an IC there would not have been a good idea.

So same sides and bid for the next game? If so, same placement.

Some thoughts after trying a J1.

The main one is that China is very much stronger. I would go back to placing a Kiangsu IC J1, and a 2 TT buy. Malaya is not a good location for an IC because you can’t reliably hold it.

Other thoughts are that hold the Carolines are probably even more important with more NOs in that part of the Pacific.

In general though, I think the move is very strong.

@Argothair said in We need an allied playbook.:

What I’m interested in is whether it makes sense to try to capture Yunnan at all on J1 during a J1 DoW. I go back and forth on that question. I like attacking with 3 land units and 2 planes and then retreating when you are down to 1 infantry or so – you might get lucky and capture the territory, and on average you will kill more infantry than you lose. Together with a small attack on Hunan, you can bleed the Chinese pretty dry on J1 and keep Kwangsi safe for a while.

Right. I read your comments as you not being sure about whether to attack Yunnan at all. The Yunnan stack is one of the strongest bids so I was very confused by your comments.

Strategic bombing on Moscow can’t start G3 unless there’s a G1 DOW. You do open Calcutta up to bombing from J2, but this isn’t a strong Axis move anyway unless the allies are likely to defer the fall of India. Makes much more sense with a J3 DOW. Anyway, a G4 unescorted bombing raid is something that is likely to need to be countered. Escorts can only make it if Belarus, W Ukraine or Ukraine fall I2. British fighters may be available for intercept, but may not too.

Ok, so if you’re just questioning whether to strafe, I still wouldn’t plan to do that. I can accept the idea of holding back an infantry in Kwangsi for reasons already discussed, but only in the case of a J1 DOW. If the battle goes badly enough, you can never rule out a retreat. I wouldn’t retreat one artillery and leave alive one Chinese inf. It puts you in a really bad tactical situation turn 3. China will stack Szechwan C1 and build artillery. Then turn 2, are you going to put your artillery into Yunnan? Doesn’t make sense given you wouldn’t do that turn 1. So China gets two turns of building up in Szechwan. By J3 you need to move into Yunnan or India can keep living too long. But China may be able to kill your stack on its own. Your choices become really bad unless you’ve taken India somehow (refer to my thread on stopping the J3 India crush). All this to save (usually) one artillery? Terrible decision. Still terrible if China got no hits on you.

If you aren’t doing the J1, my go to plan is to send the Kwangsi artillery to Hunan. There are two reasons for this. firstly just to keep the artillery alive for extra punch and an extra hit in later battles. Secondly, if the 2inf in Hunan get a double hit in the first round (1 in 9 chance) or a second hit in an improbably later round, then a Chinese counter attack is on and will probably succeed. Now, back to Yunnan, if I do indeed lose all my ground troops, I’ve never lost a plane to take the territory. I’m pretty sure I can attack it J2 in that case.

It’s massively different in a J1 DOW or later. In a J1, every ground unit is that much more precious. I can accept leaving Yunnan Chinese in a later DOW because you can that much more easily occupy it later.

Oh, one more thing. I thought I had something with the S France beachhead, but I didn’t think that it would be enough. Had I kept that beachhead, then also landed on Korea, we could have still had a game. Maybe then I would have had to consolidate Persia and delay an attack on Egypt which I was obviously planning. I also think it was a mistake to move my entire E Siberia stack to meet the tank when the Korea landing was probable.

I think marines cause enough awkwardness without adding extra rules to them. The value to gameplay is already highly dubious IMO.

I reckon about 30, only one against a different opponent. Could be more actually, considering how long and how often I was playing.

About 200 online, perhaps more, including standard and Balanced Mod.

From the Axis perspective, taking the Solomons early was certainly a mistake. USA just smashed your forces and they achieved nothing. Also, not enough forces were within range of Sumatra to take it J3. That should have been something which was intended to be done and stacking it should have been anticipated. As previously mentioned, the Germans over invested in navy IMHO even though they won. The heavy investment in Japanese transports was a bit unexpected but it seems to have enabled a lot of Japanese early action at sea.

On land, Japan was a bit weaker than I would have expected but it was probably a price worth paying. Good move there, I think.

One thing I didn’t love was the investment in ICs for both Shantung and Kiangsu. I think Shantung would be better omitted, otherwise much money gets absorbed and in a way which doesn’t help any major cause for Japan. Pushing China back is not that high a priority but Japan has little else to do for the first couple of turns in a J3 DOW scenario.

Perhaps you should consider taking FIC J2. It only costs you 8IPC and you can land a tank there which can take Malaya J3 if the Allies don’t block it and blocking costs another infantry.

I guess moving the US sub to the Indian Ocean was a waste of time. It might as well have been killed.

Perhaps that’s enough post game analysis.

The rule about the Vichy naval base in Sth France being usable to the Axis should be added to the notes.

You’ve selected the wrong map. You need to select “Global 40 House Rules”. Or the one with Canada if you want that.

I will add another thing. I strongly agree with your J1 buy. Regardless of DOW, the 1IC 2TT buy is the strongest possible IMO. Without the IC, China gets too strong. The third TT makes little difference. While a single TT doesn’t allow enough expansion of Japan.

Paragraph breaks in the last post weren’t quite right.

The effect is so slight that it isn’t really noticed.

I think this idea would make the game a lot less fun, for many of the reasons already posted. Would certainly give the Axis a black eye. So many inf can be bought in India that it may never fall.

I actually think that Canada should be its own economy or even power. It irritates me that the Canadian money can be spent in London and not spent in a Sea Lion game. The problem is that it makes it too easy to do Sea Lion, enough that UK1 you have to buy all inf for London. The other problem is the created power is not that much fun to play.

I had great dice for me there. I was thinking there would be two planes on the Philippines and two off Celebes but one each will have to do.

@fasthard said in G40 Balance Mod - Feedback Thread:

Hi there, I’ve got two questions about G40 BM3 and GO40 BM4:

• Is the only difference between both modes the IPC costs for the strategic bomber?
• I read that the average bid in BM3 was about 10IPCs for the allies (please correct me if I’m wrong). Is the average bid in BM4 0IPC now?

Thank you!

(a) yes
(b) Bids went up and up. Early on Axis were getting bids. BM3 vs BM4 has had basically no effect on bids. Typical bid is now around 15 but a semi final game has 22.

If UK_Pac are likely to be there for a while shouldn’t you be convoying off their income? I’d be inclined to strat bomb too but the convoying doesn’t have any downsides.

Yeah, I think with your G1 buy I should really have gone after Japan a lot more. Although I find it a real challenge to weaken Japan early. Unless there’s a miscue by Japan, they seem to get really strong, really quickly in spite of allied actions.