If you play with the new setup and no bids, I could see it as a potentially good gambit. You would have to commit the Egypt fighter, which may cause you to lose Egypt. But at least India should hold with the extra Inf in the new setup.

At 55% win chance, it may well be worth the investment. Losing all of that navy for J gives america a shot at the Pacific. This will likely cause you to have no fighters in the theater. The US fighter can move from china to Egypt to hold a G2 push, but depending on what they do in the Med, that may not be enough.

If you pull it off and still have a surviving fighter, I think that you are pretty golden.

Hey there,

I have very little experience playing A&A on a real board but would like to introduce some friends to it. One of the things that I always found difficult about A&A on the board is organization. Specifically, I find the role of aircraft very difficult to keep track of, since fighters and bombers may fly many spaces from an origin country to a battle. Once in the battle, everything is kind of mixed and I imagine we will forget where each fighter came from originally, or more specifically, how far it has already moved.

How do you deal with this? I was considering some sort of markers to place in origin countries, one for bombers, one for fighters.

An alternative I suppose is to use an array of D6 dice, and sort of have a die displaying how many moves have already been made with each plane participating in a combat. So I would perhaps have a fighter model and a bomber model off to the side where I keep all my other stuff. Then, for each fighter, place a D6, facing the number of moves used (or remaining, depending on the convention we choose) up.

On that note, as a slight rules question. If you have say 3 fighters attacking a country which as AA, and 1 of them gets shot down. Can you choose to lose the fighter which has used the most amount of movement already, or would you need to roll a die 1:1 for each fighter.

Any other ideas about board organization that might help us get through a game and not get bogged down in game piece overload?

I suppose the idea was not to have a 4 turn game, but something much longer.
How does one kill Germany in 4 turns or less?

Will Germany really have enough forces between the beginning and T4 to take out Russia? The idea was upon landing in France, Germany cannot continue to support the eastern front with new troops without risking Berlin.

I have never played, nor understood, how this game can be a 3 hour tournament game.

I agree with Argothair that you should not start the shuck until US4 (preferably you open up the shuck with UK4, then supplement on US 4).

Anything earlier than that typically gets wiped out with little gains. When you start a KGF stack in France, you are committed to that strategy and must ensure it does not fail. There are plenty of other places the strat can fail, but getting France wiped out seems like a game ender to me. At that point regaining a foothold is really hard as you have to hit France hard (taking losses) then deal with the 13 unit Berlin/Italy hit on the following turn.

If you can gain a slight advantage in units in France then you must be patient. Keep shucking until you know you can take Berlin. When I take Berlin I typically sacrifice the 4 UK transports in the med by pushing them into the Baltic for an amphibious assault on Berlin, while the rest of UK walks in from France. Fight till you are down to your fighters then leave. US will hopefully  finish the job.

The West coast US troop production is brilliant.

What does WD mean?

@IKE:

How many planes are you losing to take it though?

It’s been awhile since I played but UK player typically buys two fighters in London.

True, but normally the starting fighters go to Russia, netting you only 2 fighters in the UK. Another thing to note is typically US will land their bomber in UK on US1, so that is another pip to the side of the defenders.

Assuming no extra drops in UK and no additional aircraft on Germany’s part, it is roughly a 50/50 shot at taking UK G2. This will cost most of your planes, and you may end up losing UK on a UK2 counter from Canada (assuming the tank and infantry as left there).

I think this plan has a pretty narrow margin for profit and requires A) The UK to not realize what you are up to and B) a bit of luck (or additional bombers on G1). I could see the benefit of always using the same Germany opener, planning on the eastern front march, then just waiting to see what UK does.

If they know what you are up to, then you have provoked the purchase of landlocked units in the UK, which is less to contend with on the water or in India.

Interesting idea, sounds like a pretty reasonable approach. I would imagine the drawback is that you give away your plan on G1 by staging all of your airforce in WE or France. That allows UK1 to drop infantry in UK to keep themselves safe.

Your question of whether UK drops ships in N. UK seazone, S. UK seazone, or nothing at all really depends on Germany’s opening.

You have a point though that if the UK drops nothing in the UK then they are pretty screwed. I would never drop a fleet in southern UK on turn 1 because it will get blown out of the water. I could almost see building G1 ships as a great ploy to this strategy (no transports). It will give the UK the impression that Germany wants to be a big naval power in the Atlantic, therefore the UK will probably hold on to IPCs to have a strong T2 naval drop. This means more IPCs for you when the 1 transport invasion of UK occurs. The G1 ships serve no purpose other than a ruse.

Even without the ships, this threat to the UK is at least worth delaying UK for a turn (causing them to drop units in the UK) simply by flying all your aircraft to WE.

On a side note, you should not be able to get the UK infantry from north america into the UK on turn 1, that is 2 moves.

Cool idea

If you play with the new setup and no bids, I could see it as a potentially good gambit. You would have to commit the Egypt fighter, which may cause you to lose Egypt. But at least India should hold with the extra Inf in the new setup.

At 55% win chance, it may well be worth the investment. Losing all of that navy for J gives america a shot at the Pacific. This will likely cause you to have no fighters in the theater. The US fighter can move from china to Egypt to hold a G2 push, but depending on what they do in the Med, that may not be enough.

If you pull it off and still have a surviving fighter, I think that you are pretty golden.

Never without a bid. I send India ships into the med, and aus ships towards morocco.

Taking the J transport seems more beneficial than taking out a J plane, which is about all I can get from SZ37. I don’t really like either suicide approach.

@taamvan:

If the USA buys more bombers, that’s flexible and great but they wont have enough $$ to do that AND build a real sea-defensible fleet against Japan its one or the other.

Bombers themselves are pretty defensible from a deadzone perspective. So long as you keep your US fleet just outside the clutches of the Japan fleet then any aggressive move towards the west coast can be met with a bomber counter. Grabbing a battleship and a couple subs/destroyers would also round out this force. If Japan rolls in with a larger stack, you can strafe the navy with your bombers and smaller fleet, soak some hits on the BB and lose the subs as fodder.

You should likely then gain defender’s advantage making a counter from Japan quite risky. I have not played against a heavy naval Japan strat, but against a combined initial fleet, you can do pretty good with +1BB, +1 bomber, and +sub chaff.

Just to confirm in the rules. When you are the defender and the enemy brings a destroyer, then at that point you can elect to take sub losses from planes instead of anything else, right? In this case, it almost behooves you to have the enemy bring the destroyers as the subs are cheap fodder, and garbage on defense anyways.

Hey everyone,

I wanted to get your perspectives of what to do with the starting UK and US bomber on T1 to T4.

Obviously the UK bomber is quite useful in UK1 to dispatch the remains of German ships from the Baltic, but after that the UK is not terribly offensive.

The US seems to have no real use for the bomber before T4-5 as they have no readily available destroyers in the Atlantic (because it will be sunk G1), so sub hunting is not possible. You could send it to the pacific, but without taking any of the J islands, it is really hard to stage a naval fight. Maybe you could send it to China? But you only have a couple Inf after J1 to do anything with. I have not tried, but considered just staging it in HI or Western US just to keep Japan from getting any funny ideas.

I have resorted to using both bombers for SBR on Berlin until they get blown out of the sky. I realize that SBR is not really cost effective on the average, but bombers sitting on the ground are not cost effective either, and they lose value over time as massive stacks begin to form.

Using the bomber is a defensive pip seems nuts to me, but I guess if it was to keep Egypt I would accept the sacrifice.