Best posts made by TheHersh

Howdy!

I live SW of Fort Worth, Texas.

I started playing A&A (original) with my uncles back in the 90s and didn’t pick it up again until a couple of months ago. There’s a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in this game for me - those holiday nights (my uncles all lived out state) were the only nights I was allowed to stay up much past the 10 O’clock news.

Being stuck in doors with Covid19 with stir-crazy kids for the last several months proved a great opportunity to pick up the old habit again. We purchased the anniversary reprint and have really enjoyed playing the '41 setup with restricted or closed Dardanelles and a bid of 9 to the allies.

I’ve enjoyed reading through a number of the posts on this forum - there’s a lot of good content.

Thanks to the mods for keeping up with the website.

We have gravitated to the 1941 OOB with the Dardanelles closed mod and an allies bid of 9. This variant has led to the longest (most balanced) games.

Take this with a grain of salt as I mostly play with my 3 younger sons who are prone to gamble on tech and make ill-advised attacks occasionally.

What we have found is that the European front is well-balanced (especially if the US doesn’t go full KGF - hard to justify KGF given the Japanese power imbalance in the far East in 1941 Anniversary) but the Japanese can easily steamroll China and nearly all far-East, middle East and Pacific UK assets in a few rounds. The combined pressure from Japan and Germany in Russia then becomes overwhelming a bit too early in the game. To extend the grace period for Russia dealing with only Germany, the 9 IPC bid for the Allies typically go to one inf in Yunan (otherwise, it is a priority target J1 and the Flying Tiger squadron is lost) and the other two inf at Allies discretion between Egypt and/or India.

I make no claim to having reached some Panacea of balance but these mods have resulted in some rich games for us.

Alternatively, 1941 OOB (Dardanelle’s closed) and no NO’s has been pretty balanced. This is easier to execute, especially for newer players, but takes away from the experience in my opinion. NOs add a nice layer of depth to the game and can result in some interesting variation in strategy for both sides.

We’ve taken to adding 1 extra infnatry in Yunan province. Japan can still smoke the flying tiger but it requires trading initiative elsewhere by bringing at least 2 fighters to the battle. The OOB build makes the J1 demise of Yunan a formality.

I’m interested in trying out the variant (mentioned in a previous post) where the US can move the fighter to another province at setup.