Posts made by TimTheEnchanter

I see two mentions of techs and they are both fairly powerful techs for the germans (rockets turn 1 and partroopers).  Did anyone else get techs?  How much did they play a role in the outcome.  Germany with rockets can quickly start hurting the allies to the tune of several ipcs per turn, and paratroopers open up a whole range of possible avenues that might not have otherwise been accessible.

I’ll post my thoughts on 2 games played here on the boards.

Title: Axis start slow, finish strong (Me vs. Funcioneta 1941) Date:  jan-feb 2009
Special Rules: NOs and Techs
Victor: Axis
Game 11 rounds - allied surrender with axis about to take moscow
Bias:  Advantage to Allies - this was my first AA50 game and I definitely made some early mistakes

The first couple rounds, things were really breaking the allies way.  Germany got chewed up on the eastern front in the opening salvos (although it took egypt without bringing the bomber) and foolishly left FRA poorly defended early-on before I understood the importance of the NOs.  Uk got Improved Factories on the first round and started cranking 4 units from johannesburg so the axis never controlled africa.  Japan got Shipyards on rd 1, but didn’t maximize it’s NOs early on because I was still learning the options. US got LRA on turn 2 and sunk a loaded jap carrier with minimal losses.  I think the italian fleet went down to a slew of LR air on US4.  With the exception of a few units and air support in Eur/Afr, US went almost entirely Pacific.

Around turn 4 or so, the russians had a spate of bad dice and I started figuring out the axis.  From that point on, it was a fairly slow churn as germany methodically massed forces and moved on moscow while japan moved up with tanks from the east.  The allies couldn’t make any serious headway in europe without US support and Japan was able to hold them off in the pacific.  Towards the end, the US started making headway in the pacific while japan tried to split its focus but it was too late.  Once the med fleet was gone, italy turned to churning out most of the defenders for france and a few units to the eastern front, allowing germany to focus almost entirely to the east.

Title: Axis Romp  (me vs. DarthMaximus 1941)
Date:  jan-feb 2009
Special Rules: NOs but no tech
Victor: Axis
Game Length: 7 rounds - allied surrender with moscow surrounded by overwhelming force from all 3 axis powers.
Bias:  Axis - DM is flat out better than me, plus he had more experience in aa50.  My 2nd aa50 game, and first as allies.

Germany pushed hard on russia, and I started giving too much ground too quickly.  Around round 3, russia tried to make a move toward retaking Karelia, but instead got its forward stack completly crushed by the germans in Bel. From that point on, Russia just tried to survive as long as possible.

US tried to engage in the pacific, but was hardly even able to mount a minor nusiance campaign.  I tried to divert a few us troops to support the UK in africa and europe but most investment was in pacific.  As the game got to the end, A small us fleet got the Japanese to split their navy attempting to protect both the islands and japan and the US was able to score some damage to part of the Japanese fleet, but there wasn’t enough US firepower left to finish the job.  But at least there was potential to do damage to the japanese. UK had an IC in s.africa but the Axis were able to seriously threaten it (but not take it, although it took a good portion of the RAF to secure it.) with combined german, italian and japanese forces.  Even with the US pressuring the pacific, japan could afford a small fleet to help out africa.

DM could probably give more insight to the axis perspective, but it was just an axis rout from the get-go. Japan exploded as usual, and Germany in particular was not at all contained.  The only question was how long could the allies prolong the inevitable.

I invite both DM and Funcionteta to add their perspectives to this.

Just had 2 games end, so I’m looking for a 1941 game for the forum - with NOs, prefer Tech, although I could be persuaded otherwise.  Now that I’ve got a couple games under my belt I’d like to see if I’ve learned anything.  :lol:

I’m ok with playing either side.  We can roll for sides or something like that.

Please send a PM if interested.

That 60+ percent survival rate makes no sense whatsoever.  Something is very wrong.

I did a little experiment that should prove something isn’t quite right with the “must take territory” option.

I ran a test of the same units, but changed the order so the armor were killed last.  This predictably lowered the success rate from 13 to 12 percent and change because the armors (@3) are kept instead of the bom(@4).  Killing the armor last should fit any criteria of “must take territory”

I then turned on the flag for “must take territory” and reran it, and the the chances of success went up to over 15%.  If the armors were already dying last, what in the world would have changed to allow it to take the territory more often?  Then, to make it even worse, when I look at the details it says there is a 69% chance that I end with 1 unit (the arm + it gives me the AA), and no chance (even with the slider set to the lowest setting) that I end with 0 units.

If you don’t use the big icons, they all fit and you don’t need fleet markers.  :|  Plus that has the potential of being very misleading, not being able to easily see what’s in a particular zone.  The fleet markers should be very different looking from the units.

Why do the fleet markers need to be country specific?  The F tokens get lost in the noise of the other units on the map.  If you use the AAR model you could just have a bunch of generic marshalling tokens and marshalling “cards” or spaces on the map.  Then at least it would be clearer that there were units missing and you would know to look at the marshalling area.

Oh, and the color scheme, especially the orange and blue is… um… how shall I put this…garish interesting! ;)

@Unknown:

Try reading some of wodan46’s posts. ;)

I get the impression that would be more along the lines of “Every once in a while you’ll come across a strategy that makes you think " wtf is he/she doing? huh” just before they take your you take their Capital."

@Krieghund:

Welcome, Ithkrall!

d142 has made a good start, but perhaps it would help us to help you if you told us what it was about A&A Classic that your group didn’t like.

Bingo!  That’s what I was going to ask.

This one isn’t really AA50 specific, but humor me anyway.  Let’s say I have an AA gun already on a transport at the start of my turn.  During combat moves, that same transport picks up an inf and the inf captures Territory X.  Can the AA move off the transport into Territory X during NCM because it hasn’t moved yet? Or is it locked into the boat because the trn moved during combat and can’t unload again during NCM?  What if it wanted to unload into friendly Territory Y which is also adjacent to the same sea zone?

I’ll hang up and listen to your answer. ;)

@Capt.:

Krieghund, I think I sunk you.

On the matter of attacking subs and defending ships/fighters.

Pg. 29 - Additionally, your aircraft may attack enemy submarines.

This says nothing about defense.

in the FAQ this was reworded to “Additionally, your aircraft may hit enemy submarines if you have a destroyer on the battle board.”

There’s a whole section on submarines in the FAQ.

On the subject of sinking Krieghund:  since I think he has been tasked with writing the FAQ interpreting the rules, the rules pretty much are whatever he says they are. :)

@Croggyl:

@Bardoly:

Exactly, in 2 games recently already, the Russian sub has taken out both my German sub and the cruiser.  :-(

Correct me if I’m wrong: Subs can’t attack each other, because a sub can dive instead of rolling a dice, and both attacking and defending sub has first strike? So the definding sub could dive instead of rolling defending dice?

It’s not correct that subs can’t attack each other.  It’s just that often, if there aren’t DDs in the mix, one side doesn’t want to and will submerge before any battle occurs. In the case mentioned, the defender could have submerged the sub, but chose to fight with it, probably intending to use it as fodder to protect the CA.

This seems a bit inconsistent.  If the combat is over when there are no combat units left, why can the attacker withdraw when he’s down to just trns, but not when the defender is down to just trns?  It seems that if you are saying trns are not combat units, then the attacker should not be able to withdraw.  If the trns are combat units, then the attacker should have the option of whittling them away and then retreating from the fight while trns are left.

I’ll accept the decision at its face - I’m just trying to understand the reasoning.  Thanks

@Cmdr:

I suspect it’s increased traffic over loading the server.  Basic Denial of Service error.

But that’s just my suspicion based on what Djensen’s previously said about increased traffic with the release of the new game and all that.

I just run a program that notifies me as soon as it’s able to ping the site again.

Maybe all that pinging is what’s bringing down the server. :-o

I have a (hopefully) quick question about the defenseless transports rules.

If an attacker in a naval battle gets down to the point that he has units going against defenseless transports, is it required that the transports all be auto-sunk, or does the attacker have the option of rolling the battles, with the intent of retreating from the sea zone before the last trn goes down?

For example:  Say a battle is down to a damaged BB and DD against DD, 5 trns.  The attacker gets 2 hits and the defending DD gets one hit.  The hits would sink the two  DDs and 1 trn, leaving BB vs. 4 trns.  (1) Can the attacking BB retreat at this point, even though only defenseless trns are left in the zone?  (2) could the attacking battleship engage the trns for several more rounds against ONLY the defenseless transports and then retreat from the zone once they are down to a single trn?

Oh, I’m not saying I proposed the perfect attack force.  Certainly if you ONLY care about the BBs and not the subs, an ALL airforce attack force would be best.  I just took the OP’s germany attack force and modulated it as he suggested - first removing the DDs (which as I expected gave him a slight improvement) and then replacing them with additional subs as he described.

when you say ‘5 bom, 1 CA, 4 sub, 0 DD against 4 BB and 4 sub is less then 7%.’ I’m not sure what you’re saying or where you get that from.  The sim I used said it would be about 9% to clear the zone completely and only about 4% possiblity that any of the BB’s survive.  Maybe I’m doing something wrong, or the Sim I’m using is buggy with its order of loss.  :?  Any hits from the fodder boats (CA, 4 Sub) would be taken first against the subs, but once those fodder boats are gone, or the subs are gone, it’s bombers against BBs. and most times it seems the Bombers should win out.

Now that I think about it, the one thing that may not be factored into the sim is that it would make sense for the defender to take any boat hit against the defending subs.  The sim probably automatically assigns the first 4 hits to damage the BBs even if they come from other boats, which would be sub-optimal, given the bombers can ONLY hit the BBs, so you want to direct any non-Bomber hits to the subs.  I guess it would take a pretty clever sim to really get good numbers on this.  :|

I ran this through a simulator and if your only goal is to kill the BBs, your are better off not bringing the DDs - even if you don’t replace them with something else.  Replacing 2 dds with 2 subs (saving 4ipcs as well) makes it a significant improvement.  Just keep in mind, in the first two cases I was not looking at your own losses or net IPCs etc…  The DDs do provide you fodder to protect your more valuable units.  I was strictly looking at a 100% BB kill rate.

Attacking force / Approx likelihood of killing all 4 BBs
5 bom, 1 CA, 2 Sub, 2 DD / ~67%
5 bom, 1 CA, 2 Sub, 0 DD / ~71%
5 bom, 1 CA, 4 sub, 0 DD / ~96%

@Funcioneta:

Hi, Krieg, we are in a bit confusing situation. Tim wants enter with his sub in a sz where I have sub, dd, tra but he wants do it in NCM phase, without attacking them. I think he must attack and kill the dd to enter the sz, but he thinks not. I’m not sure of this, just I’ll link you to the game thread

@Funcioneta:

There is a dd in z23, so you must attack it to enter that sz with the sub. You cannot enter there in NCMs unless you kill the dd first

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=13098.285

Another thing, can the trannie transport troops if I must leave the sz in case of Tim has right? It must do it in combat phase or in NCM. Thanks

I hadn’t even thought of this until just now.  I know you don’t have to move the TRN just because I am there.  A sub does not make the sea zone hostile for you.  You are free to ignore my sub there for as long as you would like. You should be able to move those boats in either combat or non-combat move as you wish.  However, my question would be:  IF the DD attacks my sub, does the TRN have to then move in combat move (thus not picking up units unless they unload in hostile territory) either out of the territory or as part of the attack on the sub, or can it do an NCM (moving units to a friendly territory) and the DD does its Attack?

(this all assumes my interpretation of the original question is correct and my sub can be there in the first place  :-P )

Not a problem.  Slight confusion possibilities, but better in the long run.  You might want to do some sort of versioning in the main post (maybe a version/readme file in the download itself) and try to advertise when changes like this are made, so people can say “I’m using version x”  I’m using version Y". “Oh, that’s why it’s different.”

Probably more trouble than it’s worth….

Absolutely. As long as it didn’t make a combat move, that armor can non-combat move through/to any 2 friendly territories it can reach at that time.  Think of it as the land equivalent of clearing a blocking sea-zone, then moving your boats through to the other side.

Ignoring china and letting it sprout dozens of trapped infantry means Japan gives up 14 net IPCs (12 for chinese territories, 1 for Kwa and +1 to UK for kwa) that it otherwise can achieve with very little loss, and hold with virtually no effort throughout the game.  Japan’s advantage is its overwhelming cash and this seems to negate that.

@HolKann:

Ow, forgot to mention, but some areas in the Pacific have changed a little of their shape, the most notorious being the East-Indies (it is placed a little more to the South-West now). The changes are for better usage of available map space (OKS, WPO, NPO, SUL, BOR and IJS are a bit bigger now, and 20 pixels are added to Csu and Mex), and correct borders of the American region.

These changes are not huge, but might be a source of confusion. To avoid this, make sure both your and your opponents AA50 modules are up to date ;) Also, I’m not planning on any other territory changes in the near future, to ensure compatibility between the module versions.

But most importantly: have fun :)

I was just going to ask about this.  I downloaded the map on a new computer and suddenly a bunch of boats in East Indies sz showed up in the Borneo sz.