Posts made by ZehKaiser

I am currently in the middle of my first game of Global using Alpha. It is going really well actually. We have played 6 games of global in our group (this alpha game is our 7th). Initially we certainly believed that there is a distinct allied advantage, and I still do. I believe that only very skilled players playing as the Axis have a chance of winning with them, and that is if they play against mistake prone allied players. If you have skilled allied players against equally or even more skilled Axis players, the Allies seem unbeatable barring extreme luck or blunders going in Axis favor.

We have 1 victory for the Axis, and that actually came down to our two best players who are much better than the rest of the group playing Axis, and the allies were made up of our third best player and two totally new players. America’s player was playing for the first time ever. And the Axis just barely won due to a 1/36 tech miracle and botched allied play (poor use of transports).

There were also 3 allied victories, and 2 games we called draws, but the allies would have won if we decided to play for weeks longer…

We are currently on J3 in our latest game with our first go at the Alpha setup. We also have the same two players as Axis, only this time switching powers. I have to admit that I think I like this setup better as Germany because our UK player is infamous for bringing the whole british empire into Egypt and holding Africa with overwhelming force while threatening Italy all game long. Less planes and ships and initial transports makes this harder for him and makes Italy more viable. Also we started with a G2 DoW on USSR. Things are going very well for them with the USSR’s hardware in dead zones, so by R4 they will be down to only Inf.

Japan is doing very well also in China and with the sizeable Manchurian land force nipping at the retreating Russian’s heels in Siberia. The lack of planes certainly is putting a cramp in Japan’s game play in the Pacific itself, and in its Caroline/Hawaiian posturing against the Angloish-Allies, but they are still in a solid position. I the new naval base in NSW is a very interesting double edged sword. It makes Australia very happy that they can move around a bit easier, and can claim DNG on ANZAC1, but they have to be careful because it no longer is a dead end for the IJN, which makes ANZAC a viable target for Japan.

I just scanned all 31 or so pages of this thread to see if this question had been asked yet and I didn’t see it (hope I just didn’t miss it) as there have been a lot of repeat questions…

Germany has an NO for not being at war with the USSR. Is this NO only ever in effect in the first turns until war is initially declared between those two powers, or is it possible to get it back later on. If it is possible what exactly would the conditions be? I should think that if Moscow is under Axis Occupation AND there is not a SINGLE USSR piece left on the board that would imply that the USSR is out of the game until another Ally can bring them back in, and as such, Germany is no longer at war with them, and so would collect the 5 IPC NO. Is this just wishful thinking or is there something to it? Maybe it’d have to be taken a step further and there could not be a SINGLE USSR territory not under another power’s or even exclusively Axis control in order to no longer be in a state of war with them. Or are you simply considered to always be at war with a power, even if they are literally blown off the map…?

In our games on ANZAC 1 the player always moves his Destroyer up to the Queensland SZ to block a Japanese move to the capital in one move. So to take Aus you have to DoW on J2, then wait until J3 to take it, and in the meantime tie up your fleet very far away from the heart of Japanese operations, as well as give the US time to take the Carolines and/or Japan/Korea in the meantime. :/ Not to mention that the USA is only 1 move away from Aus from Hawaii and so can get there easier than you, and with more IPC’s of stuff.

Also Japan doesn’t really threaten allied efforts by taking out aus, so as a US player I think I’d just dump most of my IPC’s into Europe early anyways and put Germany on the defensive before they take the offensive (because of your early DoW)

My favorite on television atm is Always Sunny in Philadelphia or The League.

Of all time certainly Seinfeld! George Costanza for the win!

@Krieghund:

Both kamikaze attacks and scrambling occur at the beginning of the Conduct Combat phase, so all combat movement will be complete when they occur.  As a result, they may only occur in sea zones in which enemy units end their combat movement.

Thank you!

Also I gamerman, thank you for your reply as well. I had written my question a couple times before posting, and in my original draft I mentioned that he activated the kamakazis by taking iwo, but then i deleted it during my editing.

That makes a bit difference. So it turns out the Kamakazis would have only prevented bombards and took a few wounds off of the fleet stack. Also one last followup.

In order for the kamakazis to prevent the bombard to they simply have to be used against the fleet as a whole, where even one kamakazi attack used on a ship (regardless of whether the target can bombard or not) prevents the whole fleet from bombarding? Or is it only the ships attacked themselves cannot bombard? So if a fleet had 3 bombard capable ships you’d have to use 3 tokens on each one respectively to cancel their bombard.

Thanks again to Krieg and everybody else (gamerman too!) who takes the time to help us eager global players!

This is a bit of a Pacific question, but applies to Global as it came up in my global game. Also I read the entire official Pacific FAQ word for word and didn’t see this.

When exactly can kamakazi’s be used? If a ship is passing through a seazone with a kamakazi marker can I attack it with kamakazis? Or do you have to wait for a ship to reach its final destination before you can kamakazi it?

Basically I wanted to know if it can be used for blocking ship movement. We had a very heated debate about it in our last game. An allied fleet would move through Iwo SZ to reach Japan and the Japanese player would kamakazi the fleet on its way through and have that count as “combat” thereby making the Allied fleet have to stop and conduct combat and not be able to move past it.

The same goes for scrambling planes. Can they scramble to fight as a unit simply passes through its seazone. And if it does can the ship continue on its way (if it survives) or is it stuck there because it fought in a combat? The kamakazis were basically used in this way if its allowed.

Whoops!  :oops: That’s embarrassing. Sorry I didn’t make it all the way through. Still though i believe that the allies gave up a bit too soon. USA can really swing things.

How did US land units in UK so early? Did you declare war on them on G1 or G2? They can’t land in UK until war is declared. Also, why would the Allies quit if Russia falls? 80ipc US and the remaining major ally (either UK or USSR depending on who Germany takes out) is still more than enough to go toe to toe with the Axis. I feel the game is stacked very heavily against the axis and in order to make it a fair fight they have to knock out UK or USSR just to compete once the US is involved.

I think your opponents gave up to easily. In every other version of A&A that has ever existed then if USSR falls it is game over, but in this one, I think that’s when the game really begins.

How does it work when a power wants to move sea units through occupied sea zones with neutral powers? I know a sub doesn’t block, and a transport doesn’t block regardless of the state of war, but do surface warships of neutral powers block the movement of your surface warships?

@13thguardsriflediv:

Which 2 Novo inf (considering you are talking about Global)? In the Global game, Russia no can has 2 inf per turn in Novo.

Really? I know its a blurb in the Europe section of the RB, not in the Global. But its not a Euro only NO or a Global only NO, so I assumed that global was all of the euro rules and all the pacific rules, with a few added pieces, and the only difference was that you replaced the two sets of NO’s with the Global NO list. That means that you include rules like the Novo inf and Japanese Kamakazi tokens and the like.

In our games Russia has been sending the 2 Novobirsk inf into China every turn. This really makes China a serious issue for the Japanese who have a hard enough time with them in P40. India is actually not as scary because they often send planes to help egypt, and you can take their IPC base and sub their convoys and bomb their IC, so they can be slowed down to a crawl if the USA isn’t dumping 80IPC’s on the japanese mainland.

China is tough. I think that the next time I play Japan, my J1 build is going to be two minor IC’s. I think two minors is better for Japan than one major, its cheaper, you probably can’t afford 10 units in one place, and it has the advantage of giving you two different locations to produce from making you more flexible, also if one falls its not as bad, your eggs aren’t all in one basket.

I think you have to do this J1, or its too late, its the only and fastest way to deal with China, and you build 6 Mech inf there every turn to take territories, and you planes to kill units. The mech cost the same as the initial cost of the two factories. Then you can focus the rest on the Pacific.

My question (which is technically OT) is what turn should Japan declare war on the UK/ANZAC/US?

We just played a game last night and I was Russian and my friend Germany and he sniped Leningrad away from me with a clever maneuver that I didn’t see, but then he was kind of stranded behind my lines, so he couldn’t reinforce it easily, but I couldn’t take it back very soon either (I was two turns away, and my relief force was prolly a coin flip anyways), but he was saying that he wished he could just kill all the bases and then sail away lol.

Thankfully he couldn’t, but we were toying with a house rule.

We thought it’d be lame if a single inf could do it, but maybe if the total UV of all the units attempting to sack the assets was equal to or greater than the UV of the assets themselves (IC’s, AA guns, NB, AF etc…) then you could do it.

This is probably a really simple question that is certainly not limited to this A&A game, but applies to like ALL of them, BUT, this FAQ is where the action is atm…

If a player amphibious assaults a territory, with some units, and attacks the same territory with some land based air units (or even other land based units), which units are inelligable to retreat. ALL of them, or just the units that amphibious assaulted. ALSO, if the air units can retreat, can they leave before the amphibious units are wiped out, in essence abandoning them to their fate, or do they have to wait until all the amphibious units are destroyed before they can retreat.

Thank you! And sorry its not a Global40 specific question.

I am in love with these minis. I’m sooo jealous! I really want to paint mine, but I don’t have a dedicated enough group to appreciate the effort that it would take. If we would play even once every two months I’d go for it, but I’m lucky for more than one game a year… :(

Are you talking to me about the bombers? We did them the way you said. I only said 4-5 hits for the 5 bombers because there’s still a good chance of missing with 1 of them, but like you said, its’ not super high. We also rolled each bomber separate so it wouldn’t influence our results that way either.

@Raeder:

Building 5 Bombers for Germany doesn’t sound like the most sensible thing to do.

It was a bad move, he should have kept up with the tanks in retrospect, but I do see why he did it, with HB’s and the such a large stack of fodder already on the front these things could have turned the war by either crippling Soviet production, especially in a given IC, since they’re so spread out now and it would make the obvious move north or south of the pripet marshes more decisive, or by just adding 4-5 almost guaranteed kills each round of combat which would be huge.

@Bruda_Iz:

I agree… it sounds like your expert german player hasn’t been reading these forums. :?

lol you’re right. He thinks he’s too cool to “study” how to play a game online, or to talk about it outside of the game, he’d rather do something more social in his other free time, unlike me obviously  :mrgreen: That said, I think that more than one person in a group coming to forums like this would ruin the game. If all the players are into not only what they think optimized play is, but instead are into playing “teh only roxzors optimized” way that the know it all net people think is the only non-retarded way to play, then the game would get very boring very fast.

We can look at things with fresh outlooks when we just sit down and play every couple months and try something fresh without worrying that its “auto fail” according to the all knowing interwebz. Not that you fall into this category, just saying!

@Koningstiger:

@Bruda_Iz:

I think the tech development is waaay too random.

We use the offical rule from A&A revised: Buy dice (5 IPCseach, say which technology you’re attempting to develop (say #3), then you need to roll a three to be succesful and actually get the development you want. Any other roll(s) is/ are a failure.

Don’t know why they ever changed this back again. This was the system that made the most sense to me. Also, if you wnat say heavy bombers and you end up with super submarines, this would often be completely useless and a waste of IPCs. 5 is quite a lot and normally you would need multiple dice to be succesful. If then you could even get sth useless, why research in the first place?

Of course in A&Aglobal40 you still need to pick one of the two columns first, even with our houserule/ rule from A&A revised.

We ended up using the A&A50 tech rolls with the tech tokens. You spend 5 for a research token, and get one die roll for it, if you get a 6 you hit ONE breakthrough (no matter how many 6’s you get) and you discard your tokens, if you don’t get a 6 then you keep them and try again until you get it. If you make a breakthrough you pick a chart, then roll another D6 and get what you get, he got HB’s.

Another system we were thinking of is that instead of getting a research token you can just buy x dice and roll them all at once and you get as many breakthroughs as you get 6’s but you have to discard the tokens even if you get no breakthroughs. High risk high reward or something like that. Its good for the big powers.

I think that your way of doing it like revised is great too, but it seems too good when combined with research tokens.

@WILD:

Thanks for a fairly detailed report. It was cool to see some strats that worked, and some that didn’t. Just wondering if you used the new set up for Pacific in your global game (14 air unit reduction, inf changes in Asia, NB on NS Wales, and 1 tpt to India). Also giving the new guy Japan was just wrong, to much power, and to many decisions  :evil: The UK attacking Japan, now that’s a twist, but it seemed to work against the newbie. The German player didn’t do much of a naval build from what you said, I think Germany has to pump some $ here to keep UK honest in the early rounds. The trick is to keep your navy afloat, so you can use it in the Baltic to reinforce/counter attack Scandinavia/Russia. You also noted an SBR campaign on Germany, did you use to ftr/ interceptor rules, did you lose any planes because of it?

You are welcome for the report! We used the OOB set up with the slight revision from LH when pacific 40 first came out, it was replacing the Major IC in Australia with a minor, and removing the minor from NZ, as well as adding a NB and AB to the Philippines. We didn’t reduce air. From what we saw in this game, reducing the air would have been a bad idea, I think the Axis really have it hard enough. Especially Japan now. The J1 attack really is prolly off the table because Germany needs at least 2 rounds to keep things stable in europe. If the US can dump 80ish IPC’s in the atlantic from R1 I think they would be foolish not to. But if they have to wait a while then they would be more temped to spend some in the Pacific.

@knp7765:

Hey ZehKaiser,
Sounds like you had a pretty good game.  It also sounds like the German player made some bad decisions.  I found the IC in Romania very interesting.  Then you have an access for new tanks right there on the Russian front.  I wouldn’t have put a Major IC though.  Costs too much.  Basically, he spent his whole income that first round on 1 piece.  I would have went with a Minor and gotten some other equipment.  Perhaps this helped lead to his ultimate downfall?
I put a Minor IC in Norway to back up the Finns and converted my German IC to a Major.  I then proceeded to build up three army groups on the East in preparation for Barbarossa.  When the North army group took the Baltic States, they didn’t need to concern themselves with Leningrad and could leave that to the Finns and concentrate on the attempted Soviet build-up in Belarus.  It worked like a charm and the Russians were soon destroyed.
I can’t blame him for buying extra bombers after getting the heavy bomber tech, although he might have went a little overboard.  Whenever I research and get Heavy Bombers, I usually end up gettin more bombers than I usually would.
By the way, speaking of the Heavy Bomber tech.  I don’t like this “roll two dice and pick the best result”.  Heavy bombers are just that…HEAVY.  You spend that money for reasearching that, which is expensive, then you should be able to get two hits per bomber, not just rolling two dice and picking the best one.  It’s not like you pay for research and boom, you get heavy bombers.  First you buy the dice and hope to get a six.  If no six comes up, you lose your money.  THEN, you roll and hope to get ANOTHER six.  There are five other items you could end up getting and if you are really wanting heavy bombers and get one of the others, then you are screwed.  That’s why I don’t like the new limitation to Heavy Bombers.
Also, I miss the reasearch tokens from the Anniversary game.  At least that way if your reasearch fails, you can try again next round and your money wasn’t totally wasted.

The game was a lot of fun! I think you’re right about the Romanian IC, a minor one would prolly be best. I think a few minors spread around is better than a major in one place. I think he put it there because historically to take out Russia you took out the Caucasus, but now that seems less important than Leningrad. Its very far out of the way and the territories are worth little. The real action is in the north I think and I love your idea of the norway factory, I’d just be terrified the brits or americans would get it.

It was our first game, certainly a learning experience. We all did a few things wrong. I was going to take Eire with the US to make a bomber base, but then I remembered it was too close to Europe, then I took brazil and now I guess I couldn’t even have done that without first being at war? So I should have just sat around with my thumbs twiddling about as the US.

Sorry about the delay if anyone was actually following this  :-P

In R4 the war continued in the same manner as R3. However important developments easily meant the end for the Axis. The Japanese split their forces to finally grab the territory that they normally take in the first 3 turns in Pacific40, but the difference was that the US had a mega fleet, ANZAC had a two carrier fleet, and the Indians were still largely intact as well. This meant that the allies were able to start taking the Japanese apart bit by bit, so they were waning in power, and their collapse was inevitable.

The Germans built 5 bombers in G4 to take advantage of their tech and destroy the Soviet production power in either the north or South in an attempt to prevent reinforcements showing up and to help with nearly 5 guaranteed kills per round in combat. It seemed like a good idea, but it weakened his position in the east by not having another wave of armor left to absorb losses, and with the Russian pulling all the way back to outside Moscow it meant that the very large wermact stack was now out of position and the Russians attacked. They killed everything but the German armor (which was now down to about 12) and retreated to moscow. It was a HUGE battle the biggest I’ve ever fought in an A&A game. I think I killed over 30 units between all the land units I killed with only those 12 tanks left. I also lost a lot but kept all my hardware and built 10 more inf in moscow, more than enough to prevent the 12 tanks from taking anything (even with the bombers) when combined with the tanks, fighters, and other land units I had that survived the earlier battle.

That attack meant the Germans were done in Russia, and that the soviets would start heading back to Germany. IF the USA WAS NOT IN THE GAME the Germans would still likely have lost, but they also had 40ish IPCs from the US heading into the med each turn. Northern italy fell and Southern itally was next. Europe was basically empty thanks to Germany going literally “all in” in Russia.

Allied Victory! We stopped around R6 or so. If we played it out it would have likely taken a few more rounds to make it official, but the Axis was surely doomed.

In our game we had 4 players, 2 very experienced, one mid level and another new. The best and worse player teamed up as the Axis, while the two in the middle (myself here as the second experienced player) as the Allies.

The best player took Germany and Italy.
I took the USSR, the USA, and China.
The mid level player took the UK, ANZAC, and France.
The newest  player (relatively new, he knows the game) was Japan.

The Axis were hell bent on not bringing the USA into the war for as long as possible.

-On G1 the player built a Major IC in Romania I think. He took out the UK fleet around the UK. He killed France, and moved as much else towards to Eastern Front as he could. Takes Finland and Bulgaria.
-R1 I built an AC and inf. I pulled all of my infantry but 1 back off the border and made two power centers above and below the Pripet Marshes. I pulled all the asian inf but 1 back a space to the most westernly of the territories that started with 6inf to prevent massive Japanese air attack.
-UK1 he built land units in India and fortified Egypt, and naval units in Great Britain. He also killed the Italian BB fleet with the carrier. Also took as many DEI as possible.
-J1 had the japanese player hamstrung without being able to declare a J1 attack on the Allies at the german players strong request. He stormed into FiC and China as well as castling up in the Carolines and Manchuira (no NAP between USSR and Japan).
-I1 took SF and fortified Alexandria. Also killed the AC and french fleet I think. Little fuzzy here.
-China builds 3 arty and castle up.
-ANZAC sails to take a DEI territory to help it beef up. (indians took DNG)
-US1 builds Pacific fleet and a bomber and flies all air to E.US, evacuates Philippines.

R2
-G2 research, hits super bombers, builds all tanks for Romania. consolidates his forces for Barbarossa, hits more UK fleet with what’s left of his air and subs.
-R2 build 5 tanks, and arty and an inf. Takes Persia. Continues to castle up 1 space behind the front around the marshes. Moves inf and arty to Karlia from Leningrad to counter Finns, and attack finns when war starts, they will have enough time to get  back to Leningrad in time to garrison it as germans arrive.
-UK2 more of turn 1 but got ready to attack Japanese units. Same old in GB, also researches Radar.
-J2 more of what he did on turn 1. Also more carrier buys, expected a naval arms race with US and a huge Carolines/Hawaii battle.
-ANZAC2 builds a carrier and takes West Indies.
-China trades back some territory and builds all inf.
-Italy takes egypt and continues to struggle with token allied med shipping. Also builds AC.
-US2 builds a transport fleet with units in atlantic, bomber, (fruitless) research, and the rest on a sub or destoryer or something for the Pacific.

-R3, the War beigns.
-G3, Attacks Russia, builds more tanks for Romania, takes the 3 soviet buffer states. Is pinned in Finland, combines his force in the middle so he can choose to go north or south of the marshes in G4.
-R3, build inf and arty, Retreat one more set of spaces and leave new 1 inf buffers north and south of the marshes. concentrate outside of Russia territory. Also some minor research with no results (might have got this the turn before). Now looking to outnumber germans. Also invade Finland and win. Scandinavia is looking to be permanently Russian now.
-UK3, attacks Japan, reinforces china, attacks Iraq to soften it for an Australian landing. Invades Normandy for a trade. SBR’s W.Germany Major IC for a total of 11 (5 in UK2, and 6 now)
-ANZAC 3, ANOTHER carrier, also takes Iraq.
-J3, USA still not at war, but japan decided to take phillipines and bring them in a turn early. Started to head for DEI to take it out.
-I3 Nothing important. Sent land units to fortify France.
-US3, moves fleet off Japan. Invades Morocco with 3 trannies (3inf, aty, mech, and tank) and flew stack of 5 bombers to Gibraltar.

More to come. Class now!

I can see Dylan’s point on the cost though. Also makes 6 that much more justified in my eyes. 5 Was way too cheap, remember when they had 2 defense!? And they were still a bargain back then. Make them Defense 2 and I can get behind 5 IPC’s again.