NO LUCK

@Bean:

Miscommunication, I was talking about your game with Rising Dragon, not your game with me. That game waiting for lucky dice didn’t help, that was what I’m talking about.

I have to say you’re putting up a good fight in our game, except it doesn’t look like much of a KJF.  :roll:

Yea, I had to wait until round 4, remember?

Now you have a sizable, but weak British fleet in the Pacific and a large American fleet in the Pacific.  Looks a lot more like KJF now, eh?  And it’s round 4, as predicted.

Anyway, I almost got screwed in SZ 15 by the dice gods.  But luckily, my fighter found a bullet to put the bismark at the bottom of the sea. whew.

As for Rising Dragon, yea, I fully expected the game to be over a few rounds ago!  But he waited, decided to go blitz up Africa instead of hitting Russia, giving me time to entrench and he got nailed with defensive fire.  He’ll get it this round though.  Nothing I can do, even with good dice, to stop that!

@ncscswitch:

GOOD players can adapt, unless the dice go completely rancid (two back to back force decimations in Ukraine on R1 and G1 comes to mind…)   :wink:

even if its ransid, even if you loose that game,  you still had a great chance to improve your play, with situation that is more difficult there is a bigger chance of improving the play since you have to pull out some new solutions or simply outsmart your opponent :wink:

i agree with you folk, low luck isnt that good as it seems, axis and allies isnt chess, its axis and allies :wink:

I may surprise you all soon…

I am less than an hour away from logging 100 DAYS of active posting on the site (in 2 years).  That may be worth an update…

Thanks DM. It was the low luck aspect that really threw me the curveball. Taking a cursory look, it seemed that LL makes a lot of the first round battles, on both side, that are deemed “must do’s” by most players a little more palatable so, all things being equal, it was hard to judge which side would come out ahead at the end of the 1st turn.

@Mr:

I saw some of the expansions of A&A have cards.  Do they offset the luck factor of the dice?

I’ve played a many of card-driven military board games and the luck factor is just a high as dice only games.

Ahem, if you are drawings cards, how is that any less random (barring cheating) than rolling dice?

I agree with critmonster – the bizarre results make the game more interesting.  Think of it this way – if every game played out the exact same way, then how interesting is that?  Chess is a bad comparison in some ways because, except for the fact White moves first, the players are perfectly evenly matched.  Not so in A&A.  The game is carefully balanced, but the Allies and Axis clearly don’t have all the same pieces or all the same advantages.  Their positions, pieces, economies and opportunities are all different.

A great example is a recent game I played where, as Japan, I DID NOT GET A SINGLE HIT IN PEARL HARBOR!  Lost 5 pieces (yes, probably should have pulled back) and then proceeded to lose my transport fleet on the U.S.'s turn.  Talk about your big holes, but it was great fun figuring out how to dig out of that situation.  I probably won’t face that again for another 50 games, but you bet I’ll always remember THAT battle!

So my point is, the bizarrely random results are the stuff of which great war stories are made!  That’s why we all spend our time on a forum dedicated to a dice game instead of being hunched over our chess boards.  :wink:

Update:

Germany holds most of Africa with 100% of Japanese forces being diverted to Egypt.  England’s putting 6 units a round into Libya (3 infantry, 3 armor) and hitting Germany for 7 IPC in damage every round (taking 5 damage in return.)  America is invading through Norway and W. Europe with 10 units a round with 5 bombers doing 17/18 IPC in damage (alternate rounds) and taking 12/13 IPC in damage (leaving me with plenty of income to keep at least 10 infantry, usually 6 infantry, 3 artillery, 1 armor) going into Asia.

Germany has yet to see a round after 1 with more then 40 IPC income.  They are currently averaging closer to 38 IPC - 25 in SBRs for a net of 13 IPC to Russia’s 20-28 IPCs.  Japan is no threat as they have to move all builds into Egypt to counter English reinforcements.

Germany has no Atlantic fleet.  Their med fleet is augmented with Japanese battleships to prevent American fighters from sinking them.

sure, I’d play ya IRL.  But I’m in NYC and you’re around Chicago, I think, yes?

OH wellz, what can ya do?

Indeed