Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?

  • 2024 2023 '22 '21 '20 '19 '18

    I’d hardly call Russia buying INF all game and turtling in Moscow “correct play” in 1942.3, but to each his own. I have no tournament experience in this version but I imagine a marginally more aggressive Russia build (at least 1 Tank bought every few rounds) would yield better results.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    @DoManMacgee With $6 tanks, I differ. I need something in front of the fighters. The opener is Russias only solid chance of being aggressive, though it can’t lose its offensive forces, and I struck two territories with all the offensive units I had.

    Like the other versions, the rest of the game is about keeping Moscow alive while the Allies get going and grab some of the VC on one side of the board or another.

    My overall point is that the luck during the opener is more decisive than what russia buys. And there is no viable russian counterattack as the game progresses, because if you fail to strafe/retreat, you lose the few tanks you start with.

    And with a bid of only 7, i did reduce germany to 7 surviving units, though it could sacrifice those 6 planes and still take the money and wipe out the Russians.


  • @taamvan Yes, but with no Tanks Russia can’t attack Germany ever or even strafe their positions. You’re just letting them run all over Russia and gobble up IPCs. Russia’s base income is lower than Germany’s and the US/UK need at least 3-4 rounds to establish and secure a Fighter Conga Line to Moscow (I typically use a Carrier on the US East Cost -> whatever relevant UK SZ you can manage to hold -> Mosocw, but your mileage may vary based on how your Germany plays).

    I agree with your assessment though. If you have poor luck during the opening you’re going to lose as Allies every time. That can be said for most A&A versions, though.


  • @DoManMacgee I was able to make 1 pre-emptive attack, against his northern stack, and only because I retained the 2 armor, 3 fighters. This important strike had to be a strafe (lest 1/2 the moscow units leave moscow right before the southern wing struck) and it was some of the worst luck I had in the entire game, losing everything except 1 art, 2 armor and dealing fewer hits than I took.

    Reinforcing that counterattacks are at best break-even, and in many cases, positional or attritional losers.

    I want that congo line running, and went 100% UK assets from India to Russia and 100% KGF…and it was still far too little too late. KJF works better in this version than others because you can take 2 VC from a contained Japan, and VC victory (rather than capitulation) is how most games will be decided after the quarterfinals.

  • 2024 2023 '22 '21 '20 '19 '18

    @taamvan That sounds more like a luck problem than anything else.

    Counterattacks are not the same as strafes. You can strafe with land units as long as you pull out before you lose too many INF. Something like the following, completely hypothetical scenario:

    West Russia (9 INF/1 ART/4 TANK/1 FTR) attacks Ukraine (4 INF/6 TANK).

    Let’s say you have okay luck, get 4-5 hits and Germany gets 5 or so hits, leaving 4 INF/1 ART/4 TANK/1 FTR Vs. 6 TANK.

    At this point, you just withdraw, and send 4 INF from your previous turn’s buy to West Russia to get your stack back to 9 INF/1 ART/4 TANK/1 FTR and force Germany to either reinforce Ukraine or step back, depending on the wider situation.

    This sort of pressure works as long as the German player hasn’t so totally cornered you that they have a strong stack in Karelia and Ukraine. Once you’ve reached that stage, the Allies have already lost, more-or-less.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    @DoManMacgee

    I’ve played this version of the game alot.

    Beating other strong players is different. Germany is on Russia and the decisive battle comes on Turn 4. In AAZ, its Turn 3. In G40, its Turn 5 or 6. The “you’ve been totally cornered” moment comes right after R2 in 42.3. Germany has dramatically more attack power than Russia, and Germany never buys fleet, or anything other than stratbombers and tanks. That’s the critical path. The other allies don’t even have enough time to do anything but fly stratbombers in to be used as casualties (in Game 203, i actually used these to kill the 3rd wing of the german army). I buy either tanks or fighters with UK, and send those to block/hold the rest of the german army.

    I think the experience of other players is different than mine, as my consistent opponent does not vary from this path, he does not commit to half measures or wait and build up, and mistakes are punished by annihilation.

    Before the patch, even a 24 bid would still result in an axis blowout. The games are very biased towards the Axis (except AA50/41).


  • @taamvan We’re not talking about 42SE. 42SE is totally Axis-favored, as you stated. Allies need like 30 bid to even begin to stand a chance. We can agree on that much.

    I’m interested in seeing one of your replay files if Germany is killing your USSR by only building Tanks and Strat Bombers in 42.3. Doesn’t seem like very cost-efficient trading to me.

    Despite disliking your appealing to authority (which is a logical fallacy), I have to admit that I don’t have significant tournament results for 42SE to back up any of what I’m saying. I didn’t make it to Gen Con or Origins this year and playing face-to-face is an entirely different animal vs. TripleA because of the hard time limit + lack of a Battle Calc.

    Not much else to say, really. Stomping beginners/weak players in A&A is easy as long as your grasp of the proper openings is solid enough and you know how to exploit early errors. I think you have a typo at the end of your post, as most modern A&A games (post Revised) are Axis-favored, not Allies-favored. Only Allied-favored games I can think of post-Revised are 1914 and AAZ, and AAZ may not be Allied-favored under the tournament rules.


  • @DoManMacgee Yes, typo fixed thanks for pointing it out. And apologize for sounding as if the experience makes me right or my conclusions unassailable–the reason I said that was to avoid the impression that I was making a blanket statement about the game without having tried it every which way possible.

    Germany does have 6-10 inf and arty left at the doorstep to Moscow, the rest is armor. “1” move units would be defensive as the slow movers can’t get close enough in a short game.

    I don’t play AAA so there are no files to review. I’ve tried, but the few games petered out pretty quickly.

    AAZ is sort of on the fence, with or without the changes. Its not super fun or dynamic–but I have bought into the argument that it is balanced OOB–In 3-4 short turns there is a coin flip battle that decides the whole thing, in most cases.


  • @taamvan Ah, I think I’m understanding now. You’re saying that, after the attacks/strafes R1, Germany consolidates what’s left of its starting forces into its stacks and still buys the stray INF to shield the otherwise Tank/Bomber-heavy builds? Does Germany simply leave France undefended and use a Dark Skies-esque strategy to perpetually sink the UK/US Fleet?


  • @DoManMacgee

    Germany only has inf/arty left that were on the board to begin the game, and survived. All the buys go Tanks+SB and there is often some stratbombing but its not necessary unless it cripples the last Russian buy.

    The USA was still building up, it had 3 transports and some units in Africa. The UK fleet is mostly sunk G1, the US fleet is too slow to build up and too weak to step up. It would start to make Germany hold back around US4/G5, and Dave asserts that if Germany hasn’t rolled the final battle at that point, they’ve already lost.

    In this particular version, to recap, I was very CONSERVATIVE (not correct) in buying infantry, and tried to use as much UK/US stuff as I could to get to moscow. UK bought a lance of tanks and some fighters, but Germany traded those Rook for Rook with an amphibious counterattack. At the final battle, there were 3 extra bombers, 3 extra fighters (1 rus, 2 uk), and 1-2 extra non-russian infantry.

    It’s still too little to push the odds to 50/50. Better threat might have forced Germany to stack differently, but he has 3 stacks (1 in archangel with 3-5 tanks and 8 units total, one in caucasus with a ton of tanks and slow movers, and 1 in the ME coming up from Africa that I traded 1:1 with the UK.

    And even if I’d won that last battle with great luck (I had pretty good luck in the final battle hitting 5/12 2s), Russia was still cooked with more Japanese and Germans at the edges, and essentially nothing left with Russia.

    I still have much to learn but I won’t get a chance to test that out until I’ve beaten the first 3 rounds of casual players and first timers. Wish me dice luck!


  • @taamvan Oh, right! Gen con is this weekend!

    Good luck! Hope you break into the semifinals or beyond!

    Are you able to fit any other A&A Games into your schedule, or just 42SE?


  • @DoManMacgee Oh yes, I’ve signed up for AAZ as well. Greg asked me to bring my board and only needs 4; that means a short 3 round tournament and not a huge group.

    G42 is a 4 day slugfest, I’ve met several people who’ve signed up, and our former opponents and now best friends Jason and James will be defending their 2018 title this year.

    Dave (Apollo, if I’m Rocky) won’t be able to come again until 2021, where we hope to repeat our 2016 win (and maybe, against Jason and James again).

    I’ll also be scouting around for promo cards and goodies as I made quite a bit of $ off small free promos that are only available at Gencon, probably play MTG Draft Pickup Tourney again, and then, as the evening proceeds–head to the epic Sun King Brew Tent to retire.

  • 2024 2023 '22 '21 '20 '19 '18

    @taamvan I was interested in going myself this year, but life had other plans. Definitely going to make sure I take the days off work well in advance next year. You should come back and write up a tournament report of sorts when you get back. I’m sure people would be interested to read it.


  • I’m interested in the full records. Particularly the W Rus strafe reasoning and aftermath. Was it a retreat into Karelia? If yes, no need for further explanation on that count, though I’m still curious about the exact distributions, attack roll results, and defender decisions, esp. as 42.3 is Larry Harris setup right? and Germany took the bomber as an early casualty at Ukraine it seems?

    @DoManMacgee said in Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?:

    I’d hardly call Russia buying INF all game and turtling in Moscow “correct play” in 1942.3, but to each his own. I have no tournament experience in this version but I imagine a marginally more aggressive Russia build (at least 1 Tank bought every few rounds) would yield better results.

    Well I mean three Russian fighters seems like a super luxury to me, but as far as 8 infantry goes at least on the first turn, I’m not sure I’d really say that’s passive. The way I figure it, Russia needs casualty count and infantry are what you put out. Germany has this big logistics problem getting stuff to the front. So you build more infantry, you trade with fighters and artillery, you keep building infantry, you do strafes and stuff, more infantry keeps your unit count healthy while Germany feeds into it.

    But infantry ALL game, I don’t know. Like, I think I would stick some artillery in there if I had infantry stacks, maybe not R1 or R2 or even R3 but . . . all game, all infantry? I mean, I could see it in some games but I’d want to see a game record to see how that all played out.

    Isn’t that an exaggeration after all? I mean if you had three Russian fighters, didn’t you have to buy one? Or does patch 42.3 change that up or something? I don’t know.

    “The UK traded a stack of tanks to fend off the german ones coming out of africa” - really, German had a stack of tanks in Africa? Is that normal? I don’t think I would expect it.

    @DoManMacgee said in Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?:

    I’m interested in seeing one of your replay files if Germany is killing your USSR by only building Tanks and Strat Bombers in 42.3. Doesn’t seem like very cost-efficient trading to me.

    Well German tanks repositioning can be really nasty. But still.

    Also I’m thinking about the effects of tournament rules, what with timers and things. So if the Axis just contain 7 VCs then they win? How do games usually go on time? To the end with 9 Axis or 10 Allied VCs?

    Because the tournament thing is pretty big imo. It’s like okay if Moscow is threatened normally maybe you pull out of India but if it’s a battle for 7 VCs before time’s called that’s less an option.

    (edit - After having played more and read some old posts by Hobbes, I agree 8 inf is not the way to go in the now-implemented LHTR setup. If you have a good successful Ukraine strafe and retreat to Caucasus and everything goes right, then 8 inf can work. But if Ukraine doesn’t go well or if Russia captures Ukraine, then Russia loses a chunk of its attack power on R1 or G1 respectively. Then Russia can’t really punish German incursion especially with Japanese fighter reinforcement.)

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    @DoManMacgee @aardvarkpepper

    Well, since I wrote this I’ve been to the tournament and got AXA Online working.

    Most of the players on AXAO are pretty good–even if they are inexperienced they do keep the threat coming and not splitting.

    In the tournament, the winning play was to KJF and take the 2 victory cities while keeping Russia alive. Doug and I had a lot of success with UK buying air and US buying carriers, fighters and bombers–this strikeforce has enough reach to hit the Japan home sea zone and land if Iwo is Allied. If Japan can’t defend his inner lines, he cant really place units and so this checkmates Japan.

    The cure, for both Axis, is to buy 2 subs with Germany and more with Japan. The Allies have to perceive a threat from stepping up, and building a Japanese factory turn 1 without seeing the US buy is a mistake, IMO.

    Then there are other players on AXAO who are really quite good–showing off some strategies that dont follow the same dynamic as the tournamnet games did. They often split the UK fleet, having it run rather than kill SZ37. They also LOVE to attack germany in waves, if UK has any navy at all this gets ugly really fast such that about 1 turn of Germany production has to stay behind. With 2 fighters 2 bombers and 2 transports each (US and UK) Germany needs about 20 pieces on it to ensure it doesn’t die.

    But i guess the takeaway is there are alot of ways to win this version, the play is pretty dynamic and reactionary, and its alot of fun.

  • 2024 2023 '22 '21 '20 '19 '18

    @taamvan Good to see that you had some success at the tournament! I imagine that with a bid, crippling Japan is something actually feasible on this map. As in other “medium” size maps, they have 12 (really 11, who actually takes New Guinea?)/30 IPCs in the Money Islands, which means that once you bust their navy, they’re going to be hard pressed to mount any serious offensive threat for the rest of the game, unless they’re already at the gates of Moscow.

    I’m assuming you just used bid money to buff up the UK India fleet to make killing the DEI Carrier + Battleship more of a sure-fire thing, then go from there?

    AAO I’ve had the opposite experience as you. Most of my opponents have been rather poor so far. The only two games I’ve lost so far (as Allies, haven’t lost yet as Axis for obvious reasons) were one where I lost the West Russia attack R1, and another where it was a 5-player game, UK was controlled by the (miserably incompetent) AI, and the US Player left after turn 2, having sailed their entire starting fleet to French Equatorial Africa for God-knows what reason. I tried to swing things back around once I had control of USA, but West Russia went down on G6 so I called it quits.

    The Axis players in particular that I’ve come across seem a bit green. Germany Players NCM their air force on to the front lines, and are too aggressive with leaving Tanks exposed to strafing in-general. My Allied opponents so far have been a bit better, though. I’ve been using a super-lazy build with Germany to try to force wins in 4 turns (G1 all Tanks, consolidate initial position + take Karelia, G2 all FTRs, hit Ukraine with everything/retake Karelia if needed, G3 all Bombers, everything to Caucasus and/or West Russia, G4 all INF (to defend against US/UK), Moscow crush, G5 onwards just spam INF to get US/UK out of Europe while you wait for India to fall). I’ve been surprised by the number of USSR players that are actually able to put up a pretty good fight, getting strafes off and whatnot. I’ve seen some variety in the UK strats like you have, but none of them have been what I’d call “good”. Most of them seem overly hell-bent on keeping Egypt alive, to the detriment of the defense of India.

    My opponents (in 1v1s and multiplayer) seem to be the worst with USA. Lots of people just move stacks of Transports to Africa (but not a good SZ that threatens key territories, bizarre ones like the French-Equatorial Africa one or the Brazil one), leave Transports completely unguarded, hang their fleet, etc. None of them seem to like challenging Japan in the Pacific either, which frees up the Japanese Battleships/Carriers to take down India faster.

    What was the time limit on your tournament games? A PBEM game that lasts until OOB Victory Conditions is generally going to take a stall-ier form than a game that has to be completed in 5 hours (~6 rounds). The real-time factor opens up the possibility for gambit-like strategies that aim to take enough VCs to win once time is called, but do so in a suicidal fashion that would surely lose the game long-term. Something like (totally hypothetical here) abandoning Moscow in a late round to 100% all-in Karelia/India (assuming the Allies can capture other VCs at the tail-end of the round to secure the win). Normally, Moscow falling is game-over for the Allies, but when time is called all that matters is who has the raw VC gain, right?

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    @DoManMacgee

    About the Tournament, its 5 hours. Since the Axis can take and hold Karelia, they can also sandbag the victory by playing REALLY slowly. In order to win, you have to take the phillipines and kiangsi or whatever that one is called. Even if the other players are going really slow, there is an art to prodding them, and Greg will come over and insist on fast play–they also have a rule about starting a new turn during the 45 minutes “end time”–when that’s called, you only play out that remaning turn. If its not, you start a fresh turn and finish that out to end the game.

    There is def. an art to winning in that setting, with careful attention to things like rolling and casualties–our opponent asked to invalidate several rolls because the dice got swept before he saw them.

    Yes, the bid goes to a sub for SZ37 (“The Black Queen Gambit” is what I call that attack). In one of the games, 2 subs lived (make sure selective rolling is done for the SZ37 battle because many pieces cannot hit everything present, on both sides, because no DDs). Those 2 subs went on to sink 2 destroyers and 1 transport. If japan doesnt build any DD, they have so few…that’s why I favor ripping stacks of subs for USA and Japan (and germany)

    In AXAO…last night USA stepped up and I wiped his entire fleet, keeping all my surface ships -1 DD and losing 6 subs

    Yeah, I have been beaten, much to my shame. I prefer to play an entire team myself as its disappointing to lose against weak players because your partner(s) are even worse.

    Still hoping to get a game with the folks here going–but hordes of noobs keep joining my “Axa.org Only” games…


  • @taamvan said in Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?:

    @DoManMacgee

    About the Tournament, its 5 hours. Since the Axis can take and hold Karelia, they can also sandbag the victory by playing REALLY slowly. In order to win, you have to take the phillipines and kiangsi or whatever that one is called. Even if the other players are going really slow, there is an art to prodding them, and Greg will come over and insist on fast play–they also have a rule about starting a new turn during the 45 minutes “end time”–when that’s called, you only play out that remaning turn. If its not, you start a fresh turn and finish that out to end the game.

    There is def. an art to winning in that setting, with careful attention to things like rolling and casualties–our opponent asked to invalidate several rolls because the dice got swept before he saw them.

    Yes, the bid goes to a sub for SZ37 (“The Black Queen Gambit” is what I call that attack). In one of the games, 2 subs lived (make sure selective rolling is done for the SZ37 battle because many pieces cannot hit everything present, on both sides, because no DDs). Those 2 subs went on to sink 2 destroyers and 1 transport. If japan doesnt build any DD, they have so few…that’s why I favor ripping stacks of subs for USA and Japan (and germany)

    In AXAO…last night USA stepped up and I wiped his entire fleet, keeping all my surface ships -1 DD and losing 6 subs

    Yeah, I have been beaten, much to my shame. I prefer to play an entire team myself as its disappointing to lose against weak players because your partner(s) are even worse.

    Still hoping to get a game with the folks here going–but hordes of noobs keep joining my “Axa.org Only” games…

    Think of it as teaching them the game. 😀

    As for me, I’m not going to play it. It’s too inferior to AA50, and AAA anyway.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    @squirecam I wont convince you, but I disagree. The game works great and AAA has glaring flaws I can’t overcome. Mostly I just want to play with my buddies, y’all.


  • Tournaments are different to AXAO. Larry Harris setup, bid, games called on time so decided by +1 VC, AXAO doesn’t implement the rules per board game.

    It’s like, I don’t think they can even be compared. OOB East Indies attack and two-territory Russia attacks are all unstable. 30%+ failure at East Indies, and a little dice swing on Russia 1 can be pretty nasty. Bid makes a big difference, plus the Larry Harris setup.

    As to +1 VC, I really don’t know that I’d go 100% tanks on G1 in a normal standard game of 9 Axis VC / 10 Allied VC.

    @DoManMacgee - French Equatorial Africa, not French West Africa? Brazil, yeah that’s just not right. But if it’s French West Africa, I don’t think it’s necessarily bad. Well maybe it is bad but I don’t think it’s bad because I might do it sometimes. And of course I have three whole weeks of experience on this board. Maybe two and a half. Whatever. So if I do it, it can’t be bad, right? :relaxed:

    Stipulating we’re using OOB with the additional restrictions of AXAO - (i.e. no use of allied transports or carriers, defending fighters float instead of having to land or be destroyed if their carrier dies, defensive profiles (which are a big change, I could go on) -

    OK anyways if Germany does 2 subs to East Canada and 2 subs air to UK battleship and lands fighters on NW Europe and Finland, then UK probably has no fleet to start. And if the UK player was using the default defensive profile, if the Russian sub joined the UK fleet then it didn’t submerge and is probably dead too. So UK is looking at Baltic cruiser and transport which is inconvenient to Russia, and has zero fleet, plus probably there’s a German sub hanging out. But all UK can build is destroyer and carrier if it reserves 9 IPC for 3 infantry at India. And if it does that, then it gets whacked by 1 sub 6 fighters 1 bomber, never mind what happens if UK tries to kill the German cruiser (which probably isn’t the worst idea considering London might be threatened) and loses a fighter in the process. Regardless, UK1 fleet drop probably not good.

    So US1 builds fleet while UK does whatever. Then what does US2 move do?

    Well if Germany grabbed Trans-Jordan on G1, UK might want to pull Egypt units to take it back. If UK attacks Libya probably Germany stacked it so that isn’t too good. If UK sits where it is, Trans-Jordan and Libya both attack and crush them. If UK runs into Africa and pulls German units after them, that’s not the worst, but Germany can just push up into Transjordan, UK units in Africa can never catch up, then Germany has a little pocket force in the Persia region. So none of those are maybe too great, so maybe UK hits Trans-Jordan.

    Well if that happens then Germany marches into Africa, and what happens? US can drop to French West Africa and fight them off. If Germany fights them, that uses up some of Germany’s attention and stretches Germany’s logistics, so that’s not the worst use of some US units that couldn’t even think about landing in Europe any time soon. If Germany doesn’t fight, that works out okay too as UK income is preserved. US could drop to Morocco but that risks getting stalled out. But south of Africa, really hard for Germany to push to.

    As to G1 tanks, G2 ftr, G3 bomber, G4 infantry . . . well on AXAO I can believe it wins. What with all the Russian players trying to hold Karelia with way too few forces, or buying Russian bombers, or stacking Buryatia where Japan just whacks them, or things like that, woo.

    Edit - anyways I got sidetracked. So the thing is US1 two carriers and destroyer, US2 fighters and US1 fleet moves to Africa, UK3 builds fleet, US3 moves to reinforce UK fleet. Depending on what’s going on, maybe US1 three destroyers and a carrier, etc., maybe Japan flies a bomber to Karelia, little variations. Anyways US fleet really doesn’t have much other place to go than Africa if Germany’s zoning north Atlantic with subs on US2 (US fleet can’t reach UK waters), so US1 fleet drop only reaches London on US3 anyways . . . right? So then Africa makes more sense because hey.

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