JDOW (X) vs farmboy (L+12) BM3

[farmboy]

@JDOW said in JDOW (X) vs farmboy (L+12) BM3:

Thanks a lot for the game. I am happy to keep my Axis scalp :-)
And I agree, the Germans reached the state of becoming an unstoppable juggernaut. regardless of what the Allies would try, the Germans would always have the resources to be 1 step ahead. Only a major blunder or extreme dice result would have had the potential to turn the game.
I am a bit surprised you did not at least bring your extra TTs in and see what you could do from there. But most likely, the Germans could have coped with it

I thought about it for quite a while. And I thought for a while that initially I might have a chance because I would at least have plenty of targets for you to defend. I might have been able to delay your attack on Moscow, or take back a VC for a turn (unlikely) But with that amount of air, and that income I felt pretty sure it was just delaying the inevitable. I think I needed to be in a solid position in France and probably hold Norway, before you were in a position to take Moscow to have a chance here. I also still had the problem of needing to spend on two fronts with the US since Japan was down but far from out. Had I been able to take Spain and started the mass transport of inf a couple of turns earlier, it might still have given me a chance, or at least a reason to play this further.

I did not even plan to rush Moscow, but wanted to take SA first. With this achievement, the economic dominance of the Germans would have been carved in stone.

You did a pretty good job by putting a lot of pressure on Japan, as AD warned me.
The Sumatra move caught me off guard, but the Allies could not manage to seal Japan’s demise. I believe I did a good job in keeping Japan afloat and I also think you could have tried to be a bit more aggressive.
In addition, the move came with the price. With the UK boats in the med, you may have had the potential to murder the Italian fleet. This was a major factor in Europe, where the Allies litereally didn’t achieve anything throughought the whole game.
Usually, losing the Italian fleet and getting convoyed in 97 becomes inevitable at some point if the Allies apply enough pressure. I guess the British fleet that joined the Pacific forces was the missing puzzle piece to achieve dominance in the Med.

That might have been the case. My intention hadn’t really been to pull the UK fleet into the Pacific. But took the opportunity after that portion of hte fleet got stranded in the Indian ocean. And although I prefer to wipe out the Italian fleet, I’m typically less worried about letting it live as long as Italy is kept relatively contained.

All together your Allies game is very strong and I find it comparable to my style. You are very efficient and detail-oriented. That being said, if Axis is played properly (what I believe I am capable of doing), I sometimes also do not know how to crack them. Whenever I play Allies against decent opponents, it always feels that I only win because the kind of blunder at some point.

I would have made a couple of things different though in our game as Allies. Frankly, I am not willing to share all details as we may face each other in the playoffs, but 2 things I’d like to share:

1. I am not sure if you gained anything by your first excursion to Mariannas. I could easily protect everything and you maneuvered your fleet out of position which certainly made it easier for me to get India.

Yeah, that was a mistake. I think I had the mistaken assumption that you would then abandon the Carolines so I would only be out of position for a turn.

2. When you made the Sumatra move (which was very good), I doubt it was a good idea to offer the Chinese for slaughter. It was good to take India back as this makes the attack on the fleet unattractive as I cannot lose almost all my air when not having India. But the Chinese sacrifice was imo unnecessary. The planes that attacked China could not reach India anyway, so the attack didn’t overstretch my resources. I made a test run killing the Russians instead and I found this version clearly worse compared to wiping the Chinese.
   I think the fact that the Chinese were stopped from reaching a critical mass that would have been annoying saved Japan’s ass as the dominant position on the main land, with sufficient supply of land units kept Japan afloat and prevented them from being cracked.
   It was an interesting stalemate on the waters but without the juice to crack the resistance on the mainland, the Allied fleet was a bit like a toothless tiger.

Yeah. My thinking was that if you attacked the fleet you could not attack the Russians, China, or India, and so a naval victory had to be quite decisive for you not to be in a worse position after. But really I just needed India for that.

I’m forgetting the specifics but I think your naval base and factory in Malaya that your fleet could retreat to influenced my thinking. Because of that, I thought one choice you had was to attack my fleet and retreat, building 3 carriers and possibly an airbase for insurance. I’d have to damage carriers in the battle not knowing how far you would take the attack and the following turn, I would have to retreat my damaged fleet and set up blockers to keep your now repaired fleet from wiping me out. That was risky enough that I didn’t think you would do it, but I thought it may be less risky than a straight up attack on the fleet. So I wanted to give you a lot of other targets.

For me the real challenge is what to do in the Middle East. Holding (or at least contesting) it is pretty key for the allies. And usually, if the Germans bring their forces down, I can make them pay for it by bringing the Soviets down and block their route back North. I opted to sacrifice a ton of units as blockers (although some units would not have been able to escape in time in any case) hoping to slow you down. But I couldn’t really get set up anywhere else and only held Caucasus and Volgograd for a turn or two. Bad dice didn’t help, but again, not sure my situation would have vastly improved if I was hitting around average. So I have to think about that again and whether I should have played that differently.

Again, thanks for the game, you are a great opponent to play against.

Thanks. It was a lot of fun! Looking forward to a rematch down the road (although not just yet for me)

[JDOW]

@farmboy said in JDOW (X) vs farmboy (L+12) BM3:

I’m forgetting the specifics but I think your naval base and factory in Malaya that your fleet could retreat to influenced my thinking. Because of that, I thought one choice you had was to attack my fleet and retreat, building 3 carriers and possibly an airbase for insurance. I’d have to damage carriers in the battle not knowing how far you would take the attack and the following turn, I would have to retreat my damaged fleet and set up blockers to keep your now repaired fleet from wiping me out. That was risky enough that I didn’t think you would do it, but I thought it may be less risky than a straight up attack on the fleet. So I wanted to give you a lot of other targets.

Good point, I did not even consider such a hit and run. If this battle goes South, Japan is f**ked and I did not want to risk that so I didn’t look deeply into that option.

But as I said, playing Allies is tough and I am not sure if I had any chance if I played myself as Allies. Axis is just too strong and in order to win, Allies need one of the 2:

1. A major blunder by Axis
2. Give them a BIG BIG bait that is too good to resist but that has the potential to go South, so they bite and it goes South.

But regarding 2: I observed games, where the Allies did that and the Axis took the bait but the dice did not punish it.
Wheatbeer once played gamerman. On paper, gamer was supposed to win this game in 95% of the cases. But what just took bait after bait, it all went well and out of sudden there was nothing what the Allies could do.

But I really think that this is inevitable when playing Allies. At some point, you need to make a bold move and put the game into MARTI’s hands. Otherwise, Axis will always be one step ahead.