"Finished" my first game of Global 40


  • 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!


  • 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.


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


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


  • I could be a viable strategy. I know in the old AA Europe game when the US player gets hamstrung in the Atlantic by German subs they will buy bombers to have an economic impact on the Germans. Or at least force the Germans to keep back their fighters from the Russian front with the constant threat of a SBR.


  • The only power who gets anything out of a bomber strategy is usually the US.  Plus, the new Heavy Bombers tech is a lame washout.


  • He said he got the bomber tech. Maybe he thought it would be beneficial to have all the bombers so he could use the tech he had.


  • I think the tech development is waaay too random.


  • @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.


  • 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?

  • Customizer

    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.

  • Customizer

    @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?

    Hey Wild Bill, where are you getting these new setups for Pacific in the Global game – 14 air unit reduction, inf changes in Asia, NB on NS Wales, 1 transport to India?  The only setup changes in the rulebook are 6 infantry each on 3 different Soviet territories and 1 ANZAC infantry in Egypt.  I see nothing about a Naval Base in NSW or a Transport for India.  What is this “14 air unit reduction”?  Does that mean there are 14 planes taken out of the Pacific setup?  Please explain.


  • He is probably talking about the proposed rules changes that Larry is having people test out to see if they can balance P40.

  • Customizer

    I still don’t get it.  Do they think that Japan is too strong?


  • Yeah, most people feel (and it has been proven) that if you do a J1 attack and focus in India that you can win the game like 90% of the time. The only thing that can save the allies are lucky dice or several Japanese blunders. Because of this people were wanting to tone down Japan’s power to start the game so people wouldn’t always do a J1 attack. That way the game      would be more varied and not so straight-forward.


  • @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.


  • I think you did heavy bombers wrong. You can’t get 2 hits with them. You roll 2 dice and pick the best result, so heavy bombers have a 1/9 chance of missing in stead of 1/3


  • 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.

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