@Hobbes:
Guys, please stop treating me like I’m the guru of AA42 or something. :)
No. :-D
I watched the game, and have comments!
The way I figured it, Granada would eventually make some kind of mistake somewhere, and Hobbes would drive a truck through the opening. I don’t know why Granada sometimes does silly stuff, but he does.
Hobbes, though, is like a relentless machine. He might make a small error now and then, but I never see anything that I consider to be glaring errors like I do in other players’ games.
Comments on stuff I would have done differently -
Both Russia and UK had a glaring lack of offensive power around round 12. I haven’t viewed the game history to see exactly why that was, but it was quite noticeable, particularly given UK"s final few turns.
Specifically, I think it’s fine to have a defensive stack of UK infantry if you’ve prevented Germany from controlling Africa (restricting its income), and are rolling up its territory in Europe. If I remember right, Germany was out of Africa. But UK could not roll up Germany. Once UK got close, Germany could break a large UK stack with its combined infantry, tanks, and air; neither US or Russia were in a position to reinforce. At one key point in the game, I thought it would be best to move UK’s Karelia stack to Archangel, where it could reinforce Moscow next turn. Instead, it was moved to Norway. At least, I hope I remember that all correctly.
At one point, UK and US had a stack on Ukraine, with 2 German infantry on Caucasus, and a stack of German tanks on Balkans. Had I been playing, I would probably have done the flashy thing and attacked the Ukraine stack, retreating all to Caucasus. (This would have made any Allied attack on Japan-held Caucasus very costly, considering the board situation; since the Allied Ukraine stack couldn’t hit Caucasus easily, they might have had to go through West Russia, allowing Japanese and Germany to do a two-hit strike to Moscow.
However, Hobbes did NOT do the flashy “tank teleport” trick. I haven’t had time to consider it yet, but I think that if the German tanks had ended up in Caucasus, that it might not only have given the Axis a quick shot on Moscow, it might also have opened the door up to the Allies moving to Eastern Europe in force while cutting off the German tanks from attacking the stack, allowing Allied pressure of Berlin. Or it could be that the Allies would have been able to use their stack to reclaim Moscow. I’ll look at it again sometime. Probably the former is true to some degree; I’m unsure as to whether the latter would also be the case.
That’s probably the big difference between Hobbes’ gameplay and mine. I’ll look for an easy cheap flashy victory, Hobbes just sits there and grinds you into paste.
Anyways, Hobbes ended up killing the Allied stack instead of just strafing it, limiting the Allies options. Japan took Moscow soon after, with 16 Jap tanks plus air surviving. Berlin was still strong, and the Allies didn’t have a goodly stack in Europe, so that was game.
Now for Bunniez’ Buncha Theoretical Stuff! It’s the new special here on the forums . . . hosted by yours truly.
I mentioned a G1 Ukraine stack a while ago as one of the possible responses to the R1 2 fighter attack on Norway as described by Granada. The typical Russian game revolves around control of West Russia, trading Karelia, Belorussia, and Ukraine. It’s my opinion that a German Ukraine stack slashes Russia’s power. Russia is permanently denied the 3 IPCs from Ukraine, and with its stack locked to Caucasus, it cannot maintain control of West Russia. Meanwhile German reinforcements at Eastern Europe can trade Karelia, and without Russians at either Karelia or West Russia to hit Belorussia, Germany locks in that income too. So theoretically that puts the Germans up at 5 IPC per turn, and Russia down 5 IPCs per turn.
This seems pretty trivial. Oo, Germany can afford one more fighter after two turns! But it is NOT a trivial difference. A single unit can mean the difference between a 60% battle (reasonable but risky) and a 80% battle (a pretty good shot). Once you consider that the Germans have perhaps 2 more units a turn, and the Russians 2 less a turn, it becomes VERY nasty very quickly. The Ukraine stack alone is MUCH nastier than the German Karelia stack. The German Karelia stack only swings 2, not 5.
That’s one of the big pluses to Russia hitting Ukraine on R1. If Russia takes Ukraine, Germany can’t land fighters on it. If Germany can’t land fighters on Ukraine to help defend it, Russia can probably retake Ukraine, and so on and so forth.
