Thank you very much Panther. This clarifies the question.
Turn one attacks that must not fail
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I have played many games in my life, and many times, I’m the one with the advantage. I’m the oldest of my friendset and the owner of almost all the games. I’m the GM or rules-explainer. My opponents then have to fight uphill against me for 3-4 more hours, fruitlessly, sometimes for YEARS.
It seems really unfair then that when I take a knock, or bad luck, or a “worst” outcome, that I would just give up, ever.
I’ve had the advantage so many times, I’ve just realized that its much more fun and more fair for me to play out a losing game. Winning is fun, but it would hypocritical not to let other people enjoy the advantage that experience usually offered me first.
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If one of these attacks goes badly, there are undoubtedly consequences. The consequences are typically very bad unless due to bad luck your opponent is not able to capitalize on it. That’s “fog of war” type stuff – the dice represent that. Low luck players don’t want any uncertainty, which IMO is not realistic.
Can you win after one of these attacks fails? With equal levels of play and no more surprises, it will be extremely difficult – you really need some kind of equalizer to have a decent hope of winning following failure in one of these battles. The dice are your realistic hope for that equalizer. It is possible to win however – as someone said, upping your risk tolerance helps equalize.
Can it be fun to still play if you don’t win? Absolutely.
Can you learn things from continuing in these situations? Absolutely. Every game teaches us something, and we learn more from unusual situations than the usual ones.
Many folks find that they want a serious challenge on both sides of the board or the game is not rewarding. Frankly I find it more rewarding if I win because I played better and not because the dice just hosed my opponent’s properly-planned major attacks. I would rather the dice play a major factor late in the game as opposed to early. Chalk it up to personal preference.
Marsh
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C1 on Yunnan & UK1 on SZ96 - Yes. In both cases, particularly the first too much damage is done.
J1 on Yunnan - no. Not at all. Not a little bit. What are you smoking?
G1 on SZ110? Without bringing in the BB, if the UK scrambles you would expect to lose 3+ planes. Strange comment.
G1 Paris? Perhaps. I’m not so sure about this one. If you take out 1inf 1art 1arm it becomes about 97%. Perhaps if you lost that you would be looking a bit poorly. -
RE sea zone 110, if you bring the BB and two subs and still lose three planes, Germany is hosed IMO.
Re J1 Yunnan attack, if this fails you are not taking India by land. It’s a major setback. Game loser? Only if you were planning to take India to win.
G1 Paris you can win the battle but the attack can still be considered to have failed if the French defense got into your tanks. Good luck taking Moscow quickly if that happens.
Marsh
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Well im one of those LL players and i dont mind the uncertainty, but i dont want the extremes.
I would love to have a system that is more random the Low-Luck currently is but that guarantees that your dicerolles are in the 50% part of the bellcurve.I’m there with you on that desire, but frankly that also is not realistic. Weird stuff happens in combat, and those extreme results on the dice account for that possibility. It is odd how in every game we see at least one result that is 1% or less likely.
Marsh
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@Marshmallow:
Re J1 Yunnan attack, if this fails you are not taking India by land. It’s a major setback. Game loser? Only if you were planning to take India to win.
I will not lose a plane to take the territory and suffer no real ill effects if that happens, other than not getting to kill a couple more Chinese J2/C1. What is the problem you are talking about? If you do lose planes and still withdraw?
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My issue with LL is that it changes the game balance in ways I don’t completely understand, particularly for small, air supported battles.
For example: there are 3 infantry are in a province. I know I can send just 2 units and sufficient aircraft to land 3 hits, always be successful and always take the province. Depending how important both winning and taking the province was, without low luck I might have to send 3 or 4 units. This will be especially problematic in amphibious assaults, because knowing I only need to send one transport can make a huge difference.
I think this will further tilt the game into Axis hands. Germany and Japan both have large starting air forces, take part in many small battles, and guaranteed outcomes will free up Japanese transports for other tasks. Maybe it’d even out elsewhere, but I’m just not sure what all the ripple effects will be.
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I will not lose a plane to take the territory and suffer no real ill effects if that happens, other than not getting to kill a couple more Chinese J2/C1. What is the problem you are talking about? If you do lose planes and still withdraw?
Yeah, losing the plane would be a bad call. But if China gets four hits on defense, you lose four ground units and do not take the territory.
You can still take India, but you have to do it by sea, and chances are you will not be getting any overland units to help. That means that India will be biting hard into your air force to take it.
China holding Yunnan is a bad beat for Japan.
Marsh
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If you build the MiC in FiC, or Malaya, or the naval base on Yunnan, more reserves can be brought up by J3, easily.
Its just another way of saying that if China gets 20th% lucky and gets 6 extra dollars C1 rather than dying by J4, Japan quits because the road wasn’t standard level easy.
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I agree with you that it’s not the end of Japan’s game if the Yunnan attack fails. However, I still maintain that it delays you from taking India by a turn if UK Pacific and China are run properly. Losing that turn is very costly for Japan.
That being the case, Japan may be planning to not capture India until late in the game for some reason, so you may just not care…
Marsh
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I understand the feeling of being screwed after a bad dice role. But does it not reflect what happened in the real battles? Not some, but quite a few war changers happened against all odds! Just one example is the battle of midway where Japan traded 3 carriers for 1 US carrier. I can imagine Japanese admiral blame an other: that is why you need to play low luck!
In my opinion you should be able to handle some unexpected outcome. For me that is part of the game. Even if that causes to loose in some cases. Some other time you have more luck and you win. Nothing in this world is 100% based on skill!!!
I do agree that a bad first round has a big influence on the rest of the game. Much bigger than any other round! But that is part of the dynamics of the game! -
:-D The Imperial Japanese Navy actually lost or ‘traded’ 4 aircraft carriers (Akagi-Kaga-Soryu-Hiryu) to only 1 aircraft carrier for the United States Navy (Yorktown). FYI!
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:-D The Imperial Japanese Navy actually lost or ‘traded’ 4 aircraft carriers (Akagi-Kaga-Soryu-Hiryu) to only 1 aircraft carrier for the United States Navy (Yorktown). FYI!
Quite. And in a 4 on 3 battle. Although the USN was reading the Japanese code and knew they were coming. They also successfully timed the attack to when a chunk of the Japanese planes where in the air on the return journey from ground pounding Midway Is.
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They didn’t have many planes on Midway AIUI and some of them were level bombers - not much good against CVs.
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Hmm, according to wiki, it was 127 land based aircraft and 233 carrier based aircraft on the US side vs a few more carrier based aircraft on the Japanese side. Looks the US carriers were also carrying more planes per CV.
I don’t remember the land based planes making much difference though.
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Yep. I think that combat (and its subsequent depiction in movies) partially inspired the Trench Run in Star Wars. Most of the stuff in Star Wars space battle and theming seems inspired by WW2…
so we just need some special house Midway rules;
CAP Interdiction; if you attack with at least 2 tactical bombers without a fighter of your own, and the defender has at least one fighter, roll the bombers separately. If the first bomber misses, roll for the defensive fighter. If the fighter hits, remove one of the tactical bombers; the other hits the Carrier of your choice, automatically.
j/k
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At work, don’t have time to read the whole thread right now but I had a thought -
Not tested, not well thought out mind you, just a thought: What if you strafe Paris with Germany and let Italy clean up on purpose? Might be a good way to let the Italians rebuild some warships after a Taranto meanwhile, if you strafe decently, Germany should be able to save the 19 IPC worth of units, maybe.
Just thinking…as I said, I really didn’t think about it overly hard, I was just pondering the option, which occurred after the OP mentioned it was 100% necessary to win with Germany round 1.
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If your German attack fails, leaving only the French fighter, then Italy has at best a 75% chance of taking the territory if the UK lands everything it can get there. If France has more than a fighter there (exactly what depends on your strafe and the dice), that chance goes down considerably.
Marsh
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If England lands everything there, I would almost prefer not taking Paris with Germany round 1!! This only makes strafing it better, in my opinion, because now you have a completely neutered England who won’t be any kind of threat to Europe - and no pesky aircraft racing to Moscow to help defend there.
Or am I missing something? (not that I am looking at the map right now.)
Anyone have numbers on what the likely result would be of a strafe? Assuming Fighter, armor, artillery but I don’t remember exactly what was on Paris round 1. Germany I would suspect would keep all armor and artillery that were used, maybe some of the infantry/maybe not.
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Ms. Jennifer,
What you propose is how you execute the Italy Strong Strategy. Germany attacks first, killing almost everything, then Italy takes it, along with a heap of money, lots of income and all new possibilities for Italian Rage.
I do see what you are saying about intervening with UK between the Axis turns. The Italians can attack with 2 inf, 2 art, 1 armor, 2 fighters, 1 SB. Since you can bring a crazy amount of fighters (4, plus 1 Tac) to defend the French, 6 planes (also with an SB as a cas) might be an effective defense against that Italian attack.
This happened to me in a live game, and I chose not to intervene in Paris. This could have been because I didn’t see how many planes I could really bring by committing everything. Also, I may have perceived that even with the 6 ripping fighters, the Italians should probably attack anyway, just to inflict more casualties.
If UK does this, they cannot
Stop a G2 sealion
Taranto
Tobruk
Take Somalia without risk
Attack German subs with planes on UK1So, overall, I’m thinking that this attack plan creates some risks for the Axis than it appeared to in live play. The strafe isn’t hard to execute, but leaving only a single fighter might be. I foolishly believed that somehow Paris was going to live until its turn.
If you do stack the planes, and somehow you prevent Paris from being taken, the French can bring in a bunch of stuff on their turn, and buy (???). Still, at that point, Germany will annihilate everything a turn later than usual, taking the entire UK airforce with it. It’s wasted an entire Axis turn on a failed gambit, but they still killed everything you had. This attrition can work in the Allies favor…
Overall however, the strategy is kinda flawed as well. If you make Italy rage, and if UK doesn’t commit to the defense, it can kill your fleet and forces in Africa. Then, you begin the game with a minor power having a ton of money that it might like to spend on strategic assets (ie buying a new fleet) but we’ve seen again and again that no matter how much Italy builds up in the Med, it isn’t going to be adequate after US5. Italy will grab the oil and north Africa, but German is permanently neutered by the fact it never got a threshold income to buy a stack of tanks or arty with, and so killing Moscow early is off the table.
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