Alpha 3 Setup Map

@Young: Also, scatter 1 infantry in each territory when pulling back as it prevents blitzing and forces them to earn every mile, confront his stack with yours to early, or leave most of your infantry where it can be reached. Let me add that not every zone that the enemy can reach needs an INF as a blocker. In certain places (in case there aren’t a LOT of german tanks), leaving certain territories open is ok, trying to single out some tanks and finishing them off with some INF + air force. Of course not every German will take the baitl.

Correct.  However, the “home territories” NO will most likely be changed to 10 IPCs.

I am in the middle of game, round 4 America’s turn.  I took several pictures of the board that I could email you if you would like.  I could then give you the exact chip stacks around Russia since it is kind of hard to tell.  The situation is Germany has taken and hold Ukraine with about 15 inf, 2 art, 8 mech, 7 tanks. Russia has 17 inf in Bryansk with more in Russia.  The Luftwaf is all but gone, Italy is almost totally out of Africa and only has 1 trans and 1 DD on the board.  Japan has wiped out China and is poised to enter Russia, Russia inf are in Manchuria and there are 22 Brit inf in India with 2 art.  America has a small naval off Gibraltor and a large navy off the coast of Caroline islands (controlled by Japan) opposite the IJN in the Phillipeans SZ. If you are interested shoot me an email, but I couldn’t get them to you until Sunday, since I am leaving town for the rest of the week.

same

theRocmonster, You are correct that if Germany builds a carrier, destroyer and submarine on G1 and brings in some planes to scramble from Western Germany it is very hard for the British navy to drive them from the sea on UK1. The German assault on England via Sea Lion on G3 is not automatic. They have to successfully complete two strategic bombing raids and repel the British navy on Uk1 with little or no loss to their air force. But you are right, if they do, they only face 16 Infantry (on average), 1 Artillery, 6 Fighters (assuming they lost none in interceptor duty), 1 Tactical Bomber, 1 Bomber, and 4 Anti-Aircraft Guns. The Germans will bring 22 ground troops, 5 Fighters, 5 Tactical Bombers and 2 Strategic Bombers. Even with the Anti-Aircraft Guns the Germans should roll over the British. But I don’t see any way to stop Sea Lion. Unless the game designer intended for Sea Lion to be a weak strategy because of the removal of the German NO for London and the new rule allowing Russia to invade if London falls. I just have not played any games where London fell under the new rules so I don’t know how the Russian offensive strategy will play out vs Germany and the Balkans on R3. As soon as I do, I will let you know.

Thanks for the post, Frank.  Yep, you pretty much summed up a few of the many reasons why OOB is fatally flawed, and you have the 30-35 games to back it up. I get the feeling from my few games of Alpha2 so far (not going too crazy playing it - just a couple games at a time because it will probably be changed anyway) that the Allies still have a significant advantage in Alpha2.  But I have to admit none of the games have lasted even more than a few rounds (with the Axis getting obliterated each time) so maybe those oil field NO’s could really come into play sometimes I suppose. To me, Russia and USA have suffocating power (Russia is very deep, and as Larry himself acknowledged - he wondered if it was 1 territory too deep), and the UK can be very powerful as well.

Slacker is right, yeah its not what we all expected but its still a great game and you should be happy with Mr. Harris taking his time to help improve the game experience. yeah its a pain to check the updates but its not all that bad. i still like both the 1940 games and the way my gaming group plays, we don’t think the OOB is totally unbalanced. yeah it needed a little work but not that much. theirs my 2 cents