Unpredictable Crap-Shoot

That makes for a better game.

What you don’t want is eggheads with some sure fire strategy destroying the games re-playability. How would you like it if an exact course of action could be employed. Would that make you like playing it more or would it get real boring really quick?

Even though I agree with your views on the battles Garg, I still think the game is skewed enough in the favor of the Allies that it isn’t all that unpredictable, at least in terms of who wins (how you get there could be pretty wild)

Upgrades for fighters would definitely help make air superiority feel more than a toss up, but you can always buy more planes.

Otherwise, I haven’t felt that the luck factor is any bigger than it needs to be to make it a game. If you knew that the next big attack was going to succeed before rolling for the chance factor where would the fun be?

Randomness is totally unaffected if a hit happens on a 2-, 3- or 4 unit.
You always have a certain chance - that’s it.
The game is as unpredictable or predictable as all previous axis games in terms of the rolls.

I have actually found quite the opposite. The majority of hits are happening on ‘3’ in a lot of these fights.

Because of the slow movement of assaulting troops, the defender has plenty of time to build a large defensive stack, of which the aggressor will be sure to meet with a large amount as well.

The smaller skirmish fights are absolutely a total crapshoot most times but when you start to get megastacks of 50-70 infantry the battle results really start to gravitate toward the average results almost every time, with variations if about ±5 at most. Rolling 60 dice? You should expect 25-35 hits almost every time.

This is the part of the game where I think overarching strategy and planning are what are going to determine the outcome of the game. You know the enemy is going to inflict X amount of casualties, how to maneuver, prepare, and deal with it and the probable worst-case battle scenarios.

I mean if the other guy defends with 30 troops and gets 25 hits, that can and will happen if you play Axis & Allies enough, but it won’t happen often enough to influence the result of every game. If one aberrant fight decides the entire game for you then either A) Your strategy shouldn’t have hinged on the luck of the dice if one battle decided the fate of the world, B) You were in a position of desperation anyway and had to bet it all on black (you always bet on black, I’m told) or C) It just wasn’t meant to be that day (this is like failing to take France as Germany in Global 1940 that 1% of the time).

There is a reason people play low-luck games, but I feel like that certainly takes some of the mystery out of the game. Part of the “skill” in Axis & Allies isn’t how lucky you are at rolling dice, it’s how you cope with the bad luck when it happens.