2015 League Post Game Results Here

Intercepting rules, or Larry’s late decision to make SBR damage +2?

Instead of refusing to play against the strategy, I would suggest something like agreeing to a house rule with your opponents that there is no +2 to SBR damage rolls, if it’s the SBR damage that you find objectionable.

no, i don’t mind the +2 so much as the fact that bombers dog fight against fighters at the same roll of 1…i think intercepting fighters should defend at 2, and tac bombers should probably also participate, but perhaps at 1. a fighter’s specialty is defending the home skies, so how can it be rolling equivalent to a bomber’s role?

@Gamerman01:

Intercepting rules, or Larry’s late decision to make SBR damage +2?

Instead of refusing to play against the strategy, I would suggest something like agreeing to a house rule with your opponents that there is no +2 to SBR damage rolls, if it’s the SBR damage that you find objectionable.

also, i think someone mentioned this somewhere in another thread, but would be good to neutralize the +2 bonus damage if there are any interceptors. that’d be a big help as well.

@axis-dominion:

no, i don’t mind the +2 so much as the fact that bombers dog fight against fighters at the same roll of 1…i think intercepting fighters should defend at 2, and tac bombers should probably also participate, but perhaps at 1. a fighter’s specialty is defending the home skies, so how can it be rolling equivalent to a bomber’s role?

@Gamerman01:

Intercepting rules, or Larry’s late decision to make SBR damage +2?

Instead of refusing to play against the strategy, I would suggest something like agreeing to a house rule with your opponents that there is no +2 to SBR damage rolls, if it’s the SBR damage that you find objectionable.

I can tell you this - in AA50 the fighters DID intercept on a 2.  Larry (or whatever rulemaker) made a conscious decision to change it to 1 in G40.  There must have been a reason.

@Gamerman01:

I can tell you this - in AA50 the fighters DID intercept on a 2.  Larry (or whatever rulemaker) made a conscious decision to change it to 1 in G40.  There must have been a reason.

probably because they play tested the game with the same people over and over and they were all scared of losing their bombers.

Not to mention that for a long time factories in capitols had unlimited production.  I don’t recall exactly when that changed.  But the current damage rule and the 10 production limit can put the USSR and UK in a real bind.

They should have made Novosibirsk a 2 IPC territory with a Mmic on it. That would help a lot.

AA50 introduced production and damage limits.

But the combination of reducing interceptors to a 1 and adding a +2 damage to strat bombers was probably a bit much

I am a fan of the +2 damage especially because then if a strat bomber gets by the AA fire, it will have a 100% chance of disabling a base.  But a +1 I think is sufficient because then it’s still 83%.

Maybe they were compensating for the fact that there is ALWAYS AA fire in G40, whereas in AA50 there wouldn’t be any sometimes - especially for a newly built complex with no AA yet.

But before AA50 and damage limits, SBR bombed the money right out of your bank account.  That would have put UK or USSR, the powers you mentioned, in a much worse bind.  Potentially zero money to spend, ever, if you had enough bombers.

I honestly don’t understand why everyone seems to want to focus on SBR.  SBR is trivial to block.  Just put 3 or 4 Fighters there.  If the bomber player sends more than 3 or 4, then he’s exposing them to AA for no good reason.

Neither Russia nor England have any trouble doing this.

No, the issue with Bombers in German hands is threat projection.  But I’m still not convinced the strategy is unbeatable.  If it was , why did it take so many years to catch on?  It’s just forcing the Allies to play differently, is all.

@Shin:

No, the issue with Bombers in German hands is threat projection.  But I’m still not convinced the strategy is unbeatable.  If it was , why did it take so many years to catch on?  It’s just forcing the Allies to play differently, is all.

Yes the issue is threat projection.  SBR is just one of the many threats that the bomber stack presents.  It’s waaaay harder to play against this than any other axis strategy I have seen.

@Shin:

I honestly don’t understand why everyone seems to want to focus on SBR.  SBR is trivial to block.  Just put 3 or 4 Fighters there.  If the bomber player sends more than 3 or 4, then he’s exposing them to AA for no good reason.

Neither Russia nor England have any trouble doing this.

No, the issue with Bombers in German hands is threat projection.  But I’m still not convinced the strategy is unbeatable.  If it was , why did it take so many years to catch on?  It’s just forcing the Allies to play differently, is all.

Correct.

i never said it is unbeatable, but that no one (as far as i know) has an answer. many have proposed ideas, and some think they have the answer but haven’t had the chance to play against it. what i do know is that between bmnielsen and dizznee (so far the only two in the league that i know of who use it) remain unbeaten with the strategy. gamer is playing against it and looks like he has a good chance, but it’s definitely challenging him hard

so what i’d like to see then is a match between bold and bmnielsen!

@axis-dominion:

i never said it is unbeatable, but that no one (as far as i know) has an answer. many have proposed ideas, and some think they have the answer but haven’t had the chance to play against it. what i do know is that between bmnielsen and dizznee (so far the only two in the league that i know of who use it) remain unbeaten with the strategy. gamer is playing against it and looks like he has a good chance, but it’s definitely challenging him hard

so what i’d like to see then is a match between bold and bmnielsen!

bmnielson and i have played last year - can’t remember the result.  i am up for it, sure.

@Shin:

SBR is trivial to block.  Just put 3 or 4 Fighters there.  If the bomber player sends more than 3 or 4, then he’s exposing them to AA for no good reason.

Attackers just send escort fighters which are not subject to facility anti-air fire (the Axis powers start with plenty if fighters). Attackers just need to make sure they have enough fighters that any dogfight casualties will be their escorts and not bombers. Attackers don’t need to have more planes than the defender to get a good economic exchange for the overall SBR run.

Example:
Germans attack with 2 fighters, 4 strategic bombers
Soviets defend with 12 fighters

Dogfight net average: -10 for Germany
SBR aa/damage net average: -17 for the Soviets

Even with double the planes, the defender will experience a net IPC loss on average.

Scratch that, my math is off. I was using low luck numbers. Factoring in the pure luck possibility of losing 2 or more strats to aa, such an SBR attack has a net IPC average close to 0.

But still, that requires the defender to station double the attacking number of planes to achieve.

So if the problem is the threat from German bombers exploiting all the possibilities they get from being stationed at the West Germany airbase, and if SBR is so effective, then the answer to the problem should be to leave the SBR rules as they are and give the allies a chance to effectively use SBR to knock that airbase out of commission and thereby reduce the threat.  The way to do this is to make facility repairs come effective at the start of noncombat movement phase instead of combat phase.

This tiny tweak should have negligible effect on the game, except when the axis do the bomber thing, and in those games the allies would now have the option of doing their own bomber thing to counter it.

This change does not require any changes to triplea; both sides just have to agree at the start of the game not to use the +1 range from bases for combat movements when the base has 3 or more damages.

@Shin:

I honestly don’t understand why everyone seems to want to focus on SBR.  SBR is trivial to block.  Just put 3 or 4 Fighters there.  If the bomber player sends more than 3 or 4, then he’s exposing them to AA for no good reason.

Neither Russia nor England have any trouble doing this.

No, the issue with Bombers in German hands is threat projection.  But I’m still not convinced the strategy is unbeatable.  If it was , why did it take so many years to catch on?  It’s just forcing the Allies to play differently, is all.

I think Shin Ji is probably right.  He played that tactic against me, and it was a very close game. I don’t think the bombers by themselves won it for him. The bombers definitely changed up how the allies had to respond, but the game more turned on the unrelated fact that UK got diced at Taranto and Italy captured Cairo It1, meaning the fall of Moscow was the end.

The allies were only a turn or 2 away from either recapturing Cairo or boosting up Moscow.

I am very much in support of Variance’s HR as a solution to this.  It’s not overly extreme, it doesn’t affect the game in far-reaching ways, and it add options that weren’t really there before.  Like bombing the Gib naval base.  Pointless to stop a British fleet before, but now the Brits will need to defend against this.

bmnielsen only played people once and the best (ranked) player he beat was me so there is still hope.
I felt overwhelmed, but a big part of this was because I wasn´t prepared for all-bmb strategy.
I don´t think it is unbeatable….otherwise everybody would be using it. don´t see any reason to tweak the game just because bmnielsen got everybody running scared  :wink:

Alright dudes, I don’t mind some discussion in the game results thread, but I think we’ve reached the point where I want to request that the discussion about too many German bombers be taken elsewhere - thanks

not everyone uses it because it doesn’t suit everyone’s style of play. bmnielsen is particularly good with this strategy because he loves to do massive air blitzing, wiping out small to medium stacks of units and not afraid to lose a couple bombers here and there. not everyone is comfortable trading off planes for inf, for example. he takes those risks and you know what? he’s generally been very lucky with them. i’m sometimes astounded at how lucky he gets in fact. for example, in the loss i just posted, he struck at my small force in morocco of 4 inf and 2 bombers, and he wiped it all out without a single loss. now that’s very frustrating to lose 6 units like that without any compensation whatsoever. they reach everywhere and nothing is safe for the allies  :lol:

also, it’s not just because of this strategy that i don’t like the intercepting rules…i really think they’re problematic regardless of which strategy is employed. they’re problematic and also just not very realistic (i realize many aspects of the game are not historical or realistic, but still we should strive to refine the rules to be as accurate as possible without loss of balance and fun gameplay)

@Bjergmose:

bmnielsen only played people once and the best (ranked) player he beat was me so there is still hope.
I felt overwhelmed, but a big part of this was because I wasn�t prepared for all-bmb strategy.
I don�t think it is unbeatable….otherwise everybody would be using it. don�t see any reason to tweak the game just because bmnielsen got everybody running scared� :wink: