In defense of total annihilation victory rules to balance OOB setup
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Game 169 (G42) lasted 3 sessions. I was the Axis, knew I was beat after session 1. Still, we wanted to play it out till turn 9–total annihiliation right?
Italy hadn’t done anything but repair for 5 turns. Germany failed to take Moscow. UK took Turkey and USA blew up all my Axis nodes on the shores of the Black Sea.
You guys inspired me to play on getting my butt kicked for two more evenings. I even blew up an 24 hit allied fleet–but had to take 3 follow-ups. 2 subs lived.
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@WILD:
The OOB rules have the axis and allies playing two different games IMO. The Axis play for a VC win, and the Allies are playing the longer annihilation game (must take all 3 axis capitals, that’s going to take a while lol). That’s why the allies rarely win OOB, and a bid is often used. Seems to me that the bids don’t necessarily allow the allies to win in the short term, but rather we are placing units on the board to stop the axis from achieving their victory in the first 10 rounds. This gives the allies time to where they can over power the axis at some point (forcing an annihilation game).
Well, in my experience when you have a group of players who are new to 1940 the Allies have the advantage in a OOB game.
Once players get more experienced they realize the Axis have to go on a singular focus plan of attack…J1, Calcutta Crush, All in on Moscow, so and so forth. The Axis cannot win the game with a balanced approach and take their time.
Thus as we move on and experienced players are at the table the Allies need a bid to stop these singular focused attacks and give them a chance to win.
Now at the end of the day around turn 8-12 if the Axis have not achieved their victory conditions the Allies are on the move…the game is basically over. Now, it is up to the players, specifically the Axis if they want to drag it out to Turn 29 for the Allies to win a total victory.
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Indeed, the key to Axis victory is concentrated determined attack. The same applies to World War II itself. The Axis got spread too thin. However, as we experience with alternate victory conditions, strategies, and setups, we have found it to be a lot mor fun and fair to try unorthodox methods and massive assaults across a wide front. With the Allies, fighting out losing battles like Leningrad can be interesting as well even as a legitimate way of slowing down the enemy. There is an element of fun and variety and even balance when players try different routes and get the dice rolling. Too many players are afraid to defend with unfavorable odds because the Axis are always attacking with huge force.
In essence, yes, suboptimal Axis play is more preferable in the gaming point of view.
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The main allied strategies still hold up. The one that becomes more dominant would be shuffling 20 units a round into Spain from USA… But even this has its flaws.
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