Why Nine victory cities

@Zhukov44:

The problem is game imbalance makes it tough to find people who will agree to play Allies in online play.  A 1 inf bid to Persia or to the Soviets would be nice for balance here.

One infantry bid?  Wouldn’t that make this the most closely balanced A&A game ever?

I disagree with your analysis–from what it sounds like, UK1 was played quite well.  Ignoring Japan for a few rounds is not a problem.  As far as I can tell, the main factors contributing to Allied loss were
—not contesting Africa (big one!)
—losing the British fleet (carelessness + your luck)
—Panicking on the USA west coast–your landing in Canada could have been handled easily

Sounds like there was solid Russian play all the way through, and mostly sound Allied play, but with the aforementioned oversights.  If he had shut you out of Africa and not had to rebuild the USA fleet, I’ll bet Germany would have been about ready to collapse by the time Moscow fell.  Generally the Allies can win if Berlin falls even a round or two after Moscow.  I don’t think the idea of letting Japan go for a while and going full bore against Germany is wrong as a big picture approach, it just sounds like a couple of the details were botched.

9 is all that you really need to know who won in A&AR. Very rarely will someone still have a chance if a side holds 9 after the USA turn and that is usually when one side made some silly mistake. But to be absolutely sure, 10 would be needed.

I play with 9 becuase that’s all all I really think is needed. I play at GTO so the game will end when I have the 9th, whether my opponent wants it over or not. It keeps track of stats and some will drag their loss out to the bitter end. If I played with 10, then many games would drag out for no reason, even though it’s clear the game is over.

I always quit if i’m sure I lost. The ones that don’t, I feel are mini-stallers. Even in a 9 vic game, some will stack that 9th vic, just to prolong the end. A waste of time, imo. I refuse to ever play with 8. That is not a game based on conquering the other side and it isn’t that hard for the axis to get 8 and win, even though the game is far from over.

Jet Fighters neutralize the allied annoying tactic of putting AA Guns all over the place because your fighters are immune.

And I meant 10 IPC for Russia.  6 from the rocket attack on Moscow and 4 from the rocket attack on Caucasus. (Remember you can only fire one rocket to each industrial complex per turn.)  Add in a bomber to get the two point conversion on Russia for 12 though. WEG

Yea, heavy bombers have been completely castrated.  I wouldnt turn them down if they were free, but I wouldnt pay for them either.

@johnny:

Is it a good strategy to try and get small pieces to build up an economy or to try and take out victory cities first?

Is it a turn limit game and/or short time limit game?
If so, economy is not as significant, especially as the game gets toward the end.
In a time limit game, economy is focused entirely on “do I have enough IPC to build what I need to take the VCs?”

If it is a death match with all the time in the world, the economy becomes more important.
In the death match, if I can stalemate the VC situation while getting a leg up on the economy, I will win.  In this kind of game the 19 IPC that UK has scattered through Africa, Asia and the Pacific gets valuable.  The Allies are not well positioned to get units into these areas and even if they try to build a factory in the southern hemisphere it is either on the front lines or severely limited by unit count.  India and Sinkiang are classic gambits.  Australia, Union of South Africa or Brazil are less obvious choices with pros and cons…

And just FYI…

In Second Edition by Milton Bradley and in the old Hasbro CD (3rd Ed.), control of 2 Allied capitals by the Axis was a defined Axis victory.

Each side has an equal number of VC’s.  If you add an Allied one, you add an Axis one, otherwise the extra VC is an Allied advantage.

Good luck with the tourney man!