Poll on A&A-Revised: What are the most important battles in round 1?


  • What`s your experience?


  • Egypt and China have to be the 2 biggies.  If one or both of those fail, or go far worse than expected, it puts the Axis in a MASSIVE hole to start, a hole they are not likely to dig out of.

    Failing in Egypt means the German Med Fleet is toast, and African income is lost to Germany for the remainider of the game in all likelyhood, and it puts every single German territory at immediate risk of attack instead of places like Balkans and Southern being “safe” and able to be only thinly manned to allow bulking up of defensive and offesnive forces elsewhere.  Germany simply will have too many territories at risk to not have one or more weak spots for teh Allies to exploit.

    Failling in China will take 2-3 turns for Japan to re-group and re-position to go after again, and a US IC in Sinkiang being built if China fails will play total havoc with Japan advances in Asia, also killing Japan income.

  • 2007 AAR League

    Attack FIC with UK


  • @ncscswitch:

    Egypt and China have to be the 2 biggies.  If one or both of those fail, or go far worse than expected, it puts the Axis in a MASSIVE hole to start, a hole they are not likely to dig out of.

    Failling in China will take 2-3 turns for Japan to re-group and re-position to go after again, and a US IC in Sinkiang being built if China fails will play total havoc with Japan advances in Asia, also killing Japan income.

    I`m of little different opions: the “big” ones are definitely R1-UKR and G1-EGY where the first even has a little influence on the next one (does german fgt survive or not) so being propably the “most” important. Next is WRU, EMD (because of risk to loose the loaded trn which influences EGY severely) and then EPO, I would say. Africa is definitely important, but even more important is the front between Germany and Russia and LEN, WRU and UKR are the key countries (later my be CAU, too). Keeping Germany out of LEN in round 1 (I mean the whole eastern army, not the single inf that takes it) would put a lot of pressure away from Russia. And wheather you can do that or not depends on your russian purchase and heavyly on the result of the R1 attack on WRU.

    China is sure important, but a bad battle in EPO and may be even a successfull US-counterattack would hurt you very badly!


  • What do you mean by important? Important to actually do or impotant to not get unlucky.
    West Russia and China are very important but it would take extreme dice for you not to succeed.
    Egypt, Egypt counter, and Ukraine on the other hand are close enough that unlucky dice will turn the tide and put you in a bad way.

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Egypt is.  Whenever I loose Egypt (which is whenever I perform a combat against it as opposed to when my ally does) I loose the game.

    It’s such a trivial piece of land.  Maybe we need a houes rule making it worth 20 IPCs?  At least then I can justify the cost of 2-3 fighters, 1 bomber, 3+ infantry, a BB, an armor or two and a couple of artillery for the battle of it!


  • @Infantry:

    What do you mean by important? Important to actually do or impotant to not get unlucky.

    Interesting question. By “important” I meant the “key battles” of the game, so both the “impact” of the dice result and the importance to do this battle. Of course, everybody will attack WRU. So it would be of 100% importance to do, so is imho EGY, WMD and CHI. But thats it, all other battles are "optional". The question then is, if bad dice in WRU will have a "big" influence on the game. And bad dice does not mean to loose a battle. Youll almost always win in WRU, the question is, does it have a “big” influence on the game if you get a little unlucky there (e.g. loosing 5 infs instead of average 3)? I say yes, others will say that it does not matter more than it would anywhere else. If a above attack is of no big “impotance” to do (i.e. you have alternatives that you`ll play in some games), then potential bad dice there will will not affect many games (simply because the attack does not occur so often)! So take both aspects into consideration.


  • I find that West Russia going slightly worse than normal is of minimal impact as Russia.

    Under the current patterns of play, Germany has to consolidate their position on G1.  This is especially true with the current consensus regarding a Baltic naval build in G1.  Germany just cannot risk pressing any advantage they may gain by Russia being a bit weak in West Russia, or they risk the loss of ALL of their frotn line offensive units on R2 to Russian INF and FIGs.

    Remember, in the early rounds, Russia is not actually driving for Berlin… they can’t.  All they are doing is creating a buffer zone between their forces and German forces with the goal being to make Germany expose its ARM to destruction by Russian massed INF and their FIGs.  If West Russia goes poorly, and Russia has fewer forces there, and Germany pushes their initial advantage, they will get spanked.  They lack front line fodder, and will take heavy losses of their ARM on an R2 or R3 counter-attack.  And once that initial stack of ARM is gone, Germany is not likely to be able to rebuild it in a KGF game.

    So West Russia being up a few INF or down a few INF from normal is not as critical as it may appear.

    Now if BOTH Russian openning attack go poorly (Belo/WR or Ukraine/WR)… THEN perhaps Germany can be more aggressive and actually make Russia pay for that early weakness.  Otherwise, a German press to take advantage of 1 weak showing only exposes their forces to the Russian Meat Grinder.


  • One thing not covered in this thread…

    The most important NON-combat moves in Turn 1.  While combat is important, how you set up for subsequent assaults is certainly no less important.

    Perhaps a new poll and thread on what folks feel are the most critical non-combat moves in T1…


  • I think the most important battles are:

    Germany: Egypt, clearing the Med of british shipping

    everyone else depends on their strategy.

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