When is the best time to invoke Russian Winter?

Empty territories just get blitzed into and out of by Russia for free cash.

The idea here is to stack the territories where they have to either attack with significant resoures or yield them permanently.

So I played a quick game against a friend last weekend (we agreed it was experimental and would not count towards our scoreboard).

I was the axis and picked two national advantages: naval night-fighting and nazi scientists.

The allied player insisted on also having two national advantages, so he picked colonial garrison and flying fortresses (I forget the name, it’s the non-LHTR national advantage; US bombers are immune to AA).

Colonial Garrison gave me a lot of problems!  He placed the IC in India, which I went for right away, but the allies managed to trade it for a few turns, and then the US player waited till I was in a bad situation and bought two factories in china and sinkian.

The battleship advantage was not that great.  It was fun for a couple of battles, but then the US player just avoided my battleships.  I was a few turns from opening the suez canal, and my fleet was prepared against africa, but the US player was going to provide quite a hassle.

The game ended prematurely; I suspect I would eventually have lost.  The nazi scientists got me a tech upgrade only after 10 tech buys.

@gnasape:

TDJ that’s classic.  Mr. T. says “Tanks are strong!”  Is that from the Caspian Sub paper?

Blitz2: It never hurts to try but I would have to agree with both Dan and TDJ, buy ground forces.

It might work in AA 1942 but not really in revised?

It should be even worst in AA42: 1 less hit and 3 less dice points. Germany could ignore it, of course, and even mimic building tons of navy. Since you, as soviet, gave them time in east, Germany could buy a uber fleet to create havoc in allied fleets. A powerful german combo would be: take gib, kill z2 or z1, send 2 subs to English channel, buy, say, ac, bb, 2 inf, tons of subs or any other wicked combo (join fleets round 2 or 3, ouch!). UK will struggle to keep the pace, and USA cannot join the fight and also buy enough land guys to protect their rear/contest Africa (silly Bering strait icecap  😛 ) OR germans could still do the moves and simply make a tank rush while Japan does the same

In Revised, it could be interesting trying, but without a bid. I doubt it can work by the way, it’s just slightly better

A note: stick to Revised, it’s better than AA42 (KFJ is viable and also Polar Express)

@Axel:

but the day after: we played axis&allies for 2 hours!
and remember this: after 1 hour, i asked her: “do you want to do something else?”
but she said: “no no, i want to see where this is going”
😛
BINGO!!!

Ha ha, good work mate!

One suggestion I would have for the original poster is have a decent grasp on the rules.  If you can explain the basics to your friends before the game starts, then explain the more intricate details as you come to them during the game, the game will be more fluent.  There’s nothing like checking the rule book every two minute to detract from the fun.

@bigchris:

@gnasape:

Thanks bigchris, what if we assume that the dice rolls of the attacker and defenders are two separate events?

16 rolls for attacker, 7 rolls for defender.

sure, that’s fine.  as long as you are separating the rolls based on some arbitrary labeling and not based on their values, you can test any group/sub-group you like.

Ho: the dice are uniformly distributed
Ha: the dice are not uniformly distributed

Attacker: 6,5,6,5,4,6,5,6,6,4,3,5,4,6,3,6
histogram for entire sequence (16 rolls total)
6s: 6666666
5s: 5555
4s: 444
3s: 33
2s:
1s:

pearson chi-square test:
with 16 rolls, we expect 16/6=2.67 rolls in each bin according to Ho.
(7 - 2.67)^2 / 2.67 +
(4 - 2.67)^2 / 2.67 +
(3 - 2.67)^2 / 2.67 +
(2 - 2.67)^2 / 2.67 +
(0 - 2.67)^2 / 2.67 +
(0 - 2.67)^2 / 2.67 = 13.25

chi-square value = 13.25
degrees-of-freedom = 5
Probability (One-Tailed): 0.0211

that is, for the attacker, if Ho is in fact true, the probability of getting results as or more extreme than these is 0.0211.  These data are sufficient evidence (at the 5% level) to reject Ho and adopt Ha.

Defender: 2,2,1,3,4,2,1
histogram for entire sequence (7 rolls total)
6s:
5s:
4s: 4
3s: 3
2s: 222
1s: 11

pearson chi-square test:
with 7 rolls, we expect 7/6=1.17 rolls in each bin according to Ho.
(0 - 1.17)^2 / 1.17 +
(0 - 1.17)^2 / 1.17 +
(1 - 1.17)^2 / 1.17 +
(1 - 1.17)^2 / 1.17 +
(3 - 1.17)^2 / 1.17 +
(2 - 1.17)^2 / 1.17 = 5.857

chi-square value = 5.857
degrees-of-freedom = 5
Probability (One-Tailed): 0.3204

that is, for the defender, if Ho is in fact true, the probability of getting results as or more extreme than these is 0.3204.  this is insufficient evidence to reject Ho.  therefore, we do not reject Ho.

Thanks, I am basing it as usually the attacker’s dice roll is submitted first than defender.

@cyan:

if you have excess money to buy navy with russia i’d rather spend it on fighters and then use the one sub as sort of a fodder pieace. that way once your navy objective has been covered you can switch to land easily and i think fighters are great.

Actually, if you needed fodder pieces for Russia, I’d go with Transports.  Then you can shoot down planes. 😛

cool i’m in. what do i do for dicey. i’ll check forum

@Dr.:

Hey guys, I can’t really figure out how to use my med fleet best. I usually use my bid on 2 units for Libya. Then should i still send my med fleet to Egypt to try a take and hold, or should I buy ekstra fleet for the baltic and then send my med fleet west and unite the fleet on G2?
How do you use your med fleet?
do you buy the carrier or transports for the baltic, if you buy any at all?

Those two first listed options pretty much sums it up.

I don’t ever buy carriers for the Med fleet.  German fighters in Western Europe combined with the Med fleet prevent early Allied naval invasion of the Mediterranean.

Late game, I sometimes buy transports to shuttle additional infantry from S. Europe to Caucasus.

You can try to pressure Caucasus extra early on if you make a couple of German transports at S. Europe.  That is, if Russian fighters land in Moscow on R1, 2-3 Baltic transports is not sufficient threat against UK (since Russian fighters can fly to London).  But if Russian fighters land in Moscow on R1, they’re not in position to attack any German transports produced at Southern Europe.

But if you DO produce transports at S. Europe early, remember that they’re not going to do too much.  Even with transported infantry, it is very hard to match up to the bulked mass of Rusisan infantry/tanks/fighters/some artillery.  It is probably a far safer bet to produce infantry early, march east, then produce transports to unload infantry, and have Jap fighters land in the same territory.

BUT if Russia was very aggressive, or very unlucky, Germany can try to run a tank dash to Moscow game, in which case early transports in the Med are decent.  But this should ONLY be tried if a gigantic proportion of the Russian army is destroyed.  Otherwise, Germany simply overextends itself.