"Upgrade" bidding

Here’s another complete system; very easy to use.  If you have seen the game show “Name that Tune” then you’ll get the concept immediately.

Caspian Sub Bid Rules
1. Roll for high roll to see who gets the first bid.

2. Conduct the bid like “Name that Tune”.  The player with the first bid says “I can win with the Axis and X IPCs.”, where X is the number of IPCs the bidder receives to play the Axis.  You are always bidding to play as the Axis.

3. The other player either lets the first player have the bid or counters with a bid that is smaller than the first bid such as, “I can win with the Axis and X-2 IPCs.”  This is a bid-down system.

4. Keep going until a bid is accepted. If the bid ‘goes negative’, then the bid becomes “I will take the Axis and give the Allies X IPCs.” Counter-bids then become higher values given to the Allies.

5. Once the bid is accepted there is a pre-game bid placement turn. Whoever is getting the IPCs may buy units to place on the board.
  a) Unit costs are normal
  b) Land units can be placed in any territory a power controls
  c) Naval units can be placed with other naval units or in territories adjacent to a power’s land
  d) There is a limit of 1 bid piece per territory
  e) Powers cannot put their units in another power’s territory (i.e. no German pieces start in Japanese territory)
  f) IPCs do not have to be spent on units.  IPCs not spent on units can be given to any of the team’s powers.

6. Play starts as normal with the Soviets.

SZ 37 is not a help in taking Hawaii, a44.  The idea of the transport for Japan, IMHO, is to take out a third American fighter.  Otherwise, I’d rather have ground forces in Asia for Japan (or Africa/Europe for Germany.)

For the record, letting the allies keep W. Europe is worse then E. Europe but both should be avoided at all costs.

=)

Oh yea, and never let America take Norway.  Better to let England have it.  Odds of them affording an IC and putting out 3 armor a round there is much smaller. =)

Thanks DM. It was the low luck aspect that really threw me the curveball. Taking a cursory look, it seemed that LL makes a lot of the first round battles, on both side, that are deemed “must do’s” by most players a little more palatable so, all things being equal, it was hard to judge which side would come out ahead at the end of the 1st turn.

Wow, what a thread!

I must say, I take NCS’s position on this one for several reasons, the most pertinant of them being that

a) While the Axis certainly CAN win without a bid, when you have players of equal skill and who are equally skilled at playing both Axis AND Allies (not just one or the other side), a bid can certainly make the difference in the early round(s) and many times it’s what happens the first 2 rounds that can help decide the game.

b) figuring out statistics is something that can only be done over thousands and thousands of games. I mean, you can flip a coin 100 times and get 90 heads. Does that mean the odds of getting tails are skewed? No, because if you were to flip that coin 10,000 times or 100,000 times the odds are it would be very close to 50/50 and 1,000,000 times or more and likely the difference would be so negligible as to allow us to say it was 50/50. While we cannot play 1,000,000 AAR games, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that a bid helps even out the game.

You know, just as many of the issues of AA Classic were worked out in AAR, I think probably in the next iteration (or version) that many of the issues we’ve seen here will be worked out as well. Maybe an extra unit here or another territory there… whatever it takes to balance the game.

muhahahaha

this tactic works well against the group i play with… they go after germany with a vengance… they retreat everything from all the corners of world for the most part and pull to the atlantic just to put a wrench in the works for germany… they buy nothing without germany in mind… its 100 % devotion… it took 5 turns last game before i felt i could even make a real run at russia because i had to hold strong while japan got going…

Edit: holding strong meant staying at 40 or above… i fell to 37 one turn but rebounded back after a little regrouping…

A good thing is to throw ramdomly one NA and then, BID. So if the allies have Lend lease, colonial garnison, and superfortresses, and the axis have kaiten torpedo and dive bomber… the bid will be really high:

Winning bid 24 IPC ! I put 3 trannies in the baltic ! Sealion ! you’re dead , I win, lest start another game !