After Action Reports

@TG:

14 hours!  I think that’s the record for longest match game in history.  Plus you guys made it competitive until the end.  Any idea of the total number of rounds?

No idea how many rounds. But if you figure out what one of my Japanese battleships did: they sailed off to Australia, then fought some American ships in the Pacific after several turns trying to scare off/outmanouevre the US fleet (and eventually crushing them), they returned to India. After that they threatened the UK-fleet that just passed the Suez-canal, they sailed to South-Africa (and unsuccesfully trying to retake Western Africa), through the Streets of Magelhaes… only to merge with my main fleet in order to fight off another US-fleet. They set sail to Hawaii, garding it as a bomberbase, only to fall back to Japan (keeping the US-fleet at bay). Eventually, they ended up before the Indian coasts… Well it must have been quite a lot of turns.

The longest campaign I’ve ever fought was one in the MB-version: this game was played during three days. During the first day we played like 12h, some 9 to 10h at day 2, and a couple of hours at day 3. That game became a stalemate, with balances ever turning until one of us finally broke through.

:-o :-o :-o :-o

why dindt UK buy 4 bombers and sink Jap BB?  :wink:

@atarihuana:

:-o :-o :-o :-o

why dindt UK buy 4 bombers and sink Jap BB?  :wink:

1. This small fleet consisted of 2 battleships, 2 transports, 3 inf and 1 armor. It wasn’t a too easy target. Anything less then 3 to 4 bombers wouldn’t even threatening me.
2. I don’t think the UK had any bombers (maybe a single one in the UK itself), nor did they have any AC’s (seriously limiting their range), they were too busy trashing my Italian inf in Libya (who were hopelessly isolated by significant US and UK forces). The UK did have a few (max 3) fighters however. Remember I didn’t even attack UK-ships as Germany. Going for a vast fleet (BB, cruisers and transports) and force landings in Europe was an obvious UK-strategy. This was even more the case since Germany put a really big pressure upon the SU, and the UK didn’t want to send forces to the SU (which would cost her a NO). The pressure was (partly) removed by keeping a considerable UK-fleet in the Med Sea. They would cut off any German forces who dared to break through to the Caucasus. At the same time a vast UK-fleet garded and harassed my North-Sea and Atlantic shores. From a UK-point-of-view, these BB and cruisers were mainly there to kill my infantry in coastal bombardments (but they could as well cut off any forces attacking the SU). They were also forcing me to keep significant infantry stacks in Europe, rather than sending them to the eastern frontier. Therefore: not building bombers and allowing my Japanese fleet in S-Afr made sense.
They didn’t bothered building bombers, since they probably didn’t think I was dangerous in S-Africa, and since they were busy building ships to invade Europe.
3. I couldn’t really threaten Africa. The best I could hope for was picking a territory or two for a couple of turns. Since there were UK forces in Northern Africa on the verge of breaking through, UK didn’t really bothered my forces. Actually I was the one trying to relieve my Italian forces (hoping to keep some African provinces for a few extra turns). A direct attack on their fleet however, was way beyond my reach.
4. The US did build some bombers in Eastern-US. Therefore I had to set sail to the Streets of Magelhaes rather than attacking Brazil (my initial plan) The significant naval buildup in W-US forced me to hury to the Pacific, rather then trying to irritate/harass some forces in Africa.
5. The UK wasn’t that rich. They had some 35 to 40 IPC/turn, due to their lack of NO-bonusses. They choose to build three units in India each turn, and their landings weren’t that expensive (they had to train tanks and inf, since their fleet was safe). Building such an amount of bombers and bringing them to S-Africa would take quite a lot of time. :-)

@TG:

What are “Carrier Islands”?

Do you think the closing of the Black Sea had any impact on the game.  It seems like Italy still had an easy time slicing into India.

No, and your right Italy still was impressive, left unchecked, unwisely in my opinion.  The black sea has become an avenue for Italy to help Germany hit USSR.  I have made Turkey a tactical target in my
AA50Shades of Grey Alternate setup, where you can invade certain Neutrals, like Turkey and gain access to the Black sea. You can find it here under Alternate setups folder:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=db7389213b434449d2db6fb9a8902bda
Moses, I believe you have no taste for those alternate setups.  I can appreciate, you hold the game designer has achieved a delicate balance on his setup choices.
I merely find the alternate options fun to explore and experiment, perhaps discovering what the game designer saw, and the reasoning for his final choice for the setup.

The Germans and USSR were at a stand off for awhile in this game,
US was unable to provide assistance in Europe. 
The US had their hands full with Japan41, wow was that fun. 
Next time I want to be US instead of Japan, to see, if I can stop,
the Roaring Nihon Kaigun.  I believe, this is the challenge of 41 setup. 
All good players, should want to overcome the impressive deployed tempo advantage the japanese enjoy.  I think this is a genius move by Larry Harris considering the thoughts on AAR, that was almost always played with an Axis Bid, to overcome the Allied economic advantage in that setup.

Carrier Islands, gives Islands tactical value.  All Island based FTR are considered in the Air at the begining of your turn and do not count the sea zone they are in, as if the Island was a carrier.  This provides Island based FTR, 1 extra move, to reach targets, increaseing the value of island based FTR/BMB.

@atarihuana:

maybe that fighters starting of an island start(and even end?) their movement in that seazone. basically jetfighters for islands only?

Yes, you are basically correct, as I have outlined the rule in the above choice.  Again, this is not my creation.  It was a National Advantage for US in AAR.  Thanks again to the great creative minds that play this game.  They constantly provide me with new ideas to experiment and enjoy, Kudos all.

<edited as=“” i’m=“” blind=“”>  :-o</edited>

ta for that, should lay off the scotch. previous post edited for the truth factor haha

Title: Pacific Stalemate - Russia falls

Date:  2/13/09

Scenario: 1941

Optional Rules: Tech and NO yes both

Rounds: 9

Victor: Axis

Observations: US focused on building a pacific fleet.  Japan had a headstart and with 55+ income per turn Japan could outpace USA plus build troops to send against Russia.  Japan and USA both had huge fleets but it was effectively a stalemate and Japan held all the pacific islands and was never seriously threatened.  When Japan got “improved shipyards” near the end of the game that tech it made it all that much worse.  With decent Axis players, the 41 Scenario with N.O.s strongly favors the Axis.  I have never seen Allies win 41 with NOs unless the Axis were newbies.  UK built IC in South Africa but it’s too much to ask UK to try to keep Africa, invade Norway and pester france without USA help.

Despite strong play, Russia eventually was overwhelmed and Allies conceeded.

Title: German Onslaught
Date: 14 Feb 2009 
Scenario: 1942
Special Rules: NO & Tech used 
Victor: Axis by concession
Game Length: 2 players, 3 hours, 2 rounds
Bias:   Even, both playing 4th game, me taking Allies
Description:

Turn 1:
Japan destroyed US Hawaian fleet & UK fleet at sz 35, took 1 Chinese territory and concentrate land attack on Buryatia & Soviet Far East.
Russia re-took Belorussia, Eastern Ukraine & Ukraine but with few units left due to bad dice roll. Built-up defence.
German pushed heavily into Russia with land units, 4 fighters & 1 bomber, taking back Belorussia, Eastern Ukraine & Ukraine plus Karelia. Russia losses are great due to bad dice again. Destroyed UK sz 12 fleet, leaving sz 1 & 2 untouch. Got paratrooper.
UK, too greedy with occupaying France (successfully taken), built a carrier & support ship to protect its fleet, totally ignored German sz5 fleet & left only 3 land units + 1 US bomber on homeland. BIG MISTAKE!
Italy failed to retake France but finished off UK destroyer at sz15 & support German on eastern front.
US destroyed remaining Japan fleet at Hawaian, built a carrier and support ship on western US to prepare for Europe invasion.

Turn 2:
Japan continued to push through Soviet Far East. Attacked on China was halted by the loss of 2 fighters and 2 infantry in the invasion of Yunnan (US fighter), not many land units left.
Russia suffered huge losses on Turn 1, can only retake Belorussia and built on defence by concentrating on Caucasus & Moscow. Only 2 infantry left at fast east.
German began DOUBLE assault on London & Moscow and sucessfully taken both! London was taken by fleets with transport from both sz 5 and sz 12 with bomber carrying paratrooper. On Russian side, German pushed 3 tanks, 1 artillery, 1 infantry,  4 fighter, 1 bomber with paratrooper into Moscow, sacrificing its fighters to keep alive the land units. Too happy & forgot to retake France. Total IPC end of turn is 130+.
At this point Allies (me) to dishearten to think much on next move.
UK, cant do much but destroyed German fleet at sz 6. Failed to take Libya with units from Egypt & Trans-Jordan (bad dice roll).
Italy continue to support eastern front operation.
US retake London with Atlantic fleet. Got super sub.

After analysing current situation and German boasting to build 5,6 battleship to kill off UK & US fleet. Allies conceded.

Observations/Recommendations:
It is essential for UK to finish off German sz5 fleet on turn 1. Allies too engross in capturing France coz from previous game, that move provided huge income boost to UK & US while disrupting German’s eastern front campaign.
German can easily swarm into Moscow if combine with air power within 2 turns. 
Never thought that German can pull off double assault successfully. Paratroopers helped alot on that.
Good lesson learned.

Name: Total Confused War (1941)
Date: February 15, 2009
Game Length: 5 or 6 turns.
Special Rules: Tech
Bias: Me (I’ve played more games), first game as Allies. Close friend was playing Axis (first in AA50).

Description:

Germany Attacks Russia making major headway with thier troops, eventually gaining Mechanized Infantry. They created problems for the USA when they hopped into Brazil and the West Indies.

Russia turtles. Trades a few territories with Germany to make back IPCs. Eventaully, the Japanese break though Byuratia late in the game. Last turn, they sent some troops to retake India and other British colonial possessions.

The Japanese come to dominate the Pacific, except for the Philippines. They get Improved Shipyards which put them farther ahead. They ended the game with a massive fleet on the coast of the USA, facing 15 US infantry. Built IC in east Indies to At end of the game most of the Pacific was empty besides in the Japanese homeland and some in China.

UK buys IC in SA and reinforces Britain and SBRs Berlin for most of the game. The UK invaded North Africa with USA in the middle of the game. The UK ended up taking both Rome and Berlin by the end of the game. They also invaded France later in the game. They obliterated Italy’s fleet. They get Hvy Bombers and Radar. They ended the game with 87 IPCs to spend.

Italy made no real contribution to this game. They could not make any headway in Once the UK invaded Rome they were a moot point.

The US got both Jet Fighers and Long Range Bombers. They constructed an IC in the Philippines and pumped out fighters to harass Japanese troops all along the coast of China.  They sent bombers to the UK to SBR Berlin. Their fleet was subsequently destroyed by the Japanese fleet and led to them building a huge stack of infantry on the West Coast.

The game looked very gloomy for the Allies at the end of the game. While the UK was tooling on Germany and Italy, the Russians were getting slowly strangled by the German advance. The United States was dealing with a massive Japanese fleet, but the base in the Philippines was prepared to strike back at the Japanese empire in the South Pacific. I believe that the Axis were going to win, mainly because of Japan’s domination of the Pacific, but my opponent believes it was the other way around.

Observations:
IC in South Africa was key to intimidating the Axis to not invading Africa. It stopped the Italians from making any headway at all. SBRs with Heavy bombers are pretty intimidating except that all SBR roles ended up being 1’s or 2’s on both sides. The fighter base in the Philippines was very convenient to deal with Japanese troops on the mainland.

Title:  USA make up your mind! , 1941
Date: 13.02.09

Rules: NOs yes. no tech or optional faqs.
Victor: Axis. Japan takes Russia
Lenght: 18:00 PM till 6:00 AM  :|
Bias: our standard 3 player round( all around tenish games ). last time i got to play germany. what a relief :D
Description: G set up Karelia for round 2. Uk landings in Norway. USA split in the ozeans. tried to sub -sink italian fleet. Japan thought cool idea. J3 lots of subs scattered around hawaii, pushing USA out of pacific> so we go KGF. Germany was prepared for this. in the end Jap 38 arm, 3 bmb, 8 ftr( 3 lost to AA)  14 inf and one art!!! in caucasus attacking russia and taking it. unexpexted, but even if russia would have held, germany would have been in range. even though germany was hard pressed in defense ( down to 30 IPC somewhere around 3 am) and russia did grab its 10 IPC bonus twice, axis recovered ( jap planes, thank you lord :D)
Observations :

imho:

• USA cant split. if he goes pacific, every single IPC is needed there… 
  -sub “wolfsrudel” work great in pacific, but not in atlantic, too narrow.
  -micromanagment of allied( USA) naval operations  once again not optimal. axis can afford such “slow down” mistakes, allies cant in the first few rounds.
  -yes 12 hours is more than 12 rounds  :roll:

ps. correct.  :-)

Hey, just wanted to do an after-action report before I forgot.  The same group played a 1941 game last week, but since that was a week ago, I might get some of details wrong so I won’t talk about that (though, Allies won).

Title:  Fascism wins the day!  1941
Date:  February 16, 2009
Special Rules:  Both Tech and National Objectives were used
Victor:  Axis won by player concession.  Axis had control of 13 cities, but it was quite clear that it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world fell.
Game Length:  8 hours.  About 8 or 9 rounds.  Sort of lost track there.
Bias:  About equal.  Germany/Italy and UK had the stronger players of about equal skill with US/Russia and Japan had the weaker partners.
Description:  After realizing that the Axis wasn’t aggressive enough in the game we played last week, the Axis amped up its aggression in the initial round throwing the Allies off-balance and never allowing them to regroup (Japan used a first round strategy straight out of these forums).  Good die rolls (especially in Axis tech research) helped the Axis stay on the offensive.  Eventually, all of Africa fell to the Italy/Germany and Japan conquered China and was marching a small force through Russia’s back door, though that was eventually stopped by a squad of UK bombers.  Still, Moscow was on the verge of falling and Russia had only 2 infantry and a submarine when we decided to call it quits.  The UK and US weren’t under immediate threat, but it was obvious that over time, they would fall too.
Observations/Recommendations:  As luck would have it, both Germany and the UK got both heavy bombers and long-range air in the tech which was a huge development.  The UK managed to make better use this than Germany, but only because it had a bigger air fleet.  But this also meant that neither Germany or the UK could invade each other.  As soon as a fleet was built to transport land units for an invasion, it was utterly obliterated by the other side’s bombers.  As such, both Britain and continental Europe were virtually impregnable, but since the UK was more or less stuck on an island, Germany/Italy could wipe out Africa and concentrate on the Soviet Union which eventually succumbed to the attacks.  Meanwhile, Japan and the U.S. fought over Iwo Jima several times while the rest of the Japanese fleet conquered the rest of the Pacific and a couple land units controlled most of eastern Asia.  At the end, Japan had virtually no army in Asia, but a huge swath of territory allowing it to be the biggest economic power in the game by far.  I (I was the U.K.) suspected that the Axis would probably win by the end of the third turn, but it took a few more turns before it was completely obvious.

Format

Title: 1941, Classic Axis Sandwich USSR
Date: 2/16/2009
Special Rules: NO and tech allowed
Victor: axis(ME)
Game Length: 9 hours
Bias:  US player took lots of pills that morning and didn’t seem to coherent, although experienced in A&A classic, Axis player had no prior experience with version(including paying 8 IPCs for all his subs and transports)
Description:
Axis went all out on first turns then got some lucky rolls.  Japan survived the pearl harbor counterattack with a carrier and fighter allowing for complete Pacific freedom for the rest of the game.  After round 1, Germany still had most its air-force, and two subs, while allies had little or no Atlantic presence.  The only thing that stopped a German sea fleet, was UK mass producing aircraft. USSR turn three proved crucial as Germany repulsed an all out attack putting USSR on its heels until the finish.  Italy went unchallenged in Africa.  US was too slow to hit Europe and UK took too long building sea fleet back.  It may sound like Allies were dumb, but USSR took a long time to kill, and UK held Japan at India for a long time as well.  Also, Allies invested heavily in tech.  UK got super subs :), and US had bad rolls, and USSR got Mechanized infantry when it didn’t have any armor left.

@tin_snips:

ta for that, should lay off the scotch. previous post edited for the truth factor haha

Good God man!!  Hold on to that glass of scotch, I would immediately cut out the use of the optional Carrier Island Rule if I thought for one minute, it would cause the loss of one drop of scotch.

I will need to ponder this delimma, with several glasses of whiskey.

@Bluestroke:

@tin_snips:

ta for that, should lay off the scotch. previous post edited for the truth factor haha

Good God man!!  Hold on to that glass of scotch, I would immediately cut out the use of the optional Carrier Island Rule if I thought for one minute, it would cause the loss of one drop of scotch.

I will need to ponder this delimma, with several glasses of whiskey.

haha, fair call. +1 karma

and sorry for de-railing your thread Moses  :-P

Title:  The Bear was more like The Bunny
Date:  February 17th, 2009 
Special Rules:  NO’s + Tech (no one bought)
Victor:  Axis Victory by Concession/Projection 
Game Length:  7 Hrs. Concession Round 5!
Bias:  4 players, 1 new to AA50.  I (3 games) played Germany , two (2 games) took the allies, smart rookie took Japan.
Description: 
Allies: Not organized.  England and US started off balanced, then tried KGF.  Too late, Russia was behind early and needed to defend Capitol and Caucus from 3 columns.  Allies bought aggressive, but slow-played.  
Axis: Japan stayed after the complex built in India, Russia could only offer limited support.  Japan took over some Russia, India and island hopped.  America did not invest early enough and was stacking up a stalemate in the Pacific.  Germany literally set the pace, Japan right behind.  Germany took Russia on Round 4.  Okay, they had a huge victory in Karelia.  Italy never had any opposition and played an important role in making all this happen.
Observations/Recommendations:
Everyone was totally intense.  The first three rounds seemed to fly for the Axis.  And the money, OMG, Germany collected 57 round 2.  Japan was nearing 50 at round 3.  US has got to do something substantial Round 2.
Russia can not purchase all tanks the first two rounds, they need total units.  England should’ve scrapped the factory in India and invested heavily against Germany, by the time England and US got into France, Germany took the Russian Capitol.  Say what you want about KGF or KIF, if the US is going to take on Japan, England needs total commitment vs. Germany.
Oh, and there was a 45 minute argument about Submarines.  Got it worked out, thanks Krieghund!