So you just bought the Axis and Allies game 1942 second edition, the latest 5 man world theater game… Congratulations, good call!  

Perhaps you’re returning to A&A from one of the older games, or maybe this is your first time. Either way, now that you’ve studied the map, got the pieces all laid out, and have finally puzzled your way through the rulebook, its time to dive in and start thinking about the Russian opening! Maybe you’re pre-gaming it, looking to get a match with one of your friends face to face, or are playing WW2 v5 in tripleA vs the HardAI, to get a feel for the map. We’ve all been here at one point, looking at those Russian units and those 24 ipcs and trying to figure out the best way to make use of them. Right about now, you might be thinking to yourself that the Soviet starting position looks kind of ugly, what should you buy? and what is it you’re supposed to do with these Russians units anyway? ha!

Well, here are some ideas about various openings that you might find helpful for the 1942 sec edition game when playing as the Soviets. What follows assumes OOB conditions, (if you know what a bid is and how to play with bids these conditions can be changed), but often times, if you’re starting up a new game with newer players in your group, explaining what a bid is can take more time than its worth, and this is already a fairly involved game. Instead, you, as the more experienced A&A strategist and the one who bought the board, can just let your buddy play Axis while you take the Russians. Sure it’s a challenge, but you’re up to it right!

But what to buy in the first round? This Russian planned economy gives you 24 ipcs out the gate, and this doesn’t allow a whole lot of room for error. Maybe infantry is best? Lets consider it for a moment…

At a cost of 3 ipcs a pop, 24 ipcs gets you 8 infantry, and we know that boots on the ground are always important for the Russians right? I mean just throw more bodies at the problem, that’s one ready solution isn’t it? And surely infantry have the best defensive value for the cost of any unit, and provide the most hitpoints for the least amount of money. Another way to think about it is the total power that your purchased force can project: the cumulative attack value and defense value of the units in the force and how far it can move.  We often call these attack or defense ‘points’, or ‘pips’ for the purposes of fast calculation, and try to think about how much attack or defense power the units can bring to bear.

24 ipcs in infantry = 8 hit points, with a total attack value of 8 points, total defense value of 16 points, and it can move 1 space.

In two out of four dimensions, the 8 infantry buy does pretty well. 8 hit points, or hits that you can absorb, in terms of “fodder” with cheap infantry to protect your more expensive attacking/defending units. On defense 16 points, since each individual infantry unit hits at 2 on defense. Taken together, that’s a solid 2 hits on defense reliably, and probably 3 hits or more if the infantry is grouped together and all “dug in.” Rolling a lucky deuce or two, and that kind of infantry stacked together can be quite potent!

But in the other two out of four dimensions, the 8 infantry buy is somewhat lacking. 8 attack points doesn’t sound all that bad at first, but when you start to crunch the numbers, you find that this only gives you a reliable 1 hit, and a “long shot” (1/3 chance) to grab a second hit on attack. And this only when the whole force is attacking at once. Sure there’s always a chance you might roll a bunch of ones, but its not a great chance, and there is of course a chance that you could completely “dud” in your attack. A lucky “one” is just harder to come by than the “lucky deuce” when you’re playing a game with six sided dice. This sort of thinking and logic has given rise to a style of play called “Low Luck” which you may want to familiarize yourself with at some point, just for reference, but similar principles apply in a normal dice game, when you’re trying to figure out what the likely chances are that you’ll get “X number of hits” in a given round of combat. Basically what you’re doing is adding up all the “hits at” values for each unit, the number you end up with shows you how many hits you’re likely to achieve with these units when rolling the six sided dice, by dividing that number by 1/6. This gives you the likely number of hits on average in a dice game, or the auto hits in an LL game, and any remainder left over can likewise give you a sense of how likely it is to pick up an “extra hit.” For a regular dice game these are just rough averages but they’re helpful when thinking about the attack/defense value of the force you’re buying.

Finally there is the aspect that involves movement or range, which for infantry is just 1 space from where they are placed. Now when you look at the map and the production spread for Russia, you’ll see that with an 8 infantry buy, some of these units won’t be able to get into the fight immediately, because the factory in Caucasus can only produce 4 units at a time, and the factory in Karelia is indefensible in the first round, and inf units placed in Moscow will be two moves from the front during the second round. So having surveyed the situation on the ground, for the purposes of attack, buying 8 infantry doesn’t really get you the full 8 attack points the very next round. Instead you end up with just 4 attack points “at the ready”, from the infantry out of Caucasus, and the other 4 infantry units placed in Moscow will take at least one more round to move out “into position.” To defend against German counter attacks in the second round you still get 16 on defense, but from the perspective of an early Russian offensive, the 8 infantry buy nets you just 4 attack points and 4 attack fodder hitpoints “at the ready” in the second round.

Now lets look at some other ways you could spend that same amount of money for different units beyond just “all infantry.” These are all max placement buys, where you spend every ipc with no remainder left over. Listed below with the total hitpoints, total attack points and total defense points for each buy, and finally the number of units with effective range to the front, for immediate counter attack, and the max attack power they can project the following round (during the opening salvo of the combat phase).

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Potential Builds:

Buy: 4 infantry and 3 artillery =
Total: 7 hitpoints, 13 attack, 14 defense
Range: 4 units to the front (1 inf, 3 artillery from Caucasus).
Projected Power: +8 counter attack points against Ukraine.

Buy: 6 infantry and 1 tank =
Total: 7 hitpoints, 9 attack, 15 defense
Range: 5 units to the front (4 inf from Caucasus + 1 tank from Moscow).
Projected Power: +7 counter attack points against Ukraine, or + 3 against Karelia/Belo.

Buy: 2 infantry, 3 artillery, and 1 tank=
Total: 6 hitpoints, 13 attack, 13 defense
Range: 5 units to the front (1 inf and 3 art from Caucasus + 1 tank from Moscow).
Projected Power: + 11 counter attack points against Ukraine, or + 3 against Karelia/Belo.

Buy: 6 artillery
Total: 6 hitpoints, 12 attack, 12 defense.
Range: 4 units to the front (4 artillery from Caucasus).
Projected power: +8 counter attack against Ukraine. But this build is sometimes more about the +12 against Caucasus itself, when you plan to give up the factory and then re-take it the next round.

Buy: 4 infantry and 2 tanks =
Total: 6 hitpoints, 10 attack, 15 defense,
Range: 6 units to the front (4 inf from Caucasus +2 tanks from Moscow).
Projected power: + 10 counter attack points against Ukraine, or + 6 against Karelia/Belo.

Buy: 3 artillery and 2 tanks =
Total: 5 hitpoints, 12 attack, 12 defense
Range: 5 units to the front (3 art and 1 tank from Caucasus + 1 tank from Moscow).
Projected power: + 12 counter attack points against Ukraine, or + 6 against Karelia/Belo

Buy: 2 infantry, 2 artillery, 1 fighter
Total: 5 hitpoints, 11 attack, 12 defense
Range 5 units to the front (2 inf and 2 art in Caucasus + 1 fighter in Moscow).
Projected power: +11 counter attack points against Ukraine, or + 3 against Karelia/Belo *extra advantage in light trading of territories/total unit value over time, provided by the third fighter.

Buy: 2 infantry, 3 tanks
Total: 5 hitpoints, 11 attack, 13 defense
Range: 5 units to the front (2 infantry and 2 tanks in Caucasus + 1 tank in Moscow).
Projected power: +11 counter attack points against Ukraine, or + 9 against Karelia/Belo.

Now that’s a lot of numbers I’ve thrown around, but when you see them all laid out, you’ll notice that when you opt to buy more expensive units, what you’re doing is trading Russian hit points and defense points, for Russian attack points and a greater effective range on counter attack. There is some flexibility here and a little room to pick and choose, depending on how aggressive you want to be with the Soviets, but there is a point at which it’s simply no longer worth it to exchange hit points/defense, for power projection on counter attack. I would suggest that if you go lower than 5 hit points in the opening round purchase with Russia, its likely that you will lose control of Moscow to the Axis during the endgame (if your opponent is fairly competent.) Even 5 hit points is rather low, and what I would consider a “gambit,” meaning that you’re counting on a fairly lucky roll with your Russian openings and counter attacks to make up the difference on hitpoints by killing German units and just losing a couple pawns.

A 6 hitpoint purchase will allow you to project some power with counter attacks in the second round, without giving up too much defense later on. This is what I would consider an aggressive Russian purchase, meaning that you will have a decent offensive capacity if the rolls go your way, but still retain an alright defensive capacity if the rolls go poorly. The 6 hitpoint purchases are all about threatening counter attacks against an early German stack in Karelia or Belo. Trying to buy yourself one more round of trading territories, before you have give them up to the Germans.

A 7 or 8 hitpoint purchase is what I would consider fairly conservative, meaning that you plan to play a primarily defensive game with the Russians, giving up ground early in exchange for a slightly better defense later on, and relying heavily on the Western Allies to make up the difference for you.

Why does all this matter? You might rightly ask.
Well basically, because what you buy with Russia will determine how many attacks you can realistically run in the first round, with decent odds of success, and how quickly your friends the Anglo-Americans will have to send you assistance to prevent your capital from being captured by the Axis.

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Now that we’ve thought about purchases for a minute, lets look at the Russian production spread, and see how the starting factories factor into things.

Karelia: Forget about it!   There’s just no way you’re going to keep the Germans from taking this territory in the first round. Seriously, its a lost cause. Even if you took Belo and Baltic states, even if you somehow managed to sink the German  transport in sz5 with a risky double fighter attack, even if you took W. Russia light, and then blitzed all your tanks to Lengingrad on Non Combat, even if you bought 2 fighters and placed them in Karelia… its just not going to happen. Sadly the Germans will still have you beat, and the Total Unit Value (TUV) trade is terrible, not to mention costing you the whole Eastern front in the process. So just resolve in your mind right now, that Karelia is toast for the time being. Eventually you might be able to liberate it, but holding this factory at the outset is hopeless. The best you can do is trade the territory back and forth for a couple rounds, and keep the Germans from using your own factory against you! And that’s the real key, because what you’d really like to avoid here, is Germany stacking the territory on the first round. In addition to all the German units in the neighborhood, the Japanese can even reach Karelia with their Tokyo Bomber (6 moves) to put an extra defensive pip on the territory. That’s a lot of Axis units for the Russians to overcome!

It means that you either need enough units of your own stacked against it, or you have to shave off some of those German units in your opening attacks to prevent them from going north. The latter option is particularly risky, since its hard to predict how many hits the German defender might put up in W. Russia itself, let alone Belo, or Baltic States. There’s also Caucasus, that other all important factory territory you have to consider in your opening…

Caucasus: Don’t forget about it!
Now that Karelia is off the table, and you’re firmly resolved to just grin and bear the loss of that northern factory for a while, its time to look at that other factory down south! Caucasus is arguably the most important Russian territory after Moscow and W. Russia, not because you need the production per se, but because its very important to deny this production to the Axis. Letting the Axis gain control of a factory that boarders your Capital is just an all around nightmare for the Allied war effort, so you should do everything you can to avoid this for as long as possible. Fortunately, unlike Karelia, it is possible to defend Caucasus in the first round. Its also possible to trade this territory and recover it quickly, owing to the fact that the British are in the area and can lend a hand with their tanks/fighters if need be, but its still a good idea to keep Caucasus under your thumb. Even if you can’t hold it forever, you at least want to threaten it on counter attack with enough force to prevent the Germans from stacking there and then flying in Japanese fighter cover. Once that happens, it becomes very hard to control the center of the gamemap and your Russians will be more or less pigeon holed into an entirely defensive “turtle up” posture. This is something you might be able to manage during the endgame, once the Western Allies have some units nearby to help prop you up, but its a disaster to let happen in early rounds. Caucasus is the main objective of most Axis drives early on, and what they will try to do is force you out of this territory (often by making you choose between Caucasus and the Capital Moscow.) For your part, you’ll want to push this decision out as far as possible. The best way you can do this is to either stack Caucasus itself, or stack W. Russia and Moscow with enough troops, that any German units that move into Caucasus will be immediately destroyed the following round on counter.

Finally, Moscow: the Center must hold!  
Losing Moscow early on, is basically losing the whole game. During the endgame it is possible to trade Moscow for an Axis capital, but in order to even get to the point where something like that is possible, you need to hold Moscow for a pretty long time. Lets put it this way, if you give the Axis a shot on the Russian capital anytime before round 7, things are probably going to end badly for Allies. So what does this mean? Well basically it means keeping Axis units more than 1 move away from Moscow, while at the same time keeping Allied units close enough that they can reach Moscow in 1 move if they have to. And frequently, it means sending US/UK units (esp. aircraft, but also ground) into Russian territories to ensure this.

OK, that was all background and a fairly long winded way to arrive at…

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All the Russian Openings!

The rest of this thread below will be for descriptions of specific Russian openings, from basic/general stuff to the more complex, and I invite anyone else here who has thoughts on the subject to post those here as well. TripleA saves would be nice if you want to share examples. I’ll start us off with one of the more popular…

Well, I loved those old infinity engine games and black isle materials. Baldur’s gate is always one of the first games loaded on the hard drive whenever I get a new laptop, so its cool to see someone with excellent taste at the helm haha. Maybe 42.2 has legs after all? I’m really pleased that one of these games is getting the official treatment. I gotta imagine there’s a fair amount of overlap between the peeps who got into D&D via those crpg games and peeps who might get into A&A with a digital introduction to the rules and such. Sometimes the table top can be intimidating for newbies and it can be challenging to connect with other like minded players face to face. But we buy the physical boxes at the same shops, so seems like it could work. I’m intrigued by the asynchronous play concept, and how a digital version might be used to help cement the ruleset or official updates to the setup and the like. Definitely cool news. Anything that gets more people interested in Axis and Allies, and a way to keep the franchise kicking. Especially if it leads to new boards or other boards like AA50 or 1940 getting a similar translation. I think hardcore vet players will be looking for different things out of the engine than players brand new to the game, but either way its still good news for those of us who like the digital format.

Like a Xvart catching a fireball, I didn’t see that one coming hehe, but I gotta say its pretty exciting!

If you’re like me and your bookmark takes you straight to the forums, you might not have caught the announcement on the front page, but lools like we’re getting a digital version of this one.

I’ll be especially interested to see how the Axis advantage is handled, whether through some formalization of the bidding process (which would be nice) or some kind of set up tweak along the lines of a tournament variant.

I gotta think we’ll get something not too dissimilar from what Hasbro did with the classic cd way back when. That one helped to establish certain balancing mechanisms that weren’t really present in the box, so maybe we get something kind of like that. The Russian restricted opening in Classic comes to mind as something that game probably helped to establish.

I’ll also be interested to see how the new system of casualty selection and restriction on friendly carriers/transports will effect the playbalance for 1942.2. Not too concerned about transports, but the carrier thing could definitely have an impact for fighter transits and the British naval game in particular. From what I just read I’d think the proposed changes will be mainly influencing the Allied game. Really curious to see how having a fixed order of loss based on unit cost will effect multi-national stacks or strafing. Like if you have an Anglo-American joint stack that is attacked by G, it could make a big difference if you have to split casualties in a close battle based on cost, instead of choosing to take all the hits for one nations stuff to preserve the other nation’s counter attack power. Also there’s always those questions about how subs will be handled. But all in all, I can see the advantages of doing an asynchronous approach, since it will definitely simplify the back and forth in a given round, in terms of necessary exchanges between players who are doing their thing remotely.

Will be fun to see also what kind of options there are in terms of modification or edits to the standard game that the engine will allow. I think a lot of long time players would be looking for things of that sort to drive it into the future, since we’re a group that likes to tweak stuff. But yeah, I think it could be a major thing in terms of setting standards, if the base game has some options built-in to help with balancing or offering new takes after some time has elapsed.

Anyhow, I think its a pretty cool announcement. Look forward to learning more about it.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/category/68/axis-allies-online

Ukraine Offensive:

There are two basic versions of the Ukraine opener, we can call them Ukraine “Alpha and Beta.” Or Ukraine “Heavy and Light”, or whatever you want, but it comes down to whether you bring 3 tanks or just 2 tanks into the Ukraine fight. In previous games, this opener was often described as “the Summer offensive” but whatever the season, it is a fairly standard issue Russian opener in A&A, and a good one to be familiar with. Here is the move…

Alpha: Hit Ukraine “Heavy” with everything in range, then send everything else to attack W. Russia!
3 infantry, 1 artillery, 3 tanks and 2 fighters to Ukraine.
9 infantry, 2 artillery, 1 tank to W. Russia.

In Ukraine retreat after the first round of the combat phase. This is what we call a “Strafe” in A&A. With any luck this will allow you to peel off a good portion of the German ground forces in Ukraine, but still allow you to retreat your tanks safely to Caucasus where they can defend the Russian factory, while simultaneously threatening Karelia on the blitz, and supporting the British position in India (both 2 moves from Caucasus.) Note that attacking beyond the first wave is a little dangerous, it runs the risk that you will “sweep” Ukraine entirely and be forced to occupy the territory. Its also possible with 3 tanks that you might get a strong opening roll and take the territory outright. This is rather less desirable than a solid strafe, since it leaves your tanks exposed to German counter attack, but its still workable. If that happens be prepared to send UK assistance to Russia immediately, in the form of UK fighters and Persian infantry. Otherwise, if the strafe succeeds as planned, what you want to do is continuously stack W. Russia with infantry and artillery, and use the Tanks in Caucasus to threaten larger scale attacks against the Germans. In other words, you don’t want to use these tanks in minor combats, but instead save them for the really large engagements. They can also be used to defend or liberate India in a pinch, should the UK find itself in trouble and desperate for Stalin to sacrifice a tank or two on their behalf.

Beta: The same as above except here you hit Ukraine “Light” with just 2 tanks, and send the other tank to W. Russia.
3 infantry, 1 artillery, 2 tanks and 2 fighters to Ukraine.
9 infantry, 2 artillery, 2 tanks to W. Russia.

If you have a brilliant first round of combat in Ukraine, or a catastrophic first round of combat, it is still possible to strafe/retreat your tanks at advantage, but ideally what you want to do is take Ukraine and destroy that German fighter. The advantage to this approach over going heavy, is that you are only putting 2 tanks at risk to the German counter attack in Ukraine, and the second tank in W. Russia increases the likelihood that you will take the territory in fewer rounds of combat (e.g. taking less hits from the German defender in the process) and a stronger defense in W. Russia, should the Germans go crazy and attempt to counter attack here.

The Non-Combat move for both these openings is essentially the same, with a couple important options depending on the results of the battles, especially in W. Russia.

1 Sub from sz 4 to sz 7 (remember to take as the first casualty if possible)
1 AAAgun from Moscow to W. Russia
2 fighters land in Caucasus
2 inf from Evenki to Archangel
1 inf from Novosibirsk to Moscow.
1 inf from Yakut to Evenki
2 inf each from Bury and Far East to Yakut

Then, if the battles went poorly consider sending the Caucasus AA gun to W. Russia, and1 Kazakh infantry to Caucasus.

Otherwise you can send the 1 Kazakh infantry forward to Szech (optimal) to save the Chinese Flying Tiger, which can then be used to support W. Russia on defense.

This opening supports most of the Russian purchases I highlighted in the post above, though I definitely prefer the 6 and 5 hitpoint builds that include some additional Russian tanks to maximize the armor advantage, especially in the case of a strong strafe.

Follow up: expect to receive immediate British air support in W. Russia, Archangel, or Caucasus depending on how the British wish to respond to Germany’s opening moves. Ideally you want the British bomber to be in Caucasus or Kazakh to provide the maximum threat against Japan, and you want to get the two British spitfires from UK into a position where they can fly to India if they have to which means either W. Russia or Archangel. The US fighter and infantry in Szech should pull back to protect the center. I consider a sz 61 attack on the second Japanese transport fairly critical, though it is possible to focus on Egypt instead if you wish, in the later case be prepared to evacuate/trade India somewhat earlier and as the Russians you may have to use your armor to liberate India for the British.

There is a third Ukraine opener worth mentioning, which we might call Ukraine Gamma, or the Soviet fighter rescue. This looks exactly like the heavy opening with 3 tanks to Ukraine, except rather than sending the Moscow fighter into the Ukraine attack, you send it to Egypt instead (4 moves) to defend the British position from a G1 attack. This puts the fighter out of commission for an entire round, but some will go this route under OOB conditions for fear of a losing Egypt and the British fighter stationed there to German amphibious. I think this Soviet fighter to Egypt strategy works somewhat better in Russian games that don’t involve a Ukraine attack, but that’s a discussion for another post.

Next time, we can look at some other Russian openers. Such as moves and placement strategies that involve tank trapping Caucasus, and just stacking West Russia with everything (or almost everything). Or the merits of other strategies like the Belo Blast with the northern focus. Or the Baltic gambits. Or hardcore KJF positioning. But I’ve been typing for a while now and this at least gets us started. Hopefully some of this stuff will help the newer players to 42 sec Ed. I know many of us have been through this stuff before, but the threads get buried and can be hard for new people to locate, or they spiral into endless digressions and die off. So here’s a new thread, where we can just discuss Russian opening tutorial stuff again ad nauseam  

Have fun and good gaming all!
Catch you next time
-Elk

(Edit: I removed the outdated saved game attachments. If I get a chance I’ll update them with a current build of triplea.)

@Argothair

Point 3 is major. I remember bringing it up on the Larry boards and trying to explain the merits of that approach back before AA50 came out, since we had tried it with Midway and a couple other spots in Pact of Steel and I thought it made things a lot more interesting. But he seemed pretty committed to his definition of an island being entirely contained within a sz (despite UK breaking with that definition all along.) Anyhow, I think the gameplay is more dynamic for island hoping and naval cat and mouse when they straddle the sz borders.

For colors I don’t have a strong opinion when it comes to individual nations, but I guess I do have strong opinions when it comes to the overall color scheme for the whole, which I’ll elaborate on here in a sec. In tripleA its easy to edit the territory colors in the gamefile hex code on the player’s end, though much harder to adjust the color for the unit graphics themselves, so I guess that is something to keep in mind. One thing I’ve found helpful in the past is to differentiate the various national colors on 2 out of the 3 color dimensions. Color pedantics to follow hehe…

So for any color you have Hue, Value, and Saturation.

Hue just means ‘color’ in old english, which isn’t very helpful, but it basically refers to position in the rainbow, roygbiv.

Value is often described as the position along a grayscale, from white to black or tint to shade.

Saturation or Vibrancy is the intensity of the color, or how much light it kicks off. They are basically synonymous but sometimes vibrancy is an easier tool to work with in a graphics editor since it usually isolates the totals at one end and leaves the mids, whereas a saturation tool usually moves everything at once.

Even people who may have trouble distinguishing Hue (red/green colorblind is the most common), will usually still be able to distinguish Value or Saturation pretty easily. I think Value is the most recognizable and easiest to work with. The quickest way to determine what Values you have is to desaturate everything and make the map grayscale. If you can still differentiate the various nations in grayscale then you are usually solid. Just note that the defaults for most nations in tripleA do a really poor job of this. Some nation’s territories are almost identical in value/saturation. Many people have a strong aesthetic preference for colors at a certain value/saturation threshold and end up just changing the hue, which can lead to everything being more similar than one might realize at first.

In the WW2 tripleA games the color values for many nations are very similar Germany/USA almost identical, Japan/Neutral the same, Russia/Britain the same. Here with Argos draft it is divided more by side Allies are lighter, Axis darker, which I like.

Also one last thought on color, when I made the original baselines for AA50 and the World Projection Map, parts of which have been used for various other tripleA maps, I put the ocean at a pretty light value intentionally. I honestly think I could have gone even lighter, so that nothing competed with it on the high end, and the ocean was always lighter than land. But for whatever reason someone changed the ocean to a mid-range value almost 50% gray, which was a weird call in my view. In the standard WWII maps it creates these strange visual ‘pops’, where some land territory colors are significantly higher value (closer to white), than other land tiles or than the sea (i.e. impassible neutrals, or lighter nations like Japan.) I think it is better to go way light or way dark on the Ocean color value. Below are examples of those same baseline maps I posted before, but totally desaturated to show how far you can push the value and still be blue just with hue/saturation adjustment. The last set shows an extremely light ocean color, probably about as far as I’d go before it gets obnoxiously light for me, but which would definitely allow all the darks/mids of the land tiles to be easily distinguished from the sea zone tiles, and make the overall ‘world’ of the world map feel more visually cohesive.

I’m not 100% percent, but I don’t think the ocean color for the standard WWII tripleA maps is something that can be quickly edited in the map file (its not listed with the hex codes for everything else), and the mapmaker will take any color other than pure black/white as a sz, so its kind of a pet peeve that all those standard A&A maps use a blue that is so close in value to true gray. Basically you need to turn on map details and provide a skin to make it look better after the fact, but yeah, the default ocean color is pretty far from what I had originally envisioned before they cut up the baseline. Alas. Logan’s color choice for the ocean tiles in the tripleA Classic map was better in my view, though still a little “neon glow” for my taste, but everything recent follows the standard color choices made for tripleA Revised, which is a little unfortunate. Anyhow, I think sea zone color is an important first choice, since it carries through after you color the baseline.

Totally on board with points 5-8. I really believe that its possible to have a more complex map (in terms of total territories/sz, or number of player nations, even the unit roster) without upending the learning curve, provided the basic rules are universal and other stuff isn’t too wild like with objectives and whatnot.

Anyhow, just wanted to offer some encouragement. Looks cool so far

ps. curious historical aside, in western painting blue pigment was rare and so many famous painters used clever tricks to limit its use. With a limited pallet of Raw Sienna, Burnt Umber, Yellow Ocher (red mud, brown mud, yellow mud) + Black and White, you can create the illusion of blue in your grays. Rembrandt was pretty slick at it. The storm on the sea of Galilee is a fun example. Almost all the blues you see in the sky/ocean there are actually grays, but they appear blue when viewed next to the colors that surround them. I think its cool. Anyhow point being, probably way too much thought can go into choosing the blues and the grays lol, but I think its important hehe.

For a long time now I’ve been hoping to see an official digital platform for A&A (one with at least some kind of connection to the designers and publishers) that could be used for alpha testing a new game before its actually released in print. I mean like a tandem release, where the new physical game follows the online drop.

Analog playtesting the way A&A has been handled in the past is pretty laborious and time intensive, as a cursory look back at the larry boards will reveal. Even with an open alpha and tons of feedback on forums and such for each proposal, its still a challenge to aggregate everything and to rely on anecdotal after action reports. I get the impression that there is never really enough time to hold the kind of informal FtF tournaments that would be required, or to get enough people all going gangbusters at the same time to actually get enough data beforehand to determine whether its fully cooked before running it to the printers in china and pushing it out on the shelves.

With a digital alpha you could speed up the whole process considerably and have gamesaves to use as evidence, to help parse the overall play-pattern and player experience in each iteration.

I think A&A online could provide a real opportunity, if ever we got a shot on a re-issue of 1942. Even a re-release using the same base map could be fun. I admit new maps get me more excited than the existing ones (there were a couple changes from Spring to 2nd Ed so least there’s a precedent), but even using the same map as 2nd ed, with set up changes or a rules change or two there are a lot of ways to get at a new take on things.

I guess what I’m hoping for is that A&Aonline goes beyond just offering a way to play 1942.2 or any of the existing A&A games digitally, and might eventually serve as a hub for developing the next A&A games. A place where the players could actually be more involved with that process, and provide feedback on things when it might still make a difference, e.g. before its shrink wrapped and sent off to stores.

I know there are some core table toppers who would probably never really play A&A on a computer, but who might reconsider doing so, if hopping online also meant possible glimpses at the next upcoming board. Or having other ways to get involved, provide feedback while it might still influence the basic set up/balance design, or otherwise engage with something that they eventually get to put on an actual table. I think we could see a pretty strong 3rd edition going at it that way.

Anyhow, just a few thoughts. To me the real longer term promise of an online A&A project would be something like that. And why I get exicted about things like possible toolsets or map/scenario editors.

Not sure what the publisher would stand to gain from that other than generating ill will with a core part of their potential online player base. TripleA has moved pretty far away from the A&A clone it was initially and is driven much more by original content now. The whole process of creating games, downloading maps and everything was altered to remain in-bounds a while back. I’ve been participating in the project now for the better part of almost two decades and I can say that it has morphed considerably since the last dmca of like 10 years ago. Really all you have to do is look back on the staying power of the defunct GTO A&A Spring 1942 computer game, to see how silly it was to try and present that as a viable alternative. To really replace tripleA they’d have to create a title that does all the things that tripleA does, but better, which seems like a pretty tall order given how its grown into an open ended game engine now, with the majority of maps having nothing to do with Axis and Allies. Pointlessly coming after it without a suitable replacement to fill that void for the larger game creating community would just piss off the exact long-time players they want to attract in the first place.

If they build a good stand alone A&A online platform, emblazoned with all the regalia of officialdom, then the players will gravitate to it by themselves, so I’d hope it doesn’t get presented as an either or proposition. I’m pretty sure the people at Beamdog can appreciate the value of having a creative user-content driven community behind them, just given their history taking on a redux for projects like BG or Neverwinter Nights.

I think beamdog is a particularly good fit for Axis and Allies, just coming out of a mutual appreciation for what they did with those other crpgs. I was really surprised and pleased to see that they were taking on this project for us.

Back when Black Elk was a druid named Jah-din, I used to put out massive portrait packs for those games hehe. Took samples from the dusty tomes, all my favorite fantasy artists of the 1st/2nd edition D&D era, with a credits list like half a mile long, since that kind of stuff is important to me. But anyway, main point being that a large part of the appeal of those games was stuff like that, all the user created content, mods, possibilities for customization etc.

I’d say we have the exact same sort of group here among the A&A playerbase, just waiting for a developer to do right by us. If anything TripleA could probably help them to learn a great deal about the sort of things the community is really hungry for.

Honestly the situation we’ve been in with A&A/tripleA is almost exactly analogous to what was happening with the Baldur’s Gate modding community before beamdog enhanced it across the finish line. People just trying their best to find new ways to make it happen in the afterlife. I remember the first time I played BG using the BGII engine, just hunting around in random corners of the internet, messing with dos prompts and the like. It was doable, and awesome when it finally worked, but I can tell you right now its way more convenient to just drop like 10 bones on a steam sale and have all the legwork already done.

But yeah man, a toolset. That’s the ticket right there. I mean obviously I’m buying it regardless, but with a toolset out the deal you could start to harness the creativity of the community at large, and put it to work in furthering the online franchise long term.

Exactly! Its actually kind of bizarre, given how much interest there is in things like collecting sculpts or additional accessories (dice, chips, counters and whatnot), not to mention other variant materials like card decks or specialty rules for expansion scenarios. Of course you can customize and cobble stuff together using 3rd party resources and house rules, but I think there is a pretty clear desire on the part of most players for some kind of official guidance in that area.

To me the most sensible approach would be a starter set (containing all the essential materials for the basic game) then a series of modular expansions for that starter set, and then periodically a big box (Black Box, Gold Box or whatever) where you can get a bundle of expansion materials incorporated into the sale of the starter materials. The potential for smaller transactions is pretty limitless. I could imagine things like national expansion sets with sculpts and rules for how to incorporate a new player nation into the base game, or unit expansions where you get sculpts for all the existing nations. AH tried to do something like this with their miniatures series, but the obvious issue was that those miniatures were for an entirely different “squad” based game, that had no application in the existing A&A boardgames and no real connection to the boardgame franchise other than the name recognition.

The other issue with the single “big get” model, is that the boards become outdated way too quickly. The older maps/rules become defunct as soon as the new stuff arrives, so you end up with all these total replacements and a bunch of boxes stacking up in the closet, rather than a situation where you could build up a for a master collectors game over time. In the digital arena people tend to grumble about DLCs and such, but to me it makes a lot of sense for the physical board, and is already going on anyway at places like historicalboardgaming, which is currently filling the void left over by the dearth of official A&A expansion materials.

The splintering of the community is a real problem, and there is a definite lack of cohesion when it comes to things like official fixes for game balance. It puts us in a position where people who are trying to play the same game, end up playing very different games, as they try to address these issues in localized player groups or tournaments with House Rules or whatever.

I think a lot of people find the idea of a balanced game ‘out the box’ kind of patronizing at this point. We know its not going to be balanced by sides. A balanced A&A board has never been realized to date, and the track record there is pretty clear, which is why its kind of surprising that we still don’t have any official remedy or scheme for dealing with this constant problem. Like just admitting that the game is inherently unbalanced already, so we can move past that and find an optimal working solution for choosing sides.

More importantly, even if the boxed game was balanced by sides, with the perfect starting unit set up, just the right amount of cash etc. what we are talking about there is a game balanced among players of roughly ‘equal skill,’ but that is rarely the situation around the home table. There is almost always a disparity in player ability/familiarity, so these games really do require a more refined handicapping scheme to give the underdog a leg up. It should be built into the game… part of the gameplay from the get-go, not an afterthought fix.

With respect to the A&Aonline project, I’ll admit to being a little concerned about that last point. I worry that anecdotal experiences around the office may lead them to think the game is a 50/50 toss up and so the issue doesn’t need addressing, but that is definitely not the consensus view here. There are probably hundreds of games logged in the PBF section which support the general assessment that the 1942 board was Axis advantage and seems to still be even after the tournament tweak. But you really don’t even need to go there, because we all know that even if the game was a perfect split by sides, you’d still need a way to deal with disparities in player ability. Just because an expert player can manage not to die as Allies, doesn’t mean that the average player will be able to do the same. And not every newb is going to want to play as Axis, just because its the ‘easier side’ to play. You need a system in place, an official system, to deal with this stuff.

The traditional tournament bid works alright, but even that is kind of tired at this point, and in any case it still doesn’t have the official nod despite being used by pretty much everyone. I’d rather have a series of thematic options spelled out in the rulebook.

ps. this isn’t a grand plan, but lets say worst case scenario and the boxed game is totally hardcoded with no way to edit units or provide a cash bid, or anything like that. What do we do then? Maybe skip the movement phases in the first round for everyone by player agreement? Like nothing can move until round 2, so everyone gets a preliminary purchase before it actually begins in earnest? Its the only thing I can think of right now that might somehow produce a substantially different playpattern PvP, potentially balancing if nothing else is done to vanilla 1942.2 and its just a direct port. It probably handles the balance on Caucasus and India, naval builds might be more interesting or production builds. Following the regular game sequence players would at least be able to build off each others purchases to shape the playbalance, instead of everything going to one side or one player. Might work. Allies could then save the American Atlantic transports and allow the US to pick a focus. Britain could try to set up in the Atlantic, or build for a hit on Japan out of India/sz35 so Allies get the leg up. But the Axis would also get a chance to build in sz15 or sz60 or do stuff with transports that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to, so I can imagine it going different ways depending on who builds what in the ghost round. The practical restriction of only placing units at the factory territories might be somewhat stabilizing, instead of a bid that goes to a battle breaker. I wonder what round 2 would look like then after a round of purchases? Russia would be able to ice the Ukraine battle, and Britain could put the lock on sz37, but G could probably do some things to compensate like with a transport buy in the med. Not sure how it would shake down, but might be more interesting than vanilla. A full round of purchasing would have to favor Allies for the initiative since they have more nations on the team, but least it wouldn’t be just all to one side.

I think it would be cool if the game Global map board had 6 possible set ups or scenarios by year, all printed as a set up chart addendum to the rulebook. Same core rules, just different territory ownership and starting unit set ups.

1940: Expert difficulty. Longest scenario, slowest build up, with the most involved rules and most deliberate gameplay pace.
Focus primarily on the Political dimension and Declarations of War between players. Designed as the “all night” or “multi-session” scenario. Realistically a scenario at this scale should be designed with the 1v1, head to head style of gameplay in mind.

1941: Moderate difficulty. A slightly accelerated version of the above, but beginning with total war conditions. Still a long scenario, with a fairly slow build up, just at a slightly faster pace than the 1940 game, on account of no DoW rules and more starting units. Focus on mobilization and early purchasing. Again designed to work well in a 1v1, head to head match.

1942: Moderate difficulty. Moderate length scenario. Fairly involved unit start, but a somewhat faster build up than the two earlier scenarios. Representing the Axis at their greatest extent, with roughly balanced starting forces. As the basic 1942 scenario proposed in this thread attempts to do. The familiar A&A game, modeled on the Classic experience. This game should be designed with a more free form team-player experience in mind, such as the 2v2 or 3v3 match.

1943: Moderate difficulty. Similar flavor to 1942, but with a different unit set up and a more accelerated pace. A many-headed-hydra sort of match, with the scenarios that follow focusing as well on the multi. I think this game might be fun if designed for the uneven-match 1v2, or 2v3 etc.

1944: Wild difficulty. Short scenario, fast set up. Focuses heavily on technology. The fast pace of this should make it ideal for quick games, either head to head or multi player.

1945: Wild difficulty. Shortest scenario, fastest set up. Focuses on the Post War balance of power. This last scenario might be conceived in such a way to allow the war to continue beyond its historical end-date, and to build a certain Cold War flavor into the game. Perhaps returning to the Political dimension, like a funhouse mirror reflection of the 1940 scenario, except here it is a “cold” DoW between the USSR and the Western Powers. This one would probably be fun as a 3 player game, Free For All, 1v1v1. Or perhaps as a head to head match, with some sort of cascading technology feature, or mechanic whereby the contest is really Allies vs Allies, and the Axis are there mainly as an hour glass in the competition. Or perhaps both ideas in mind, for the short 1v1 and the multi. This game might include strategic weapons as a resolution mechanism: the ABCs. Though maybe we don’t want to go there with A&A? People seem to have a fascination with the Atomic since the Allies achieved it, but the Bio-Chem not so much, even though that was where the Axis had the edge. Its the dark side though either way, and a hard sell. Probably best to just leave it alone and pretend the war ends on conventional terms. It would still be cool for the Soviet player to have a 1945 start date, since we could build them out to be at their zenith, war with Japan etc.

A game map like that would have substantial replay value, and a better statistical chance that 1 out of the 6 scenarios will score a hit, and be balanced by sides OOB.

Clearly the most complex and rules intensive year would be 1940, since this pre-dates Soviet and USA entry, and the Pacific war versus Japan, but all the rest could be designed with a more moderate difficulty level. Basically, as the war goes on, with each scenario you can strip things down a bit, to put the emphasis on a different style of gameplay. Keeping the same Total War situation and rules, just with a different flavor in each year. I think 6 years would be cool, since you could do the whole 1d6 analogy. And the basic 6 player ideal. I mean, you could probably print a set up chart for each year on just a couple pages at the end of the rulebook. I still pine and dream for a 3rd edition printing of 1940 Global, that might include such a concept.

There are a lot of things I like about DKs map, especially for a game at the level above AA50. But that scenario includes 7 player nations + neutrals and a Soviet Union at like 20 tiles. What I had in mind was more like the classic 5 man set up. In the nova board above the USSR was imagined with 9 starting tiles for a total value of 21. The 1942.2 board has the USSR with 11 starting tiles and a value of 24.

I was thinking something more like just 8 starting tiles, but with a higher total value (maybe 30ish) where that value is concentrated in fewer overall territories. The Soviet Far East in particular I was picturing as a much larger and more significant tile, with a production profile so that it can be reinforced, and a starting unit distribution that has Japan and Russia more or less deadlocked over the Manchuria/Soviet Far East front in early rounds.

Instead of what we’ve seen in previous iterations where its too hard to cover the Soviet Far East against a Japanese amphibious coastal assault (so it just gets abandoned), you could instead get a slow build/stack vs stack along that border, with a simpler map geometry that allows units to shift from the Pacific to the center, the same way it works on the eastern front vs Germany. Fewer tiles and more reach basically.

The dynamic would be an extended Russian center pocket so that the Soviets have a way to get back onto the Pacific side in one or two turns instead of like 3-4 turns, and then have the counter weight stacking vs Japan be along the Manchuria front instead of pulling all the way back to Moscow.

Or I suppose if people are really wedded to the idea of a Soviet Far East deadzone, you could have the main eastern production hub be a larger central tile like combining Vologda, Evenki, Yakut into a single territory. But something on that side of the map that anchors the Russians and gives them a way to function in the far east so they can hold against Japan instead of just retreating. No need for a NAP or anything that complicated, but just trying to stabilize the movement along that front with the production/unit distribution so it’s more gridlocked against Japan. The same decreased distance would also allow for more interesting KJF positions, or favor endgame redirects where the Allies can shift fronts more easily from the Center Pacific to Center Europe or vice versa.

It would be an inversion of the trend from the last three 1942 boards, where Russia got more eastern tiles and fewer units to cover them, to a situation with fewer eastern tiles and more units to cover them basically.

ps. Maybe something more like this?.. just rough hacking up one my old tripleA draft thumbnails in paint real quick, little choppy here but you can sort of see what I’m driving at. Kind of turning the geometry of East Asia around, so that the split in the Soviet Pacific and in China is simpler to reinforce and not such an easy steam roll Japan. Depending on how flexible you get for the ipc totals, you could basically give the Russians their Pacific production hub in either the Soviet Far East tile that encompasses like Yakut to Murmansk, or you could still it in the large tile that encompasses everything between the Urals and Siberia. Either way the Russians could redirect a lot more easily.

I think the same thing for China, where you could still have just the 4 starting tiles of 1942.2 but set up the geometry so its more defensible in tiers, instead of just allowing for a quick punch from the coast to the soviet center.

Perhaps the blocking here is a little too large for some tastes. I actually think you could also create a similarly stable warfront with a lot more tile divisions, but that would require one of the current eastern tiles like Yakut to be worth a lot more, with a larger overall economy, if Russia is meant to be trading constantly for a bunch of low value spaces. But this seemed like it might be simpler. Just with larger high value tiles that really don’t trade hands until someone is going for the win.

Sounds pretty cool! I’d watch the video haha. I have a lot of old pewters from the 80s, but mine are all high fantasy, dragons and the like. My uncle had some kick ass Napoleonic era pewters, and a great set of plastic army men from the early 60s that I always pined over.

My first serious attempt at the map concept was for the computer in tripleA, a few decades ago, so pretty limited by what the thing could do at the time. It worked for a bit, but was kinda wonky and used some gimmicky ideas for the naval movement and convoys, as a way to delay the USA. It had a kind of one direction flow from the Americas to support the Entente, but the game was basically decided by what happened in Europe with the CP. I was never very satisfied, but it was a fun project cause I like the era. You can see the map down at the bottom here…

https://axisandallies.fandom.com/wiki/Great_War

Then I tried to revisit the era again, but ended up not using the WW1 map abstraction concept, opting for something that just had the whole world on view and a more free form 1898-1918 vibe, so the factions could be less rigid. Basically I wanted it to include the Spanish American war, and Africa scrambles, or Boxer rebellion-y stuff with a kind of slow build into WW1. I split the Entente into Anglo-American and Franco-Russian sides, to see if I could find a way of dividing up the world and then tacked some others minors onto each team just to see how it would work. I think I had America-Britain-Portugal-Japan on one team, France-Spain-Italy-Russia on another. Germany-Austria-Ottomans-the Dutch and China on the last. Just so the spread would be evenly distributed with some fronts in each theater to tease out. I determined it as too simplistic and anachronistic though. It was basically the dilemma of the 3 faction game and being modelled more on the playscale of Risk than A&A that proved kind of intractable. The factions weren’t entirely satisfying, though I thought it kind of fun for make believe, and colonial competition. I just called it “Domination” lol. That one had a very limited unit roster, and simplified economy, but a much larger scale of territory divisions. I think it still would have worked on a 6 ft table, but only because of the limited units. Really it was just an excuse to draw a world map projection with a warp that I liked a little better than the traditional A&A map.

https://axisandallies.fandom.com/wiki/Domination

I wanted something a bit closer to Mercator, but which would still give a much larger Europe. The squish-blob challenge I found was in how to manage South Asia and Africa, where the map compression becomes more extreme due to what has to happen with Europe/Med in A&A style games, so there was some abstraction, but a bit different than the earlier idea. I abandoned that one too, but Hepster picked it up again and revised it considerably for a 1914 era game using the same base projection but focused more on politics and a much more highly evolved roster/ruleset for this one…

https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/1063/power-of-politics-1914-a-wwi-scenario

I’m not sure if that one would work as a physical game though without a very large map. Perhaps 2x6 ft tables to make a large square with a more extreme warp in the map projection? But basically its better on a computer I’d imagine since you can map zoom and scale to micro with the imaginary sculpts. But work on it has gone a bit quiet since last year. Anyhow, it have a few of the abstraction concepts for stuff like convoys or how to handle the Bolshevik revolution (always a toughy), or things like cities through an abstracted scheme, but not so much with the playboxes ideas.

I’m definitely interested in different ways to push the map around though. I enjoyed the Classic playboxes in the first A&A map I picked up, even if they were just sort of cosmetic zooms in that one. I liked the look of it.

I tried to use an idea like that for a WW1 map. Abstracting the Western Front in to a large playbox. Retaining Europe and the Med, but abstracting everywhere else like the Americas, Africa and the Pacific into boxes. The idea I tried to play with was like a maze of Sea Zones connecting the regions.

I thought Empire Total War also did an interesting take, by combining 3 theater maps connected with abstracted Trade routes for other regions.

Something like that might work for WW2, basically compressing the main fronts in Europe/North Africa and in the Pacific. I guess basically you’d want Axis at their greatest extent in the zoom, and some of the rest abstracted. It was easier for me to get my head around the idea for WW1 since the fronts were more limited and major expeditionary forces bouncing around the globe doing amphib stuff didn’t really fit the period. Although in WW2, I think the attractive idea is that global domination and painting the whole map is a little more conceivable in that era. Still, might work, just need a compelling abstraction scheme.

Anyhow, yeah, it is intriguing to me for sure. I’d be curious to see where you take the idea

I fired it up in A&AO a few times to see if anything was patched up recently, but I haven’t really been able to finish any ranked games in months. These days I feel like I can blink and loose a day pretty easily. Now that I’m all habituated to endless lockdown, getting anything done within 24 hrs is a stretch and I’m not particularly reliable lol. Usually what happens is I’ll stick it out for the first 4 or 5 hours if I catch a live one, then someone dips… I sleep all day, and come back to the auto forfeit. Alas

I think the big gripe with this one is that it just doesn’t really feel like the game is set in 1942. To much stuff in the first round script doesn’t look like 1942 at all. Its one thing when a big exchange happens a few rounds out and you can suspend disbelief, its another when it happens on the very first turn.

Some things that definitely didn’t happen in 1942, but which the game scripts into the first round would include stuff like German U-boats sinking the Royal Navy at Scapa Flow, or blowing up the US Atlantic fleet on G1. Britain sinking the entire Regia Marina in the med, or the Japanese fleet in the East Indies on UK1. Japan running a second attack at Pearl Harbor on J1, or just flattening China entirely. Even the Ukraine opener on Russia’s first turn doesn’t really make sense for the timeline. So yeah, the critical path is usually pretty muddy and seems to be winding away from historical expectations straight into the woods lol.

I do hope we get a proper 3rd edition or a new standard A&A board at some point. This map isn’t the worst, but the set up is pretty lackluster and one dimensional. I really think they need to provide some way for players to influence the composition or distribution of at least some of their starting forces. Like similar to a tournament bid, but more gameful in the implementation, just so there would be some more variety in the first round, or so the playpattern wouldn’t have to be so predictable a few months out. Clearly that would need to be written down in the manual somewhere, not just hacked off the cuff post release hehe.

Anyhow, hope you guys are well, and maintaining through the plague.
Io Saturnalia!!!

Best
Elk

I brought this up a while back, mostly because I find laundry lists of text describing the “moves” written out in words pretty useless when playing at a steady clip (which is probably saying something for me, cause I’m notoriously long winded with my A&A rambling and lists of lists on the forums lol), but I think what most would want is a visual representation of the moved units on the game map that is as easy as possible to parse at a glance. Diamonds and Arrows are only marginally better than lists at the final prompt in my view, since they hide a lot of the relevant information behind another click to view type graphical element. Last time I checked the diamond was updated to a black circle with crossbar riffles, its got a little circular colored meter now showing which units are involved, yellow for ground, red for aircraft ect, which is a bit of an improvement aesthetically over the diamond though functionally its much the same. The arrows have definitely been improved over the past few months, because now the ‘moving’ units don’t shift position within their starting territory to a spot along the border anymore, which was kinda confusing sometimes before, but still, a lot arrows going on.

The optimal method for usability I’d think would be like an inter-phase step, where the units actually move into the relevant territories/sea zones and are displayed clearly on the map in their ending locations rather than with arrows from their starting location (like where the moved unit appears as a ghost or semi-transparent version of itself or whatever ‘while its moving’ in the actual spot where its meant to end up, similar to the way other map games work.) But I’m pretty sure Cody described in discord that something of that sort with a preview was basically impossible given the way the game was designed. In my layman’s way of understanding it there’s no real intermediate game state to save/preview, until the phase is actually completed and then the stuff actually happens, after which point there’s no going back. Which I think is also why there’s no time machine or simple way to access or export a gamesave or to view a previous turn/phase in a game history? I don’t know how it works exactly if it overwrites as it goes maybe, or something like that to ease the load? I do wish there was a way to save games though. Even for something sort of ephemeral like a really killer A&A match, sometimes its cool to have something other than a screen capture that you can look back on later to study, or just show off haha.

I’m not a big fan of the vestigial movement arrows myself, since I think they clutter up the map view and wouldn’t really be necessary if the units just moved into the relevant space with a “to/from” for each unit involved listed in a sidebar when you cursor over the spot haha.

I try not to bring up comparisons too much anymore since I don’t think its particularly productive, but I kinda just wish the map display for movement looked more like TripleA. Like I guess its one of those 'why reinvent the wheel, when you could just take a sleigh, or cross country ski there instead?" heheh. I mean I don’t know, maybe that’s a little harsh, but yeah. I feel ya dude. It’s a bit rough, mild panic sets in immediately after clicking the “End Phase” button.

I know its an online game with “Online” in the name, but I still think not having really any focus on the single player experience is a bit of a missed opportunity. Its the lowest barrier to entry, low-pressure first introduction, that A&A really needs from a product like this. like at least as much as it needs solid online matchmaking. I know I probably played a hundred solitaires or games against goofy computer opponents with the old Hasbro CD before I ever put up an even remotely decent game in a head-to-head match.

Axis and Allies is a kinda wonky game to learn how to play, and one that would be well served by a robust computer tutorial. Even a middling computer opponent would be great to have for learning the basic mechanics of A&A, to say nothing of learning the UI. I think this one is serviceable for people who already know what they’re doing, and just want an official way to play, but I worry its not the most spectacular thing ever if what you’re using it for is just getting your head around the nuts and bolts. Or if the way you’re trying to learn how to play A&A is by running through the tutorial and then playing against the computer, before into a pvp match lol. The Hasbro CD attempt even with the limits of mid 90s gameplay still managed to find ways to engage the Single Player, with like AI generals, splashy stats/graphs/newsflashes stuff of that sort, and a lot of game mode options to mess about with.

This one really does need an editor though or at least a time machine.
Would be cool if there were more built-in communication features too and a way to share histories and gamesaves and such.

I wish I had more time to play lately. I missed the second season entirely. Might check it out again in the third. Things tend to open up for me in the Fall for A&A time sinks heheh. Hope all’s been well!

Yeah I think the ‘ignore’ advice what they’re really saying is more ‘don’t buy ships in the other theater with USA.’ So USA/Britain aren’t ignoring Japan they’re just managing Japan from the center instead of head on from East/South Pacific. And Usually if you withdraw Atlantic fleet, then you still have to purchase position to cover the West Coast and VC snipes.

I’d prob end up trying to use Britain to threaten an early Japanese press into Kazakh, since they have more to work with than Russia usually. But just having enough Brit fighters there to get the job done sometimes depends on how first round cracked off so that’s rough too. Germany can come hard all by itself, basically they just mass artillery/inf stack pushing. So you have to start trading as quickly as possible into Europe with UK/USA to draw off German hitpoints, or else Russia just topples eventually (usually you want it holding till about round 8-9, but that means drawing Germany back in sufficient numbers that they stall out a bit after W. Russia/Caucasus push intstead of careening straight into the Soviet capital in the 8th round). Germany has so many starting aircraft and tanks that you basically have to force them into half a dozen combats every round just to make a dent in their forward progress to Moscow. And probably have to bomb at some point too, if you really want an edge over even then, which is the most nerveracking. Ideally bombers you’d just want for combat, but sometimes you just can’t even get close to challenging German income without a max-damage into the dirt sort of round, which is a pretty dicey proposition. Allies also have the challenge of landing enough inf units with UK/USA that Germany has to actually funnel hitpoints west each turn to die in trading, instead of heading east for the stackfest. So its more than just the bare minimum inf and bombardments+mass air, usually gotta send more dudes just to die, just to spread G thin enough that they’re actually risking something for the reconquest every round in the trade. Hoping for lucky dud on their part or maybe holding a tile on d every once in a blue moon.

I usually go Africa coverage first then swing north. Depends on sz11. Most people I saw in Plat were going all-in on sz7 attack as Germany, with all the subs on G1 just to make sure, only a couple balsy exceptions out of like 50 some odd games that I saw. So the USA is a little better off with those transports and dd in tact but still hard to get it going fast enough even then.

I like carrier and transports+ art focus first two rounds to get the chain going, then bomber focus. Most of my wins as Allies in KGF have come from the bomber stack like 6 or more deep. Its important to at least threaten airblitz amphib of Berlin in case they mess up their no com fighter landings or placement phase and leave open an early snipe attack vs Berlin, which can sometimes happen.

Its usually easier to prop up Russia by trading north via sz5 or sz3 over the Med trade game I find, but I’ve seen the Med work in some prolonged type games, or where something went wild in early Africa battles. But basically only way to keep Russia up, is the fighter wall to the center and then trading as many spots as possible along German coast so they have to pull back to cover coastal trading instead of just hammering Soviets with everything.

I think it takes 100% USA focus in Pacific if you want to do anything to break IJN early. Otherwise its about meeting the IJN somewhere else in the engame. Usually at the canal/Med, or Indian ocean reverse press where your fighter wall at the center can help prevent the Japanese fleet from just parking into Africa sz34. If you see Japan going against USA in KGF, better to build ground chain up through Canada like the old games, write off Honolulu, and play to make the trade Alaska or whatever that way if Japan goes all balistic with transports north, when they should really be pushing em into Yunnan shuck. Then hope to make em pay for the distraction on the other side of the board with the repeating launch sz10 to sz3 Finland.

ps. another thing not always obvious is how sometimes just funneling hitpoints with USA into British held territory and holding puts pressure on Germany. They don’t always need to advance into territory unless you can start splitting G hard in each fight. Other times it can be helpful just to juice a territory like Northwestern or France after Britain has taken, just to force larger numbers into the next trade. Trying to have even larger numbers via transports for the following clap back to up the stakes. But always optimal is liberating Karelia while the center is still holding, so I like Finland push after Africa coverage for the set up. To at least try for putting heat on Karelia and securing Norway, but there’s always that tension between trying to prop up Russian in the north repeating launch, or just start slamming into G from the West head on? KGF is hard because G is so beefy and has such strong defensive position to stack Berlin. Just trying to save Russia from G is tough enough, but then turn around and save them from J while crack’n Berlin at the same time? pretty tough even with Gencon boost. Bombers in the back pocket helps

ps. this is an aside, but the main issue we have right now for playing the official A&A game digitally, is that its not 1:1 with the rules on the physical board. So the solutions for playbalance are going to be different (and unfortunately don’t port well from the one to the other). Kind of my main idea for what a digital game should be, or how it might be used, is as a way to formalize and popularize solutions that can also work on the physical board, and which are frankly needed for playbalance there.

In a face to face game, usually the opponent has already been chosen and the bid is used as a way to choose sides based on player confidence/skill assessment. The bid is basically a handicap there.

In the online game the opponent is chosen at random. So I might imagine a way where the bid amount requested brings up a pool of players willing to play Axis vs your Allies at that amount. But it still requires some kind of preliminary game phase or launch option.

I wish the digital game and the physical one were treated the same way, a hybrid release, same promotion and coordinated like that. It is possible to play tripleA or face to face using the A&AO rules in a live game, if you player enforced things like friendly fighter landings or forced casualty selection etc but I don’t know that it’d be any more popular than using OOB rules or Gencon rules and a tournament bid. But it’d be nice if both had the same conventions for play I think.

For tournament live play conditions, sudden death you could add a timer of some sort. But yeah, the cool thing about that would be that when a new release dropped you’d have a way to stitch the two communities together more.

I guess right now short answer to keeping Russia afloat is either bid or solid luck in their opener, depending which version you’re playing. OOB they’d need a bid for sure. Gencon I think a bid might help for choosing sides, but balance their seems more delicate and people seem to have fun with allies even with no bid, so I don’t know if it’d even need to go to double digits to get what we want out of it. I’d for sure play Allies in Gencon with +9 it’d be way more fun than 0 hehe. So least you got a fairly narrow range on bid, closer to what it was in Revised.

But for Russia doesn’t seem like a lot of great things you can do if dice go poorly and no bid to stabilize opener. I mean best strategic choice on offer is probably where to land the second fighter, and what to do with the Kazakh dude. Bringing him back to Caucasus is about the most you can do to juice the eastern front. Everything else comes down to the opening rolls. Only buys I’ve seen really doing much good are 3 art 4 inf (standard), or 4 inf 2 tanks (Karelia aggressive). I still like 3 art 2 inf 1 tank (ultra agro) since it’s money if you sweep both attacks for the follow up, but then probably I just get hosed in W. Russia or Ukraine battle and regret it lol. I think most attack Ukraine all-in to kill bomber, and just take it in the teeth if that fails.

Yeah there are definitely ways to pull it off. In the plat tier for Allies during the first ranked pre-season I saw a lot of peeps doing some clutch KJF play. I think KGF is more reliable when you’re not sure about the opponent, but at either end of the experience curve KJF opens up.

My interest in A&A always comes in these sort of manic waves, where I’ll be all intensely engaged with it for a few months, and then dead to the universe for a few months, then back in it again hehe. Weirdly this past couple months I’ve had less free time during the plague than I did before it cracked off, so not sure about the latest and greatest A&AO, but its cool to see how just when I think I got it pegged in the opener, someone will come up with some new surprise to explore.

I think A&AO by kind of straight-jacketing the set up with no bid, has probably resulted in the most sustained playtest of a given ‘official’ A&A board to date. Even though the rules in A&AO are slightly different owing to friendly landing rules and defense profiles, their approach to the no bid Gencon variant there is probably more consistent for a control than the actual live tournaments where a bid is included and the time limit or live play pressures factor into how people play it, a bid of anything changes a lot.

Now that everyone is all used to the no bid pressure cooker and being deprived of any bid, it might be fun if the idea of the bid was re-introduced in a really deliberate, slow and methodical way. I think the following for example would be pretty fun for an Allied advantage to try…

Bid Season: A bid to starting income of only 1-2 ipc. Which obv isn’t enough to pre-place an inf hitpoint, so everyone would then have to think about it like “OK, what could I do to tip things with 25-26 ipcs as Russia? 32-33 ipcs as UK? or 43-44 as USA?” Like maybe there is an interesting split there, and its fun because it puts the emphasis on first round purchases rather than battles. Let everyone play it for a few months as the new thing.

Then bring the bid up to 3 ipcs. After everyone has had fun exploring the purchase potential of 1-2 ipcs, now its about using it all in one spot for the extra inf hitpoint (e.g. Ukraine attack for most players I’d guess). The choice would be between playing Allies with the hitpoint boost, or as Axis vs the 1-2 income boost. See how the balance fairs for a month or two like that.

Then introduce the 5 ipc bid for Allies. This bid is really interesting because it combines aspects of the two earlier forms, mainly because 5 is such an awkward number for pre-placement bidding. E.g. Nobody is going to spend it all on an AAgun, so they’re either buying 1 inf (for Ukraine attack) with a 2 ipc remainder left over, or 1 art (for Ukraine attack) and 1 ipc remainder left over. And since everyone had a chance to explore the 1-2 ipc purchasing bid in the very first iteration of a bid season, now they’ll have thoughts about how to best use the remainder income. Whether to just take the inf hitpoint or boost it to art for attack advantage, and then where to use/split the remainder most effectively.

I’d actually stop there before hitting the 6 ipc threshold so it doesn’t hose the naval game right out the gate, and just see if people like the balance on the game at Allies bid 1-5 ipcs. In other words, instead of a broad bid range up front, stage it in, community wide, so that people can have a chance to tease things out before it goes straight into pre-placement bid extra hitpoints dynamic. By stopping just short of 6 ipcs, we keep the focus of the playbalance at a single hitpoint on the ground, and avoid sub breakers to the first round battles.

Having experienced the long deprivation of playing with no bid whatsoever, a bid ranged 1-5 ipcs would suddenly seem pretty awesome and might result in a satisfying play balance for most. But if its not enough, then when you finally introduce the 6 ipc bid, the board resets again. Suddenly everyone focuses on the choice between an extra sub, or 2 hitpoints on the ground. If each season lasted a couple months, by the time you got to a bid 6+ we’d have a lot of information from the games at different tiers to see where the balance actually falls. Maybe 6 is plenty?

That’s wishfull thinking though probably. Challenge for A&AO is coming up with something that works for their matching system. I don’t know that they will ever include familiar bidding as a way to determine sides, because of how their matchmaking process is set up. But maybe they could do it in bid pools? Allies +1 makes up one pool, Allies +2 another and so on. Seems like it would be easier to do it with starting income than preplacement units though, since I don’t know how they’d add a new bidphase to the match, but maybe they could auto add income prior to launch? Probably the easiest thing for them to do is just change the set up, and offer Gencon 2 or whatever. But its too bad, cause bidding is kind of a fun aspect of the game that keeps it from getting stale over time. You could try it in tripleA, but then you don’t have enough games really to tell because the player base isn’t there, and anyway if it was most would just be playing G40 or AA50 or some other game I’d guess over 1942.3 hehe

Which set up are you playing? For A&AO in Gencon or TripleA World War II v5 1942 SE TR, basically USA is spending 100% in Pacific for several rounds to prop up India, clip a money island and sink or push IJN off sz61, while UK/USSR are basically spending 100% to hold the line at W.Russia/Caucasus and the India/Persia/Kazakh wedge.

The most important change in that set up is the extra 2 inf on India, and altered German opener (bomber in Ukraine, naval adjustments in Med and Atlantic.) That set up basically takes G1 Egypt off the table and German press in the east is delayed by a round. Some will invert the canal order (first Trans G1 then Egypt G2) or delay canal with Libya push G1, or ignore for Ukraine or Gibraltar press, but Africa is slower like that.

For OOB bid is in the double digits, going north of 20 ipcs sometimes. So that gives other options to mess with IJN via subs say, or to shut down Med before G fleet can really do anything meaningful with it.

For Gencon in A&AO still no bid is supported, but I’d guess Allies are still good for a hitpoint or two in the bid on balance. Prob most would use vs Ukraine R1, though 6 ipcs or higher opens up some interest for KJF with a Brit sub.

To defeat the Japanese AI in TripleA, the best way to pressure their fleet is from the air. Fighter/Bomber spam works pretty well for that (against human, dd/sub spam is more reliable over the long haul and just stacking hitpoints, but the machine in tripleA gets brain freeze vs air attack power). HardAI will tend to retreat their fleet rather than hold position to defend sz61/62 the way most humans would. Been a while since I played vs the AI for latest updates, but the computer is pretty good at the Tokyo turtle, so I’d just bypass and try to force their fleet off the home island. The AI tends to build production on Manchuria too, so that’s another quick crash if you can nuke the transports or force them out of range. HardAI in tripleA has its own play patterns that you can start to tease apart, but its pretty decent at the basics. An income bonus to the AI can be fun for harder challenge once you’ve got it pegged, or for painting the whole map world conquest type challenge after most human opponents would throw in the towel.

The computer opponent in A&AO is pretty middling, since it doesn’t know how to use aircraft properly and will land fighters in vulnerable positions even from the first round. On that platform its pretty much pvp or bust, since the computer can’t hold its own.

ps. just played a few out using the stable, saw computer Japan going for early bomber focus, with more Moscow raids and such, and a couple fleet sweepers when the bombers stacked to the ceiling after their fleet gives hehe. Feels improved from the last few times I played hard AI. Still I think the best way is to push up on IJN from the south first sz44 then 49 to springboard into the island trade. Aussie fleet doubles back to keep the pressure on for round 4, and sack a transport to start the exchange. Japan sometimes goofs by pressuring north towards Alaska and such and leaving a money island out reach to set up shop. Russia surviving or how for long prob comes down almost entirely to W. Russia/Ukraine result in the first round with no bid in Gencon, but if playing vs a computer I imagine most would just dip after W. Russia slaughter anyway. If Russia gets in W. Russia with 6 inf+ though and handles Ukraine center wedge can get pretty strong before G can crash the party. AI Germany pushes their art stacks pretty east pretty well, but also suffers from undervaluing their starting air. Break downs for their fighter landings can give Allies a leg up.

The Hard AI can be made pretty challenging by giving the computer opponents each a bid of an extra starting bomber edit. AI is pretty good at building off early bomber strength. But it also struggles sometimes on air protection, landing them in vulnerable spots or withdrawing from a spot where a teammates air has landed, that’s usually where it gives I find.

Anyhow have fun on the next one! Glad to see Redrum’s AI still pulling out some strong play

I had always hoped for something more like RiskII for a combat animation layout (just for another 90s cd call back). Like where you were given the option to run the battles in a sidebar, or actually enter the tile and have it expand to combat scale, with little toy soldier type dudes and tanks blasting while the dice roll. Or basically all the same features from a roller that RiskII had on the fly, where you could scale it to fast battle and just see numbers and dice flashes for a sec, or view the combat in a minimized battle board window, or on actual terrain with full animations (more along the lines of what they did visually in the A&A RTS game from 04, but with the animations only going with dice rolls, not like the actual mini game that that one was based off.)

For the map, the main thing I really want is just a full scale pan out. Max zoom-out to see the entire world at a glance and read the numbers. It’d be cool if it ran like a mini version of google maps, where you get the global pan out at various scales, but can go to a street view where it generates a table top layout on actual terrain. In combat a view like that shows the tanks roll around and blast, or fighters strafing across the screen, and when hits are made the tanks explode and planes crash, dudes keel over and disappear. That sort of thing. At sea much the same, just with fleets and open water, or coastal terrain at the zoom in combat if it’s amphib. An iso or birdseye quick view would be cool for that, planes coming in when hits are made, battleships bombarding when the dice drop with craters and clouds. Capitals and VCs might have their own visual flourishes at that scale for terrain zooms with iconic buildings or landmarks, bridges or whathaveyou.

Features for a camera view Z axis to rotate around and position a cam like it was an actual table. A tricked out battlefield game-table, in someones imaginary double wide garage palace, ultimate board hehe. Where the player can set and move pieces that look like plastic army men into position in columns, on a game plane simulating a physical board that looks like a model train-terrain set up. That would be cool. Or something with a cartoon vibe maybe. And just stats screens plastered with info, and with WW2 ephemera all around. Medals posters old photos or clippings, whatever. All the window dressings basically.

I like a tutorial advisor, fully voice acted like they do in Total War, or things like news reels or bulletin period headlines. Splashes randomly during the various phase, turn, round sequence transitions. A passing computer opponent that makes for fun solo games and AI generals that randomize the computer playpatterns in different ways.

Then just AA50 or Global with all that going on. Options to edit the board state at any time to allow for all game possibilities. I think a tutorial mode and a decent computer opponent using an established board like AA50 would help the learning curve because the game almost needs a ride along show, and step up to Global scale which is pretty complicated without a primer. But I think 3D map, terrain, weather etc for sure. Give a happy medium, or just a gang of options to have basic abstract national-color with plastic looking army men and cardboard vibe, or painted tin soldiers decal’d out on train model scale with the tiny waving flags miniature vibe and all that. I think those are the two looks most people like.

If max zoom’d out to view the whole map, more like the former, if entering the close up combat view, more like the latter. It would look slick. In my head, anyway. Just pining lol