Posts made by Contango

@waxenhen4 said in Allies getting destroyed every game?:

@Contango thanks for the pictures

So is the most optimal counter for an all in Russia attack really abandoning EVERY thing except Moscow? I suppose this would deny the VC but give Germany almost all of Russia’s ipc value for free.

the UK advice seems pretty strong but what do you think makes a better permanent main landing for the allies: Normandy, north/south Italy, or south France? (assume your not playing a mod that appears to have made southern France neutral)

For Russia it might be a bit strong to say to abandon absolutely everything. I think you can justify deviating from a full on retreat under certain circumstances:

1. You can make a case that your deviation stands a good chance of actually helping your Moscow odds.

Examples:

• Trading units to re-take Novgorod, Ukraine and Volgograd -> not only kills German units but also denies factory usage
• Sending some mechanized units to kill small groups of German tanks/mechs trying to do a Northern run-by to gobble up income
• If Germany moves ahead too quickly, or splits up and leaves you an opportunity to strafe his army and still be safe afterwards, (a strafe is where you make an attack with intentions of retreating on purpose) or otherwise leaves you a lucrative unit trade

2. Germany has allocated resources away from Russia, so Russia can now flip to offense.

Examples:

• German production switches heavily to the Atlantic
• Germany decides to do a mid-game Sea Lion
• Germany goes hard with mechanized units into the middle east leaving you outnumbering his slower army

As for my thoughts on an Allied permanent landing:

Normandy is probably the best:

• Free factory
• Opportunity for UK ground troops to use US transports easily
• UK Air cover (watch the Italians taking out your airbase before Germany’s turn)
• UK production of extra naval units if things get lively and it’s necessary
• Furthest from Moscow, meaning German planes have to pick one or the other
• German infantry/artillery have to move off of defending West Germany to get there
• Can quickly switch to the Med if you see opportunity
• Threat of sniping Berlin (US takes Denmark, UK follows up with transports to Berlin)

I find Norway is good, but kind of situational. You can sometimes really annoy Germany with a small investment of suicided transports and not taking your entire fleet out of position and away from air cover.

@waxenhen4

It sounds like there are a few issues with the Allied play, let’s try to work through some of them:

Russia:
You mentioned that Germany is doing an all-in on Russia. As soon as you see the German 1st turn purchase being Russia focused, your role as the Russian player now needs to be 1 dimensional. You’re the rationing survivalist and every decision needs to be focused on collecting an income for as long as you can, and making Moscow as costly for Germany as possible. (of course you can take advantage of mistakes if they come up, but otherwise It’s unify and back up)

• 18 infantry in the Moscow battle is a failure for Russia, you should be targeting 80+.
• I would avoid buying high tier units if at all possible. Some artillery are acceptable and maybe mechanized infantry selectively. 100% infantry is boring, but worth trying.
• Abandon trying to hold both north and south flanks, you shouldn’t even to be able to hold one flank if Germany is going all in on Moscow properly. Priority #1 is a safe path to Moscow for every unit.
• Abandon playing aggressively as Russia. Sure it’s fun, but it’s a recipe for a loss. A good player will pick it apart and shouldn’t leave you a lucrative attack opening anyway.
• Your blitz blockers are probably waste… if the territory is important enough, Italy will can-open for Germany anyway. If you’re leaving enough units to stop a can-opener, well then you’re just leaving “free” one-round units for Germany to gobble up. Any incremental unit making it to Moscow will probably roll 3 times, and likely result in an extra tank or plane death for Germany. Use blockers very sparingly.

I just pulled an example from a league game of Wheatbeer (X) vs JDOW (A) after the Russian 3rd turn. (getting lots of TripleA errors so might be in an older version)

Note how many units Russia has in Bryansk on turn 3. The 2 units in Novgorod were used to re-take it to deny German building units there, but otherwise there’s zero waste.

UK:
The UK’s focus is harder to narrow down. The UK is about finding the best thing you can do for the least investment.

I’d say more generally your goal should be to take whatever low hanging fruit you can get and otherwise try to get good value and create headaches. Try to force Germany to have to allocate resources to you.

As for openers, this is already long so I wont give details, but you should probably try:

• The Taranto raid
• Stacking SZ92 with a Gibraltar airbase

Some good UK ideas:

• Egypt and/or Persia Factories
• Fighters for Moscow are great, but fighters on Atlantic side are also helpful, they can defend fleet from the UK, defend fleet from Gibraltar (with an airbase) and generally be prepared to support a US landing, also nuke any naval units Italy tries to accumulate in the Mediterranean
• Some fleet can be helpful to take the defensive burden away from the US, but don’t overdo it
• Some transports are great -> force him to defend Rome, force him to hold back units for Norway that could go to Moscow, support a US landing, trade coastal territories rather than trying to “stick” a permanent landing

Here’s another example from the game I mentioned earlier. This is after UK’s turn 4 and followed up a SZ92 stack. Note the US/UK have already got a defensible landing including 3 UK fighters with minimal investment from the US. Also note that the UK is using US transports to further reinforce on the next round. Perhaps the French will also. (This is BM3, so I believe the UK may have some extra cash, but you get the general idea)

@waxenhen4

I think two things can be true at once, and there’s probably some combination of the below:

1. The OOB (out of box) game heavily favours the Axis, especially as a gaming group gains skill/experience
2. Your group’s Allied play is probably lacklustre

On the first point, there’s a consensus among skilled players that OOB favors the Axis. Sometimes it takes a while for a new gaming group to gain enough skill/experience that this starts to show up, and it’s not uncommon for the Allies to win >50% of games in a very inexperienced group.

Mind you, the progression to a high Axis win rate can happen very quickly because the Axis are much easier to script a potent opening for. This appears to be what’s happening in your games, as Germany seems to be using a scripted Moscow crush that your allied players haven’t developed an answer to yet.

Here are some items that are suggesting to me that inexperience is, at least, part of the problem:

• You’ve only played 4 games, and these were split between Global and Europe
• Japan wasn’t rampaging even though the US was ignoring it
• Moscow appears to be falling on turn 5/6 – I would consider this early, although turn 6 isn’t completely unreasonable, it should be a huge, all in, gamble for Germany

Some things that aren’t clear:

• Did you check the odds in the Moscow battles?
• Is Russia bringing all their forces back to Moscow, or leaving them haphazardly to die elsewhere?
• What is Russia purchasing?
• Is the UK sending support to Moscow via the middle east, especially fighters? (Persia factory?)
• Is the UK doing a proper Taranto Raid or 92 stack? Or something less effective?

So the real question is, how much of your problem is due to the Axis being favored and how much is due to inexperience. The solution to the first is house rules or a bid, the solution to the second is learning.

My best suggestion is to start by downloading TripleA and then view some top tier league games to see what better players are doing as the allies. Then you can mimic/implement some of what you’ve learned. Hopefully that will solve your problem. Sooner or later though, you’ll need a bid/house rule to help, so you could also consider implementing that now.

Unfortunately very few league players are doing OOB these days, so probably the next best option to learn from is BM3 (Balance Mod). It’s a house ruled variant, but at least it’s reasonably close to OOB, so the play is somewhat similar.

There isn’t a Rookie League per se. However there is a forum league that is broken up into 5 different tiers. The tiers from top to bottom are M-E-1-2-3.

Here is the “Find League Opponents Thread” that you can use to find league opponents:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/30809/find-league-opponents-thread?

Here is a link to the league rankings sheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhOB4pSke42ydEhlX0RfbGxmM3RMSHJQd083TV9JUGc#gid=10

I would suggest to start by reading the league rules and then posting in the Find League Opponents Thread and asking for either newer players or those in rank 2-3 to see if someone is up for a game. You can also look back through the list of people who have recently asked for games and try hitting them up with a personal message to see if they are still looking.

Alternatively you could also try looking at the league ranking sheet for 2020 and send a personal message to some of the lower tier players that play often (have completed many games) and see if they would like to play you.

One thing to keep in mind is that the majority of the league games aren’t actually played using the traditional out of box G40 rules. Most games are played using either the Balance Mod (BM, or BM3) or Path To Victory (P2V) house rules. So, keep in mind that if you’re only looking to play the traditional rules, that might disinterest some potential opponents.

Hope that helps.

@general-LD

Excellent, I’ll send you a private message.

Here’s a link to the past event post as well:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/33919/battle-of-waterloo-g40-event-nov-9-2019-waterloo-kitchener-ontario-canada/

@general-LD

Welcome to the forum. Where are you from in Ontario?

We had a Global 40 event in Waterloo/Kitchener not too long ago and might do another in the future. Just wondering if that’s in range for you and if you have interest.

Battle of Waterloo Fall 2019 – Recap

• 16 players
• 3 tables of G40,
• 8-10 rounds of play per table
• 2 successful Sea Lions
• 1 Japanese takeover of Australia followed by US invasion of Tokyo
• 1 liberation of London
• 1 fall of Calcutta
• 0 takeovers of Moscow

By my estimation everyone had a great time and wanted to know when the next event will be. If you’re interested in joining in any future events leave a reply.

The whole Crew

Von Blucher Table

Wellington Table

Napoleon Table

Birds Eye View

@Marshmallow-of-War

I don’t think it’s written anywhere but it’s fairly simple so I can explain here.

• All UK units on the Pacific board will be replaced with grey ANZAC units (or another colour, so long as they are unique from other nations)
• UK Pacific and ANZAC starting cash is combined, as is future income
• UK Pacific and ANZAC now operate as one nation and play in the original ANZAC position of the turn order
• The capital of the new UK Pacific Nation is Calcutta
• UK Pacific units function independently of UK Europe units, do not attack together, do not move simultaneously and don’t transfer ownership when crossing between maps
• We will eliminate the Malaya national objective for ANZAC.
• The “maintenance of the empire” UK objective and “Strategic outer defense perimeter” ANZAC objective will remain available for the combined nation.

It’s conceptually the same as how Canadian units and income are joined into one nation with UK Europe, so hopefully fairly straight forward.

So far we have about 12 players confirmed and waiting on confirmation from some others, so hoping to have 3-4 games going.

Hope you can make it, please let me know as soon as you can confirm if you’ll be there.

We’re hosting a G40 event around the time of the upcoming Remembrance Day/Veterans Day and we’re looking to have multiple tables of G40 going.

Rumor has it that @Young-Grasshopper may be attending, so don’t miss your opportunity to trash talk him in person.

Short Details:
Date: Saturday November 9, 2019
Location: Waterloo/Kitchener Ontario, Canada
Game Type: Global 1940, Out of Box Rules with Grasshopper’s combined UK Pacific and ANZAC for balance.

Venue address and further details will be sent to those who sign up. Please PM me if you’re interested or have questions.

Grasshopper’s video on combining UK Pacific and ANZAC:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9t8JwxT5Eo4

Hey @Grinchveld

I’m also in Kitchener/Waterloo area. I mostly play G40 Global but am open to others.

Send me a private message and we can try to set something up.