Best posts made by Ozymandiac

@655321
It is permitted and not at all considered bad form. It would be expected from you.

If my opponent would NOT tip his battleship, I would probably ask him if he’s sure.

Tournament Rules
Gratefully adapted from @trulpen’s tournament rules.

Organisation
@ozymandiac carries the main responsibility for the tournament.

Furthermore, arbiters are @ozymandiac and @The_Good_Captain. The arbiter’s function is to support conduct and rules implementation during the tournament. If need be, arbiters will make the final decision on any rule violation or other game dispute. Arbiters are prohibited from making rulings in their own games.

Available game versions
The name of the game is Axis & Allies Anniversary, 1941 scenario (TripleA: ‘World War II v3 1941’).

Format
The tournament will be single elimination. At the start of the tournament, players will be assigned random positions in the bracket. All games will be 1v1.

The remaining player wins the tournament and all its glory.

Game location
All games are played using TripleA, so other players can view the tournament’s games. Games may be played via PBF (play by forum), PBEM (play by email) and/or live play.

Results
The standings are available in an online spreadsheet (link to Challonge follows).

Posting results
The losing player is responsible for posting results in the tournament result thread (link to forum thread follows). This way it’s certain the losing player agrees with the game result. The winner may post the result when the game result was due to time limits.

Post the names of the winner and loser, the sides each player played, the value of the bid, and provide a link to the game thread (or attach the latest savegame). For example, if the bid was 10 IPCs to the Allies:
• Amy (Axis) defeats Boris (Allies + 10)
where “10” was the value of the bid.

Game rules
The basic rule-set is the official ruleset with errata.

The following settings are default:
• Regular dice (as opposed to low luck)
• No Research & Development
• No National Objectives
• Dardanelles closed to sea movement
• Fighters & Escorts are allowed
• Play until one player surrenders
• Bid to determine sides (see following section on Bidding).

Any default settings, whether it concerns rules, bidding or time-limits, may be modified by mutual agreement of the involved players.

Bidding
At the start of the tournament, each player is assigned a random number (‘seed’). At the start of a game, the player with the lowest seed begins the bidding process by offering to play a side for a certain amount of IPCs. The other player either accepts this bid or offer a lower counter-bid. The process ends when one player has accepted the other player’s bid, or when the bid has reached value of 0.

Default settings for bidding:
• A bid may be used to increase any nation’s starting money and/or purchase bid-units.
• Only one bid-unit may be placed in a territory or sea zone.
• The nation placing a bid-unit must have started with at least 1 unit in the territory or sea zone prior to placing the bid.
• China is limited to bid-units of infantry and fighters.

Posting schedule
There is a 72-hour time-limit per move. Players may negotiate a faster pace (not slower) at the start of the game. Such an agreement has to be posted in the game thread before the 1st turn is played.

If 72 hours go by and there is no game-play post from the opponent (i.e., no game decision was made), a player may post a warning (“bump”) along with the tagged opponent’s name and the number of the bump.
• @NN bump#1

Do not add any other text than the bump and the opponent’s name in your warning post. Each valid warning resets the clock for another 72 h. The second, third and fourth warning look like this:
• @NN bump#2
• @NN bump#3
• @NN bump#4

The offending player may be disqualified on the 4th warning, resulting in their loss.

Play can be paused for a total of 21 days without penalty by simply posting the need for a break. The duration of absence needs to be specified, the reason does not.

Once a new game has started, the player that ought to make the first bid has 2 weeks to do so. If not, they may be disqualified, resulting in a loss.

Assumptions
The purpose is to reduce the number of game stoppages for opponent decisions (e.g., their order of losses). Because you are assuming a decision for your opponent, the opponent must always be given the benefit of the doubt and arbiters will always decide in this manner.

When making an assumption, there’s a risk that the opponent will disagree after seeing the turn. If there is an issue with assumption, the players should try and come to an agreement about how to handle it.

If there’s no agreement, then the defender can demand that the entire concerned battle(s) will be re-rolled.

Alternatively, either player may request an arbiter ruling.

Order of play
From the rule book: Axis & Allies is played in rounds. One round consists of each power taking a turn. Each power’s turn consists of seven phases, which take place in a fixed sequence. After each power finishes a turn, play then passes to the next power. So: a player may only go back to previous phases or turns of the game and make changes with permission from their opponent.

Player’s responsibility
TripleA does not always apply the rules in a correct manner. It is primarily the players’ responsibility to keep themselves informed of the rules and apply them in a correct manner. The arbiters are mainly at hand for help and support.

If a player sees that a new game has started (visible in the online Results spreadsheet (link follows)), contact the opponent to discuss the optional settings and the bidding process.

You should probably state your goal: do you want to be able to enjoy a balanced game among friends, or do you want to spread this setup to the entire community?

Because people will only start playing this setup if it’s had a lot of feedback. If you want more (in depth) feedback on the setup you should think about setting up the pieces in TripleA, and post the setup as a savegame on the forums. No promises, but it will be easier for people to see what the board looks like and maybe try playing a couple of turns.

Hi,

We’re setting up a tournament through TripleA for Anniversary 1941.

At the moment, 4 people have signed up. If you’re also interested, let me know by posting over here.

@panther Thanks! We will use that of course, then.

I’m currently gauging interest in an Anniversary 1941 tournament. If you’d like to participate, let me know in this thread.

Ozy.

Nice idea!

People often encounter this when playing by forum: one player makes his combat moves, but needs to know a few things before rolling dice (like in your examples). In most cases, it can be solved by going ahead according to an honour system, where you choose the option you perceive as optimal. The opponent would be informed of choices you made on their behalf, and was given the option to redo a battle according to their wishes (this shouldn’t happen since the choice was obvious!).

When the optimal choice isn’t entirely clear, we’d usually ask the opponent (via phone).

A bit late perhaps, but thanks for playing us. The other Axis players will be ‘Lederhosen macht Frei’ (Japan) and ‘hansworst’ (Italy).

Have a good game!

@victoryfirst The more the merrier!

Could you edit 1 infantry from Karelia to Finland?

And we’re off! 9 people signed up, and it’s time to start.

You can check out the bracket over here. I shuffled the seeds so your opponents are randomized.

To start a game, the player with the lowest seed begins the bidding process. The seed should be visible in front of your name on the bracket (if not, let me know).

@The_Good_Captain Thanks for editing. And no worries, that Soviet sub is probably the most edited piece in the entire franchise ;)

Hansworst and I are having the same problem in our game. I thought I maybe messed up the settings, but it seems we’re not the only one.

We started playing via Email in the mean time.

As to why playing online: I like playing this way because we can save the game and continue at a later time. I prefer playing face to face from time to time, but Covid has made that impossible.

As to why TripleA: The forum and its members made it very easy to start using it, when we first started looking for an online platform. Also it was free (not unimportant).
There are versions on Steam, but they offer only 1 scenario (1942) or seem very time consuming (Tabletop Simulator).

@hansworst G7-04.02.2022.tsvg

I hoist the white flag and congratulate Hans.

(BTW in the battle of Moscow, I misclicked when selecting casualties, I wanted a tank to survive instead of a fighter. That doesn’t matter for the outcome but explains why I persisted in the attack).

And a happy New Year :)

The first result is in:
Hansworst (Allies + 11) defeats Ozymandiac (Axis)

:(

@hansworst You know me too well.

Have a good game, all.

@the_good_captain Thanks! Congratulations Captain. And thank you VictoryFirst for participation. I will update the bracket.

I’ve only played a couple of Anniversary games with National Objectives, so not enough to give you an informed opinion. Forum consensus seems to be that NOs favour the Axis. I have a couple of generic thoughts on NOs and bids, though, maybe these answer your question in part.

Regarding National Objectives: The more games I play, the less I like NOs. The first reason is that they are forcing you to make moves that are strategically suboptimal. Most NOs are an incentive to conquer regions that were important in the real-world WW2, but these targets are sometimes not at all important in the A&A-universe. For example, most people playing Japan/USA will not be interested in diverting resources to Pacific Islands such as Midway and Wake Island, but there are multiple NOs that stimulate you to go after these 0 IPCs island that hold little strategic significance. It seems the NOs are mostly used to simulate history, but that’s not an interesting aspect to me. Other players are really into the historical aspect, however, so it’s a question of taste maybe.
The second reason is most NOs are valued at +5 IPCs, which is a huge amount in my opinion. In most cases, you cannot afford to ignore NOs. As an extreme example: France is mentioned in 4 NOs that are worth 5 IPCs each. Together with its 6 IPC value, that represents a swing of 12+20=32. In essence, once you enable NOs, France is not worth 6 but 16 (!). In this way, NOs force your hand, and you are discouraged to pursue other, non-historical paths.

Regarding bids: the question what a fair bid would be, has no good answer, I think. The first reason is that any bid is fair, since both players agreed to it. (I do understand, however, that it’s interesting to think about how large a bid should probably be).
The second reason is that the slightest mistake or bad dice roll can completely negate the bid. For example: If you look at the game of Go/Baduk, people have studies for years what compensation should be awarded to the player that moves 2nd (Go is won by gaining more points than your opponent, so unlike Chess, the score can be ‘corrected’). Although research is converging on a certain number for fair compensation, it’s mostly academic: the slightest mistake by a player – even at professional levels – completely overwhelms the compensation. And that’s a game without luck! So for A&A – a game with luck, played by amateurs – bids should be taken with a grain of salt.