@ampdrive attacking the USA on the open usually ends up as an even trade, whether you attack Solomons or pearl harbor. Japan usually ends up weaker for trading ship/ship with the USA.

@cpadebo not to my knowledge, black elk came up with it a while back…giving them an extra turn of income before the rest would be pretty overpowered in light of how experienced allied players can tear the crap out of germany. the tournament game is only 6 turns which means the allies have to push the axis to play quickly or there is not enough time to get into position to win

@cpadebo Yep. In AxA Online, the game feels almost balanced because there is no set ending and 16-20+ turns the Allies can overwhelm Germany, critically weakening it and as long as Russia has survived the first 6-8 turns a carefully planned Allied KGF can suffocate Germany. The tournament of course is a different beast. Having said that, Doug and I took the 2019 title playing the Allies every game.

Since the game is more or less balanced, the reasoning behind implementing US0 isnt as strong as it was when we first discussed it.

@barnee @cpadebo @Black_Elk The bid is lost if you can’t place it, so the minimum effective bid is 3. You can’t save any money, and you cant place the bid where that team doesn’t have units. All the versions have imbalances to some degree or another, but think of the bid as a minigame much like the coin toss in football for who gets choice of team. That could be because of personal preference, perceived bias, or because of genuine imbalance and no-one should play without a bid for one of the teams or the other.

The tournament is an all day affair. There are some informal house tournaments in canada, orange county, vancouver, tennessee etc. These usally have a single elimination or winner plays winner/loser plays loser format. The Gencon and Origins tournaments are a “sit down and play until elminated” so it is done in one more or less continous series of games, sometimes 2 games per day. There are formal time limits on games–in this version 42.3–the allies can win the game but they can’t really accomplish that in less than 5-6 turns so the enemy could in theory win the game by sandbagging. Without annoucing a strict time per turn, gentlemen’s rules is that you have your full attention on the game and try to move things forward as quickly as possible. To put that ball in the opposing team’s court, I play as quickly as possible, ala speed chess, with a minimum of side-discussion when its not my teams turn.

Tournament organaizers may assign players to team, allow byes, allow second chances, each game doesn’t necessarily attract enough players to give an even number of teams and they have to create a bracket based on who shows up each day and who may have other comittments.

Other than that, you sit down at 8 am, set up, bid (takes 5 min) play at 9-930 averaging 1 turn per hour, until about 5-6 pm at night, in the G42 tournament. Then you repeat that for 3 or possibly 4 days. It is an all-in-one sitting winner takes all single elimination with very competitive teams.

@GuamSolo its a good point they cant load transports, but they can leave hostile sz, and or stay with some pieces and not others. the simpler block to ensure they cant take india J2 with naval base is to block sz 37 with the dd. it would depend on whether they left men on the transports, built the naval base, or didnt. if they didnt build the nb, they cant reach india regardless until j3

@barnee @Panther

“him” the one who embodies our passion for the game and exhibits it
“it” our passion for this game/the game and our desire to express it

@barnee @panther thats why we love him/it

@simon33 naw i think thats what both the poster and bob intend–that they think they can block a UK fleet sitting in SZ 98 with two ships or any fleet in SZ 91 by blocking 92 which wont work when Ger/italy can so easily co-operate. I taranto, almost every game. Whether you do or don’t the med bonus should be pretty secure until Axis/4 because any ship is easily accessible to one or more of the axis. the UK can only hide in SZ 91 or 81, the med is very intentionally unsafe for the allies until the midgame

You could build an AB on egypt or gibraltar but that idea leaves England vulnerable instead unless all the UK stuff/money forms up in one zone–which works great later on but not on UK1

@simon33 the two SZ 96 and 99. The major issue with these plans is they seem to forget that the Germans can easily blast any or all of the blockers which open the door for the concentrated Italian bastion fleet to hit any of the other spaces (including SZ 91, if the Italians dont squat in the key SZ 97 zone)

@simon33 ty