Skew is an important concept, but unfortunately, it’s hard to quantify.

The most accurate battle-predicting statistic that I know of is to add up your starting punch, plus your punch after taking 1 hit, plus your punch after taking 2 hits, etc, all the way down to when your force is wiped out.  For instance, if you have 2 inf 2 tanks attacking this statistic would be 8+7+6+3 = 24; for 4 inf defending it would be 8+6+4+2=20.  This statistic shows the advantage of skew.  Also, it can account for attacking transports and/or the “free” hit on battleships; for example, an attacking force of 1 BB 1 tran would have 4+4+4=12.  Unfortunately this takes a while to calculate, especially for medium- to large-sized forces.

If there’s a faster way to calculate skew, I’m not aware of it (but would love to be!)  Punch and count can be calculated much faster.  Based on these, the most accurate predictor comes from multiplying punch times count.  Punch times count tends to be a pretty good predictor unless the forces are highly skewed; for unskewed to moderately skewed forces it will pretty much always tell you who’s favored.  In most situations the way that I account for skew is just by noting that it’s there and mentally saying “ok, this side is actually a little better than the punch and count would indicate”.

Then of course you can always do the expected-outcome calculation where you run through a battle in your head, and for each round assume each side gets the expected number of hits, and see what happens.  The nice thing about this is that it does account for skew, plus you can do it reasonably fast.  Unfortunately the round-off errors can pile up, but it’s still a decent indicator overall.

Hi all,

Sorry if this question is asked/answered on another thread–I didn’t find it with a couple minutes of poking around and am too lazy to look farther than that.  :-)

Is there a list somewhere of the difference between the Revised and Spring 1942 maps and initial setups?  It seems like the list is pretty short.  Here’s what I’m aware of so far on the map:
—SZ63 no longer borders WCA
—Iceland and Formosa are playable game spaces
And the setup:
—DD in SZ 35 is now a cruiser
—BB in SZ 13 is now a cruiser
—DD in SZ 50 is now a cruiser
—DD in SZ 10 is now a cruiser

It seems like it would be pretty easy to play a face-to-face 1942 game using a Revised board and pieces: just figure out some way to mark a cruiser, and disallow Wca landings from SZ 63, etc.

Fleetwood Dan: I absolutely agree, stacking Karelia on G1 can be a watershed moment for Germany, even a game-winner if it holds for the long run.  By the way, if suicidal British are a danger in the first round, you can always NCM a sub to SZ 3 to take that out of the equation.  In my mind, it’s well worth the loss of the sub and the reduced defense in SZ 5.  Long term is trickier, especially if you’re trying to hold it while also ramping up your defense in Western Europe; I’ve seen some very, very good players abandon Western Europe in order to hold onto the Karelia stack (and done it myself a few times).

In answer to the original post: It’s not too unusual to see the Axis equalizing the income by round 2-3, however, it’s often for a fleeting moment because the Allies can recapture Africa and may start to make gains in Europe.  Sometimes you can make a second income surge in round 5 or so, due to Japan hitting 50+ income while Germany holds the line at 35ish (assuming KGF, of course).

One thing that’s important to keep in mind is that comparing the incomes at any one point in time isn’t the best way to assess the economic balance, because any territories that are getting constantly traded will only be counted for whoever owns them at the moment.  (So if you compare after your team’s turn, things will look better than they are, and if you compare after an opponent’s turn they’ll look worse.)  A more accurate index is to compare the total amount of money collected on each side over the last 5 turns.  That may sound tedious to add up, but since people generally don’t save too much, you can get a good estimate by comparing the cash on hand (unless there are a lot of SBR’s going on).

For those of you who don’t check the AA50 boards, there’s a discussion going on over there that’s relevant to AAR as well.  It appears that Hasbro is taking action to shut down TripleA, probably in the hopes that they will make more money from Game Table Online as a result.  See http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=14893.60

Sounds like it might work.  You could combine such a move with a pure air build…might be enough to make the Americans back off.

I would probably go for it in those circumstances…I don’t really have a lot of good guidelines though, just gut feelings.

Darth: I absolutely agree.  Everyone wants to push their stack east, but not everyone is willing to sacrifice WE to do it.  The “stack WE until they pry it from your cold dead fingers” approach that many follow (and that I myself used for a while) only gets you so far…there just aren’t enough inf to have your cake and eat it too.  Timing the abandonment of WE is, I think, a lot of the finesse of playing Germany well.  Recently I’ve been seeing a lot of expert players empty it on turn 3 or 4, and one world-class player I’m in a game with emptied it on G1!

Zhukov: At the risk of going off topic into a full discussion of G1 purchases (hey, the Revised boards are slow enough we should probably take any activity we can get, right?): I think one reason art are less popular on G1, besides that most people undervalue art anyway, is that you don’t need them for a while.  During the trading phase where you swap border territories with Russia, you have enough air power to just use inf and planes for the trading.  Art really only come into play when you want to push your stack up, or prevent them from pushing theirs, so you can probably afford to buy it turn 2 or 3.  Tank purchases on G1 immediately project power into the hot zones of Karelia and Ukraine.  For example, you can deter a Russian stack advance to Ukraine if that was a danger.  Or, if you stacked Karelia on G1, your tanks can help hold the line on G2 until your G1 inf purchase arrives on G3.  In the longer term, it’s good to have a decent number of tanks around, either to help defend WE as Darth recommends, or (after you abandon WE) to keep in EE where they can pressure Russia while simultaneously keeping WE deadzoned.  I do like to have some art in my German stack as well, but often get them G2 instead of G1.  Sometimes I go with 12 inf 1 art on G1 if I feel like playing a slower game.

Thanks for a great article, Darth!  I’ve been doing something similar to this as my “standard” German strategy, but haven’t ever laid it out quite this systematically.  I used to always aim toward a Ukr “Lurch” coordinated with a Japanese push to Persia, hoping for a 1-2 on Caucasus; I’d try to do this early (say round 5-6) before much UK/US help could get there.  Worked well much of the time, but often ended up depending on the dice in one major battle.  Later I came to prefer a Kar Lurch that was more focused on isolating Russia from the other Allies, and let Japan do most or all of the actual attack on Cau+Mos.  I’m still trying out new things, though.

It seems that if you ever do get to the point where you can safely stack Wru (and, on the other side, if Japan can safely stack Kaz) then the Russians will probably have to abandon Cau to save Mos.  When things get to that point you’re usually very close to victory, unless the Allies are pouring tons of units through Arch or something.

Lots here to digest and ponder.  I hope people see this; it could seriously raise the general level of Revised play on the site!

Yeah, that may not have come out very clearly in the article; I wasn’t trying to recommend type 1 KJF; I was trying not to comment on it one way or the other (because I feel I have insufficient data).  A more complete breakdown of the different types of KJF I’ve seen would be as follows:
(1) Go whole hog against Japan, from the start, with everybody.
(2) Go against Japan from the start, but only with the US Navy.
(3) Go against Japan (either US Navy only, or with other assistance) in response to dice and/or opponent mistakes.

The purpose of the article was to make the case that (2) is a bad idea.  In my mind the jury is still out on (1); at best it’s very difficult, but it’s possible I just haven’t honed it enough.  I think (3) can be usable.  Although, as you say, I’ve been suckered into (3) when I shouldn’t have.  I wouldn’t do (3) just because Japan skipped Pearl; in that case they still have all 4 capital ships and all or most of their air, i.e. they’re still an absolute beast.  I might go for it if they went to Pearl and left the BB and CV open to counterattack, although even then I’d be reluctant if there weren’t other things going my way too.

There are two kinds of KJF’s in the world: those that start that way, and those that switch to it.  I was referring to the first.  If you decide at the beginning of the game “hey, I want to go KJF this game,” then it’s very, very difficult to make it work unless you go all in.  This means things like stacking Buryatia with 6 inf on R1, moving 2 inf into Sinkiang, and basing fighters in Kazakh to up the threat to Manchuria; building an India complex UK1; consolidating UK fleet in SZ 30, or taking Borneo, on UK 1; and either building a Sinkiang IC and spending the rest of America’s paycheck in the Pacific, or skipping Sin and going full bore on the boats.  If you only do one or two of these, Japan can easily squash them, but with all together it can be too much for them to handle.

I should add the disclaimer that I’ve never successfully won a game this way, nor has anyone beaten me with this tactic.  I know some players have been able to make it work, but it’s awfully difficult.  You can contain Japan’s Asia expansion, but sinking their navy tends to take a while (unless they defend poorly), and Russia just can’t hold out long enough against a good German player without American assistance (and with only half-hearted UK assistance if they build the India factory).

The second kind of KJF is the only one I use myself.  Sometimes Japan gets hosed by the dice on J1; this often happens, for example, if they try to take on too many naval battles at once (e.g. retaking Borneo while still going after Pearl).  Sometimes they go Pearl heavy and don’t come out with a strong enough fleet to survive counterattack.  Etc.  When the dice or opponents’ mistakes give you an opening, you can go KJF to exploit it.

In this aspect I think it’s similar (though in a less extreme way) to KAF.  I used to think KAF was completely impossible, but two of my league losses last year were to KAF strategies!  (Funcioneta and U-505 both beat me this way.)  The thing about KAF is that you can’t do it right away, but if you build up enough transports, have some ground troops in or near Bry, and the USA doesn’t have a lot of ground forces in North America, then you can suddenly switch to KAF and take them by surprise.

In short, my opinion is that you pretty much do have to start every game KGF, and keep your eyes open for the possibility of switching.  This might seem like a bummer, but I think it’s actually kind of fun; learning to recognize what combinations of circumstances provide openings for things like KJF, KAF, or other “non-standard” tactics is an important part of advanced play.

Hate to compromise my deity status, but JWW is giving me quite the schooling in the league this year…he beat me in 5 rounds our first game, and 4 rounds into the second things are looking hopeless.  I managed to beat him a couple times last year, but I had to work for it–he’s hardly breaking a sweat!  Now if we could just get him to write some strategy articles.  :-)