Posts made by ZimZaxZeo

Try Risk 2210, for a truly over-the-top, mind-bending, dice-melting spasm of entertainment. It’s like the ultimate junk food instant gratification manifestation of board games!!

Oh – ahem – and did I mention the extreme demands it puts on your strategy gland?

Actually, it is very up-to-date, in the sense that the world political geography is entirely shrunken and interconnected – there are back-door entrances to every continent, and no territory is truly isolated from a sneak attack, conventional or otherwise. But just to keep things jumpin, the game is 3-D because you can gain power by going undersea or to the moon.

(I realize that some A&Aorg types believe that the whole Risk phenom should itself be given a free ride to the moon…)

Well, be pragmatic: use what works.
Discuss with fellow-players (enemies) prior to play, and go with the rule variations you like. If all agree to allow use of one AA vs. air and another in same territory vs. armor, great!
Just please be sure to let us all know via this forum how it playtested out!!

Hey – which history buff can tell us what the Russians generally used for AA & antitank? (we all know about the all-purpose German 88s)

@mat:

If you had 2 aa guns, could you use one for each?

Well, the rule for AA guns in A&AE is that you get ONE shot (vs. each attacking air – or in this case armor – unit), no matter how many AA guns you may have in the territory under attack.

What do youse all think of this rule?

Also – these experienced marauders say that in W@W you get to fire for each ROUND of combat, rather than just prior to the give-and-take of regular combat, as the rule is for AA guns in A&AE.

Maybe the best houseplay for A&AE is to take the AA/AT variation from W@W but limit it to ONE round of firing, pre-combat?

Those poor misguided Wehrmacht zombies!
(What the heck were they doing in Turkestan, anyway?! End-running around Belorussia??)

Congrats, El Jefe,
You win the Shiznad of the Day award!!
You is def shizzo to the drizzno, dawg.

But, I don’t see Cheney as the One World Government type.
He is more the big-oil-drenched, greed-is-good type.

Gracious sakes, Mr. DS: perhaps you’d care to share documentation?

The point is to make the German PAY to take these places. Leningrad is the more critical point – as it allows FTRs from UK to land, which you can bring into the Red air force. If Germany takes Leningrad on turn one, you can easily re-take. Then station plenty INF there, and remember: even a UK FTR sitting there will help defend, hitting Germans at 4-or-less rolls. Leningrad can be the site of see-saw battles, because the German knows you need it (or Vyborg) to land Allied FTRs coming to your aid. But he generally doesn’t devote sufficient troops to HOLD it, at least in the first few turns.

KEY: Keep Germans 2-territories-away from Moscow as long as possible.

Let’s say he takes Stalingrad, and can blitz through Turkestan to hit Moscow, avoiding your main force in Belorussia. You must: place 1 or 2 INF in Turkestan as “speed bumps” to gain TIME.

Thank you, Mr. F_alk, and let me just say: PROMOVEATUR UT AMOVEATUR.

Mr. DS:
A. The Army Corps of Engineers is part of the U.S. Army

B. And yes, there is a little humor here and there – after all, as Mark Twain more or less said, “Against laughter, no tyrant’s wall can stand.”

C. May I recommend a title for your new thread on the Mideast: “The Road Map to Hell and Back”

D. Hah. Hah, and… HAH! You think the upper class pays the most taxes. Man, what they do – (as will I, if ever I gain enough filthy lucre to enter that lofty realm) – is pay the most to tax lawyers and keen accountants, in order that they can arrange to pay the least!

By the way, here’s a good aphorism that has some application to the current discussion:
“Politics is the pursuit of private gain by public means.” – Ambrose Bierce
(This cat Bierce evidently was at least as smart as SpongeBob SquarePants.)

Well reasoned, Mr. Dezrtfish – I guess this just goes to show that, as the saying goes, fish really is brain food!

Hah.
Hah,
and…
HAH!!

(just wanted to raise the level of discourse here a bit)

1. I did not seek to imply any “conspiring” merely corruption and dishonesty. Perhaps “complicit,” “collude,” and similar terms would fit.

2. Cheney is explicitly a corrupt type. He had to have his holdings in Halliburton pried from his sclerotic mitts after he was elected vice president – I mean, go back in the public record and note that his friends and colleagues had to beg and cajole him into selling off his huge-o Halli-bucks, after weeks of people complaining about potential conflicts of interest.
By the way, this is nothing but the ordinary sequence. When one is elected to public office, one properly puts one’s financial holdings into blind trusts, or divests oneself of those holdings that might raise conflict-of-interest questions. It’s just good form.
By “explicit,” I mean that Cheney hardly seems to care about appearances of collusion, of greed, etc. And that fits in smoothly with the brazen style of the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Bush administration. Cheney, in fact, is the guy who set this tone, from before day one. Read some of his public statements over the past 20 years. He wants to come across as a tough guy, not polished so much as driven. Bush says of himself, “I don’t do nuance.” Cheney might well say, “I don’t play by the rules.” (fine: be a big-time bandit in corporate-land – the people of America didn’t vote for that – but in the White House, you are supposed to uphold the rule of law, not the rule of you and your posse winning no matter what.)
It’s on purpose. I’m not surprised by his blind spot on this issue of the impropriety of not relinquishing his Halliburton shares upon stepping into the second-highest public office: he didn’t see anything wrong with it! The word “recuse” is not in his vocab.

3. Disingenuous. Either that, or you are unfamiliar with the old adage, “To the victor goeth the spoils.”
Of course Cheney has ties to Halliburton! He ran the place for like five years, immediately prior to moving to his various bunkers under the White House, Cheyenne Mountain and wherever.
One does not run a corporation for five years and suddenly have no ties to the company or its people. Even when one is led out in handcuffs, for example, one would have forged personal and professional connections that endure. And not just within Halliburton itself – one would have strong ties to a variety of companies and persons that themselves had done business with Halliburton.
If you mean that Cheney now is financially entirely divorced from the company… well, sheesh! Cash is fungible, it is mobile. Influence is transferable. You deliver the goods to A, A takes care of B, who passes along certain favors to C, etc.
Puh-lee-uz!!

4. “Cheney has absolutely no say” so you say, in who gets awarded a contract in Iraq – because it is under the “jurisdiction of the Army.”
Please! Who is the Commander in Chief? And who is a heartbeat away?

5. Your bit about Diane Feinstein and her purported corruption sounds very interesting, and worthy of further study. But it has no effect on my distrust of Cheney & Co. So what if he spreads around the loot to his cronies, and even to supposed political competitors or enemies? To the little man carrying the whole sorry mess on his back – you and me and the whole taxpaying middle class, brother! – what difference does that make?

The Halliburton Iraq deal is about persons in positions of public influence abusing their office to loot the national treasury. In other words, stealing – and stealing.

This conversation started, I believe, around the idea that it has become foolish to trust the Bush administration. I have cited this Halliburton banditry as a single example. I won’t trust Cheney, because several of his actions seem to me not worthy of public trust.

I won’t defend anyone else’s misdeeds, either, regardless of their political affiliation, or even giving them a break because they were so nice and correct about something else sometime in their career. A theft is a theft. This one certainly seems to have been premeditated, bold, disrepectful of common decency and of the laws under our Constitution. A pox on these residents of the White House!

Hmmm. Should I be concerned… I mean, is this like “You kids just wait til yer father gets home!!”

Yanny, thanks for continuing to turn up subject matter that inspires conversation, vitriol, and other noisemaking stuff… Anyway this thread got started when I said (the following) and then DScripter said (see just below)::::::

::::what I said::::::
Meanwhile, for my mind, the Bushies have just about used up any reservoir of trust or even of dispassionate consideration.

Think about the way they crowned Halliburton with an open-ended profit gusher with the exclusive, no-bid, middle-of-the-night award of fixing and running the oil biz in Iraq. Bechtel, with Reagan-Bush ties up the wazoo, got a similar deal.

The thing about Halliburton is that they have a demonstrated and well-documented pattern: get contracts with the U.S. Army, overbill the hell of you and me, get caught, pay the fine, do it again – and again – and again, including during Cheney’s tenure. Paying the fine is just a minor cost of doing business. What’s a $2 million fee when you are doing a $2 billion oil and gas deal? (the math says it is one-tenth of one percent)

::::::and then DeviantScripter dude said:::::
Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2003 12:53 pm    Post subject:

You might as well start a new thread about Haliburton, cuz your just simply wrong about that, and it might take awhile for us to discuss it.

OK now we iz live:::::::
For the record, Mr.DS, let’s at least spell Halliburton right… OK I got that much right about Halliburton (brownie points!), please at your leisure and for the edification of our peers, start laying out how otherwise simply wrong I am…

Yes, Reefer Madness was a flick made way back in the 1930s more or less, which is so utterly glob-handed and over the top in its “treatment” of the subject that it became a smash hit in theaters as a parody during the weed-reeking 1970s (trust me, I was there… at least, I think I remember being there…)

“That 70s Show” did a fairly good send up of “Reefer Madness” in one episode; in fact I think they made the two-minute imaginary sequence in black-and-white … it shows the kids as hopeless dope fiends and gangsters. They got the tone, just the right balance of hilariously stilted language and stupidly exaggerated actions – all to assure, as in the original, that every last innocent moron in the audience would get the point.

I would not give SH the benefit of anything, any time anywhere!

Meanwhile, for my mind, the Bushies have just about used up any reservoir of trust or even of dispassionate consideration.

Think about the way they crowned Halliburton with an open-ended profit gusher with the exclusive, no-bid, middle-of-the-night award of fixing and running the oil biz in Iraq. Bechtel, with Reagan-Bush ties up the wazoo, got a similar deal.

The thing about Halliburton is that they have a demonstrated and well-documented pattern: get contracts with the U.S. Army, overbill the hell of you and me, get caught, pay the fine, do it again – and again – and again, including during Cheney’s tenure. Paying the fine is just a minor cost of doing business. What’s a $2 million fee when you are doing a $2 billion oil and gas deal? (the math says it is one-tenth of one percent)

I haven’t played A&A or A&AP, so I am not familiar with playing for VPs. However, it sounds like you have given this some creative thinking. Certainly Germany as the major invader would have to earn points by taking Allied ICs, not just by holding its own.
What rules would you weave in concerning the construction of new ICs?
(There is discussion of this “new ICs” topic on at least one other thread in the Forums.)

Feels kinda right that the maximum shots an AA gun could fire in such a scenario would be 6. One pass only at up to 6 aircraft – but it still seems odd to deliver the anti-tank function to these units that cost only as much as a single tank to begin with! It’s like a massive cheat or something. Plus, anti-tank units active on the battlefield would not occupy fixed positions; in other words, they would be capable of attack. We have only been discussing defensive use of the AA piece so far, right?

Unfortunately, the current administration has gained a reputation for mendacity, in other words: lying. This has been the case in both domestic and foreign policy issues. What really surprises me, at the least in my most cynical moments, is how they could have missed the chance (so far, anyway) to plant plenty of convincing material. The cynical me had always assumed they would go into the war with such follow-through all planned out and the stuff ready to plant! So, is the lack of evidence a sign of incompetence? On some level, it must be.

I find fault with your purchasing selections, Will, mainly due to the absence of any new air units on your shopping list. Air power is expensive, but it is potent and flexible. Due to high mobility and shielding by infantry, it can be durable – however, you can suffer losses and I think you must keep German air power at its full capacity.

As the unit represented by the “tank” piece is, let’s say, three armored divisions, then what would be represented by the AA as anti-tank gun? Maybe an unlimited number of tank-killer regiments? Well, not unlimited if they get just the single shot, but certainly a large force that reflects an uncanny ability by the Soviets to mobilize mechanized ground forces to counter the maneuvers of German armored divisions.

As anti-aircraft gunnery, the AA piece represents a broad array of defenses capable of filling the skies with flak. Am I way off base historically to assume that such gunnery would be easier to muster and utilize than would an anti-tank force spread across a thousand-mile front?

(either way, sounds like it might be a fun house rule to playtest)

FALL BACK!!

And KEEP FALLING BACK!

Seriously, make the German pay dearly to chew through all your infantry by keeping it fighting at the full 2-or-less dice strength. Counterattack only where you can savage his tanks or have a huge numerical advantage. Be very stingy with using your own armor – you’ll need it for the final counterattacks around Moscow.

Above all, get your Allies to send in air power that you can convert to Red ftrs & bmrs. Even if they retain ownership, the Brits can help by parking their ftrs where they can bolster your defense.

SOMETIMES – maybe – a German player will leave a big hole in his front line. You can cause trouble & distract him by rushing in some units. But keep it simple, keep it infantry, and MAKE HIM PAY!!

Also: keep your AA mobile, as you can wear down his air force here and there.

If all else fails, spike his sauerkraut with rancid cabbage!!