Game Report Game 129;

[CrayzKirk]

I can feel your pain; like everyone, I too get bad rolls of the dice.  Much more than my fair share, of course.  Whether it is in Backgammon where only a double 6 will get the opponent out of trouble or rolling a dozen 50% dice and consistently getting 2 or 3 while the reply roll gets 8 or 9, it just happens.  The common reply I get is that it all evens out (the law of large numbers) however when you get a bad roll as the allies followed by a good roll by the axis, it can end the game.  This has been my biggest complaint about the entire series of five player games that often turn on a single battle or even a single series of rolls of the dice.

Unless you want to play low luck, I’m not sure what can be done.  I am fairly confident that the algorithm used to compute the dice rolls simply has it in for me…  :evil:

I do enjoy reading the game logs even if I never play.

Kirk S.

[Russiangoat]

@Argothair:

UK1: fly 2 starting fighters from London to West Russia, build 2 new fighters

Assuming G1 sinks the Royal navy (with the cruiser+), and the German cruiser is left, how do you deal with it?  If you send one or both fighters then they can’t make it to WR?  Or do you send in the DD from Canada with the Bomber?  I usually send that combo (DD/Bomber) to sink the 2 German subs off E USA, with the two UK fighters to clear the cruiser.  Do you leave any German ships alone?

[Black_Elk]

I don’t know, I think the cruiser to sz7 is a bit overkill. Pretty easy to get the job done with 2 subs and 2 fighters.

Then you can send the cruiser to sz8 to cause the British headaches with their fighter transits to W. Russia or Arch. Or you can leave it in the Baltic to defend the transport, grab a bombardment for Karelia, and maybe pick off a British fighter on UK1.

[taamvan]

I do see what he is saying though;  if you attack with it and it ends up sitting in SZ 2 8 3 or anywhere but 6 and 5 they cant simply dedicate 1 fighter to it, they’ll need to bring more.  If its hanging with the subs, it will get killed during the sub hunt.  But, if its off by itself, the UK can’t attack with just 1 fighter, they’ll have to bring more and any fighters that are used there or die can’t go to WR.

They might as well ignore it.  When its not protecting the transport, it cant really become the nucleus of a sensible new German fleet (one that the americans could confront and destroy, or the UK with their air)

to Black Elk;  sometimes I wish I was playing craps because I swear that I have rolled (within 15 rolls of 2 dice) 5 sets of snake eyes and 2 hard “3”.  the best one is when you are rolling snake eyes to hit with bombers when its overkill lol

[Russiangoat]

@Black_Elk:

I don’t know, I think the cruiser to sz7 is a bit overkill. Pretty easy to get the job done with 2 subs and 2 fighters.

Then you can send the cruiser to sz8 to cause the British headaches with their fighter transits to W. Russia or Arch. Or you can leave it in the Baltic to defend the transport, grab a bombardment for Karelia, and maybe pick off a British fighter on UK1.

Karelia is usually vacated when I play, so a bombard is not necessary.  Plus Baltic is a fly over for the UK fighters, so they can still transit to WR on UK1.

Cruiser in SZ8 accomplishes the same deal (though smarter) as what I said - screwing with the fighter transit to WR on UK1.  For an aggressive German player like Taamvan faces, it sounds like early fighter support to West Russia is critical, so this would muck with that plan.  Combine cruiser to SZ8 and a juicy undefended German transport taking Iceland G1, and the German player could make it difficult to prioritize and transit fighters to Russia in the early game.

[Black_Elk]

Yeah I’m like you, I’d always empty Karelia. Though sometimes my main opponent will leave a single dude behind to be annoying. Trying to pull a fighter out of position or keep the cruiser in place for an air strike with the optimal air route. Probably because he knows I like to spend the absolute minimum on Karelia for G1. Prefer to save max hitpoints for the second round.

Even if he leaves it empty, which is the better play in my view, sometimes I’ll stay in sz5 anyway just to transport into Baltic or Finland for G2 and take a 50/50 to nab a fighter when the obvious air strike comes. I’m not usually trying to push heavy until G3 anyway hehe. Taamvan’s situation is different though, his German opponent seems kind of crazy on the attack. I’m more conservative with the Luftwaffe.

I like sz 8 for the cruiser and Iceland on the sacrifice play with 1 dude, because it’s a pretty nice distraction for the Allies. It always seems to p�ss him off, so I like that psych warfare aspect haha.

It occurs to me now that I didn’t really discuss the sz5 transport in the Germany thread I started a while back. http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=35951.0

Mentioned the cruiser play, but Iceland is a pretty good one. It should get a mention.
Alas I never finished that series. Had planned to write something for Japan and the other 2 Allies but never got around to it, just general mentions in the 1942.2 overall strategy doc. But the nation focused guides are probably easier to frame. Will have to take another crack at it sometime.

[Russiangoat]

@Black_Elk:

Yeah I’m like you, I’d always empty Karelia. Though sometimes my main opponent will leave a single dude behind to be annoying. Trying to pull a fighter out of position or keep the cruiser in place for an air strike with the optimal air route. Probably because he knows I like to spend the absolute minimum on Karelia for G1. Prefer to save max hitpoints for the second round.

Even if he leaves it empty, which is the better play in my view, sometimes I’ll stay in sz5 anyway just to transport into Baltic or Finland for G2 and take a 50/50 to nab a fighter when the obvious air strike comes. I’m not usually trying to push heavy until G3 anyway hehe. Taamvan’s situation is different though, his German opponent seems kind of crazy on the attack. I’m more conservative with the Luftwaffe.

I like sz 8 for the cruiser and Iceland on the sacrifice play with 1 dude, because it’s a pretty nice distraction for the Allies. It always seems to p�ss him off, so I like that psych warfare aspect haha.

It occurs to me now that I didn’t really discuss the sz5 transport in the Germany thread I started a while back. http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=35951.0

Mentioned the cruiser play, but Iceland is a pretty good one. It should get a mention.
Alas I never finished that series. Had planned to write something for Japan and the other 2 Allies but never got around to it, just general mentions in the 1942.2 overall strategy doc. But the nation focused guides are probably easier to frame. Will have to take another crack at it sometime.

Yeah, I agree with your second paragraph, in general.  But the Iceland play works great if you have US player that likes to transit fighters to Russia, because once West Russia looks dicey the well dries up.  Nice to mix it up, and I never really expect the transport to live to G2 anyway.

I’ve read and re-read your Russian and German openers threads a lot.  I’d like a Japan one if you ever get the time, but I feel like Japan has the most flexibility their first turn based on whatever UK did and their general multitude of options (other than Pearl Light, which seems to be pretty optimal), so it may be a LOT of writing, haha.  I’d also like a UK one, because your insistence on sinking the SZ61 transport with a fighter and a cruiser is something I would not have come up with.

[taamvan]

Evening gents, yeah loving all the ideas about the distracting cruiser micro

With a bid of 12 we can;

keep the us fleet alive 60% chance
keep WR alive 60%+ chance of a good outcome

UK can use the bid to
hit the Japanese 4 hit fleet without any sub cover this is x3 subshots etc
and/or hit the pesky DD+TT needs to die
or hit Siam with bid on the ground instead
and/or hit new guinea
keep Egypt alive and so forth

but we can only choose 1 of these things as the allies.    As the axis, as maphead plays, he is usually willing to trade the Germany spearhead for a big Russian attrition battle early on and also is consistently successful in killing Egypt (2inf 2 arm 1 sb) bid or not (and seriously, Russian fighter or not).

India is a huge vulnerability so also I’m trying to adapt some choices between the UK/india and make this costly but many more of our new ideas revolve around emptying aus/india of crucial infantry to support gambit attacks/taking income early on.  With just 4 transports and 7-8 planes, Japan can rip you apart starting J3 unless you used your bid to hit Siam there is nothing to do about it (and if you did, your pieces die to the same TT loads).

So thanks for all the ideas about air mobility for the allies/axis gamey navy, I think there is some real potential there.  Also conserving your very few infantry as Russia by not even screening.  It still feels like the crucial territories fall to the axis very early (turns 1-3) and the allies never gain the momentum.

G40 coming up Sunday Game 131…

[taamvan]

forgot to add that Germany seems really advantaged by trading “rook for rook” early, that is, taking a medium or big risk and losing a good spearhead army in return for trimming the Russians.  Once this occurs its only a matter of time before $4 Caucasus is lost and Moscow go turtle

[Wolfshanze]

Sounds to me like your main problem is having too many people to play A&A with… I think you should buy this troubling German opponent of yours a one-way ticket to Pensacola, Florida and tell him if he wants to play anymore A&A he’ll have to find someone there to play with (it would at the same time solve my problem of not having anyone to play A&A with).

[taamvan]

That would be nice, but hes my tourney partner  :-)

We do have a lot of people to play against but unfortunately they’re all good.