@W4rP1g oops! Corrected!
Larry Harris Semi-Official Tournament Game Patch
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I agree with your overall analysis, but disagree with some of your math.
America starts with 42 IPCs to Japan’s 30 IPCs. Japan should usually start turn 1 with only one surviving transport, which means Japan cannot really afford to go on any crazy adventures – an aggressive J1 might pick up $1 from Russia, $3 from China, and $1 from Burma, for $35, compared to $39 for the USA.
On J2, Japan could pick up another $2 from Russia, another $1 from China, retake Burma, and maybe pick up $1 or at most $2 from Alaska, Hawaii, or Australia. So even at the end of J2, Japan’s income is capped at $40, much of which needs to be spent on the Asian mainland. Meanwhile, the US will still be earning $38. So it’s not literally true that Japan is out-earning the US after turn 1, and even after turn 2, Japan can’t afford to outspend the US on its navy.
Similarly, Britain starts with 31 IPCs. They may or may not lose Egypt before their turn starts, but they can often retake it, and/or take Norway or NW Europe. So Britain should usually still be collecting $31 at the end of its first turn. They can often repeat this on the second turn, i.e., retake Egypt / Burma or capture Norway or NW Europe. So Britain’s income might eventually go down to $28 or lower, but not at the end of the first turn. It’s also not fair to compare Britain’s income directly to Germany’s, because Germany is also fighting Russia, especially in the early turns when Russia doesn’t really have to spend any money/troops against Japan. Russia should be earning at least $26 in the first few turns. Assume that the UK max-places infantry in India every turn, which costs $9. So, the combined UK + USSR income of $28 - $9 + $26 = $45, which is about the same as Germany for the first few turns. Germany starts with $41, and they will often lose West Russia and trade Leningrad and Stalingrad, which puts them up $4, for $45. So there’s economic parity on the western front, to start with.
And this is exactly the problem: as you point out, the Axis have economic parity in Europe after one turn, and in the Pacific after two turns. The Allies, at most, will earn a premium of $15 over the Axis before the Axis can eliminate the Allied economic advantage, and that money isn’t nearly enough to build the fleets they need to cross the oceans, let alone to establish a viable beachhead. The Allies don’t have an opportunity to set up a meaningful advantage anywhere on the board before the Axis start double-teaming Russia. This is not just unbalanced, but boring: the most interesting positions arise when each side has (at least one) advantage, and you have to win the game by exploiting your advantage and neutralizing your opponents’ advantage(s). 1942.2 doesn’t generate those positions very often because the Axis are the only ones with any structural advantages. The Allies have to rely on either bad Axis dice, a large bid, or a bad Axis mistake in order to establish any counter-play. If the Axis play a perfect game and don’t get diced, then the Axis will win every time, no matter what the Allies do. This is probably true even in 1942.3. I haven’t playtested it, so I can’t be sure, but I don’t see anything in the 1942.3 setup that would alter the fundamental strategy. As you point out, DespotDoug, the problem is with the income values on the map at least as much as with the particular setup of the pieces. To fix the scenario by tinkering with the pieces, you would need to give the Allies either a fleet that can survive the turn-1 Axis airblitz, or an offensive striking force somewhere in the British south, or both.
If you wanted to try to fix the problem by fixing the income values, I favor adding +1 IPC each to West Canada, East Canada, Australia, South Africa, Persia, Alaska, Hawaii, Sinkiang, Archangel, Vologda, Evenki, and Novosibirsk. I won’t say more than that here because it belongs on the House Rules forum, but feel free to post in House Rules, or to PM me, and I’ll be happy to discuss it further with you.
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Thanks for the thoughts - a lot of good points. :-)
Just to clarify - I realize I inverted this later in my first post, but I meant Germany vs US economy and UK vs Japan. So approximates for turn 1: Germany at $45/US $39 and assume a UK hold at $30/Japan $34. I know this doesn’t factor Russia, but to everyone’s point that is a quick downhill run. Just trying to simply illustrate the disparity before getting to the Russian economy and the mass of Axis units!
Appreciate the feedback!
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Is it possible to “sticky” this to the front page? Seems like rather important information.
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Is it possible to “sticky” this to the front page? Seems like rather important information.
Good idea - and done!
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Been a hot minute since I posted here (only just got around to reseting and poking about since the forums migrated.) But I got a request from an old hommie to play 42.3 this afternoon, since he only has time for a short game, so I guess the map is not entirely defunct for me yet. Its still hard for me to imagine getting terribly excited for the tournament patch though, gotta admit. I feel like the purpose of this board now is mainly relegated to introductions. Basically playing Allies with no bid vs an Axis opponent with less experience, hoping for some curve balls to make it interesting purely on account of that unfamiliarity on the one side, but mainly just trying to drum up enthusiasm for future matches on the AA50 or Global board. Its a little unfortunate, since I liked the price point of this board for a starter game. But at the end of the day I think it just goes in the opposite direction of what I’d like to see from a starter board. Namely it front loads everything into the first round combats, such that the game is more or less decided within the first hour. I think the only way to get around that would be to dramatically increase the overall economy, to overcome the TUV swings of the opening combats, and change the basic play pattern such that Russia doesn’t fold to an axis crush immediately. I don’t think you can get there just by tweaking the starting unit set up, it really requires a rules change of some sort, to try and open up the peripheral parts of the map and put more emphasis there instead of all on the center. Or at least allowing more of a build up before the major TUV exchanges. Otherwise the same old playpattern is going to predominate, over the same critical tiles, mainly in the middle of the map. But anyway, sometimes a dead horse can still ride I guess hehe.
Hope you all have been well! I had couple heavy rl things preoccupying me in the past year, but the new year is starting to shape up for the better. So hopefully I get in some more time for the good stuff, like plastic army men and carboard world domination lol. Catch you next round
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@Black_Elk hear hear, brother,
Yes, and though I didn’t say it here–it remains a good short game with a well-attended tournament. Many of its flaws have been ported into AAZ because the map scale and geometry is similar. Other than that, it sat in the box since Gencon 2017.
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For tournament play is there a time limit per turn? Seems like with only 4hrs 45 mins to play you only get 3-4 rounds?
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In the tournament in the bidding process if one bids less than 3 and is the winner do they just get the extra IPC since nothing can be bought?
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Yeah, if the amount is less than 3, usually saved for purchase. Sometimes the Axis bid in revised would be used so that Japan could purchase additional transports or things of that sort. In the earliest versions of bids that I recall rather than pre-placing units you had to purchase them using the normal mechanics in game. So the bids would be larger, but the opening battles preserved according to the box.
I’d guess tournaments are set up to have basically a core afternoon committed. Maybe a follow up day for the final or something like that. Even the most enthusiastic players can’t usually put in like a full work day just on the board. Since a hall isn’t quite as chill as playing a long ass game at home, where you have like couches and snacks and beverages at the ready. Some of the bigger tournaments might run it more like a convention, where its more about the meeting up and talking shop than like going full The Wizard style. Though that would be cool. Like just powergloving it vs Lucas for the chance to compete live on some grand new A&A board reveal hehe. Or like world championship in Vegas with some ridiculous grand prize. A&A Olympics with actual medals hehe. But yeah more like a big empty room with a gang of folding tables and kinda tight on time. But I haven’t been to the big ones in the midwest
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lol I like reading your stuff :)
Why do you think bids are placed before game start now ? Top players feel the opening is broken ? Is that unique to this map ?
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Hey what’s up man! Been a while hehe
Yeah I honestly don’t know the exact history of how it got started or at what tournament. I think the cd games from the late 90s probably standardized it, just because it was a relatively easy edit and more action oriented to have extra pieces banging away from the get go.
For A&Aonline the base game for ranked play is Gencon and its been going with no bid for a couple months now. If I had to put money on it, I’d say Axis retain the edge, but there are a lot of big swings and potential for Allies to come up under Gencon. The playpattern remains pretty similar to OOB overall.
The preplacement bid obviously forces players to think really hard about what is possible in the first turns, and how an extra hitpoint here or there might blow something wide open. So it has that appeal, playing to the fixed nature of A&A, where the start conditions are basically always the same. Totally different from say Risk or games like that, where there is much more variability in the starting conditions. Still just looking at the standard options in the menu for the Iron blitz game there were a lot of other ideas as well, some using tech unlocks “Axis Advantage” had Supersubs and Jets for Axis. Economic Victory. Russian restricted opening. And a couple alternative riffs on the Classic game going from 2nd to 3rd edition. It had marines and a few other things like that, some of which could shift the balance back and forth depending on which option one went with.
I still think starting income adjustment is the easiest. There’s always an amount in cash that can fix any perceived balance issue and its rather less distorting to the opener. But I’d guess the preplacement bid is used in tournaments mainly because its faster, and tournaments always have that element of time to consider. A larger cash bid that introduces units via the normal purchasing system would take longer to materialize and its impact would be more amorphous than say another sub or tank somewhere right out the gate. So prob that’s the reason it became so popular.
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@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.
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haha yeah that sounds pretty intense. I can definitely see why they’d go preplacement when you’re rocking 9-5 until eliminated. Esp with teams. My memories of save for purchase bids are all coming from tripleA warclub stuff not the sit down and gun with the gang official type situation. I always imagined that things in the actual hall would be pretty next level. Definitely sounds like that’s the case
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I’ve now played the LHTR a couple of times and my conclusion is the Axis still are the favorites. Using the time constraints all the Axis have to do is take Karelia (Leningrad) and defend all their victory cities to win 7-6. It is pretty tough for Russia to stop Germany from taking Leningrad. USA does not have enough time to put their mark in the game. UK can now conceivable hold India but unfortunately they are not able to really help Russia much saving Leningrad. These games have been with zero bid so maybe the next step is to play with a bid. I am intrigued with the idea of playing USA turn 0 where USA starts game (instead of Russia) and can do everything but attack on that turn. It would make them more relevant in the game. Any thoughts out there?
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@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.
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@taamvan have any tournaments played US0?
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@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
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Do most people still give Allies 6 bid even after this patch?
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After playing online at the plat level for a couple months now, I can’t imagine having to decide a winner by round 7 or so. To me, the game would seem so shallow by comparison. Like it’s more about positioning for VC scrambles as the timer is running out to eek out one more than your opponent, than actually trying to hit 9/10 VCs. Like ending a chess game after 25 moves based on who has more material. Even though you can often tell if it’s gonna be a win loss or draw by that point, that evaluation is based on the fact that the end game is there to play out. But if a chess game was actually capped at 25 moves, people would play much differently. Likewise with this game. Of course, games can’t be allowed to go on for too long in an in-person tournament. Perhaps if both sides had like a 2 hour clock running down whenever it’s their turn (except in conduct combat phase?). Has this been suggested before?
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@Kakarrot1138 said in Larry Harris Semi-Official Tournament Game Patch:
After playing online at the plat level for a couple months now, I can’t imagine having to decide a winner by round 7 or so. To me, the game would seem so shallow by comparison. Like it’s more about positioning for VC scrambles as the timer is running out to eek out one more than your opponent, than actually trying to hit 9/10 VCs. Like ending a chess game after 25 moves based on who has more material. Even though you can often tell if it’s gonna be a win loss or draw by that point, that evaluation is based on the fact that the end game is there to play out. But if a chess game was actually capped at 25 moves, people would play much differently. Likewise with this game. Of course, games can’t be allowed to go on for too long in an in-person tournament. Perhaps if both sides had like a 2 hour clock running down whenever it’s their turn (except in conduct combat phase?). Has this been suggested before?
“Plat level” likely means you’re playing 1942 Online, not 1942 Second Edition. 1942 Second Edition is very different, and GenCon is different on top of that. Pretty much all the points you bring up need to consider that context.
For example, clocks seem like a great idea - but we’re not talking about chess players that are used to clocks that go around carrying clocks. A lot of players won’t understand how to use a chess clock and will need to be taught. Even then, many will make mistakes that will require adjudication, or just won’t use the clocks. Then too there’s a question of who pays for the clocks? Players won’t necessarily have their own. And since the clocks aren’t personal property of the players in question, they’ll leave them on tables, unsupervised, and a certain number of these $25 USD clocks can be expected to “disappear” - not necessarily through any malicious intent. So you end up wanting maybe $500 worth of chess clocks, which isn’t necessarily an issue (maybe you could find a cooperative chess league that has a lot of clocks) - but in the end, someone has to be responsible for all of that, and has to pay for any losses.
Besides that is the question of how players take to the clocks. What if they just don’t like them? Suppose someone asks that the clock be stopped so they can use the bathroom. That could be an issue. If the clock is stopped, what about players that take a picture of the board before they go? What about players with disabilities? And you might feel that you have an answer to all these questions, but if you’re not personally administering each and every such question for the entire duration of the event, that means others are going to be involved in decisions. And nothing gets people angry so fast as uneven judge adjudication. Rule one way in one situation, another in another situation, accusations of favoritism start being thrown around. So you need to have detailed instructions available ahead of time, which half the judges won’t read - and there you go.
It’s not the clocks that are the issue so much as getting the whole system to work. I don’t think I’d say it’s a huge issue. But you can see where chess clocks wouldn’t be a thing that would necessarily just happen.
AFAIK at GenCon if you feel an opponent is delaying game, you can call over a judge. If you keep calling over a judge and the judge feels your repeat calls are warranted, they may do something. So there’s that. Not as good as clocks, perhaps, but perhaps enough?
As to being shallow - Axis and Allies is generally shallow. There’s no hidden information. No diplomacy. No exchanging one resource type for another. You don’t have mechanics as in chess like pinning, checking, castling, or promotion. Probability distributions seem complex but aren’t that difficult to understand.
That might seem like a lot to swallow, but you take a fighter out of a defense and say the win odds drop by 17%. Compare to chess, you have a pawn in the right position and you can checkmate. The possibilities in Axis and Allies collapse upon the control and location of industrial complexes. You don’t have “key squares” in chess like that, the center is important but it’s not the same.
All that’s done at GenCon is a few things are tweaked. Maybe they seem like big tweaks, and in some ways they are, but it’s really just another set of conditions. If you feel that improvements can be made - sure. But then, what would you specifically recommend - and not just what, but who and why?
I’m not saying why needs to be strictly defined, but I am saying it’s important to remember for context. If thinking about “why” all the time, the context becomes less “chess clocks should be a thing, get chess clocks”, and more “IF someone else thinks chess clocks are a good idea and is willing to do the administration and cost things, THEN perhaps chess clocks can happen”.
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