A concept for testing strategies: the "Open Game"

[Guest]

Hi, as fans of A&A we all like to theorize about various strategies and of course the forums are full of them.  I’ve seen lots of differing theories but that is a good thing.  I’m not here to promote a certain strategy but rather promote an idea for testing strategies: the Open Game.

The “open game” is a situation where preferably just two players sit down to play AA50 and share their ideas and potential moves with each other as friendly opponents - there is no winner.  It’s not a real, competitive game but a situation where one person plays Axis and the other Allies and each offers a potential set of moves and their opponent plays Devil’s Advocate saying ‘well if you did that then I’d probably do this’.  In an open game, moves can be taken back before the dice are rolled, and certain “lee way” is allowed in spirit of testing a strategy.  Why do this?

It’s difficult to test a strategy playing a game alone by yourself.  You have no one to potentially out-think you or even just come up with a reasonable alternative to what you assume your opponent would do.  It’s also difficult to test a strategy in a 6 player game where not everyone is co-operating or where some players are more experienced than the others.

Interestingly enough, in a “real game” although a strategy may be a good one, your strategy may be sunk by bad tactics like: moving a few planes to the wrong space, buying one too few transports, forgetting to leave that one infantry behind to block the blitz, etc etc.  An “open game” allows two players to test their theories without these little “oops moments”.

Is this a realistic game environment?  Not necessarily, but IMHO it is a good environment to see if an overall economic warfare strategy is viable.  It eliminates some of the randomness of a competitive game and replaces it with careful, deliberate moves on both players’ part.  Then you can judge the strategy based on its effectiveness and not the tactical sharpness of one particular player or lucky dice.  You can play an “open game” with each player revealing their strategy or not, but sharing tactical advice to your opponent makes testing a strategy easier and helps each player become a better player.

Give it a try!  Kthxbai

[Krieghund]

This is a technique that I use all the time.  :wink:

[allies_fly]

I did this recently with our first look at the 1942 set-up with a friend.

Initially, Africa looks to be a very hard nut to crack for the axis.  Lots more units for the allies as well.  The one thing that may offset this is that the axis already have many of their N.O.'s to offset the extra allied units.

[atarihuana]

90% of my axis and allies time is like this, 10% real games ^^