Invitational Classic 2nd edition

[Martin]

I updated the Nation’s ranking, as it did not make sense.

Before, all games were counted, even the ones when a US player played against a US player and when a German player played against a German player, leading to an advantage of the US.

Now, only the international games with mixed players are taken into consideration.

[Martin]

@elche @dawgoneit @Ragnell804 @The_Good_Captain

After a speedy start, the tournament games have slowed down a bit. Still 9 games to go. The country rating is currently a draw.

Game on - it will be an exciting finish! :-)

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=120069D2430781F6!846&authkey=!AJaivysx6pBsGhQ

[Martin]

Elche wins with the Allies against Martin

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/40770/classic-martin-x-vs-elche-l-1?_=1716192207127

[Martin]

@dawgoneit @The_Good_Captain @Ragnell804 @elche

Dear all,

We can already congratulate The Good Captain for the undisputed victory of our small tournament! There are still games going on or to be started, but no player will be able to reach TGC’s current 7 points. Congratulations - very well played!

The US have also taken the lead in the nations’’ ranking.

In the 15 games played so far, the Axis have won in 47% of the cases. This shows that restricting Russia from attacking on turn 1 makes sense with the Allies still having a slight advantage.

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=120069D2430781F6!846&authkey=!AJaivysx6pBsGhQ

As always, please check and let me know in case I did some mistake with the results or with the table.

[Martin]

TGC has indeed “only” 6 points, but this does not change the situation.

[The_Good_Captain]

@Martin @elche @dawgoneit @Ragnell804

Thanks Martin. Lots of fun. I am in the middle of my game with Elche and will make a few comments once we are finished. =)

[Martin]

@The_Good_Captain @Martin @elche @dawgoneit @Ragnell804

Elche has conceded, and TGC has won all of his games except for one. Congratulations again to your victory!

I still have to play my second game with elche. And I am not sure if Dawgoneit cancelled all of his games, but I believe so.

One thing: I lost my spreadsheet with the game results and the table, as I accidentally deleted it from the One Drive folder. I can reconcile it, as I luckily posted the screen shots below, but maybe one of you has downloaded the table and can send it to me be email or A&A post?

And last but not least: I had proposed earlier this year that we consider launching a Classic league starting 2025. I volunteered to keep track of results and tables. As it turned out, this would indeed be too much for me, taking care of job and family. I could ask Gamerman if he would be willing to add another table to the current one, where he already keeps track of OOB, BM, and PtV.

[The_Good_Captain]

@Martin @elche @dawgoneit @Ragnell804 @kwaspek104

That was a lot of fun, thank you all!

Hopefully, we can do this again next year. Regarding balance, I feel very strongly that games need to be played with the “Restricted Attack” optional rule but also that neutral territories need to be impassable.

In every game as the Allies, I invaded Spain early in the game. I have played hundreds of games of classic in the last five years and have not seen this strategy fail. It cripples Germany and almost guarantees an Allied win. Nobody used Spain against me when I was the Axis (Elche did but it was around turn 18 - far too late).

At a minimum, I strongly recommend playing this game with “Restricted Attack” and Impassable Neutrals.

I also recommend allowing tech starting on game turn 4. The affect of doing this is that it prevents the long, drawn out, slow death of one side or the other. When the ‘loser’ realizes he is losing, he can roll for tech and hope to catch heavy bombers to try to get back in the game. Otherwise, games go on and on and on (I would use the game between Elche and I as an example). Tech speeds up the game which is especially important in tournament games. In my experience, it does not break the game or create a lucky winner…so long as it is not accessible unit turn 4.

Finally, I recommend using the optional rule “No New Complexes”. I feel strongly (and its been my experience) that they favor the Allies and don’t do the Axis much good. The Allies don’t need the help that the complexes provide. I understand this adds a lot of “flavor” so I’m totally fine to play with them - but if the Allies know how to use them early in the game, its difficult for the Axis to recover.

In conclusion, I hope we have a tournament next year and I think perfect balance is achieved by using:

1) Restricted Attack
2) Impassable Neutrals
3) No tech until turn 4
4) No new complexes

I think the first two are a necessity. I think the second two make the game perfectly balanced but are not a necessity.

Thanks for the games and hope to play again next year.

**If anyone wants to see what Spanish Harlem looks like and why its so awful, see this video and go to 8:44. If you use Spanish Harlem against me as the Axis, I will lose the game. It just cannot be beaten.

[The_Good_Captain]

the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHBXRXn8JCM&t=530s

[VictoryFirst]

I have never played a game of Classic before, but seeing you guys having fun with it makes me want to play lol. Anyone interested in some “getting a noob up to speed with Classic” games? 😂

I would love to take part in the next invitational!

[dawgoneit]

@VictoryFirst I’ll play

[Martin]

@The_Good_Captain @elche @dawgoneit @Ragnell804 @VictoryFirst @kwaspek104

Apologies for my late reply! Thank you ever so much for your feedback, TGC, and all the suggestions! I am not a tech fan when it comes to competitive games. But if both players agree, everything is possible :-) Thank you also for the video link! :-)

It appears that there are 10+ players interested in playing in some kind of A&A Classic League, starting 2025. This could be organized in a similar way as the1940 OOB, BM, and PtV leagues. Let’s see how we can organize this. I was volunteering to keep the records. But as it turned out during the year, this is too demanding time wise. And I should not delete the table by accident again, LOL.

We shall see if we can add a “Classic” tab to the ELO sheet of the 1940 game version variants, or if a 3rd party app such as a Chess manager shall be used. Any input is welcome.

[Panther]

Topic moved to the “Tournaments” section.

[Martin]

@Panther thank you - I wasn’t aware that were is a tournament section

[Martin]

Can you please kindly share the link to the tournament section?

[Panther]

@Martin

From the forum’s homepage:

The link is
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/category/25/tournaments

[gamerman01]

@Martin said in Invitational Classic 2nd edition:

I could ask Gamerman if he would be willing to add another table to the current one, where he already keeps track of OOB, BM, and PtV.

I would if I could.

@MrRoboto was the sole designer of the ELO sheets we use. I know very well how to use them, but I don’t know how to set up a new version in it. It’s more than adding a tab.

MrRoboto was a very active player for years and sometimes vanishes and comes back. He vanished without training me how to do alterations like this.

I’m posting so I can watch things progress here.
You are right, the league is about accommodating what players want, within reason. The original game of course is deserving of a tab, it’s just before this year I’ve not heard any interest at all in the Classic game, in the corners where I live.

MrRoboto has been gone several months. It would be nice if he’d come back before Jan 1 for a 2025 league season setup, but it’s not hard to record (league regular season) results in the meantime. Then if he doesn’t return, I could always put your rankings out in the form that we did all those years before 2024.

Your electronic table for this tournament looks pretty sweet. I’m not unilaterally deciding to pull Classic games into the league, but if at least a few of you petition, I can make it happen.

If any of you play a Classic game in the play boardgames - league section, and record the result in the post game results thread (read all league rules first, in a stickied thread there), it will be saved there for whenever rankings would be done, for Classic. And I could do them immediately in my homemade spreadsheet that would be always available in league standings online. This means even the rest of 2024, as in right now (I won’t count games you had before, outside the league section though).

@elche and @kwaspek104 succeeded in getting me to play some games of Classic after all these years. It took me a bit to catch up on all the rules, some of which I never played correctly back when we didn’t have the internet, I was a teenager, and just read the rulebook myself.

Two 2024 games was all it took for me to see that @The_Good_Captain knows what he’s talking about, not that that’s a surprise given his A&A brilliance and how many games of Classic he’s played lately. I invaded Spain and it was crushing in just the way that he said, and my opponent said yeah, that’s why we shouldn’t play with neutrals on.

Agree with restricted attack, it’s even suggested in the rulebook from the 80’s. No new complexes is also an optional rule listed in the rulebook.

Too much in one post, but I didn’t want this to get buried by my own posts. One houserule that would keep the exciting neutral aspect in play would be to assign a higher IPC cost to violating certain nations, especially Spain.

And with just those 2 games, it seemed Japan complexes are very helpful to the Axis, but I know complexes help the Allies a lot.

[Panther]

@gamerman01 said in Invitational Classic 2nd edition:

I’m not unilaterally deciding to pull Classic games into the league, but if at least a few of you petition, I can make it happen.

If any of you play a Classic game in the play boardgames - league section, and record the result in the post game results thread (read all league rules first, in a stickied thread there), it will be saved there for whenever rankings would be done, for Classic. And I could do them immediately in my homemade spreadsheet that would be always available in league standings online. This means even the rest of 2024, as in right now (I won’t count games you had before, outside the league section though).

My understanding of the League section has always been that it was “reserved” for the Global 1940 games (and its derivatives of course). There has not been much interest in “Classic” during the last (at least) decade, that is why I moved this topic to ‘Tournaments’ rather than ‘League’.

However this of course is not carved in stone, of course. When moving this topic I just did not think that ‘Classic’ will become as big “League-play” as Global1940/alt.

So I am totally open to have it included in the league section if demanded. In that case I would just ask for a different topic-headline, as “Invitational” has a clear tournament-related connotation.

[The_Good_Captain]

@Panther @gamerman01
if you build it they will come…

@VictoryFirst @Ragnell804 @kwaspek104 @Martin @elche @dawgoneit @ericwool @dawgoneit I can speak for.

And who knows how many more a shout-out on a YouTube channel would shake out of the wood works.

[The_Good_Captain]

oh my and of course, @DoManMacgee

That’s nine warm bodies without trying to advertise. How many are in the G40 league?