I think the tech development is waaay too random.
I think the tech development is waaay too random.
We use the offical rule from A&A revised: Buy dice (5 IPCseach, say which technology you’re attempting to develop (say #3), then you need to roll a three to be succesful and actually get the development you want. Any other roll(s) is/ are a failure.
Don’t know why they ever changed this back again. This was the system that made the most sense to me. Also, if you wnat say heavy bombers and you end up with super submarines, this would often be completely useless and a waste of IPCs. 5 is quite a lot and normally you would need multiple dice to be succesful. If then you could even get sth useless, why research in the first place?
Of course in A&Aglobal40 you still need to pick one of the two columns first, even with our houserule/ rule from A&A revised.
Thanks for a fairly detailed report. It was cool to see some strats that worked, and some that didn’t. Just wondering if you used the new set up for Pacific in your global game (14 air unit reduction, inf changes in Asia, NB on NS Wales, and 1 tpt to India). Also giving the new guy Japan was just wrong, to much power, and to many decisions :evil: The UK attacking Japan, now that’s a twist, but it seemed to work against the newbie. The German player didn’t do much of a naval build from what you said, I think Germany has to pump some $ here to keep UK honest in the early rounds. The trick is to keep your navy afloat, so you can use it in the Baltic to reinforce/counter attack Scandinavia/Russia. You also noted an SBR campaign on Germany, did you use to ftr/ interceptor rules, did you lose any planes because of it?
Hey ZehKaiser,
Sounds like you had a pretty good game. It also sounds like the German player made some bad decisions. I found the IC in Romania very interesting. Then you have an access for new tanks right there on the Russian front. I wouldn’t have put a Major IC though. Costs too much. Basically, he spent his whole income that first round on 1 piece. I would have went with a Minor and gotten some other equipment. Perhaps this helped lead to his ultimate downfall?
I put a Minor IC in Norway to back up the Finns and converted my German IC to a Major. I then proceeded to build up three army groups on the East in preparation for Barbarossa. When the North army group took the Baltic States, they didn’t need to concern themselves with Leningrad and could leave that to the Finns and concentrate on the attempted Soviet build-up in Belarus. It worked like a charm and the Russians were soon destroyed.
I can’t blame him for buying extra bombers after getting the heavy bomber tech, although he might have went a little overboard. Whenever I research and get Heavy Bombers, I usually end up gettin more bombers than I usually would.
By the way, speaking of the Heavy Bomber tech. I don’t like this “roll two dice and pick the best result”. Heavy bombers are just that…HEAVY. You spend that money for reasearching that, which is expensive, then you should be able to get two hits per bomber, not just rolling two dice and picking the best one. It’s not like you pay for research and boom, you get heavy bombers. First you buy the dice and hope to get a six. If no six comes up, you lose your money. THEN, you roll and hope to get ANOTHER six. There are five other items you could end up getting and if you are really wanting heavy bombers and get one of the others, then you are screwed. That’s why I don’t like the new limitation to Heavy Bombers.
Also, I miss the reasearch tokens from the Anniversary game. At least that way if your reasearch fails, you can try again next round and your money wasn’t totally wasted.
@WILD:
Thanks for a fairly detailed report. It was cool to see some strats that worked, and some that didn’t. Just wondering if you used the new set up for Pacific in your global game (14 air unit reduction, inf changes in Asia, NB on NS Wales, and 1 tpt to India). Also giving the new guy Japan was just wrong, to much power, and to many decisions :evil: The UK attacking Japan, now that’s a twist, but it seemed to work against the newbie. The German player didn’t do much of a naval build from what you said, I think Germany has to pump some $ here to keep UK honest in the early rounds. The trick is to keep your navy afloat, so you can use it in the Baltic to reinforce/counter attack Scandinavia/Russia. You also noted an SBR campaign on Germany, did you use to ftr/ interceptor rules, did you lose any planes because of it?
Hey Wild Bill, where are you getting these new setups for Pacific in the Global game – 14 air unit reduction, inf changes in Asia, NB on NS Wales, 1 transport to India? The only setup changes in the rulebook are 6 infantry each on 3 different Soviet territories and 1 ANZAC infantry in Egypt. I see nothing about a Naval Base in NSW or a Transport for India. What is this “14 air unit reduction”? Does that mean there are 14 planes taken out of the Pacific setup? Please explain.
He is probably talking about the proposed rules changes that Larry is having people test out to see if they can balance P40.
I still don’t get it. Do they think that Japan is too strong?
Yeah, most people feel (and it has been proven) that if you do a J1 attack and focus in India that you can win the game like 90% of the time. The only thing that can save the allies are lucky dice or several Japanese blunders. Because of this people were wanting to tone down Japan’s power to start the game so people wouldn’t always do a J1 attack. That way the game would be more varied and not so straight-forward.
Building 5 Bombers for Germany doesn’t sound like the most sensible thing to do.
It was a bad move, he should have kept up with the tanks in retrospect, but I do see why he did it, with HB’s and the such a large stack of fodder already on the front these things could have turned the war by either crippling Soviet production, especially in a given IC, since they’re so spread out now and it would make the obvious move north or south of the pripet marshes more decisive, or by just adding 4-5 almost guaranteed kills each round of combat which would be huge.
I agree… it sounds like your expert german player hasn’t been reading these forums. :?
lol you’re right. He thinks he’s too cool to “study” how to play a game online, or to talk about it outside of the game, he’d rather do something more social in his other free time, unlike me obviously :mrgreen: That said, I think that more than one person in a group coming to forums like this would ruin the game. If all the players are into not only what they think optimized play is, but instead are into playing “teh only roxzors optimized” way that the know it all net people think is the only non-retarded way to play, then the game would get very boring very fast.
We can look at things with fresh outlooks when we just sit down and play every couple months and try something fresh without worrying that its “auto fail” according to the all knowing interwebz. Not that you fall into this category, just saying!
I think the tech development is waaay too random.
We use the offical rule from A&A revised: Buy dice (5 IPCseach, say which technology you’re attempting to develop (say #3), then you need to roll a three to be succesful and actually get the development you want. Any other roll(s) is/ are a failure.
Don’t know why they ever changed this back again. This was the system that made the most sense to me. Also, if you wnat say heavy bombers and you end up with super submarines, this would often be completely useless and a waste of IPCs. 5 is quite a lot and normally you would need multiple dice to be succesful. If then you could even get sth useless, why research in the first place?
Of course in A&Aglobal40 you still need to pick one of the two columns first, even with our houserule/ rule from A&A revised.
We ended up using the A&A50 tech rolls with the tech tokens. You spend 5 for a research token, and get one die roll for it, if you get a 6 you hit ONE breakthrough (no matter how many 6’s you get) and you discard your tokens, if you don’t get a 6 then you keep them and try again until you get it. If you make a breakthrough you pick a chart, then roll another D6 and get what you get, he got HB’s.
Another system we were thinking of is that instead of getting a research token you can just buy x dice and roll them all at once and you get as many breakthroughs as you get 6’s but you have to discard the tokens even if you get no breakthroughs. High risk high reward or something like that. Its good for the big powers.
I think that your way of doing it like revised is great too, but it seems too good when combined with research tokens.
@WILD:
Thanks for a fairly detailed report. It was cool to see some strats that worked, and some that didn’t. Just wondering if you used the new set up for Pacific in your global game (14 air unit reduction, inf changes in Asia, NB on NS Wales, and 1 tpt to India). Also giving the new guy Japan was just wrong, to much power, and to many decisions :evil: The UK attacking Japan, now that’s a twist, but it seemed to work against the newbie. The German player didn’t do much of a naval build from what you said, I think Germany has to pump some $ here to keep UK honest in the early rounds. The trick is to keep your navy afloat, so you can use it in the Baltic to reinforce/counter attack Scandinavia/Russia. You also noted an SBR campaign on Germany, did you use to ftr/ interceptor rules, did you lose any planes because of it?
You are welcome for the report! We used the OOB set up with the slight revision from LH when pacific 40 first came out, it was replacing the Major IC in Australia with a minor, and removing the minor from NZ, as well as adding a NB and AB to the Philippines. We didn’t reduce air. From what we saw in this game, reducing the air would have been a bad idea, I think the Axis really have it hard enough. Especially Japan now. The J1 attack really is prolly off the table because Germany needs at least 2 rounds to keep things stable in europe. If the US can dump 80ish IPC’s in the atlantic from R1 I think they would be foolish not to. But if they have to wait a while then they would be more temped to spend some in the Pacific.
Hey ZehKaiser,
Sounds like you had a pretty good game. It also sounds like the German player made some bad decisions. I found the IC in Romania very interesting. Then you have an access for new tanks right there on the Russian front. I wouldn’t have put a Major IC though. Costs too much. Basically, he spent his whole income that first round on 1 piece. I would have went with a Minor and gotten some other equipment. Perhaps this helped lead to his ultimate downfall?
I put a Minor IC in Norway to back up the Finns and converted my German IC to a Major. I then proceeded to build up three army groups on the East in preparation for Barbarossa. When the North army group took the Baltic States, they didn’t need to concern themselves with Leningrad and could leave that to the Finns and concentrate on the attempted Soviet build-up in Belarus. It worked like a charm and the Russians were soon destroyed.
I can’t blame him for buying extra bombers after getting the heavy bomber tech, although he might have went a little overboard. Whenever I research and get Heavy Bombers, I usually end up gettin more bombers than I usually would.
By the way, speaking of the Heavy Bomber tech. I don’t like this “roll two dice and pick the best result”. Heavy bombers are just that…HEAVY. You spend that money for reasearching that, which is expensive, then you should be able to get two hits per bomber, not just rolling two dice and picking the best one. It’s not like you pay for research and boom, you get heavy bombers. First you buy the dice and hope to get a six. If no six comes up, you lose your money. THEN, you roll and hope to get ANOTHER six. There are five other items you could end up getting and if you are really wanting heavy bombers and get one of the others, then you are screwed. That’s why I don’t like the new limitation to Heavy Bombers.
Also, I miss the reasearch tokens from the Anniversary game. At least that way if your reasearch fails, you can try again next round and your money wasn’t totally wasted.
The game was a lot of fun! I think you’re right about the Romanian IC, a minor one would prolly be best. I think a few minors spread around is better than a major in one place. I think he put it there because historically to take out Russia you took out the Caucasus, but now that seems less important than Leningrad. Its very far out of the way and the territories are worth little. The real action is in the north I think and I love your idea of the norway factory, I’d just be terrified the brits or americans would get it.
It was our first game, certainly a learning experience. We all did a few things wrong. I was going to take Eire with the US to make a bomber base, but then I remembered it was too close to Europe, then I took brazil and now I guess I couldn’t even have done that without first being at war? So I should have just sat around with my thumbs twiddling about as the US.
I think you did heavy bombers wrong. You can’t get 2 hits with them. You roll 2 dice and pick the best result, so heavy bombers have a 1/9 chance of missing in stead of 1/3
Are you talking to me about the bombers? We did them the way you said. I only said 4-5 hits for the 5 bombers because there’s still a good chance of missing with 1 of them, but like you said, its’ not super high. We also rolled each bomber separate so it wouldn’t influence our results that way either.
