I’ve followed this forum for a long time and have found it’s a great resources for the A&A community. I’m hoping with my first post I can solicit some opinions on a disconnect my play group seems to have with the general consensus on which side is favored in A&A Global. If this thread should be moved to the House Rules forum, then I would welcome one of the moderators to do so.
It seems that most topics I’ve read hint at a pro-Axis advantage under standard victory conditions. My friends and I, however, always play with total victory conditions. That is, we ignore VC totals and play until one side capitulates, whether that occurs in round 6 or round 16.
One thing we’ve noticed is that the Allied economic advantage tends to create a significant advantage and Axis victories are quite rare–usually the function of some fluky dice or a relatively inexperienced player’s mistakes.
Admittedly, we can usually only get together once every other month or so for a weekend and have difficulties squeezing in more than 2 games, so we’re looking at a small sample size since Larry finalized the latest Alpha set-up. I would like to know what the community thinks concerning this topic and hopefully get some feedback from other gamers who play with similar rules.
Is the inherent Allied economic advantage too difficult to overcome? If so, do you use a bidding system? Are we perhaps too unimaginative in our Axis strategies?
Thanks for the help.
The longer the game goes on, the Allies get stronger and stronger. After round 10ish they almost always have the advantage. As the game goes on beyond that their advantage will grow and grow. With unconditional surrender as the only victory condition the Allies will win every time.
Total Domination/Concession is the only way we play…Maybe we should look into VC’s more.
I guess the best way to explain this phenomena is that for the Axis, this game is a race against time.
Achieve your VC count quickly (or relatively fast) or face the fact that eventually the US will be able to deny Axis VC’s in both theaters and grind the Axis into submission.
Simply allowing the game to continue lets the Allies play hyper conservative until the Allies achieve and then exceed the starting advantage the Axis has in units on Round 1.
After that, its basically game over for the Axis because the production curves for the Axis and Allies dramatically switch as the Axis will be unable to replace units as quickly and effectively as the Allies will.
If anything, I suggest a joint VC house rule for the Axis to prevent the all-in Germany/Italy/Japan vs Moscow strategy.
I guess the best way to explain this phenomena is that for the Axis, this game is a race against time. Â
Achieve your VC count quickly (or relatively fast) or face the fact that eventually the US will be able to deny Axis VC’s in both theaters and grind the Axis into submission.
Simply allowing the game to continue lets the Allies play hyper conservative until the Allies achieve and then exceed the starting advantage the Axis has in units on Round 1. Â
After that, its basically game over for the Axis because the production curves for the Axis and Allies dramatically switch as the Axis will be unable to replace units as quickly and effectively as the Allies will.
If anything, I suggest a joint VC house rule for the Axis to prevent the all-in Germany/Italy/Japan vs Moscow strategy.
I’m unfamiiar with VC, so could you by chance go into detail a bit more? Whats a joint VC? The All-in, what is that?
Effectively you need a specific amount of VC’s in either theater for the Axis to win with the normal rule set.
As such, Japan can end the game all by itself and Germany can just turtle or do whatever it takes to distract the US from spending IPC in the Pacific (IE SeaLion that ends up off Gibraltar in position to lay siege on US territories).
So, if you change it so that the Axis win is a combination of VC’s in BOTH theaters, you force Japan to play its Pacific Agenda while Germany goes after its European Agenda and you don’t have a Japanese fleet in the Med on Round 8.
It also prevents Japan from giving up easy to hold VC’s like the Philippines or the ones in China and instead going all-in against Moscow on a long march or by putting an AB somewhere in China and flying 15 aircraft to Stalingrad the same round Germany takes it.
So if Japan needs “x” VC to win the Pacific and Germany needs “y” VC to win in Europe, you can come up with some combination of X and Y so that when the Axis arrive at something like 15 total VC, the Axis wins the game, regardless of which VC the Axis controls.
Of course, that opens a whole new basket of eggs for strategy where the Axis may be able to win the game without taking out a single capital from the Allies. But you could always require that at least one Allied Capital is lost in each theater to prevent “cheap” wins.
The only problem with that joint VC condition is that US can basically ignore one theater of war knowing that the axis CAN’T win unless they get enough VCs in both theaters. And once one side of the world is allied, it’s only a matter of time that the other side will be allied as well. With the axis ability to win in either theater, US is pretty much forced to spend at least some of their cash on both fronts.
So Vance and osu88, I take it that your games that ignore VC victory conditions also typically end in an Allied victory? I guess would bids be the way to try to balance this out?
I play with VCs as in the rule book. Without the VC win, the allies would just win every game.
Without the VC conditions, I wouldn’t like the game as much. It would still be fun, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near as historical, because the Allies could go full KGF or full KJF without risking the VC loss.
It would be an uphill battle for the Axis if the Allies opted for an all-out KGF.
I have seen many Axis won games where the Axis won by the skin-of-their-teeth. If those games went on a couple of more rounds, it would have surely turned into an Allied victory.
For example, I have seen this happen: Germany takes over Russia gaining Leningrad, Stalingrad and Moscow. They already have Berlin, Warsaw and Paris, plus Italy has Rome. There is 7 of the 8 VCs they need to win on the Europe board.
While Germany was fighting in Russia and Italy was dealing with the British in the Med, the US fleet stomps the Japanese fleet and has them cornered on Japan. The US also builds up a HUGE invasion force in the Atlantic. They move it to SZ 91 off of Gibraltar. That same turn, Italy finally manages to grab Cairo from the Brits –- VC #8 — and puts a single destroyer blocker in SZ 92.
See, the Allies are screwed. That big US invasion force could easily take Rome, but the US fleet has to stop in SZ 92 to smash that 1 Italian destroyer. Therefore they can’t get to Rome, or Cairo. From SZ 91, even with the Gibraltar Naval Base, there is no other European VC that is under Axis control that they can get to. They could invade W. Germany, but while that would hurt the German effort, there is no VC there. Both Berlin and Paris are 1 more turn away. At the beginning of Italy’s turn, the Axis win.
Berlin, Rome and Paris could all be totally undefended, but since the Axis captured their 8th VC and held it for one full round, they win. In a way, this kind of sucks but that’s the rules. I guess it is designed to make the Allied players think harder about their defence of VCs. Perhaps go all out on that critical 8th VC to keep it from the Axis an any cost, whether it be Cairo, Moscow or even London.
