Low luck or not?

@Eqqman:

@vonLettowVorbeck1914:

We do dice 95% of the time but sometimes it gets to a big battle and no one wants to get hosed, so one proposed LL and if the other agrees, we do it for that battle.

If I was the defender in such a situation, I’d probably issue an automatic no to that idea, since you’d likely just be handing the attacker an automatic win after several turns spent maneuvering and building up.  In some cases the element of chance is the only thing that is going to give the defender enough of an edge to discourage attack.

Yeah, the defender never says yes if it were the battle of moscow or something, we usually see this is naval battles where the defender wants to make sure they get a few planes and the attacker wants to make sure they don’t lose it all.

usually play low luck, the disadvantage of it is however is that you can make attacks with a smaller margin, low luck is attacker friendly, and has a real luckadvantage of its own.

just imagine using 2 inf + 1 bomber against 1 inf, in low luck you will win every time and take 1 ipc as a loss on average.

with dice you will take 1.5 IPC and only take the terr about 95% of the battles

I think we would play lowluck more if it didn’t seem that retreats were so abusable. (of course though, what is abuse is opinion in this case).

LL

Main reason: Hate spending several of hours on “great strategical work” just to see the game ending in a split of a second without you making a mistake. On the other hand I dont find it very satisfying winning a game because my opponent lost a battle to dices.

A note on low luck: low luck doesnt mean that you dont loses games because of bad dices - or wins games because of good dices. But normally it takes several rounds of bad dices to lose a good played game or several rounds of good dices to win a bad played game. More my way of playing.

Yeah, I remember a few games of LL in revised where one side got repeatedly hosed on the trade battles on the Eastern front. Things like 3 inf 1 ftr losing 2 or 3 to 2 inf while the opponent’s 1 inf 1 ftr beats 1 inf constantly.

The  effect of the infantry losses discrepancy can really break even a LL game. It’s not as simple as sending enough to guarantee victory every time as a way to avoid losing in LL. You do that, you run out of dudes.

Dice.

I like the idea that you can make gambles that pay off.  The analgy that Zhukov44 makes about poker vs chess is perfect!

next game I am thinking of giving everyone 3-5 combats where you can call low-luck and that fight is resolved by low luck as opposed to dice.  Gives people a little bit more confidence in that one big gamble they need to pull off but keeps everything from being reduced to linear combat.

Pure low-luck games don’t sound that interesting because you are normalizing everything which doesn’t strike me as being anything like a war.  I love those wins/losses that occurr completely against the grain and these occur in the field too, Rats of Tobruk anyone?

The crazygonuts stuff still happens plenty in LL, just in the smaller or more even battles.

Medium luck is the best thing that anyone ever came up with to address this.

anytime you are about to roll dice you can choose - Average + remainder die, or all dice.

It makes a hell of a better game, and most of the time, you find that you risk in on the dice anyways!

@elzario:

Dice.

I like the idea that you can make gambles that pay off.  The analgy that Zhukov44 makes about poker vs chess is perfect!

next game I am thinking of giving everyone 3-5 combats where you can call low-luck and that fight is resolved by low luck as opposed to dice.  Gives people a little bit more confidence in that one big gamble they need to pull off but keeps everything from being reduced to linear combat.

Pure low-luck games don’t sound that interesting because you are normalizing everything which doesn’t strike me as being anything like a war.  I love those wins/losses that occurr completely against the grain and these occur in the field too, Rats of Tobruk anyone?

I love this idea. Maybe giving each of the axis 5 LL battles during the game, and each of the allies 3. This would mean that almost every battle is still dice, but there would still be LL in big battles like france.

It really works well.

We’ve found that it’s not the -Big- battles where you get screwed.

It’s the little ones…

• You send two fighters and a bomber against a destroyer.
• You miss with everything and he hits…
• Having already lost a fighter, you roll your fighter and bomber, MISS again, he hits again
• Now you’re screwed, you just lost two fighters for nothing, after 7 dice are rolled.
• Do you continue with the bomber? Hell no, you’re outta there, -20 IPC’s…

That scenario has surely happend to all of you.

Medium luck eliminates those kinds of scenario’s for the attacker.

And for the Defender, Low Luck always screws them. � You have 3 infantry defending a territory you HAVE to keep, and your opponent only has 2 infantry, but a handful of planes.

With LL, he just takes your pieces off the board and removes one of his own.

With Medium luck, you can call for a hot streak, and roll to get 2, or 3 of his JUICY pieces, and then maybe losing that territory wasn’t so bad!

It’s even more historically explanable than dice.
-choosing a Low Luck battle, is like choosing a conventional military strategic approach to a situation
-choosing to roll dice, is like choosing an out of the box solution/gamble, that’s either going to pay off huge, or blow up in your face.

IMO all future axis and allies games should be medium luck!

Medium luck also totally deflates the “I had a bad dice game” complaint. Because you can always throw it back “It was your call to go with dice.”

Case closed, game improves, lots of fun, there are still chance variables, but they are yours to CONTROL!

Always placed dice, because, well, it comes with the game and that is what you are supposed to roll when deciding combat.

Never tried low luck, but don’t see much point to as dice put enough variability into deciding the battles for me.

@Gargantua:

It really works well.

We’ve found that it’s not the -Big- battles where you get screwed.

It’s the little ones…

• You send two fighters and a bomber against a destroyer.
• You miss with everything and he hits…
• Having already lost a fighter, you roll your fighter and bomber, MISS again, he hits again
• Now you’re screwed, you just lost two fighters for nothing, after 7 dice are rolled.
• Do you continue with the bomber? Hell no, you’re outta there, -20 IPC’s…

That scenario has surely happend to all of you.

Medium luck eliminates those kinds of scenario’s for the attacker.

And for the Defender, Low Luck always screws them. � You have 3 infantry defending a territory you HAVE to keep, and your opponent only has 2 infantry, but a handful of planes.

With LL, he just takes your pieces off the board and removes one of his own.

With Medium luck, you can call for a hot streak, and roll to get 2, or 3 of his JUICY pieces, and then maybe losing that territory wasn’t so bad!

It’s even more historically explanable than dice.
-choosing a Low Luck battle, is like choosing a conventional military strategic approach to a situation
-choosing to roll dice, is like choosing an out of the box solution/gamble, that’s either going to pay off huge, or blow up in your face.

IMO all future axis and allies games should be medium luck!

Medium luck also totally deflates the “I had a bad dice game” complaint. Because you can always throw it back “It was your call to go with dice.”

Case closed, game improves, lots of fun, there are still chance variables, but they are yours to CONTROL!

Great point. I think you’d see attackers choosing LL and defender choosing dice almost everytime, but good thinking.

@Gargantua:

It really works well.

We’ve found that it’s not the -Big- battles where you get screwed.

It’s the little ones…

• You send two fighters and a bomber against a destroyer.
• You miss with everything and he hits…
• Having already lost a fighter, you roll your fighter and bomber, MISS again, he hits again
• Now you’re screwed, you just lost two fighters for nothing, after 7 dice are rolled.
• Do you continue with the bomber? Hell no, you’re outta there, -20 IPC’s…

That scenario has surely happend to all of you.

Medium luck eliminates those kinds of scenario’s for the attacker.

And for the Defender, Low Luck always screws them. � You have 3 infantry defending a territory you HAVE to keep, and your opponent only has 2 infantry, but a handful of planes.

With LL, he just takes your pieces off the board and removes one of his own.

With Medium luck, you can call for a hot streak, and roll to get 2, or 3 of his JUICY pieces, and then maybe losing that territory wasn’t so bad!

It’s even more historically explanable than dice.
-choosing a Low Luck battle, is like choosing a conventional military strategic approach to a situation
-choosing to roll dice, is like choosing an out of the box solution/gamble, that’s either going to pay off huge, or blow up in your face.

IMO all future axis and allies games should be medium luck!

Medium luck also totally deflates the “I had a bad dice game” complaint. Because you can always throw it back “It was your call to go with dice.”

Case closed, game improves, lots of fun, there are still chance variables, but they are yours to CONTROL!

From a different perspective:

Defenders are never afforded an opportunity to retreat.  Attackers are.  Its not the defender’s fault they are trapped and have to roll dice to continue the battle.  Further, its not their fault that you elected to trade 2 fighters for a destroyer because the destroyer cannot retreat and was forced to roll dice.  There was a 1 in 3 odds that you’d lose at least one of your units in the attack in the first round.

Granted the odds were in the attackers favor, but historically odds don’t always reflect the outcome of battles.

My proposed solution:

Defenders may retreat anytime the attackers have the opportunity to retreat and elect not to.  In order to do so, the defender has to leave units equal to the units lost that round in combat but may retreat all units in excess of that to an adjacent territory the defender controlled before combat begun, or into an uncontested sea zone.

@Gargantua:

Medium luck is the best thing that anyone ever came up with to address this.

anytime you are about to roll dice you can choose - Average + remainder die, or all dice.

It makes a hell of a better game, and most of the time, you find that you risk in on the dice anyways!

How does medium luck work?

@cond1024:

@Gargantua:

Medium luck is the best thing that anyone ever came up with to address this.

anytime you are about to roll dice you can choose - Average + remainder die, or all dice.

It makes a hell of a better game, and most of the time, you find that you risk in on the dice anyways!

How does medium luck work?

My understanding is you can choose low luck or normal dice roll before resolving combat.  I guess you can do it before each roll if you wanted.

if you are going to make retreat rules, how about this;

before defender rolls, he has the option to retreat.

If he retreats, then the attacking inf+art are not alowed to fire, the attacking mech +tanks can either chose to attack the retreating mech/tanks (defenders choice between mech and tank) and suffer a +1 on all rolls, or to attack the retreating inf/art at no penalty.
the attacking planes can chose to attack retreating inf/art at  -1, mech/tank at 0, or defening planes at -2.

this way the planes are DANGEROUS on retreat, slowmovers are not so bad, but tanks + mechs are more important.

I prefer the simplicity, but I see the point.

In example you have 6 units that should lose to a superior force.  In the first round the attacker has terrible rolls and only lands 2 hits.  You have 4 units remaining, but to save 2 units you have to leave 2 units behind for the attacker to roll against.  In effect it becomes low luck by taking x amount of units off the board but you get to preserve the remaining 2 units.

I think its a better balance for the defender allowing low luck scenarios to occur, but requires the attacker to first experience an ill-fated roll.  The trade-off is that the defender doesn’t lose all their units in the process, which is the biggest gripe from low luck as I see it.  It gives the attacker the territory they wanted, at the expense of a few units escaping.

I would posit that the lone exception to my rule would be TT cannot retreat unless they are escorted by surface warships.

you could just say, at the beginning of any round of combat, the defender can declare a retreat.

then either the attacker gets to attack like I said, or the attacker rolls one regular round of combat, and the defender does not roll at all.

@Kreuzfeld:

you could just say, at the beginning of any round of combat, the defender can declare a retreat.

then either the attacker gets to attack like I said, or the attacker rolls one regular round of combat, and the defender does not roll at all.

I like this as a defensive retreat option, but for simplicity I would probably just have it as normal regular round of combat for the attackers - but that is me, simple things for simple minds eh?