The balance of sportsmanship & competition among A&A players

Absolutely. I see the fatigue, the sometimes overwhelming complexity, the social qualities of a multi-player alliance, awful luck, great luck, dumb errors, varying levels of chivalry, the uneven-ness in play skill and confidence, etc. as integral parts of the game. Every one of those things has an analogue in messy and awful real wars and is welcome at my table.

Yrs.,
R.

Good article YG, red cards sound like a good idea (mainly for Ken lol)

I believe in 2 rules.

1. Play your opponent at “thier” best.  That means defer to their interests, and for the sake of the game, point out the glaring mistakes/stuff.

2. Dice are the point of NO return.  You can only go back as far as the last dice roll.

Conan the Barbarian’s answer to YG’s question would have been: “Crush enemies…see them driven before you…hear the lamentations of their women.”

A more nuanced answer would be the comment I once read in a book on wargaming (written, I think, by Tony Bath).  He said that, in many decades of wargaming, his experience of sportsmanship had been that true wargamers will push the rules to their limits (and that they can be very clever and inventive about it), but that they would regard actual cheating with horror.

Well if I played by you guy’s rules I’d win every time (or my alliance does) and that only pushes people away from axis and allies.  I’d rather have a friendly game where they are learning so that maybe someday they won’t need any help.  I successfully created a axis and allies group on the submarine and at shore duty, with some people loving it and some people that just show up for beer and to toss dice.  If I had no mercy they wouldn’t have played long.

Where can I get one of these BJ Cards you’re named after?

That sounds really good. :)

They are only issued to my wife at the moment.  :-D

The greasier the nerd the less sportsman-like I become.

My old A&A crew had one of our own who was a total D-bag he was a friend of my best friend and we didn’t get along in anything much less A&A. Yep I was a total rules lawyer with this guy. He thought he would kick our arses because he was a veteran D&D player….NOPE! Mind you, we had an A&A session EVERY Friday. ROFL He left Russia wide open and I literally took one tank and captured Moscow! He picked up the said German tank and threw it at the table as hard as the tall-skinny jack-ass could, it bounced off the table and hit the radiator in the room. The clink was so loud it sounded it was hit with a pellet gun. Now I’m not the best A&A player but I was damn sure better than him and that’s all that mattered that night.

OTOH I’ll point out mistakes and strategy to my opponent depending upon ability. Stray dice or wrong rolls for the most part will fly by and re-roll. Out and out cheating get will get you kicked out. If someone plays like an A-hole they’ll get treated like one.

Last story: OMG this one guy came over bought pizza and soda all the while talking trash for weeks about how he would school my crew on how to play A&A. Board was set up he played Russia lost Karelia G-1 and quit. Wouldn’t come back. Didn’t want to just start over. Nope he left and looked like he was going to cry.

Okay one more: Guy from my friends high school wants to play with our group. Big AD&D, Mech Warrior, Fortress America Guy. Bragged how he used world maps and Battleship pieces for A&A House rules. We set-up a game for friday. He wanted Germany so we said okay. He takes Karelia first turn and then proceedes to start moving survivors into Moscow for another attack. We’re like,“Hey wait you have to wait until your next turn!”  HE’s like “WTF!, you guys don’t use house rules?” We told him there was no way in hell we play with rules like his. He got bent and stormed off. He didn’t talk to my buddies who went to his school for a while.

Had a lot of good times with A&A Classic through the first half of the 90’s.

How is Germany taking Karelia turn 1?  You don’t have the 19 Inf, 2 Arm, 2 Fighter wall there?

@BJCard:

How is Germany taking Karelia turn 1?  You don’t have the 19 Inf, 2 Arm, 2 Fighter wall there?

It was Classic. These stories were all from Classic when that’s all there was. Karelia on Germany’s first turn was easy because he was stacking on Moscow and left a token force Karelia. Maybe I sound mean in my post, but these were just a few examples literally hundreds of games I played as a teen. My freinds and I played A&A Friday nights and about every other Saturday. The guy in that story did play strategy games a lot and he was quite a bit older than us but he wasn’t as experienced as a bunch of teenage guys that had nothing better to do than play A&A.

Fair enough; I knew you were talking about Classic, just saying that all Russia has to do is stack Karelia turn 1 with 19 Inf, 2 Tanks, 2 Fighters and there’s no way Germany can take it.

@BJCard:

Fair enough; I knew you were talking about Classic, just saying that all Russia has to do is stack Karelia turn 1 with 19 Inf, 2 Tanks, 2 Fighters and there’s no way Germany can take it.

LOL yeah that’s what I didn’t really convey in the story. He could have easily prevented that and we would have helped him out. We would have started over, anything to keep playing. He was angry that we would even attack him that early in the game. He thought we un-sportsman like for going all out early. Had he been some kind of newbie we would have. He had indicated that he was well versed in the game and told us he would essentially mop the floor with us.

You have to remember too, this was 1992-1995 we didn’t have AA.org no online forum all of your experience was pretty much f2f gatherinings and nerds networking. A lot of our meet-ups had to coordinate via yours truly because I was the only one who owned the game. I essentially used it like a Bible trying to convert Risk players to our much better religion of Axis&Allies LOL.

What really wrecked our group is finding Shogun at the Goodwill and a couple of the gang really went all in for Magic CCG. Once we got Shogun the “tank-thrower” only wanted to play that game. We tried doing Talisman which didn’t work out for lots of reasons. Finally the deathnell was tech school and work for me. My friends church missions and military service. Plus even though I was younger I graduated high school earlier. There just wasn’t time anymore.

These days I play a lot of solo games and read forums. I even have hopes of getting my wife to play. As far as finding game nights I just don’t have any interest in playing at card shops with a bunch of strangers who are half my age. The only promising thought is there is a “Men’s strategy game night” at church my wife and I attend occassionally might check that out. It’s generally mature late twenties to early thirties guys playing Risk and Catan it looks like but ehh who knows.

A lot of our meet-ups had to coordinate via yours truly because I was the only one who owned the game. I essentially used it like a Bible trying to convert Risk players to our much better religion of Axis&Allies LOL.

Toblerone: I love this part.
I think we could see how addiction(and love) of this game as a Cult at times.
You are either in or out.
If in, there is no leaving and we have to collect other members.

@Gargantua:

Where can I get one of these BJ Cards you’re named after?
That sounds really good. :)

––This is “Classic Garg!”, and although his humor is sometimes off-beat(psychotic?), it’s what I enjoy about his character(mental?).
----BTW, I haven’t heard from you directly since my “BarBeQue Battleships” sank your “Candy-covered Cruisers”!  :-D

“Tall Paul”

Great article and yeah sounds like your past games were about the same as mine. ONly a few good old friends we olny the occasional “beep” while throw a dice in disguse. As long as it’s just that….quick. Sometimes you just have to blow off a little steam and then realize “It’s just a game”. Plus later it’s great comical material against you. “Hey man don’t blow up if you lose this battle” and so forth. HAHA