Minor/8 Point Victory, revisited

Play Europe and Pacific. You will be surprised

My god it’d be nearly impossible to win as the Allies with the current setup if Russia had to defend Leningrad and the UK had to defend India.

Japan can easily wipe out India on round 3 if he completely focuses on it; start with a 3 tran buy and just start walking all land troops towards India (still wipe out pearl harbor and uk navy). It doesn’t matter if the US or Russia invades your territories, just run for India! On turn 2 buy 2 bombers. Then round 3 slam India very hard with everything you have, which is a hell of a lot of infantry, 2 battleship shots, 6 fighters, 3 bombers, and a couple tanks and 1 artillery. There’s no way the UK can defend India alone; and if Russia tries to help out then Leningrad is toast. It is probably already toast because it’s just too near to Germany and the UK has been spending half his income on India already, plus the US takes like 4-5 turns to get into strong action. Germany would just have needed to crush Leningrad on turn 3 so when Japan takes India, the game is over unless the US somehow managed to liberate one victory city.

I just don’t see how the Allies could win this one….

And even if you somehow managed to put massive defensive tracts into both those locations (very improbable already), what if the Axis simply played the long route, ignoring those hard points and bypassing you? You’d be spending so much effort defending Leningrad that Germany would come up along the low route through Ukraine and sap Caucasus, and probably also has Africa in the bag since there’s nothing the UK can do about it since he can’t sacrifice Indian troops.

Yeah you’d have to change the board. Or give the Allies all techs and national advantages ;)

I’ve heard the special point scoring system they use at GenCon tournament makes stuff like India and Karelia very important because those cities are worth extra points when determining an economic victory. Also some of the Japanese victory cities are worth a lot so KJF is more feasible in that sort of scoring system.

It still exists! I don’t know much about it at all but I’ve seen it mentioned many times in various A&A sites and they hold tournaments there!

http://www.geocities.com/headlesshorseman2/smoreyswamp.html

This link is to a guy’s site which is dedicated to keeping track of upcoming A&A tournaments, I believe the information is there somewhere about where GenCon is being hosted this year.

The reason Russia and the UK were determined not to lose Leningrad and Calcutta respectively was the risk those loses would force a negotiated peace.

The loss of Leningrad would severe internal political repercussions in Russia.  The loss of India would devastate the “Empire” of the UK.

On the other hand, there was no guarantee that losing those cities would have knocked either country out of the war.

A house rule I will propose for our next FTF is a “Minor Victory” is only final if it is achieved for three turns in a row.  A “Moderate Victory” requires two turns in a row.  A “Major Victory” is one turn.

This has the effect of not allowing Germany and Japan to ignore everything and go for the Minor Victory by Turn 2 since holding it for three turns is not trivial.  On the other hand, the Allies can’t just let those cities fall and not make gains elsewhere or come back to them soon.

This also tends to keep the unit count low.  If you don’t have all the time in the world to build up the perfect invasion force / counter attack you tend to fight the war with the military you have.  That means low unit count battles…

This also tends to make Africa more of an economic and military sideshow since there are no victory cities there to help with the time pressure of an expansionist Axis.  On the other hand, ignoring Africa now puts three infantry into German that actually matter in those low unit count battles.

Hi Craig,

That is a very detailed point scoring system and I am sure a lot of effort went into balancing it.

I don’t see my buddies and me using it.  It does not mesh well with the beer and pizza environment.

Requiring Minor, Moderate and Major Victory Conditions to be met for 3, 2 and 1 rounds respectively is very easy to implement, solves the whole number of rounds vs timed play and keeps all the players focused on the historical goals of major power capitals and the political-economic centers of Leningrad, Calcutta and Los Angeles.

If I were asked to put together a point system for ranking players on this, I would just use the IPC of the winning team as their score.  Minor Victory would not be as likely to have as many IPC but then again, a Minor Victory team might spend the remaining three turns after gaining 8 Victory Cities sucking up as many IPC as possible.  If they can do that and still retain the 8 VC, I would feel justified in giving them those points.

Just a few thoughts from the beer and pretzels end of the players table.

@trihero:

My god it’d be nearly impossible to win as the Allies with the current setup if Russia had to defend Leningrad and the UK had to defend India.

I just don’t see how the Allies could win this one….

.

Only way would be to use OOB National Advantages.  Probably why they gave the allies a slight edge in them?  LHTR of course nerfed the crud out of the allies and buffed the axis up to super strength.

take and HOLD for one full round (like d-day)

the idea of VC scoring to to have a desperate fight with the forces available at the time.

we do the one round hold and it works quite well

Ive played a game recently with Craigs superb VT system.  I enjoyed it, the game seemed more diverse than the 9VC system I usually play with.

In 9VC, it seems to me that any time the axis win in our games, Germany takes leningrad, Japan takes India, then while germany holds off russia and the UK, Japan gets to sneak around through the north (bury / yakut / novosi) and steals Moscow.  These Victory territories make it more important for Japan to avoid the north and head more through china, and it encouraged more activity in the pacific since Japan had to defend its valuable Borneo and East Indies.

Ive been thinking if the VT method could work for a goal of only 16 VT’s needed. It would probably make the allies scramble a turn or two quicker into the action.

I like that a lot.  Sorta like a “regular season” and a “playoffs”.

Posted by: ShadowHAwk

I still think that 8VC with the current board and setup is doable for the allies if the rules are slightly bend.

8 VC but you have to keep all 8 for 1 full turn ( lose 1 during the turn even if you take it back resets the score )

i said this at the beginning of the thread, maybe you will get more love  :cry:

we play this way , especially if the allies have an experience advantage.  we also don’t use a bid in this format