The Afrika Korps

In my games when playing the Axis, Italy doesn’t have enough power to attack Turkey on I2. Often Italy wasn’t able to take over Greece on Turn1. Especially if there is a substantial amount of UK Navy in the way after Taranto. Italy has to use all of its planes to hit the UK fleet to kill it in order to not get convoyed. That means no planes for Greece and only 2 extra units to land at Greece that sometimes don’t win.

I guess Italy could do a strafe on Turkey to take out some units, then retreat (if they had conquered Greece on I1, which doesn’t happen often). This will allow a Black Sea Fleet to get out.

Do you give the Bulgarian infantry to Italy? I think this could really hurt Germany maintain and stabilize the Russian front once that war begin.

If the UK doesn’t do Taranto, then Italy has enough to work to where there’s no need to violate the strict neutrals and flip them pro-allies neutral.

I’ve been playing around with strategy for a few weeks on my own trying to find an alternative to attacking the strict neutrals. Thanks Afrika Korps for inspiring me to try something new to get the Italians unglued from Southern Europe. This is what I’ve come up with so far;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxSfedTpnbI

It’s not a perfect strategy because it forces the Japanese to wait until turn 3 to do their main attack. I might have to buy that player a beer to get him to go along with it.  :wink:

GHG, it would be easier if you set some of this up in Triple A and take screen shots of the combat moves and typical board layout after die rolling.  It is too hard to follow along on the video.  Cow does a great job in his playbook pages:

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=30167.0

I tried follow along for the G1 attacks.

**A)**That fight in SZ110 is very risky:
1 German BB, 2 subs, 2 bombers, 1 fighter, 1 tac. 
If the British scramble, you have a 32% chance of losing (game changing to lose 4 planes since you will struggle with either Sea Lion or Barbarosa).  Even if you win, you likely will be left with just 3 units.  No thanks on that exchange.

**B)**You also have a risky 1 sub vs 1 destroyer attack in SZ 106.  Your chance of killing the destroyer and the transport is 39%.  UK will get to keep both units 39% of the time.  That can mess up your gameplan.

C) If I replicated your moves properly, you have a 7% chance of losing the battle in Paris.  With that outcome I usually start the game over unless I am going against a weak opponent.

Adding up these three risky battles give you about a 40% chance of having an outcome that is so bad you blow the massive initial Axis advantage.  If you are playing a standard no-bid game, you don’t need to be this aggressive on G1 to win.  You should be able to win 75+% of the time against a good Allied player.

Try out TripleA since the Battle Calculator is invaluable for evaluating the effectiveness of opening moves.

Thank you for your comments Arthur I will attempt to be more clear in the future.

I have purposefully avoided downloading and playing the game on the computer. The reason I play this game is because it is a board game and I love board games. I don’t use a calculator for odds I go based upon my assessment of the situation and how risky I’m feeling at that particular moment. I can see the attraction to use the computer for doing all of this but to me I like the human aspect of playing with plastic pieces on a board and pitting my wits against another human without the benefit of calculators. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not putting anyone down who plays the game the other way, I just don’t want to sit in front of the computer and play the game. I work on a machine and interact with a massive amount of computers and programs that would put any computer game to shame so it’s no wonder that I would want to get away from that in my downtime. The only downside is that I don’t get to play against the great players that are here on the forums. Some day maybe but not at this time.

If I were to play the same strategy again I might make different choices as I rarely do the same thing exactly the same way twice. I have rarely ever lost a game of A&A or any other board game in my life and yes I used to play against some very good players. I’ve just always had a extra sense for playing board games that I can’t really explain or understand myself even, it comes natural to me.  If we all lived in the same town I would love to play a game with you and the other people on here, not just for the competition but also to interact with you on a personal level as well. Maybe that’s why I love board games so much. I do appreciate your comments though and like I said I’ll try to be more clear in my videos in the future.

@Arthur:

GHG, it would be easier if you set some of this up in Triple A and take screen shots of the combat moves and typical board layout after die rolling.  It is too hard to follow along on the video.

Adding up these three risky battles give you about a 40% chance of having an outcome that is so bad you blow the massive initial Axis advantage.  If you are playing a standard no-bid game, you don’t need to be this aggressive on G1 to win.  You should be able to win 75+% of the time against a good Allied player.

Try out TripleA since the Battle Calculator is invaluable for evaluating the effectiveness of opening moves.

GHG:  I watched your Germany video and found it intriguing. Disclaimer that I have not yet read this thread and can’t comment on the strategy of this ‘Afrika Korps’ move as a whole… yet.

I would second Bomber Harris to some degree. The more scientific you can make a strategy, the better it will be in practice. To that end, it seemed like many, if not most, of your Axis rolls were highly favorable and many of the Allied rolls were highly unfavorable. I know that wasn’t intentional and that this is not a true simulation of the whole game, but the end result of your version of the strategy becomes somewhat anecdotal in that it cannot be reliably repeated.

You may still be able to make use of a simple calculator found here on the site for some of your strategy sessions (http://calc.axisandallies.org/). Forgive me if you were already aware of its existence. Like you, I prefer to play the game in person and do not calculate odds on battles. I have played TripleA, but don’t care to spend more time in front of a computer screen than I already do. However, this is not very obtrusive and you can run decent battle simulations with it, even thousands of times over, within seconds to come up with more representative results. You could achieve this by running standard roll simulations or using the low luck dice function.

The element of complete chance rolling is part of the appeal of the game to me. I am not sure that I would want to play an online game in which that chance was removed for the averaging of overall odds. Yet, I recognize that in making a real proof to a strategy, this kind of sanitized odds should be used, ideally. I am not sure that it was even your intention to scientifically prove anything; rather than just to demonstrated the spirit of a particular strategy. Either one is a worthy endeavor. Nice work on the videos and glad to have you around supporting the community. Looking forward to seeing more from you.

Thank you for your advice and your kind words. I was really only trying to put forth a general strategy on how to get to the Med and give Italy a role in the game. I understand completely what your saying by the luck that I was having with the rolls, I felt almost embarrassed to give the results and even considered redoing them. I think what I’m going to try and do in the future is not bother rolling and getting too specific, but rather suggest to go in a direction and what to do if the rolls go well or poorly. That’s how I play the game, have a strategy and then try to achieve it based on how the opponent responds and how the rolls go. I believe if you get too specific on exactly what to move and where to move it then you will be ill-equiped over the course of time to respond to the game that you are playing and the opponent that you are playing against. One of the things that made me a pretty good board game player over the years was that I understood that the game is not only played on the board but played by the players as well. There is a certain amount of persuasion and manipulation that can occur between the players. Reducing the game to calculators and scientific strategies takes much of the human element (and fun) out of the game. To each his own though and if you guys get lots of enjoyment playing the game the way you do then that’s all that matters.

@GeneralHandGrenade:

Thank you for your advice and your kind words. I was really only trying to put forth a general strategy on how to get to the Med and give Italy a role in the game. I understand completely what your saying by the luck that I was having with the rolls, I felt almost embarrassed to give the results and even considered redoing them. I think what I’m going to try and do in the future is not bother rolling and getting too specific, but rather suggest to go in a direction and what to do if the rolls go well or poorly. That’s how I play the game, have a strategy and then try to achieve it based on how the opponent responds and how the rolls go. I believe if you get too specific on exactly what to move and where to move it then you will be ill-equiped over the course of time to respond to the game that you are playing and the opponent that you are playing against. One of the things that made me a pretty good board game player over the years was that I understood that the game is not only played on the board but played by the players as well. There is a certain amount of persuasion and manipulation that can occur between the players. Reducing the game to calculators and scientific strategies takes much of the human element (and fun) out of the game. To each his own though and if you guys get lots of enjoyment playing the game the way you do then that’s all that matters.

Well said and I agree wholeheartedly. As you said, if a particular strategy meets the eyeball test of looking favorable, I think it could be explained and without much actual combat rolling. Most people make their in-game strategic decisions based on a visually weighted blend of observation, rough calculation and experience… as you indicated.

@Afrikakorps:

So working further on the target.

Take Caucasus, Leningrad, Stalingrad and Egypt in G5

Build major in Romania G1
Build med fleet in SZ100 G2
Italy takes Turkey I2
Germany start producing fast troops
Afrika Korps take Caucasus G3
Tropical Fleet takes Egypt G3
Afrika Korps takes Middle East/Stalingrad G4
Germany takes Leningrad G5

Collect +/- 100 IPC G5

Italy will be making 35-40 IPC I5
Japan will be making 70 IPC J5

Axis making +/- 200 IPC per turn

I don’t think this work for many reasons. Here are two examples; you might get Caucasus 1 turn, but it’s taken back immediately. Building a Romanian Major lets Russia spend extra money on expensive stuff like tanks and then a fleet on G2 is a huge advertisement to buy more tanks and move south. Italy might not have enough troops in place on I2 to get Turkey if the UK brought the right stuff into the UK1 med fight.

During WW2, when Germany launched Operation Blue (seizing Stalingrad for the initial purpose of it becoming a Logistics depot for future operations); some Generals wrote in their diaries wild fantasies of seizing the Caucasus oil fields and the middle east.

Another advantage to doing afrika korps is that if your playing with ygh rules thats a vp right there.

Also i think japan should do a calcutta crush along with afrika korps. That way, uk cant send fighters from india into egypt, otherwise lose infia and/or the possibility  of taking india back

Your plan?  Yes, dave goes through Turkey to slay the middle east, from time to time.  The most direct path avoids this and just pours units into Russia but UK has a bastion in the ME with some relief and that’s what your cool plan was trying to lance

@taamvan:

Your plan?  Yes, dave goes through Turkey to slay the middle east, from time to time.   The most direct path avoids this and just pours units into Russia but UK has a bastion in the ME with some relief and that’s what your cool plan was trying to lance

I don’t get the Turkey thing… doesn’t that turn all the neutrals against you and cause more trouble than its worth?

I think both sides should see the neutrals as the enemy and aim to crush them if the opportunity arises.

If axis can get turkey spain portugal sweden. It cancels out the ipc from south america.

Turkey is a great way to gain access to the middle east. The other options are by sea or through rostov. If italy can open that door it makes life a lot easier for the axis.

If the allies are unprepared then axis can easily grab a stack of territories.

I think that Japan will have to go hard against Russia and germany still needs to go hard to at least to leningrad and or sevastopol so that the Russians dont go having it too easy.

I think that uk factory build in persia iraq and a us landing on morroco could cause further problems for this strategy.

Uk and russia could also team up against fin/swe/nor which would be costly and difficult if all of germany’s ships are in the med. I would probably keep the baltic fleet there and reinforce the northern attack on russia to keep that area strong and busy while the bulk of the axis europe forces go south.