The Afrika Korps

I am curious if it would just be better to skip the Navy build completely if you are going to do a Neutral Crush anyway.  It slows you down a round or two by driving fast movers instead of transporting them.  Nevertheless you save so much by skipping out on the ship building.  You had approximately 120 PUs of ships in your recent Med + Baltic plan.  For that price you could have ten extra bombers or 25 extra fast movers.  Sure you can reach more places faster with the ships, but will you have enough forces to withstand a determined Russian counterattack combined with Americans pushing into Western Europe?

I have been following along with this discussion since the beginning. I ran a number of scenarios over the weekend in regards to building a German fleet in the Med. It looked to me like it was a really good idea but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why you needed to do a neutral crush. This game isn’t a race to see how fast you can achieve every one of your objectives by turn 4 or turn whatever for that matter. It is much better to set your ultimate goal and try to achieve it step by step with alternate moves that you can do each step of the way.

First you ask yourself " Why am I going to Africa?" For me the answer is;
1. The money. Take the money for yourself and take it away from the UK.
2. Give Italy a role in the game besides being the can opener for one turn and a turtle for the rest.
3. Draw America’s focus away from the Pacific and Europe.

All I need to do to accomplish those things is get a medium sized German fleet to the Med. I don’t need to crush any neutrals or have a solid plan for defeating Russia. The Russians can wait until the 4th turn when my focus changes to them and there are German troops already in Africa. Even if the UK attacks my fleet when it gets there I have already accomplished a lot. First I have successfully faked a Sealion attack by purchasing only boats on the first turn. Second I have provided Italy with 2 of their NO’s by taking out Gibraltar (Italy takes Greece) and North Africa (with their help) upon arrival. And last I have killed virtually every single boat and plane the UK have when they attacked me. This whole time Italy has saved all of their income and now can build a navy which put them in the game. UK will have a difficult time taking Africa with any speed (if at all) due to a strengthened Italy and and small German force that made it there. They will have an even more difficult time if I add in a heavy duty bombing campaign against London since my planes won’t be busy for the next couple of turns anyway.

Germany doesn’t have to mortgage the farm to do all of this. Yes it will take longer to reach Moscow but like I said it isn’t a race. I don’t believe that the UK can take out my German fleet and with the IC on Southern France that I take on turn 2 I can add to the fleet before the Americans get there. If they don’t then I will add more ground units to Africa and start making my way to the Middle East. When the Americans do come across the Atlantic if I play my cards right that navy plus the Luftwaffe can take out the American fleet and set them back 3-4 turns until they are ready to sail again. That gives me all day to walk to Moscow.

Having the fleet instead of a ton of bombers gives you more options too. After the British are defeated you can send the fleet back up north to assault London if the Americans go against Japan instead of Europe. You can build up your bomber fleet slowly and have both if you want. Every step along the way take what your opponent gives you instead of planning every single move and purchase for the next 4 turns. Did I mention it isn’t a race?

A Romanian IC is a massive negative value adder for going into Russia.

Whether it adds positive value for the neutral crush is unclear. Why is it being done again and why does it need to be major? Minor can pump out 3art/turn and bring in Mechs from Germany + planes to help. Minor can also pump out ships - 1TT 1CV 1DD with planes flown on is a force which can fight depending on enemy strength.

Turkey begins the game as a neutral territory, so neither side may move through the Turkish Straits until Turkey is captured.

When you talked about building in the black sea and moving into the med and then back to the black sea, I’m guessing you have already attacked Turkey? which round do you attack turkey?

I still think all of this spending on ships and the IC is not the best plan…but it sounds fun.

I think a minor IC is plenty in Romania.

G1, Build minor IC in Romania, 3 artillery and 2 infantry in Germany.

G2, Build 1 transports, 1 carrier, 1 destroyer march those 5 ground units to Hungary…next turn Romania. Build as many straight leg infantry and artillery on Germany to fill those transports in G4 and maybe 1 fighter.

G3, Attack Caucasus with 2 grounds and as many air as required, build 2 more transports. Build 4 leg infantry/2 art on Germany to go to Romania on G5. Another words…create a congo line of slow movers who are going to Caucasus which then go whichever direction makes the most sense.

G4 Rinse and Repeat, except at this point you should be building more mechs and tanks on the main German Major IC to catch up with the slow walkers going the traditional paths into Russia and attacking with 6 infantry this turn. You still build 3 infantry/art on Romania, and 3 infantry/art on Germany that march towards Romania.

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