Concerns and Balance Problems with 42.2

My pleasure! I’m glad I’m not the only one thinking about this stuff. There’s a great community here on axisandallies.org.

I will def. consider your plan for Africa, the US under all circumstances seems too weak to cross on US1 without getting bombed

If the American Atlantic fleet survives and the Germans are very strong in the med, I would just send the transports, unguarded, to deliver the 2 inf, 1 art, 1 tnk, and then follow up with a US fighter on A2. The American warships can cross the Panama canal and go fight the Japanese.

If the Germans have modest strength in the Med (e.g. no carrier build, but their fighters are set up to attack the coast of Morocco), I would again sacrifice one or both of the American transports, and build a US Atlantic carrier so that an A2 crossing to Morocco will be safe.

If the Germans have no strength in the Med, you can just cross the Atlantic with everything A1.

The vanilla attack is 5 transports to Burma to make a counterattack difficult on J2 and goodnight on J3.

Wow, 5 transports to Burma on J2! This can be strong, but it’s definitely a gambit – it consumes the entire J1 buy. The gambit means nothing is going to reinforce China, nothing is going to harass the Russians in Siberia, and nothing is going to bulk up the Japanese navy. Meanwhile, if the attack on India fails, Japan is left sitting on an empty ammo canister…with the entire Japanese fleet sitting in Burma and no additional infantry left in the South Pacific, all those transports just have to sail unloaded back to Tokyo on J3, meaning that no additional troops will reach the front lines on J3. Meanwhile, if the USA is building warships and trading knight for knight and bishop for bishop, as you say, then by J4 the USA should be in striking distance of the money islands. Now I have a better sense of why Japan was ‘turtling’ on J4!

So relative to ‘orthodox’ play, you expect to see Japan losing income faster, peaking at 34-35 IPCs/turn around J4, and Germany making better than average progress against Trans-Jordan / Caucasus (because India can’t really afford to reinforce those fronts). Sometimes you can get away with sending one British tank from India to liberate an empty Caucasus (so Russia can build there immediately) and then return the British tank safely to India before the big battle.

which leads me to want to choose the Axis exclusively, which we did at Gencon G42 and won 3-1 (losing only when we played the Allies)…

That may well be wise, depending on what kinds of bids are available!

I’d suggest doubling the bid.

It would be great if we could get a balanced game with less, but for two opponents of equal skill it’s hard to come out on top as Allies with just 10 ipcs. After a dozen or so games with the Allies returning no wins, it only makes sense to start bidding higher.

5 artillery…
A pair of subs, and 2 artillery…
A bomber and 2 artillery…
etc.

20 ipcs gives you some decent options.
Even that might end up being too low, but at least it gets the ball rolling.
:-D

I’d say this board is much closer to Classic with bids routinely at 20+ ipcs, rather than Revised which was reasonably well balanced with bids at 6-10 ipcs. Unfortunately the spread here just isn’t that narrow, and Allies need a good deal more to be competitive. On the plus side, a larger bid does open things up for more potential opening strats.

Ps. I still prefer the red bomber myself, but that alone might not solve your problem. Might be best to find a set up change you like, and then bid on top of that, to determine who plays Allies.

If you don’t like large bids, then you might consider a recurring income bonus for the Allies as an alternative. A flat 5 ipcs per round to each of the Allies works pretty well. The opening is still weighted pretty heavily in favor of the Axis, but after a few rounds the extra ipcs start to add up, and it plays to the whole “Allied economic advantage over time” angle.

When the stakes are high it’s a tough call.

If sz 16 is closed the Med is a little easier to manage, a sub in sz 14 can help seize the initiative from the Germans and force it off the canal. Or alternatively British subs can open up a viable attack on sz 37, though it’s debatable how much that will really slow Japan. In the TUV trade British subs offer the largest potential swings in the Allies favor, but it’s also hard to capitalize on those victories after the enemy ships go down to the bottom of the sea.

More ground at the center seems to offer the best chance of halting the Axis from an early crush, but it doesn’t change the basic dynamics of how things play out around Moscow, just gives more breathing room. If you go all ground, a bid of 22 would give you 7 additional hitpoints at the center, which is pretty significant. That’s like a free extra round of purchasing for Russia. Or you could split the difference, 4 hp for Moscow support and 3 hp for India defense.

I’m not sure what you could do to prevent pearl. Perhaps a British destroyer in sz 39 to attack the Japanese sub in 44?

Just trying to think of other weird unorthodox stuff you might attempt with 22 ipcs.
A British bomber in Burma and fighter in sz 35, would give you like a 65% shot to sink the Japanese fleet in sz 60. Fighters (if any survive) land on the carrier deck in sz 61, and the bomber goes to Yakut or Szech? Doesn’t change Pearl, but it would screw the Axis on J1 transports, and might make them think twice about launching an attack against the USN. With the UK bomber flown in range for UK2 strikes against IJN builds, might give Japan some real purchasing headaches if it worked.

Blowing the whole wad vs Japan seems I’ll advised, but there’s something to be said for coming completely left field in a competitive game.

I don’t know though, if you want to win long term it’s hard to think of a way that happens without a heavy focus on the Center and squeezing Europe. A second British bomber would pretty much guarantee a kill against the German battleship, and probably be useful setting up the second round and the long haul. I don’t see many people bidding for Bombers, probably too expensive, but they are definitely murder machines.

Not sure how unorthodox you’d want to go in a tourney. Stacking infantry or artillery on the eastern front would be the most predictable way to go, if you’re trying to map out the contingencies.

I think a bid of 22 is generous for the Allies, and that the Allies should win most of their games with a bid that high. You may not be able to move the Panama cruiser, but with a bid of 22 IPCs, you can buy a new one to protect the American Atlantic transports! Even if the Germans send both subs against your DD + CA, you have 60.5% odds for the American transports to survive, plus you’re pretty much guaranteed that at least one British Atlantic fleet will survive. You have 10 IPCs left over to buy, e.g., an infantry for Egypt, an infantry in Szechuan to protect the Flying Tigers, and an artillery in the Caucasus to enable you to make an orthodox R1 attack on Ukraine + West Russia while still holding at least one tank in reserve.

Another crazy idea that starts to make sense at the 22 IPC level is a Russian destroyer bid for the White Sea (north of Karelia, with the sub). Move the destroyer to the North Sea as a blocking unit, and the German subs and cruiser can’t get out of the Baltic on G1 to attack British ships, meaning that if the Germans want to take out your British battleship, they’ll have to pay for it with fighter casualties. For maximum effect, pair with a British destroyer bid to help protect the British battleship. You still have 6 IPCs left over to buy a couple of infantry for Egypt, Szechuan, or the Caucasus.

A third option is bidding a fighter for Karelia – this lets you sink the German Baltic cruiser and transport at very little risk, and will also usually give the Russians a third fighter, which always comes in handy. If you want to go crazy with the Russian air force, you can spend the whole bid to put a fighter in the Caucasus and a bomber in Moscow and attack the German Med fleet on R1 – you have an 82% chance to sink the German Battleship, which nicely protects Egypt and makes it very expensive (air casualties) for Germany to sink the British boats in the Med.

More conservatively, if you just bid 1 inf in Egypt, 1 inf in Szechuan, 1 art in India (giving you 88% odds to take 4-IPC Borneo on B1 even without a cruiser bombard), 1 inf in Karelia, 1 inf in Caucasus, 1 inf in Moscow, and 1 inf in Archangel, you should be in good shape to win a conventional war. You can, e.g., put everything into West Russia on R1 and be very certain that the stack will survive any possible German counter, which will slow down the German economy, and taking Borneo on B1 plus sinking one of the Japanese starting transports has a tendency to seriously slow down the Japanese economy. The bids in Egypt and Szechuan give you very good odds of keeping an extra couple of fighters around, which can be used to help destroy Axis boats and then help defend chokepoints or capitals. True, you’ll lose the American transports, but that’s a survivable loss – sometime in the first two turns, those German subs will die without putting up much of a fight, and so you’re ultimately trading 1 DD + 2 transports (worth 22 IPCs) for 2 German subs (worth 12 IPCs). You will also “lose” the battle of Pearl Harbor Mark II, but with the counter-attack and counter-counter-attack, and counter-counter-counter-attack, that all comes out mostly even. It’s not even clear to me why you’d want to stop the Japanese from pouring 60%+ of their economy into trading on even terms with the Americans in the central Pacific, where the Japanese can’t possibly gain any income. The Axis start out with an income of 71 IPCs vs. the Allies’ 96 IPCs…so if the Axis trade on even terms and gain no territories, they lose.

Of course, if you insist, you can always bid an British bomber in Burma and British fighter off the coast of India, as Black_Elk suggests…but instead of sending them to kill the second Japanese transport, send the entire Pacific RAF against the Japanese carrier in the Caroline islands! With British 2 ftr, 1 bmr against Japanese 1 CV, 1 ftr, 1 CA, you have 87% odds to sink both the cruiser and the carrier, which absolutely cripples the Pearl Harbor attack – all the Japanese can bring is 1 bomber and 1 sub, which is laughable against your American CV, ftr, DD, sub. The catch is that all you have left to attack the Japanese transport is 1 CA, so the transport has a 50% chance to survive – but with no Pearl Harbor and a bunch of dead Japanese boats, the American Pacific fleet should be able to put enough pressure on Japan to make a blitz against India suicidal for the Japanese.

I don’t much enjoy the massive stackfests, but they are pretty common in tournament play – nobody wants to lose the game by risking everything on a 60%-40% battle. My games usually end around turn 10, somewhere between the orthodox games and the reckless games. I’ll take a risk if I see a good opportunity, but I don’t believe in just throwing every unit you have onto the front lines every turn.

Finally, as a note on overall strategy / perspective…I wouldn’t call the US crippled after a standard turn 1. The Japanese cannot take all 4 Chinese territories on turn 1, and if you put a Russian infantry or bid infantry in Szechuan, then it’s unwise for the Japanese to take more than 2 Chinese territories on turn 1. So the USA will start the game with 42 IPCs, and will likely collect 40 IPCs on turn 1. Meanwhile, the USA has a core of 35 IPCs that are pretty frigging untouchably safe, plus the Panama cruiser and a BB, DD, and transport in San Francisco bay, plus a bomber and 4 fighters. The USA is usually out of position to make any amazing attacks on turn 1, but you start with about 100 IPCs of heavy equipment, plus you get to drop another 82 IPCs of heavy equipment onto the board in turns 1 and 2, almost none of which is really needed for defense of US territories, so you’ve got a $182 punch to throw on turn 3 or turn 4. That’s not irrelevant, so don’t write the US off as a factor in the defense of the center.

I would try pretty much all those options before doing the nutso suggestion I made with regard to sz60 hehe. Was just trying to think of things I hadn’t seen before that might disrupt Pearl. The carrier attack into carolines seems like a better approach for that too.
:-D

I’ll admit to a certain fondness for air bids though, even if I recognize that you’re usually better off going ground, there’s just something novel about the round 1 attacks that an air bid can open up. If the aircraft survive the opening, they usually do more to expand your strategic options in the long term, than an extra hitpoint of ground here or there on some key tiles would provide.

Another quick thought on subs
… it’s possible to run an attack on sz 37 with just subs. If you spend 12 ipcs from the bid for 1 sub with the India fleet and 1 for the Australia fleet, that gives you 3 subs to make a run on 37 all by themselves. It’s basically just shy of 50/50 to kill the battleship, but a good chance you sink the carrier without having to face the Japanese fighters. Not sure if it’s the best use of 12 ipcs, but allows you to use your other units for other things, like an attack on sz61, or peeling away towards the canal/Atlantic while still putting a dent in the IJN. At 22 you’d still have 10 left over for another fighter, or 2 inf and an Artillery unit to shore up the eastern front.

22 seems pretty solid. You could probably get the job done with 18 on the bid for Allies, if the dice gods are with you, but I’d hesitate to go lower.

Also probably worth mentioning, any game where the Allies have a realistic shot is probably going to last like 10 rounds or more. Axis victories you might be tallying up much sooner, but the US is so slow out the gate, that it’s hard for me to see how they come out clean much earlier. In a tournament with time constraints I’d definitely double check what they’re proposing for victory conditions. My guess is they’d cap the rounds, or go by VCs or TUV within a certain round limit, which might change things, especially if you’re used to playing until concession.

In a long game, I like the 1 bomber (minimum) per round plan for the Allies, since that ensures that at least the Brits or Americans, or maybe both, will have a solid fleet killing air armada for the endgame to pin down the IJN. These can be really useful for a clutch raid or to airblitz an Axis capital if you catch the other guy off guard. But if there’s a cap on the gamelength you might have to accelerate your bomber builds at some point to pull that off. It can be hard to deal the deathblow on this map if you don’t have enough bombers at the ready.

As I am new to this forum I have a few questions about some
Of the symbols? Can you explain 13/3/4/2AAA and Pearl Harbor Mk2?
Much appreciated, I have spring 42 and am purchasing 42 .2.
Have learned much reading here. Thx!

The first one just refers to unit totals, they are listed by position in the roster…
13 infantry
3 artillery
4 tanks
2 anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) guns

The second is a bit more cryptic, but because the game is set in 1942 and the historical attack on pearl harbor is supposed to have already taken place, this opening move by the Japanese is interpreted as like the sequel.
:-D

ps. there are actually only 12 Russian infantry in the OOB set up that can participate in the West Russia opener, so the 13th dude likely came from an Allied bid. Or at least that was how I read it.

Welcome to the boards and hope you have fun with 1942 second edition. Catch you around man!

For sure, especially if your opponent is predisposed to hitting your W. Russia stack. Using a Russian bid destroyer to block like Arg mentioned will likely put any W. Rus attack on ice. Even without any ground bid at the center, and assuming normal hits put up on the initial German defense, you should still get into W. Russia with 10 inf. That’s pretty hard to clear unless he’s bringing like the entire luftwaffe. And if he does that it means either the British battleship gets a pass, or he’s peeling uboats off the Atlantic to sink it, in which case you get to keep your American transports. At the very least it will force him to play a longer game with G, instead of going straight for the jugular.

Sinking the Germans outright can be fun too,  but lower risk if you wait for the RAF to handle them rather than using the Soviet airforce to do it on the opening turn. Seems like what you need is just a way to disrupt his usual play book, to force the first round Axis openers into a less predictable direction, and buy yourself a few more rounds to build up as the Allies. I’d just be careful of that Japanese shuck shuck from sz61 to Japan and back, to drop ground into Yunnan. Once the Japanese transports are in position at sz61 it doest take long at all for them to start driving.

Hopefully you can come at the next game with a few more tricks in the bag haha. Let us know how it goes! August is still a ways off, so still plenty of time to iron out the kinks.
:-D

One more quick suggestion, it may be helpful to use tripleA to play out some test openers. Solos are not particularly thrilling, but if you have a good sense of your opponent, it can be a cool way to tease out possible strats.

The hard AI is reasonably competent, but nowhere near the level of expert play at this point. Even still, it can provide an enjoyable challenge during the downtime if you give it enough to work with.

Playing as Allies, giving AI Japan and Germany 12 ipcs each on the bid or 10 percent income bonus is pretty fun.  Playing as Axis, I like giving each of the AI Allies a bid of 20 or a 15 percent income bonus.  I’ve beat the AI Allies giving them each 30, (total bid of 90) though it took a while. I’ve lost to the AI Axis under OOB conditions, though that usually involved some bad rolls on my part or a serious goof. Just to give a sense of the disparity between sides hehe.

If you enjoy playing as Axis another fun option is to give Russia a bid of 100, or do things like that to break a sweat against the machine.

Of course if a bid still proves too easy, you can try giving the AI both a large bid and an income bonus, which can be pretty tough. The AI doesn’t play the way a human typically would, with fleets it is more conservative than most humans, with ground stacks/trading it is rather less conservative than most humans, but it does adopt some interesting long term strategies that can be illuminating. For example, in showing how bomber stacks can add up to be pretty effective during the endgame. It also never throws in the towel, so you often get to see deep endgame situations, Man in The High Castle style, whereas a human would likely already have conceded hehe.

But whether you like to play vs the AI or not, triplea is a still nice tool for solo planning. You don’t have to reset the board every time, and it has a built in battle calculator so you can map out the likely odds on a given battle to see the expected results. Going solitaire it’s not going to do a whole lot for you beyond the first couple rounds, but for planning openers it can be useful.

Right on, face to face is definitely the way to play if you have a good group.

I spend a lot of time playing total war too, and a few other classics like MOO2 or battlefront hehe. But I keep late nights, and sometimes it’s fun to just bomb on the machine in tripleA if I have a couple hours to kill. The AI is pretty formidable now in Classic and Revised. For the more recent maps like AA50, Global, or 1942.2 it’s not as strong yet, but redrum does make improvements to it over time.

In v5 (which is 1942.2) I like going 20/20. 20 ipcs on the bid, and 20% income for the AI.
Which gives a pretty tough game. Not as engaging as a live enemy, but it’s always eager to fight, even when my friends pull a no show haha.

Sorry to hear of tough times in the Pacific. Always burns when that carrier fleet claps back!

Very interesting. Sorry it didn’t work out! What happened on Germany’s first turn? Did you lose the American ships? British ships? Egypt? West Russia? What, if anything, did the UK do to help contain Germany? Did Germany get huge? Was Japan feeling any pressure by the endgame?

Yeah the Indian defense is crazy narrow, and they really need everything in range to get the job done. Japan can quickly set up against India, bringing 8 units every round, even more if they expand production, plus all their starting troops/air, against only 3 units per round for India defense. Maybe a few more if you’re flying in fighters each round, but that presents logistical challenges that need to be accounted for well in advance. Russia is usually hard pressed, so any hitpoints you’re bringing after the first round (beyond the 3 you can drop directly at the factory) are likely being flown over.

If you bounce on Egypt and let the Americans deal with the canal, you can have 10 hitpoints on India at the close of UK1 (with a transport sacrifice.) If things go really well you can potentially fly in another 6 hitpoints the following round. That’s 4 British fighters, 1 British Bomber, and the American fighter from Szech. Add to that the 3 hitpoints you can build on the India complex, the Egyptian tank, the Trans-Jordan dude who has since moved to Persia, and you’re looking at a max of like 20-21 hitpoints on India at the end of UK2. Maybe a little more if the Russians send something, but Stalin isn’t very reliable. He has his own problems. The US can fly in the bomber (if it went to Arch on the first turn), but fighter support takes longer. This all assumes that the Germans aren’t immediately beating down the gates and driving against W. Russia, which is the real kink in the India defense plan, since chances are you’re going to need fighters there as well.

It typically takes Japan only 2-3 rounds to set up a consistent shuck-shuck out of sz61, and once that happens they’re bringing more hitpoints into Asia every round than its possible for UK to match. You need a gang fighters in the pipeline, ready to go, to overcome the disparity, and even then Japan can just push towards the middle if they want, leaving you kind of stuck. It’s a definite bind. I like the starting factory, but Larry didn’t give the Brits enough cash or starting units to make it viable. I’d suggest using at least 3 ipcs or more of the bid, to help shore it up, and turtle tactics to string things along. But keeping the Japanese out of Burma is rough no matter how you slice it, and once they can stack, it’s really tough to defend against a combined push from both land and sea.

I guess that’s where a Pacific presence from the Americans would really come in handy, though I still favor KGF for this map, given how cash strapped they are, and Germany being such a beast.

What are your thoughts on Strategic Bombing? It’s tough if you’re risk averse, but I get the impression that this one was designed with an Allied bombing campaign in mind. It’s really hard to take Berlin or Tokyo without a preliminary bombing campaign.

Hopefully the next game pans out a little better for the Allies. Let us know how it goes

Here’s a kind of scenario you might like. Instead of open bidding you can make a chart of openers that your group creates, and then roll to determine which one is played. For example, say you settle on 18 ipcs as a decent number for Allied bid units, you might do something like the following…
(These examples might not be the strongest possible use of a bid, but intended rather to provide an interesting challenge. A way to put the emphasis on just one of the three Allies per game, providing some randomization, but without too much distortion.)

Flip a coin or Roll 1d6
Odd/Heads = player takes Axis
Even/Tails = player takes Allies

Allied player rolls 1d6 to determine their advantage for that game.

1. Russian bomber in Caucasus, and tank in Volodga.
2. Russian fighter in Archangel, artillery in Caucasus, artillery in Karelia.
3. British sub in sz 35, tank in India, artillery in Burma.
4. British destroyer in sz 10, fighter in Egypt.
5. American destroyer in sz 11, fighter in Szech.
6. American Bomber in Greenland, inf in Szech, inf in Sinkiang.

Or you could do it in a more open way with a Roll 1d6 simply to determine which nation gets the bid pile. (More potent)
1-2 Russia
3-4 Britain
5-6 America

Then go from there, with a set amount. Or if you want a more controlled thing, you could roll 1d6 a with six possible starts for each Nation using some pre-sets. Basically making it a bit like a tech chart process, but where the game’s bid set up itself is subject to initial rolls. Others have proposed specific set up tweaks, so there are definitely multiple ways it could be approached.

The idea is that, instead using an “anything goes” model for Bid placement, you instead work with a series of agreed upon set up changes. The rolling is mainly for variety, to keep some dynamism in the process.

Things like that can help to bring some flavor, and suspense to the start, beyond just balance by sides. There is less flexibility in structure like that than open bidding would allow, but it also gives you a way to control for really one sided or overpowered bids at a given amount. So you can go a bit higher on the total amount than you might otherwise, while still trying to keep things fair for the Axis.

That does sound interesting, Black Elk. I’m envious of anyone who plays often enough to playtest all six variant bids! Another (wacky) option would be to put various small bids on little index cards, and then bid a number of index cards drawn at random. E.g., I’ll play the Allies if you give me 3 index cards. Then you don’t know what each card will give you – maybe it’s a couple of infantry in the Middle East, maybe it’s a destroyer, maybe it’s a fighter, etc. You find out after you win the bidding auction! Or, for a (slightly) more strategic version, deal out 6 index cards or so, and then bid how many cards you’d need to play the Allies – if you win the bidding auction with 2 cards, you get to pick out your 2 favorite cards from the 6 on display.

Taamvan, it sounds like you had some bad luck mixed with a couple of minor mistakes near India, and that you’ve learned your lesson on the Indian front. You probably had a fighter in Egypt, right? If Germany hit Egypt on G1, I don’t see how Germany could have sunk all British ships and all American ships in the Atlantic and still had enough of an airforce left to pressure your fleet.

On the theme of German airforce pressuring the British Atlantic fleet, I do not recommend saving 50% of your budget toward a fleet, because of exactly what happened to you – Germany can afford to build bombers to keep up with your budget, and whenever you do plop the fleet in the water, Germany can sink it at a profit. Instead, I would recommend either saving 70%+ of your budget for a fleet, or saving 0% of your budget for a fleet. On B1, you can build, e.g., 2 artillery in India and save the rest. If Germany wants to buy 3+ bombers on G2, that’s fine – that’s so inefficient that Russia will probably be able to gain ground in eastern Europe. If Germany buys less than 3 bombers, then you can probably safely buy a fleet on B2 with your savings. You can put it to the northwest of Britain if you need to, and you don’t necessarily need to build more than one transport at first – that will protect the fleet from most German fighters, and still give you a chance to put at least some early pressure on Norway / NW Europe / France.

On the other hand, if you feel that you can’t build a useful, safe fleet with 70% of B1 income + 70% of B2 income, the alternative is to build a second factory and then build nothing but air force. For example, a factory in South Africa (or Egypt, if you’ve held it) will give you 5 build slots in the British colonies. If you’ve maintained your starting income of $31, then starting on B3 you can buy something like 2 inf, 1 art for India and 1 inf, 1 tnk for your African factory, and then also buy 1 bomber in London. That neatly spends your $31 each turn without going overboard on planes. The bomber can be sent to Africa or Rome to help with combat, and it can even bomb Berlin along the way.

Finally, if you feel tempted to drop 2 BB off the coast of India, consider going for a quick walk around the block, instead. When I get that urge, it’s a sign that I’m feeling angry and frustrated!