Larry Harris Semi-Official Tournament Game Patch

I have nothing against a shorter game – that’s an important design goal – but if you’re going to shorten the game by making half the map irrelevant, why not just delete that half of the map and save $20 on materials while making the game simpler to understand? I would play a tournament game built along the lines of A&A:Europe, where the entire Western Hemisphere is represented simply as two territories named “USA” and “Canada.” Similarly, you could condense southeast Asia down to three territories called “India,” “China,” and “Pacific Islands.” If you don’t have time for a complex theater, simplify the theater! No problem. I would still play that map as long as it had sufficient complexity in, e.g., Eastern Europe.

But for the love of six-sided dice, don’t print an extra 20 territories and an extra 40 sea zones and then say, “Oh, well, we don’t really use those, because there’s not enough time.” Either figure out how to run a faster game that includes combat in territories like Norway and Australia, or take Norway and Australia off the map.

That is one reason I want to see what can happen with a 1942.2 map set up in 1941.
The way we increase action in PTO can it becomes relevant or needs also VCs to set victory conditions? Does diverging resources from UK to periphery is an illusion of efficiency instead of just abandoning them to Japan while taking care of Germany?

Besides hypothesis, I still have the same questions on map as you, including zero IPC TTs.
I wonder if we ever get an answer.
Sometimes, I tell myself that Larry have not enough time when he got a contract for a revised A&A version so he started from previous game and tweak a few things here and there knowing that a complete overhaul will too easily be unbalanced but also very difficult to balanced right without extended playtests (so not being too far from previous versions allows to use older results).

@Argothair:

Also, for what it’s worth, I have now been waiting for over ten days for Larry Harris to approve my comment on his website.

Did you check on earlier pages in the thread?  When your post does show up, it will be stamped with the date and time you actually entered it.

@Black_Elk:

It’s unfortunate about the anti-spam thing or whatever is causing the delays for posts, since Larry is unlikely to see comments here. Hopefully that gets fixed soon. If not I could probably just quote some of the feedback stuff mentioned here so it’s not lost.

This applies only to each new user’s first post.  Once you’re verified to be not a spammer, your subsequent posts will not be delayed.

@Baron:

It is for a tournament. I believe time is a major factor and they don’t want so much even game at the end of time either.

These changes are not intended only for tournament play, but “normal” play as well.

Yes, I checked all of the pages, including the first one, and my polite but gently critical post is still not there. Taamvan’s week-old post is also still not there. I do see several posts by Larry himself asking for readers to tell him he’s on the right track, and a couple of posts from major Larry Harris fans telling him that, as always, he’s totally right.

Since I can’t sign up on Larry’s site, I’d have to say that I’m a bit disappointed that this does nothing to change the massive swing from the 44/56 SZ37 battle, assuming Egypt survives.

With these changes, I’d expect the USSR to hit Ukraine (probably should anyway) to take out the bomber. If the bomber goes then Egypt can probably survive G1.

I’ll ask Larry to look into the signup issue.

I forgot my password and emailed Larry like 3 months ago, no answer

Cant log in

I guess another problem with the proposed setup is that (as krunft has posted) taking out the only German bomber is gravy for the USSR. A solution to that might be to make the Ukraine bomber an additional bomber and compensate with an added USSR bomber. It does tend to script the USSR first turn a bit more though - you’d have to be mad to avoid the Ukraine battle with that setup.

USSR can use some more attack power in the starting positions on this board.

Actually, if the Germans have a bomber G1 there needs to be another inf in Egypt, unless it is acceptable to have a probable loss of Egypt G1, which I don’t think it is. Perhaps reduce India to 4 inf and increase Egypt to 2 inf? India is somewhat difficult to defend with 3 inf but could be reasonable with 4.

Hi,

Do any of you know if there are any possibility to play with this setup in Triple A?

KW

It’s already been incorporated! You might need to remove and install the v5 map if you don’t get the update option.

Downloading the map again worked for me, thanks Simon!

@Widding:

Hi,

Do any of you know if there are any possibility to play with this setup in Triple A?

KW

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=39838.0

:-)

Looking for someone who wants to play this online, particularly if they want to play Axis.

Hey I will do :-) either axis or allies

BTW…I notice the LH website’s just get updated and I can see all previous discussion that for some reason didn’t appeared.  Seems positive  :-D

One of Argo’s points could be at least partially addressed by upgrading an India inf to an art.

Losing Egypt G1 is a script still and one which I dislike. No additional inf there? What is that?

I still think the map is more interesting with a US first turn order and an Axis bid. At least there you get a substantially different play pattern out of the opening round, and can still use the default unit set up. Unlike LHTR for Revised, which changed the actual rules for that game, the proposal here is for a tournament tweak to the starting unit distribution. But in terms of the opener the play pattern is pretty similar to the vanilla game.

The German attack on sz 7 (2 subs, 1 cruiser, 2 fighters vs 1 Battleship and 1 destroyer) is still 98%  odds to the attacker with both fighters and the cruiser surviving.

The German subs in sz 9 can still sink the US transports in sz 11 with 87% odds and 1 uboat surviving. Or the same for sz 10.

The German bomber, if it survives, can still hit Egypt or sz 17, (or sz 13 to kill the British cruiser and still land in France).

Because of the above, a strafe on Ukraine is a lot less attractive. The Russian attack to take Ukraine is still at like 90%, with an average of 4 units remaining. But its also totally do or die, and really comes down to the first round of combat, which is kind of a toss up.

On Japan’s part the dynamics around sz 37 and sz 53 are pretty much the same as in OOB. They can still push on China/Burma using the sz 61/Yunnan shuck with ease.

I think the 2 extra pips on India are the most significant thing going on here. But they don’t do a whole lot to change the basic play pattern. At best they give you one more round of holding the India factory, or a slightly more effective retreat to bolster Caucasus, or maybe a way to give J a temporary headache if you go for broke and send them on an amphibious assault UK1. But I don’t see them as real game changer in the Pacific naval contest between the West and the IJN. The odds on sz37 or 61 remain what they were OOB.

I don’t know though, Greg and the others in the tournament community seemed to suggest that the bid going into a sz37 attack is like the key to cracking the 7-8 round VC game. And that just isn’t the way I’ve been playing at all, so maybe I’m not seeing it. If that is the case though, and sz37 is critical, then unless the bid range for Allies is pushed under 6 ipcs, you’ll probably still see Allied players bidding for a UK sub or whatever, so they can at least get the fight up to 80% odds.

OOB the odds are only like 65% with 2 units remaining, which makes sz 37 a pretty terrible TUV trade in my view.

Sure if you can bid a british battleship that goes up to 97% with 4 units remaining. But who is going to let that one slide under the new set up? To me it just seems kind of weird anyway, since the sz 37 attack doesn’t have any historical basis for the start date of the game.

I have to admit, with the recent news about AA50 getting re-issued soon, it’s harder for me to see the appeal of 1942.2 long term. I’d almost rather figure out how to balance the AA50 1942 scenario without Objectives/Tech, since you’d probably end up with a similar play pace to 1942.2, without much overhead in terms of rules, and the scale is still pretty manageable.

@Black_Elk:

I have to admit, with the recent news about AA50 getting re-issued soon, it’s harder for me to see the appeal of 1942.2 long term. I’d almost rather figure out how to balance the AA50 1942 scenario without Objectives/Tech, since you’d probably end up with a similar play pace to 1942.2, without much overhead in terms of rules, and the scale is still pretty manageable.

I upvoted this post for this last paragraph. I’m really disappointed that there won’t be a rule update if the announcement can be taken literally. I would guess house rules will be the order of the day rather than sticking with capturable AA Guns and AA Guns firing at escorting fighters!

1942.2 is not the best board even though it has quite a lot of improvements compared to its predecessors. This upgrade doesn’t really address some of the fundamental problems IMO. I started typing but I think I’ve already given my views.