Axis and Allies Classic 10 part series on YouTube

@AcesWild5049 said in Axis and Allies Classic 10 part series on YouTube:

I hate bids and won’t comment much on that.

I’m not sure about the hating of the bids. Without a bid, the original game of Axis and Allies is pointless other than playing for novelty sake.

The balance issue was settled through about 100,000+ games in two clubs in the late 90’s to early 00’s. This was via CD in 3rd edition. As for 2nd edition, players have been playing via mail and then email since a few years after the game came out iirc. 3rd edition balance is 17-20 and 2nd edition is 20-24 for bids. 5 games may not show this, but thousands and thousands do. I mean, if USA can run full pacific and have no issues (I’m clearly winning the last game we were playing that you conceded) then you can see that a bid is needed for Axis.

Again, if you aren’t interested in the game being balanced then no biggie, just not sure what the point is of playing such an imbalanced game.

It wasn’t hearsay tho. I was an officer in one of those clubs. There was even war club (forgot about that one). For PBEM there was IAAPA and AAMC to name only two clubs (those were 2nd edition, and I believe existed well before the CD came out – had their own dice servers).

I believe that war club, spring1942, and BOP each had over 1000 unique members through the years, but I can’t remember the exact numbers (that was 20 years ago now).

I have all of the General of the Army essays still on an old computer. But of course with no bid none of those would make any sense…

RR has a bid as well.

We all played those games consistently until the wee hours of the morning. We have moved on, but it’s not hearsay. I know that the spring message boards used to be around on an archive. Just start googling things and they will pop up.

The online games gave us the opportunity to show what live play could not do as easily – give us a very large statistical sample very quickly. But the lack of unique people posting on this thread I think shows you that we have all moved on to more balanced versions of the game.

DAAK, the place I played in the mid-2000s, does have some public statistics you can see that clearly prove the point:

http://www.daak.de/statistics/index.php?sprache=e

Unfortunately it does not record the average bid amounts, but I can attest that the vast majority of these games did in fact have a bid for Axis, as every game I played in had one, usually over 20 IPCs worth: typically in the range of 21-24.

Even with that, there was only a 47% total win rate for Axis over 6000+ games. This is much more cogent data than any single player can collect.

I like the game with the bid but if you are determined to prevent players from changing the starting setup, then I agree, you just need to move to one of the newer versions of Axis and Allies that are theoretically more balanced. I have yet to pick up and learn any of the newer ones but I am interested in doing so at some point. If you’re interested in playing a learning game of G40 (which seems to be the most popular current iteration) with me after our current Classic matches are over I’d definitely be up for that.

DAAK, I forgot that one and it’s probably one of the oldest…

A nice bridge game to G40 is the anniversary edition. It’s not as overwhelming and games don’t take as long. I mean, G40 is awesome in and of itself, but it’s also a lot to take on all at once.

I think I need to pull out the anniversary edition again and take another look.

There was that 1942 edition as well, but I never played it. And, of course, AA Revised was considered “4th edition” iirc.

Germany needs a bid of at least 2-3 infantry with RR and 2 hit BB with no naval occupation rule.
Russia builds 8 men
Russia attacks the Baltic probably gets one hit, then SS submerges
In Kariella, you need 2 fighters, 2 either tanks or (defend at 2 units), plus 16 Infantry= 20 units
You can try for playing on the margins with 18-19 units, with 2 tanks in novo with 2 infantry ( idea is the tanks reach most spots) and 7 Inf in Yakut.

Germany builds only men, or 3 tanks-rest men

@Imperious-Leader said in Axis and Allies Classic 10 part series on YouTube:

Germany needs a bid of at least 2-3 infantry with RR and 2 hit BB with no naval occupation rule.

So with Naval occupation if you got ships in the sea zone where naval are deployed, that player cannot ever place new units until somebody clears it? How can you be against that? Japan can take the west coast sea zone and USA never has a chance?

The invitation only makes sense under the conditions set by @Imperious-Leader

If you are willing to have the rules be what all of us understood as the real rules to the game (no one played competitively without the “no naval occupation” rule in effect. Had Larry understood the advantage/disadvantage presented in the game from the beginning, he would have said the rules should be Russia Restricted with 2 infantry in Libya (that’s the lightest the Axis should take, I’ve seen 4 bid there and the Allies still have more power).

So, I would play RR (with tech) with 2 extra infantry added to Libya and of course the no naval occupation rule in effect.

There have been tens of thousands of games played online in clubs to prove why that bid is needed. And you and I played and I tried to show why there should be a bid. Of course that was no RR – in that case the bid should be between 17-21 (depending on 2 hit BB’s and things – without 2 hit BB’s the bid is probably 21-24).

The 2 inf in Libya is the only way Germany can hold Africa with any semblance of sanity and try to play in Europe. That’s the reasoning there.

There was a game called “Anzio” where it was no tech and Axis Advantage, and still the regular bid was 9-12. I found that game boring (since I thought tech should be a part of the game) but others truly loved it.

Otherwise, we all played without bids in our day (say, 1984-1998) and realize why the game needs one.