Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?

I’d hardly call Russia buying INF all game and turtling in Moscow “correct play” in 1942.3, but to each his own. I have no tournament experience in this version but I imagine a marginally more aggressive Russia build (at least 1 Tank bought every few rounds) would yield better results.

@taamvan Yes, but with no Tanks Russia can’t attack Germany ever or even strafe their positions. You’re just letting them run all over Russia and gobble up IPCs. Russia’s base income is lower than Germany’s and the US/UK need at least 3-4 rounds to establish and secure a Fighter Conga Line to Moscow (I typically use a Carrier on the US East Cost -> whatever relevant UK SZ you can manage to hold -> Mosocw, but your mileage may vary based on how your Germany plays).

I agree with your assessment though. If you have poor luck during the opening you’re going to lose as Allies every time. That can be said for most A&A versions, though.

@taamvan That sounds more like a luck problem than anything else.

Counterattacks are not the same as strafes. You can strafe with land units as long as you pull out before you lose too many INF. Something like the following, completely hypothetical scenario:

West Russia (9 INF/1 ART/4 TANK/1 FTR) attacks Ukraine (4 INF/6 TANK).

Let’s say you have okay luck, get 4-5 hits and Germany gets 5 or so hits, leaving 4 INF/1 ART/4 TANK/1 FTR Vs. 6 TANK.

At this point, you just withdraw, and send 4 INF from your previous turn’s buy to West Russia to get your stack back to 9 INF/1 ART/4 TANK/1 FTR and force Germany to either reinforce Ukraine or step back, depending on the wider situation.

This sort of pressure works as long as the German player hasn’t so totally cornered you that they have a strong stack in Karelia and Ukraine. Once you’ve reached that stage, the Allies have already lost, more-or-less.

@taamvan We’re not talking about 42SE. 42SE is totally Axis-favored, as you stated. Allies need like 30 bid to even begin to stand a chance. We can agree on that much.

I’m interested in seeing one of your replay files if Germany is killing your USSR by only building Tanks and Strat Bombers in 42.3. Doesn’t seem like very cost-efficient trading to me.

Despite disliking your appealing to authority (which is a logical fallacy), I have to admit that I don’t have significant tournament results for 42SE to back up any of what I’m saying. I didn’t make it to Gen Con or Origins this year and playing face-to-face is an entirely different animal vs. TripleA because of the hard time limit + lack of a Battle Calc.

Not much else to say, really. Stomping beginners/weak players in A&A is easy as long as your grasp of the proper openings is solid enough and you know how to exploit early errors. I think you have a typo at the end of your post, as most modern A&A games (post Revised) are Axis-favored, not Allies-favored. Only Allied-favored games I can think of post-Revised are 1914 and AAZ, and AAZ may not be Allied-favored under the tournament rules.

@taamvan Ah, I think I’m understanding now. You’re saying that, after the attacks/strafes R1, Germany consolidates what’s left of its starting forces into its stacks and still buys the stray INF to shield the otherwise Tank/Bomber-heavy builds? Does Germany simply leave France undefended and use a Dark Skies-esque strategy to perpetually sink the UK/US Fleet?

@taamvan Oh, right! Gen con is this weekend!

Good luck! Hope you break into the semifinals or beyond!

Are you able to fit any other A&A Games into your schedule, or just 42SE?

@taamvan I was interested in going myself this year, but life had other plans. Definitely going to make sure I take the days off work well in advance next year. You should come back and write up a tournament report of sorts when you get back. I’m sure people would be interested to read it.

I’m interested in the full records. Particularly the W Rus strafe reasoning and aftermath. Was it a retreat into Karelia? If yes, no need for further explanation on that count, though I’m still curious about the exact distributions, attack roll results, and defender decisions, esp. as 42.3 is Larry Harris setup right? and Germany took the bomber as an early casualty at Ukraine it seems?

@DoManMacgee said in Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?:

I’d hardly call Russia buying INF all game and turtling in Moscow “correct play” in 1942.3, but to each his own. I have no tournament experience in this version but I imagine a marginally more aggressive Russia build (at least 1 Tank bought every few rounds) would yield better results.

Well I mean three Russian fighters seems like a super luxury to me, but as far as 8 infantry goes at least on the first turn, I’m not sure I’d really say that’s passive. The way I figure it, Russia needs casualty count and infantry are what you put out. Germany has this big logistics problem getting stuff to the front. So you build more infantry, you trade with fighters and artillery, you keep building infantry, you do strafes and stuff, more infantry keeps your unit count healthy while Germany feeds into it.

But infantry ALL game, I don’t know. Like, I think I would stick some artillery in there if I had infantry stacks, maybe not R1 or R2 or even R3 but . . . all game, all infantry? I mean, I could see it in some games but I’d want to see a game record to see how that all played out.

Isn’t that an exaggeration after all? I mean if you had three Russian fighters, didn’t you have to buy one? Or does patch 42.3 change that up or something? I don’t know.

“The UK traded a stack of tanks to fend off the german ones coming out of africa” - really, German had a stack of tanks in Africa? Is that normal? I don’t think I would expect it.

@DoManMacgee said in Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?:

I’m interested in seeing one of your replay files if Germany is killing your USSR by only building Tanks and Strat Bombers in 42.3. Doesn’t seem like very cost-efficient trading to me.

Well German tanks repositioning can be really nasty. But still.

Also I’m thinking about the effects of tournament rules, what with timers and things. So if the Axis just contain 7 VCs then they win? How do games usually go on time? To the end with 9 Axis or 10 Allied VCs?

Because the tournament thing is pretty big imo. It’s like okay if Moscow is threatened normally maybe you pull out of India but if it’s a battle for 7 VCs before time’s called that’s less an option.

(edit - After having played more and read some old posts by Hobbes, I agree 8 inf is not the way to go in the now-implemented LHTR setup. If you have a good successful Ukraine strafe and retreat to Caucasus and everything goes right, then 8 inf can work. But if Ukraine doesn’t go well or if Russia captures Ukraine, then Russia loses a chunk of its attack power on R1 or G1 respectively. Then Russia can’t really punish German incursion especially with Japanese fighter reinforcement.)

@taamvan Good to see that you had some success at the tournament! I imagine that with a bid, crippling Japan is something actually feasible on this map. As in other “medium” size maps, they have 12 (really 11, who actually takes New Guinea?)/30 IPCs in the Money Islands, which means that once you bust their navy, they’re going to be hard pressed to mount any serious offensive threat for the rest of the game, unless they’re already at the gates of Moscow.

I’m assuming you just used bid money to buff up the UK India fleet to make killing the DEI Carrier + Battleship more of a sure-fire thing, then go from there?

AAO I’ve had the opposite experience as you. Most of my opponents have been rather poor so far. The only two games I’ve lost so far (as Allies, haven’t lost yet as Axis for obvious reasons) were one where I lost the West Russia attack R1, and another where it was a 5-player game, UK was controlled by the (miserably incompetent) AI, and the US Player left after turn 2, having sailed their entire starting fleet to French Equatorial Africa for God-knows what reason. I tried to swing things back around once I had control of USA, but West Russia went down on G6 so I called it quits.

The Axis players in particular that I’ve come across seem a bit green. Germany Players NCM their air force on to the front lines, and are too aggressive with leaving Tanks exposed to strafing in-general. My Allied opponents so far have been a bit better, though. I’ve been using a super-lazy build with Germany to try to force wins in 4 turns (G1 all Tanks, consolidate initial position + take Karelia, G2 all FTRs, hit Ukraine with everything/retake Karelia if needed, G3 all Bombers, everything to Caucasus and/or West Russia, G4 all INF (to defend against US/UK), Moscow crush, G5 onwards just spam INF to get US/UK out of Europe while you wait for India to fall). I’ve been surprised by the number of USSR players that are actually able to put up a pretty good fight, getting strafes off and whatnot. I’ve seen some variety in the UK strats like you have, but none of them have been what I’d call “good”. Most of them seem overly hell-bent on keeping Egypt alive, to the detriment of the defense of India.

My opponents (in 1v1s and multiplayer) seem to be the worst with USA. Lots of people just move stacks of Transports to Africa (but not a good SZ that threatens key territories, bizarre ones like the French-Equatorial Africa one or the Brazil one), leave Transports completely unguarded, hang their fleet, etc. None of them seem to like challenging Japan in the Pacific either, which frees up the Japanese Battleships/Carriers to take down India faster.

What was the time limit on your tournament games? A PBEM game that lasts until OOB Victory Conditions is generally going to take a stall-ier form than a game that has to be completed in 5 hours (~6 rounds). The real-time factor opens up the possibility for gambit-like strategies that aim to take enough VCs to win once time is called, but do so in a suicidal fashion that would surely lose the game long-term. Something like (totally hypothetical here) abandoning Moscow in a late round to 100% all-in Karelia/India (assuming the Allies can capture other VCs at the tail-end of the round to secure the win). Normally, Moscow falling is game-over for the Allies, but when time is called all that matters is who has the raw VC gain, right?

@taamvan said in Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?:

@DoManMacgee

About the Tournament, its 5 hours. Since the Axis can take and hold Karelia, they can also sandbag the victory by playing REALLY slowly. In order to win, you have to take the phillipines and kiangsi or whatever that one is called. Even if the other players are going really slow, there is an art to prodding them, and Greg will come over and insist on fast play–they also have a rule about starting a new turn during the 45 minutes “end time”–when that’s called, you only play out that remaning turn. If its not, you start a fresh turn and finish that out to end the game.

There is def. an art to winning in that setting, with careful attention to things like rolling and casualties–our opponent asked to invalidate several rolls because the dice got swept before he saw them.

Yes, the bid goes to a sub for SZ37 (“The Black Queen Gambit” is what I call that attack). In one of the games, 2 subs lived (make sure selective rolling is done for the SZ37 battle because many pieces cannot hit everything present, on both sides, because no DDs). Those 2 subs went on to sink 2 destroyers and 1 transport. If japan doesnt build any DD, they have so few…that’s why I favor ripping stacks of subs for USA and Japan (and germany)

In AXAO…last night USA stepped up and I wiped his entire fleet, keeping all my surface ships -1 DD and losing 6 subs

Yeah, I have been beaten, much to my shame. I prefer to play an entire team myself as its disappointing to lose against weak players because your partner(s) are even worse.

Still hoping to get a game with the folks here going–but hordes of noobs keep joining my “Axa.org Only” games…

Think of it as teaching them the game. 😀

As for me, I’m not going to play it. It’s too inferior to AA50, and AAA anyway.