[Game 4] TGC (CP) v DoManMacgee (Entente) -oob, no bid, RR

@domanmacgee
(5/5)
Round 9:
AH - Takes Tyrolia/stacks Trieste again.
R - Dead.
G - Takes Finland, starts leaving Russia with main army.
F - Stacking.
B - Helps F with stacking but also goes into Karelia and Finland, albeit unsuccessfully (only got a contest off but the move is still enough to force the German ART to turn around).

O - Ottoman stacks get closer to India, also are back with small forces in North Africa.
I - Takes back Libya from Ottomans, took Serbia, also takes Switzerland as a desperation move (should have probably just retreated to Piedmont, although the situation was already pretty grim).

USA - Move into Serbia alongside Italians (more trying to get AH to stop sending reinforcements towards Rome).

Round 10:
AH - Dive on Venice, dive on Serbia.
R - Dead.
G - Stacking/trading Belgium. Cleaned up Karelia.
F - Stacking/trading Belgium. Take TJ to get Ottomans out of Africa again.
B - Hit Munich, stack India. Idea is to get Germany to back up to deal with disturbance in Munich.
O - All stacks converged in Persia.
I - Into Munich. Probably should have went to Piedmont in an attempt to draw the Austrians away from Rome (and if they didn’t take the bait, the FTRs could have at least escaped to Rome to get there before the main AH army). Germany was already going to go for Munich anyway and Rome needed to stay alive for the game to continue.

• Tried Smyrna too to get some extra income for the Rome defense but battle was a tie.

USA - Walked into Smyrna, continued reinforcing Albania/Serbia (to divert AH reinforcements away from Rome)

Round 11:
AH - Finished Serbia, walked into Piedmont, main stack to Tuscany.
R - Dead.
G - Main stack to Munich (left Rhur). This caught me off guard ultimately, as I was hoping for a partial moveout (so F can start an attrition fight in Ruhr while the stack was split). Walked into Switzerland.

F - Main stack to Rhur. This was a gamble but if it held Germany’s income lead over France would have been gone, meaning Entente would have eventually won via attrition.

B - British into Rhur also (see above). More stacking in India. Odds were leaning towards India holding via UK spamming INF into the meat grinder for as long as it would take to wear down the Ottoman stack.

• Canadians finally made it to the front lines. They landed in Rome.

O - All-in in India. 1st round of combat was more-or-less as expected. Cleaned up Smyrna (but at this point TJ and Arabia were in Entente hands).

I - Sneaked 2 INF out of Rome/into Piedmont. Hope was, again, to draw the Austrians away from Rome to buy time.

USA - Hit Smyrna (by pulling out of Albania) but also reinforced Rome with 4 INF.

• Probably should have ignored Smyrna and threw everything into Rome to hold the line.

Round 12:
AH - Dove on Rome. Initial battle actually goes pretty poorly for AH.
R - Dead.
G - Main stack rammed into Rhur. Very favorable dice to CP to the point where F was forced out of the territory. Tried to leave Russia again. Spare units went into Alsace and Lorraine.

F - Pulled out of Rhur. Retook Switzerland/Alsace/Lorraine.
B - Hit Karelia again to force Germany to stay. Dodged combat and stacked in India to continue the attrition.

O - Freshly spawning Ottoman units are trapped cleaning up the drops in Smyrna. Attrition continues in India but the O stack is barely over 20 at this point (started at ~39 units).

I - The last mistake. Tried attacking in Rome to wear down the attacking stack (idea was for USA to dive into Tuscany to cut off reinforcements) but AH got just enough of a favorable roll to put the full Entente stack in danger of dying.

USA - Followed the plan and hit Tuscany. I goofed and thought doing this would also cut off the FTRs coming in.

Round 13:
AH - AH takes Italy (FTRs sneaked through from Venice, as FTRs ignore contested territories). GG.

On a review the game ended up being a lot closer than it felt like it was while actually playing. I think that highlights the main issue with 1914’s balance though (I made a HUGE number of questionable and outright awful moves and still only barely lost the income lead, and ultimately the game). If I hadn’t blundered things completely in Rome it’s entirely feasible that:

1. The Entente could have held Rome for a bit longer since USA’s shuck was setup effectively setup (although Italy had lost so much ground at this point that eventually AH would have started getting 11+ INF stacks into Rome against only 6-9 land units per turn from the combined Italy/US buys).

2. UK could have worn down the Ottoman stack fighting in India and began a large-scale counterattack, meaning the game would have devolved into a race of “can UK liberate Moscow/take Constantinople before Rome or Paris die”?

However, given how badly the Rhur fight went, it’s also possible that Germany would have just pushed France all the way back to Paris and won the game in that way.

That’s about all I got. Sorry I nuked the thread with all this but if I DM’d it to you I would have gotten rate-limited lol.

@the_good_captain said in [Game 4] TGC (CP) v DoManMacgee (Entente) -oob, no bid, RR:

@domanmacgee I was never trying to leave Russia with the German armies up in Karelia. I was trying to get British units to run the minefields and land units up there so those German units could remain active and avoid being “mobility killed”. I was never going to go farther than Poland.

That’s interesting. I figured that, if left alone, you might have tried walking the stack (or at least part of it) down to the western front to push through the stalemate there. It makes sense that you’d want to keep the stack there to block any attempt at getting Russia back in the game though.

I went with not building the fleet in this case because I felt certain the UK would just sack its transport fleet and that just didnt seem productive to me as the CP.

Correct. Would have just let the boats die, at least until India was secure. If anything one blank turn of Germany buys might have gotten France back in the game and prevented me from surrendering (although with Italy dead I probably would have quit anyway).

One thing I would really like to know your mind on - why don’t you have the USA take Spain? Or why not have the USA soften it so that France can pick it up? I feel strongly that USA should take Spain (although my shuck strat is very different than yours too) but my feeling is that you feel strongly they should not take Spain and I would really like to hear that argument if that’s how you feel?

In a normal game I would have went for it (the second option, having USA soften it and let France get the IPCs) but I felt the crunch to get units into the Mediterranean ASAP (due to the rest of the game going south). I think I forgot to mention that in my notes though (it should have been under the part where I hypothesize what territories the Entente can take to make up for lost Russian IPCs).

@the_good_captain The only question I have about this game is which exact point did you make up your mind to refuse the RR and go for Moscow? Was it a long-term plan or an opportunistic thing based on how things went in other parts of the board (me staying in Ukraine for too long/Sevastopol going well for you/etc.)?

@the_good_captain said in [Game 4] TGC (CP) v DoManMacgee (Entente) -oob, no bid, RR:

For me, the ideal conditions on when to do one or the other are not crystal clear. However, I feel confident that the conditions on when to accept RR or brush it off will become more clear with more playing.

That’s an interesting point. From my side Russia’s entire gameplan ends up revolving around dealing with the threat of RR firing (whereas in a normal game the plan would just be to fall back to Moscow and wait for the Americans to show up/the Entente to start making progress in other parts of the board). The rule forces Russia to actually deal with the “will they/won’t they” mindgame which is created by the Central Powers’ ability to decline the revolution. At this point, I’d probably say that RR is basically mandatory to give the game any chance of being balanced, not unlike the old “USSR can’t attack R1” rule in Classic.

@the_good_captain It might have been different if I was ferrying the UK guys in earlier in the game (either from a boat lift or via Mesopotamia). The issue from my perspective is that Germany was getting the better IPC trades every round after the first battle (~turn 3). It’s probably less about diving on Ukraine in the first place (that was probably fine, since you had AH eat most of the casualties, which made them a non-factor in the area) but trying to 1v1 Germany with Russia with no support for an extended period of time was just asking for trouble IMO.

@the_good_captain Sure. Just LMK when you start the game.

@the_good_captain Oh wait duh. If I’m CP I have to start it. Will get on it either later tonight or tomorrow.

@the_good_captain Oh I thought you were “hitting me with the entente”.

If possible, I’d like a go at Central Powers just to get the experience in, since I usually play Allies in most A&A Versions with my face-to-face friends.