House rules

Well I wouldn’t say there is a need. I would say there are things folks like and things folks don’t and these rulesets and leagues crop formed by like minded players.

My experience is mostly on this site. My understanding is the ruleset differences are primarily related to bidding and tech. The tourneys and league here do not use tech for instance.

It is generally accepted amongst those using bidding that the game is slanted in favour of the allies.  I think the statistic I’ve heard is 70% of games played with no bid are won by the allies.

Bidding was introduced to add parity to the game.  So that any given game had a 50-50 chance of going one way or the other.

Also very useful for single elimination tournaments (we run many on this site), nobody would want to play axis in a single elimination tournament if they knew they only had a 30% chance of winning.

To see for yourself, go to to the forum called GAMES IN PROGRESS and just look at the thread names.  The bid amount is almost always listed in the thread.  I’d say generally 6-8 IPC is the bid that will win the axis.  This forum plays with full bid placement, meaning you can use the entire amount to purchase and place units before Russia’s first turn.  Another type of bid used is called FIDA and only allows up to half of the amount to be used before Russia’s first turn, the rest gets allocated between Japan/Germany’s starting cash.  This type of bid will often get as high as 13-15 as I understand it.

RJ is right.

Actually I went back and did some quick math (I’ll have to post this in the tournament section too) on the first 2 rds of the tourney.

Rd 1 - 17 games including play-in

9 Axis wins with an avg bid of 6.56 in those wins
8 Allied wins giving up an avg of 5.62

Overall avg bid = 6.12

Rd 2 - 8 games

5 Axis wins with and avg bid of 6
3 Allied wins giving up an avg of 6.33

Overall avg bid = 6.125

This does include a default or two. 
I think these numbers can be used to support the the need for some bid for the Axis, since were fairly close to 50-50 in our first 2 rounds and the Allied players are winning while giving up 6+ IPC and the Axis also are winning there share.

If the Axis had a higher win %, you could argue that the bids are too high around here, but since they only won one more game each round I don’t think that is the case.

From my pov, I think 5-6 bid gives the Axis a fair shot and anything bid over that is just player preference (in terms of what side they want to play) or trying squeak out as much as they can.

I’ll typically bid 7-8 and take my chances with that.

@losttribe04:

Hey Frimmel,

Why do people use bidding to pawn off the Axis player?

Looks like everyone pretty much covered it. Thanks all. Especially Darth for the stats.