Is there a "Don's Essays" equivalent for revised?

To my knowledge the Caspian Sub yahoo group has the largest collection of strategy papers on Revised currently avalable on the web.

LT,

Don’s essays are probably still the best thing around, especially the points regarding dead zones and purchasing for the long term.  They don’t address the new units - artillery and destroyers – and they don’t take account of the new defensive capabilities of tanks or the lower cost of carriers (16 vs. 18 in Classic) and fighters (10 vs. 12 in classic).  They are also a little too biased against strategic bombing, in my opinion.  Strategic bombing can be part of an overall strategy, just not your ONLY strategy.  As for taking the changes into account, I would say:

1.  Tanks are obviously a much better purchase in Revised, since they not only attack at “3” but also defend at “3”.  A tank can thus be viewed as a defensive purchase as much as an offensive purchase.  For example, I like Russia to have several tanks because, when it gets down to the defense of Russia, it helps to have those “3s” to roll on your defense.

2.  Fighters are more affordable in Revised, but the change in price isn’t like to cause you to buy a lot more fighters since they are still twice as expensive as tanks.  They are still great for defense, but now, so are tanks!

3.  The new units probably won’t change your purchasing that much – I rarely buy destroyers (and seldom see others buy them) and artillery are something you buy when you can’t afford tanks or have an extra IPC you can’t do anything else with.  Neither piece is a game-changer, although artillery do help improve the attacker’s odds in small-scale battles, which comes in handy.

4.  By far and away, the most important change is to the transport capacity rules.  In Classic, you could carry two infantry or ONE of anything else in a transport.  In Revised, you can now carry one infantry and one of any other type of piece, which makes it MUCH easier to transport tanks to the front.  In Classic, being only able to carry half as many tanks as infantry in a transport tilted thing heavily in favor of purchasing infantry.  Sheer numbers would overwhelm the superior attack value of tanks (especially when tanks only defended at “2”).  But in Revised, you get a better balance among the various pieces, which means you have more flexibility in your purchase options.  The addition of the artillery unit, while not earth-shaking, does round out your purchase options nicely to where you can almost always purchase to ensure full transports.

That’s not quite an essay, but that should give you the idea from one who basically learned how to play the game from reading Don’s A&A essays many years ago.  :-)

@losttribe04:

Well the title says it all. I was wondering if any strategy papers could be found to compensate for the changes to revised.

-LT04

I have just read his works but young grasshoper he has not learn what war really is. he does not know “All warfare is based on deception.” and “Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected”- sun tzu stleath, surprisem are the key to victory, the sixth factor, shadow.

Yes.  Much has been written on this over at the Yahoo Groups.  Check it out!

what the hell happened to the title  :lol: unless it’s just me …

Who’s Don is the better question.

http://donsessays.freeservers.com/axisand.htm
Don Rae

@losttribe04:

I’ll check out the Caspian sub group at yahoo. Like you guys said a lot of the basic concepts remain unchanged like the “Infantry push mechanic,” “purchasing habits,” and “dead zones.”

I guess I was wondering if any one had come across any thing like a replacement concept for the “shuck-shuck” strategy. With the sea zones being so much smaller it takes a lot more concentration to make an attack than before. Not only that but then other side can see you coming from a few turns away.

The way I have compensated for this is to stock pile income, setting aside say 5-15 IPC’s every turn for a few rounds then boom instant navy. This way even though they can see it coming it’s to late to do much if they were focused on something else.

As the Axis I took London on G4 this way. The US took it back on US4, but I retook it and held it till the end of the game on G6 or G7.

Has any one here found a way to offset the vastness of the oceans for moving troops quickly?

-LT04

LT, as the Allies, you definitely have to pay more attention to how you move your fleets or you can lose a lot of fleet to the Luftwaffe.  Also, you have to build more transports to get your shuck going, but the concept is still the same.  Frankly, it’s no different than in Axis & Allies Europe where the Atlantic is a lot broader and you have to build a large fleet as the Allies just to get your shuck going.  But once it GET’S going, Germany is done as an offensive power, for the most part.  It’s too busy trying to hold what it has, mostly in Europe.

In my opinion, the trap you have to avoid as the Allies is concentrating too much on the African route.  It’s tempting because you can easily shuck from E. Canada to Algeria, but then you have Libya, AES, T-J and Persia to go before you arrive at the real “front” – namely, Caucuses.  Contrast this with the northern route – England, Karelia, W.Russia and then Caucuses.  In reality, you’re there in TWO turns because Karelia is part of the Russian front, after all.

One other thing about Revised that has given me some problems is the IC restrictions on home country ICs.  In Classic, your home ICs have unlimited production.  Not so in Revised, which can make a big difference in your purchase decisions for Britain and Japan especially.  It also makes defending Germany trickier, because you can only build 10 units a turn there, so you sometimes have to shift forces from elsewhere to defend the homeland against an imminent attack.  That also requires more concentration.  After playing it multiple times, though, I would never go back – the IC restrictions add a huge strategy element to the game and also go a long way to killing the Infantry Push Mechanic as the default strategy.  If you have 40 IPC but can only build ten units (or eight), you’re definitely not building all infantry.

I actually like the Afr route as the US.  It inititally saves on transports, you only need 4 comapared to 8.  So after your US 1 buy, you don’t really need another trn and now have excess cash to bolster your airforce or do other things.

I also like the the direct threat on SE, it forces Germany to atleast place a token defense there, also you completely shut down any effort of Japan trying to make a mid game Afr landing, since they are likely to run into a large number of US troops.  Also, over time you can easily build a second US fleet (just like if you were going to Kar), but now you move one in Sz 14 and you can DIRECTLY land in Cauc from Lib.

I like that approach also Darth but it does require more fleet defenses than the Northern route.  Both the transports sitting off the coast of Africa and the group operating in the Med will need at least a carrier with fighter coverage and should have a BB / DD along to keep the submarines at a respectful distance and assist in getting across that beach.

For an example of how not to do this check out my game with Balungaloaf.  I managed to get my transports sunk too many times to allow me to be effective.

Very true.

B/c I don’t go to Afr in round 1 (I do the UK-US combo in rd 2), I buy a US AC on Rd 1 and then one in Rd 2 as well.  Since I only need 4-5 trns (and already have 3 on the board, I don’t think it hurts to get the AC’s early.

Also an AC + ftr buy on US 2 can still attack all the way up to Sz 14 on US 3, which may help to take out the German Med fleet.

I’ll add in a UK DD or AC at some point in rds 1-3 as well.  Usually the DD in rd 1, then the AC when I move the fleet to sz 5 to take Nor with the UK.

I think you can get away with not building the UK AC, depending on some things or just station one US AC up north and one in Sz 12 and hold off on moving into the Med.

I also do some things with the UK Indian Ocean fleet, so you may not need all the US AC cover if you can move the UK fleet to SZ 14 (after rd 4 or 5)after Ger goes and then move the US trans.  If you were able to secure Egy and Trj for one turn.

Yeah, Baghdaddy is right – penetrating the Med. can be tricky for the Allies, especially if that Med. fleet is still alive.  But whoever controls the Med. has a ton of flexibility.  But your strategy does have some interesting points, DM.  It IS expensive building all those transports to go the northern route.  But I have seen the northern route played extremely effectively by Mojo in our tournament game.  He basically did the reverse of what you did – he got his troops to Caucuses and then used his transports to offload them in EGYPT (or Libya, as needed) in a constant trade with Japan.  It was that maneuver that finally convinced me to surrender, since I had no chance of either holding Africa or punching through Russia once he had his northern shuck running full force, AND had the Med. under his control.

@cyan:

@losttribe04:

Well the title says it all. I was wondering if any strategy papers could be found to compensate for the changes to revised.

-LT04

I have just read his works but young grasshoper he has not learn what war really is. he does not know “All warfare is based on deception.” and “Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected”- sun tzu stleath, surprisem are the key to victory, the sixth factor, shadow.

Yeah, because there is SO much room for deception in Axis and Allies.

“All warfare is based on deception” - you SAY it’s gonna be a friendly game, but you show up with the hot lights and the electric crabs and the hot pokers and stuff.  Oo ya.  And let’s not forget the “two red chips in palm emergency plan backup”.

“Attack him where he is unprepared” - this is where you CLEVERLY use marshaling cards.  Oh, you THOUGHT I ONLY HAD FIVE INFANTRY ON RUSSIA, but GUESS WHAT, there’s a marshalling card chip under there, you just attacked FORTY INFANTRY AND SIX FIGHTERS!  Booyah.

No, rly, Sun Tzu doesn’t apply to A&A Revised very well…

OR DOES IT?

Hmmmm, brute force works pretty well.  :-D  Who needs deception?  8-)

Ooh, is there anybody interested in taking Don’s essays and writing updates to them for AAR. Just go point by point and analyze whether it is still valid (or not) in AAR and why.