After Action Reports

Title:  Doolittle Rides Again/1942 Setup
Date:  December 6th, 2008 
Special Rules:  NO’s + Tech
Victor:  Allied Victory by Concession. 
Game Length: 6.5 hours.
Bias:  I am the oldest player, all others about even. 
Description: 
Allies: Pacific Used balance strategy, UK built factory India.  Shocked at how effective China was at absorbing Jap Ftrs, it took Jap five fullrounds to catch China.  Typical stuff in Europe, Italy still very effective, constant push btwn USA/UK and Italy in Africa.  Typical maxium extend by Axis, Allies catch up at Mid game and push back, great fun had by all.

@TG:

Funcioneta,

Do you think getting rid of the silly rule that China can’t mobilize infantry in a territory already supporting 3 infantry help China’s odds any?

Yes, it would aid. As now, makes difficult stack forces and at times you simply must retreat your main force and safrice one popping inf. Not a great aid but at least would improve defense. Maybe mobilizing from a IC would better, even if only inf mobilizes (as in AAPacific).

China should count how many infs pop at end of turn. As now, It’s too easy for Japan reduce China to pop only one inf.

i feel it would be more advantageous to count how many territories China has at the END of its turn, to see how many infantry they recieve. that way if China re-takes any territories, they get an extra inf or 2

Title:  Splish, Splash, the Japs were taking a Bath… (1942)
Date:  …Long about a Saturday night… 20 December 2008
Special Rules:  Techs and NO’s
  - Attempted to go for LHTR Super Bombers rules but was vetoed down
  - Gang voted 3-2 to play with tech
Victor:  Allied Victory
  - Germany finally croaked “please take your foot off my neck… I can’t breathe…”
Game Length:  6 hours/3 rounds … yeah, we’re slow movers
Bias:  Sides seemed pretty balanced. Japanese had some really cold dice and they never recovered from J1.
Description:

G1: Tech*2. Germany opened by sinking the British navy and digging in on the Eastern Front. Loses the U-Boat fleet.

R1: Tech. Takes Finland and digs in for defense

J1: Tech*2. Transport.

• Japan had a great textbook opening attempting to sink the entire US fleet
• Takes Burma
• Skipped the Philippines
• Takes East Indies
• Takes Borneo
• Destroyed the Chinese ftr

Japan lost 5 of it’s fighters and the US BB survived.

UK1: Tech.

• Strikes German fleet in Baltic
• Builds CV, 2*DD, Transport
• Withdraws from Africa & digs into India
• Surviving Indian fleet sinks Japanese transport & blocks Australia from surface assault
• Australian fleet sets up in Carolina Island in anticipation of US fleet consolidating there

I1: Trans-Jordan & Egypt

Observations/Recommendations: 
Agreed that the next game we’ll attempt without tech. Seems to make it too much of a crap shoot/game breaker.

US/UK/Japan ended up with Long Range Aircraft as tech

Japan never recovered from the loss of it’s Air Force on the first move and failed to see US setting up in the Philippines. Japan was left empty and US walked in on US3 after a brief naval conflict. After Japan fell it was just a matter of time – though there was a brief moment where Germany might have pulled off taking USSR.

Long Range Aircraft really shrinks the Pacific and turns the tide for whoever gets it first. US had fighters and bombers in Australia as defense and the tech advantage gave them global reach. Japan should have gone totally defensive after that tech roll and waited for Germany and Italy to take Russia.

Germany & Italy were doing some amazing work in the Caucasus. That is a pretty scary combo punch down there when they finally get it wired. My hat is off to the coordinated action down there.

Title:  The game that wouldn’t end
Date: December 22nd, 2008
Special Rules:  No tech No NOs
Victor:  Axis by concession since it was 1am
Game Length:  8-9 rounds 6 hours
Bias:  About Even.  Three players – 1 Allies (Me), 2 Axis (One less experienced then me(Germany), 1 more experienced(Italy, Japan)
Description:

Germany and Russia did the normal dance, some crazy dice(should have been playing low luck) made the front stall many times when it should have probably pushed through. Italy mixed between Africa and Europe. Germany sent a little bit to africa.

UK built fleet and then started ferrying troops to W.E
U.S is what cost me the game. I saw a chance to try to sink the Italian fleet on US 2 using 2 bombers and 2 fighters vs their regular 2 cruisers and 1 BB. I had poor luck and ended up only sinking the 2 cruisers at a cost of all my planes. that really stalled US. I had planned on SBR on italy but after that I switched to ferrying to italy.

Japan did its regular Godzilla thing. I was able to slow it down quite a bit by moving some Russians to china and blocking india with UK. They ended up mostly going the north route which took them a while.

In the end Japan just got too big and I never could hold W.E and that darn Italian navy rebuilt somewhat and they finally secured the channel via Godzilla might and got the Japanese fleet through.
Africa was mostly held by the allies the whole game.

Observations: trying to sink the Italian navy on U.S 2 via air was too risky given the randomness of dice. I need a better way to take advantage of pressure I put on W.E for russia to push forward. As it was I wasn’t able to make good ground in the east. By the time they were running out of troops, UK’s income had been whittled down so much they could only make 5 inf a turn and hodling W.E became impossible

@TG:

Title:  Operation Sealion Turned (1941)
Date: December 21st, 2008
Special Rules:  Tech ONLY
Victor:  Allies by concession
Game Length:  Five hours
Bias:  About Even.  Five players – 3 Allies (Me, Amber, Flint) and 2 Axis (Jacob, Sony)
Description:
Endgame:  On UK1, Amber made a forced landing at Normandy.  On G2, instead of retaking Normandy, the Germans (who had unlocked paratroopers G1) launched a bold invasion of London.  High risk; high reward.  Well, the invasion failed (the odds were 45/55 to begin with) and Germany lost her entire air force.  The game ended with that (except for a Japanese invasion of the West Coast, which should have been successful but wasn’t), and the the rest of the rounds were spent going through the motions.          Observations: 
This game ended on a downer.  Either way you had a lose-lose situation.  If the Germans had succeeded in taking London (on the second round), there’s no way the Allies could have recovered.  The Germans, by not being able to take London, sealed their fate.  The game was doomed to end prematurely.  Bottom line: Axis and Allies aren’t for cocksure, “me-first” players.

THIS is the reason instant tech sucks.
Too much dice involved.  Getting the tech, then trying to apply the just gotten tech.

sure, but that example wasn’t instant tech, right?  just that the uk player left himself a bit open, all things considered, and the german player made an annoying decision to risk the game on a 45% chance of success.  I don’t know, maybe he thought he was losing already.

stuff like that happens without any tech involved, too.

@eumaies:

sure, but that example wasn’t instant tech, right?  just that the uk player left himself a bit open,

My apologies, I glossed over the G1 development of paratroopers.

Based on that achieved tech, UK either made a mistake or intentionally left a 50-50 battle knowing it could lose the game for Germany if London was not taken, but may not lose the game for the allies if london was lost.

I’m not sure how paras would improve Sea Lion too much in G1. After all, it would add only one inf to the invasion. HBs or LRA would be better:

Paras: 2 inf, 1 arm, 2 fig, bomb (6 vs 7 in UK) -> 15 vs 23 punch
HBs: 1 inf, 1 arm , but HBs attack twice (5 vs 7) -> 18 vs 23 punch
LRA: 1 inf, 1 arm, 4 fig, bomber (7 vs 7) -> 21 vs 25 punch

Seems a bad move for germans. With paras, would be better and safer for the bomber improve the assault on Egypt

Title:  UK beats Germany (1941)
Date:  December 25th
Special Rules:  NO’s And Tech (although tech never entered the game)
Victor:  Allies by concession
Game Length:  approx. 9 turns/7 hours
Bias:  1v1 both of us are experienced and have played for many years.

Description: Germany started off going after Russia but never got close to being a threat. Russia bought all inf and art for the first several turns and only lost Karelia to Germany once (on the second turn). Germany spent the game getting progressivly smaller while Russia moved forward with inf/art.

Russia bought their first 2 tanks on turn 7 then a fighter on the lastturn of the game. After the UK had captured Germany twice, Russia captured it the third and final time. Also, Russia was in position to capture Italy in one or two turns.

UK took Norway on the first turn, after that they invaded Europe every turn (once in NW EUR, three times in Poland, twice in Germany). UK built an IC in India around turn 4 to draw Jap away from Russia, it worked. UK attacked Germany all alone and won the game for the allies in my opionon

America went about 60/40 pacific/atlantic. US attacked 3 Jap carriers with one sub and took down a flat top, next turn US took out remaining 2 carriers 4 fighters crusier and destroyer. US needed to rebuild after that while Jap focused on China. In the Atlantic, US got Morocco on US1 but wasn’t able to do much more until the end of the game. Finally, US took North Africa and sank the IT fleet at the end of the game.

Italy stayed in Africa and finally beat UK in Egypt. They ha a sizeable navy but had a hard time on land.

Japan went like normal. Manchuria build up then go for Moscow, kill off the Chinese, then India.

Observations/Recommendations:  Both of us were evenly matched, but I (the allies) had horrible dice rolling with 7 cruiser off shore bombardments in a row missing plus three more cruiser naval batlles also missing. On the other hand, I did massive damage to IC’s (always rolling a 5 or 6 with a single bomber) and after buying 1 researcher I won tech on the same turn (improved shipyards, they never came into play).   Germany played consevatively and never went after the UK fleet except for G1 when they took out the lone destroyer. Russia stopped the German offensive and pushed forward as stated above.

I didn’t like how fast China fell. There was nothing I could do. By turn 3 it was over. Also, my opponent didn’t like the IPC value limitation of how many replacements could be placed on the capitol IC. He felt this hurt Japan. I agree to a point. I had the same problem with the UK, but to a lesser extent. Germany suffers from this too.

We had a good game. This was my opponents first game of AA50 (My second) and to my knowledge he never played Revised. I think that put him at a disadvantage.

Title:  Timid Germany dooms Axis (1941)
Date: December 26th, 2008
Special Rules:  none (base game)
Victor:  Allies by concession
Game Length:  6 Hours
Bias:  About Even.  5 players – 3 Allies (one player moderate experience, other 2 strong) and 2 Axis (strong players)
Description:
Our first AA50 game for all players involved.

Germany wanted to try to maintain the baltic fleet to control finland/norway so they bought an A/C.  Germany did not take out UK BB in sz2 and that eventually cost them.  No Anglo Egypt attack on G1 either.  With little pressure on Russia, a bomber and 6 inf was R1 buy for power and range to help the russian inf in china that was an allied game plan.  Japan over-extended to push on India and a US 6 sub buy and a few bombers kept Japan’s expansion into china slow.

UK bought a navy UK1, took norway and sank an empty German carrier UK2.
Early navy and UK IC in South africa on UK2 to keep ITaly from growing too big too quickly doomed the axis to minimal pressure on russia.

Observations: 
Germany needs to try to take out as much of the UK atlantic fleet as possible  (less pressure on WEU) and push on the ground after russia.

Title:  Operation Torch comes early (1941)
Date: December 26th, 2008
Special Rules:  none (base game)
Victor:  Still in progress.  Three rounds completed.
Game Length:  4 hours
Bias:  About Even.  2 players – Each side had a strong player

Description:
Second game.

Germany took out as much of the UK atlantic fleet as possible: sub, ftr, bmr on sz2, sunk, lost sub and sub, 2 ftr on sz12, UK sunk, no losses to germany, sz8 dd sunk, no losses to Germany.  Germany pushes into russia hard, only loses 2 inf taking Baltic states, E Poland, Ukaine.  No Anglo-egypt sudan.

Russia tried to counter attack baltic states and was repulsed.  Bad dice!  W/d with 1 tank to karelia.  6 inf, art, tank fail to take out 2 inf, art, 2 tank.

This made Russia go into fall back mode out east.  Still think you should push all 7 inf in bury R1 and then an orderly w/d after that.  Japan walked in and started taking easy cash continuously.

Here’s the beauty of this game.  Allies goal was to sink the Italian navy as soon as possible.  UK bought 2 cruisers and an A/C to join their sz9 DD and tpt in sz8.  German baltic Cruiser sunk at no cost to UK air force.  US would add 2 ftrs, dd and tpt to sz8.  US bought 2 bombers and ftr.

UK 2, algeria was taken (inf, tank), moving into sz13, US would add inf, art 3 ftrs 4 bombers to algeria US2.  Italian navy had no where to run.  US3:  sunk Italian navy with 4 ftr, 3 bombers (1 bomber did some ground clean-up), losing 2 ftrs in process, but italy now out of med.  Some german and italian ground units remain in africa, but soon should be mopped up by allies ground units.

Japan has become very strong almost entirely eliminating China due to bad dice and russia in full retreat on R1 onward.  Germany took and held Karelia G3.  UK3, carrier, ftr and 3 transports in sz3 taking norway.

Observations: 
Allied plan worked!  US has 4 bombers in (3 caucasus, 1 algeria)
US 3, bought 2 ftrs and some subs for the pacific.  Not sure how that navy will be utilized.  Australia will probably fall J4.  India fell J3.  US bombers probably will be needed to slow down German pressure so Russia can fight Japan as they close in.

Should be a good game to finish.  Axis winning 60-40 at this point (best guess)