Posts made by TrafficCop

Thanks for the encouragement!

Hi, I am a new player and found this site after reading nearly all of the posts on AA50. I just posted the crazy strategy under the AA anniversary edition forum; am from the NY area/northern Jersey. The term traffic cop is from the movie Patton where Omar B says George would make a great traffic cop.

Anyhow my son bought me AA50 for my birthday and yes it looked like the boxes had been in kids’ room and jumped on. The Wizards guys were nice and sent me replacement boxes but was initially dismayed. My son and I played until we started losing sleep and overall decline in non AA aspects of life. 🤔

My son and I play with NO and with tech full bore out of box no bid. I play Allies and tend to lose more than win depending on turn one dice. But that is how I keep a pre teen coming back. A lucky roll or two and Allies are in business, otherwise my son is gleefully going Godzilla on me with Japanese and Germans toasting in Stalingrad.

So I like the AA50 version since the shuck is no longer a simplistic catch all solution. Sorry Don. I present a sloppy attempt at a generalized push mechanic in my post on that forum. As in the cost of infantry plus all the pro rata fleet overhead and time to get said infantry to a relevant front.

As a quick thought on strategy, my approach as Allies is to be fluid and take what I am given by Axis. As an outside observer and newb I see a lot of static solutions out there when you have to adapt real time and maybe pick one of several possible strategies, but it’s situational. See my post for more details ad nauseum. I always force myself to do something as US in both coasts and snag Solomons or Africa as a sidebar to torch or KJF. Doggone I love going Pacific heavy but I have also had entire fleets sent to the deep by my son. To make him mad I like to deadzone the whole PAC with subs. Then turn Alaska into a long range bomber platform. Tech is a good way to catch that evil Axis fiend…until Germany gets rockets.

I’ll stop rambling and wanted to ask, how good does one have to be to go to the annual conference? I play some on TripleA but worry I will get destroyed out there.

Always looking for players in New York metro area…

Re: Think K[G/J/I]F is over?

As a recent new player to AA50 I would respond to this old post with a nuanced strawman approach (heavily based on my pref for Allies) but useful for Axis. I have wrestled with the math optimization of how to win OOB as Allies no bid in 1942 with NO and tech both on. I have been pondering how much income to send from US in particular to either coast. I’ve read almost all of the posts under AA50 and a few revised. Some say to launch a dedicated SBR campaign against Italy or Ruhr. Others go into a crazy naval build in WUS and do an arms race with IJN. The one post talked about parking an attack fleet with subs and caterpillar from Iwo. Others use the money island gravy train with surprise optionality to attack the Italian boats via the Suez (or repair one of my newb blunders if losing India by a relief invasion from Nimitz).

Particularly for the Allies I have two ways to think about this.

1. Turn 1 Allies: What IPCs or No’s can I grab cheaply esp with US and UK. What scraps did the Axis leave in the rubble of my fleet on Turn 1?

• If the cheesy AI skips Pearl I roll into Solomon. No cost of new units. Got one of my NO.
• If Herr Donitz can’t sink my Brit cruiser or B.B. I am taking you to Casablanca with the Canadians. Play it again Sam, no cost of new units.
• If Burma or Manchuria is stupidly left open I walk in an Indian or Siberian picket for no cost except deadzoning the poor guy. Free or dirt cheap.
• if the Japs are steaming for Midway I sneak in with my scrappy little 2 US guys into Borneo. Japs can’t cover everything or even most anything in the PAC and I snipe and nibble and scrape. Anything I can take I snag with Us fleet.
  So far I have spent 0 IPCs as US. I call this Kill cheapest first.

2. Turn 2+: What about when the subs chew apart my EUS DD and TRx2? Or smoke my Brit BB and I have to start building air and fleet from scratch? I use the other part of the strategy of not what to kill first, but when to kill it with US and UK. There is a delicate dance in build order for US against a good Axis. See what they give you and dance carefully. Maybe a sub and bomber campaign off WUS. Or run the torch playbook or just Bomb the tar out of Rome. My personal favorite.

3. As a newb I read the Essays. Shuck shuck is unfortunately no longer a viable option. I think the equation is now a generalized formula of a combination of pips per ipc, time needed to bring a given unit to a front, covering fleet per unit moved, and other considerations. Don Rae shuck shuck is like a limited form of a generalized cost benefit analysis including things like power projection and timing, and cost for the surface fleet needed to get that one guy from NY across to Eurasia. It’s just not as easy as inf push mechanic.

4. My Soviet strategy is again about timing with the timer being East Poland. Once I start seeing a given massing of tanks and inf I go turtle in an orderly and planned way, socking in spitfires and p51s in Moscow. Again it is a cool timing to the game that makes it fun. Where I see a lot of these posts go into a spin cycle is that they are looking at a static playbook that missing the point of when to make the important decisions
   A. When to build pacific fleet
   B. When to sbr
   C. When to invade Norway and so on.
   D. When to build the Indian IC. Or not at all. Or wait until Turn 3. Yes that once happened where it was best to wait.