Wasn't sure if this should go under board development or not but here it is.

I love the A&A map.  Well designed and looks good.

It seems to me that the Axis is at a disadvantage though.  So far, from the games I have played (albeit not many) the Allies will win so long as they are competent.  I have won playing the Axis, but I feel the poor play of the allies was a big reason my side won.

Its about numbers:

1.  Both sides start out with almost the same amount of units.

2.  The allies earn 96 units to the axis 70 per turn (at the start).

This doesn't seem balanced very well as the allies already start out at parity and will start to build a lead each turn till there is no going back.

In the original game, the idea was the Axis had a large material advantage to start with, but the allies had more production.  Here the allies already equal the axis forces at the start.

The problem to me is Britain.  Britain has far too many forces.  The British player starts out with more units than any of the allies!  In their first turn they can move 34 units into the channel and already threaten a Normandy style attack.  They have sufficient forces in the Far East to attack Japan's islands and have a 2 to 1 edge in Egypt (though Monty did have a big advantage at El Alemian).  The only place Britain is a little weak is in India, but it still has a sizeable force there too.

In the board game Britain is far weaker, especially after Germany takes its first turn.

There are some axis counter moves, but it seems to me that the allies already start the game in good shape...and instead of having to play catch up, already start caught up.

Thoughts?

The thing about the Allies though is that most (100+ units) of the US force is 2-3 turns from the action.  Axis has to move pretty fast and hold well, but the board has been played A LOT (was kind of a big deal on Warfish) and Axis definitely has a good chance, although I would say it is probably a bit harder and more difficult side to play.

(I edited your text font, it was brutal in non-work mode.)

What Yertle said. Axis has a disadvantage, but it's not quite as bad as you might think. Given equally skilled players, it's something like 60%-40% in favor of the Allies. This matches up fairly well with the real world, if you think about it. Also, keep in mind that, with three Allies, there are more chances that someone will mess up, a miscommunication will occur, or that an Axis player is able to catch one or two of them off guard.

Oh and I think Toaster is fixing up Germany with 42 more units :p

I just started playing version 3.  Looks better.  But the British fleet off the south of france means Britain can look up and attack right away.  I think you need to move that fleet back into the atlantic.

I take that back...the german player just needs to kill it. 

Davidny212 wrote:

I take that back...the german player just needs to kill it. 

I highly resent that, since it was MY navy that you just killed! :)

I'll add this here (Gimli wrote this for the Warfish version):

Gimli’s Guide to Axes and Allies

General Truisms (works for all players)

1. With at once play, remember opponents cannot travel more than 1 territory per turn. Strategically this basically means that men that are not near the action are wasted! For instance, men do the USA no good on continental USA: it would take minimum 3 turns before it could even be threatened. So move them all towards the action with pre-transfers (the men are moved before attacks are carried out). You can always build them on the spot if the enemy gets close to an important location.

2. Cash cards on the first turn. Everyone starts with 3 cards so you can add a little to what you want to do.

3. Navies don’t add any units to your stockpile, but they are vital to forcing your enemy to defend. Look for areas to take that will force your opponent to build defense so they cannot spend men attacking you. Best are ocean zones that can attack multiple land territories, forcing the defenders to really defensive to avoid the landing (remember attacks from sea to land have a small penalty, so people like to land somewhere and then expand, such as landing in Europe against Germany).

4. Use attack/transfers to keep vital territories. Keep in mind that there are limits to the number of units a territory can sustain. The formula is; max number of troops follows the formula 5X + 10, where X is equal to the bonus for that territory.
So lets say the USA not only wants to defend east China from Japan to stop Japan from threatening Russia’s interior, but actually wants to take over Kwangtung, the central mainland Japanese territory. Problem is with 20 max units in China and 25 for Japan (starts with far less of 1st turn), it can’t be done easily. Plus an attack from Manchuria or French Indo-China would result in USA losing east China. The solution… USA builds to 20 in the east. Now the USA attacks out of east China, leaving only 1 defense. Lets say Japan conquers it from Manchuria. But if the USA orders west China to attack/transfer to east China, USA will retake it. Or if Japan makes the orders later, USA will actually have 20 men defending east China: the men in east China left to attack Kwangtung, but west China troops attack/transferred in right after. That is why it is called attack/transfer: the command will either attack the enemy that is there, or will just move into (transfer) to the territory if it remains yours and there is space for them.


5. Keep the order of your orders in mind for strategic reasons. Each player executes one attack command at a time, in turn order. All pre-transfer commands are essentially executed simultaneously. Attack transfers order of execution would go like this. Russia 1st command, Germany 1st command, UK 1st command, Japan 1st command, USA 1st command, Russia 2nd command…… The order you give commands in has a big impact on the game. There is a slight defense bonus compared to attacking, and a good one for attacking land to sea. In our China example, the USA could actually give the command for east China to attack late in his order. This would allow Japan to lose a few more men possibly due to defender advantage, and then the USA attack if there are survivors to do so. So east China takes the hit, and however many are left then attack, and west China attacks in to fill the void of the east China casualties.
Also take advantage of the sea to land defense advantage. Lets say the UK is going to attack France from the west. Germany wants to take away the threat of a sea invasion and builds maximum troops to take the sea zone. Germany would do well to let UK attack first and take the higher casualty rate, and then take the sea zone with the survivors. This is done by making the attack as late as possible in the orders (so UK attacks first).

6. Coordination is a plus, and having warfish plus is a huge plus! J The secret messaging allows for coordination, requests and such without alerting your enemies as to war plans. It also helps to avoid allies killing each other. Tell your allies what you are attacking any time there is the possibility that you can attack the same territory.

7. Please know your basic WW2 history. It saddens but mostly scares me how many times I have seen Canada conquer the USA and the USA conqer Canada. Know your team!




Soviet Union (lets just say Russia ok?) Not gonna use much navy. Basically needs to have some offense, but the main goal is to survive until it’s stronger allies enter the war to take the pressure off. Russia starts off with the least units and smallest bonus.

Germany Has a lot of the responsibility for an axis win. Has to conquer Russia while fighting off any UK and USA threats to Europe. Russian collapse is often a sign of Doom for the allies, but neglecting the other 2 Allies will lead to certain loss. Use of navy is helpful in the long run.

UK Has to fight on many fronts with few units, but has the most flexibility in strategy. Has sizeable forces to harass Japan, and has close proximity to Germany. As with the USA, UK has the vital role of keeping pressure off of a Russian collapse.

Japan Sort of like the UK, in that the destiny of Japan’s armies is pretty flexible. Can focus on any 3 of the Allies in varying combinations from the start, whereas Germany has the early focus of Russia early on. Good aggression can keep the heat off of Germany from the UK or USA, or can help lead to the demise of Russia.

USA Starts far from the action, but can use China to make an early impact against Japan. Takes some time to get forces from NA to the action, but once there the large bonuses are going to be a worry for Germany and Japan.

Anybody willing to tell the backstory of "Pink's Gambit" and why some players are so adamant against it?

AttilaTheHun wrote:

Anybody willing to tell the backstory of "Pink's Gambit" and why some players are so adamant against it?

Pink's Gambit is named off of Pink Princess on WF (although I'm not sure he (yes he) was the official first to use it, but probably so). 

What it is:  Gambit is the US taking over Russia's Kazakh and then sending supporting troops from Kazakh to Caucuses, thus giving Russia 15 troops at it's front lines every turn.  Those troops are more important to Russia than US early on so they are easily spared.

History: I believe two more things are important to note here, previous versions of AnA on WF had Kazakh set to a bonus of 2 troops and thus a max of 20 instead of 15, which means US could pump 20 units to Russia's front lines instead of just 15.  This was changed to 15 to help account for the Gambit.

Other thing is that I think Team Transfer was not originally enabled on the WF AnA board, thus the Gambit was not available in the version that many people learned on.

Why players are against it:  It really is an awesome move for Allies and some think it makes the Allies nearly unbeatable.  Although I think it makes it more difficult I think it has been seen that it doesn't create a completely unbeatable Allies.

The "trouble" with Pink's Gambit is it really forces Japan to focus on what I think of as the "China Tunnel" and not on spreading out. By forcing Japan to focus on 20-vs-20s in China (a war of attrition, basically), it eliminates forces that can be used to, say, defend Japan from an early American thrust against the home islands, or forces that can harass random parts of the Pacific on a whim.

The "solution", near as I can tell, is for Germany and Japan to switch roles - Japan focuses on attrition and keeping American forces pointed at it while Germany prioritizes the Atlantic and Africa. Trouble is, Germany's not really in a position to go adventuring (though at least they have turn order on their side) and Japan doesn't have the armies on the board to put together an effective attrition-based campaign. 

Little known fact: Did you know that Japan sent naval units to Madagascar in World War 2? It's true!

Oh and I think Japan's farthest East 16 troop sea territory was given to help curb the affects of the Gambit (I think those 16 troops used to sit in the sea with the other 16 right off of Japan).

Oatworm wrote:

Little known fact: Did you know that Japan sent naval units to Madagascar in World War 2? It's true!

Japan also shelled a lighthouse near Vancouver with a sub... I think they were just saying hello or something.

I didn't have any issues with the original AnA. It had no team transfers and no abandon. Both are sorta more accurate to how the actual board game is played, as allies can defend together. But as Yertle pointed out, it is more equal due to the distance of USA from the bulk of the action, and the pink gambit neutralizes this important equalizer. The team transfer off is better for gameplay also because only one team can really take advantage of this: USA can also use Greenland to fast track troops to UK and speed up a Normandy invasion. So those are the 2 reasons I am against it.

Back in the early days, there were many AnA detractors... they said the Axis was too hard. So I challenged those people to assemble their own team of Allies, and I as Germany and Cumberdale as Japan CRUSHED them all. Then more people got good at it! Also in my review of the board, I took the long way of justifying the initial units because Toaster counted up the IPC value of the units in each territory and converted them, so all the armies are in correct proportion to the actual board game initial set-up.

I haven't played enough of the 3v3 version, but I think Italy sucks... they have few troops and only low value African territories to conquer... and if Italy and Germany aren't cohesive about keeping the Americans out of the Mediterranean, it is bad news. I've never had a concern with being the axis against any group of players in the 3v2 version, but I will have to learn more about the newest one.

Lastly, the guide was written with the original release, with no abandon or team transfers. With the original with like 3 units on a Japanese island, I preferred to let them sit, knowing USA would lose troops stringing out an attack route and you get a defense bonus. I'll have to re-write it soon I think!

I am one of the detractors of Pink's Gambit and there are two reasons:

1)  If Japan is willing to lose early to win later the US is in trouble via the navy and with a smart Germany it won't matter.

B)  I hate when a strategy works and then people start saying the map is faulty...that's lame

III)  I don't like anything to be given a name that doesn't have "Risky" in it!

To call any move a "Risky Gambit" would be redundant.

So then really the Pink's Gambit was just a good strategy used within the rules of the scenario (i.e. Team transfer enabled) and the reason most are against it are because a) it seems to imbalance the board and/or give the Allies an advantage or b) it seems to go against the spirit of how the original board game played.

So I have been playing a lot of games lately, encountering a lot of new people to the AnA board and trying to get them up to speed on strategy and board tactics.  I think it is important to point out that Pink's Gambit is not an "I win" button.  I have been US in a lot of games and if you happen to have one of the three allied players who isn't quite up to snuff... you are toast.  I actually think it is easier to be the axis right now on public boards on wargear.

It will certainly be interesting to see what the statistics are in the upcoming AnA tournament... but coming from someone who never got to play the original board without team transfer and abandon, I think this board is perfectly fine.  It truly comes down to out-thinking your opponent and teamwork.

It seems that I am not the only one who is noticing that the Axis is winning an awful lot lately....

Ender wrote:

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It will certainly be interesting to see what the statistics are in the upcoming AnA tournament...

...

Speaking of which, we need only 8 MORE PLAYERS for the tourney!

http://www.wargear.net/tournaments/view/274

Join now!

ATH

P.S. I'd even love it if half the invited players actually respond one way or the other *cough* Yertle, Toaster *cough*