In this video, I do an in depth, step by step analysis of the first turn of this fine game. Official errata: www.axisandallies.org/forums/... Custom Map as seen in the video: www.mediafire.com/file/e8weij...
Great video! Loved the short interludes between each phase overview using pictures relevant to that card. Where did you find them? They work very well, especially since the design is consistent with the style of the game's coverart. I was pleasantly surprised when it turns out you actually sleeved your game cards. I definitely don't do that. That and the new map makes my set look... primmitive? I'm not too sure. I liked the statistics on dice rolls. Makes sense and consitent with my experience. It's funny, you know. I always either assigned naval bombardment fire at random (I was just experimenting and I didn't know what worked at athe time) or at the zones that required the most assistance (basically Omaha). For some time I was wondering whether it was a good idea to do that (kind of throwing aid at what I viewed as a lost cause, after several German successes defeating the Allies enitrely on that beach). Glad to hear that it's likely the Allies can succeed at Omaha beach and that naval bomardment should be assigned there. The idea that fire should be directed the British beaches to prevent the loss of tanks never occured to me. The Sword Beach fighter placement makes a lot of sense. Kind of wish I thought of that. I was definitely surprised on your bomber choices. I was even more surprised you didn't acknowledge the other idea of having bombers target the most high-value units (I'm not exactly being negative, but it was something I noticed when you usually mentioned the "conventional" strategy and why it was wrong). Definitely agree that Allied hits on the first turn are underwhelming. Kind of odd that it doesn't feel that way with Global 1940 and other non-theater games, when the unit values are mostly the same. Bit annoying that the side that needs to be more aggressive to win (the Allies) are the ones with weaker attack values. I think a good word to sum up your recommended strategy is delay. Over the course of playing multiple games, while I did usually do the aforementioned German response on the first turn of "counterattack at Allied weak points as much as possible", once I realized that all Germany needed to do was to prevent the Allies from taking just one city (even if being defeated everywhere else), I think I was on the mental and logical path of concluding to withdraw and "turtle" into the victory cities. It hadn't fully developed by the time this video came out though. And this segue nicely to saying that the victory conditions are very easy on the Germans and quite harsh on the Allies, which I think is one of the reasons why the game is indeed imbalanced towards the Germans. Personal experience confirms this, with Germany winning more often and more easily (sometimes when the Allies win, it's only a turn and a single unit in each city, with both sides having levelled each other into five units, compared to one game where Germany expelled almost all Allied forces by turn 7 or 8 and was sitting comfortably with 20 units still on the board). I was also surprised at your recommendation to take blockhouses as casualties first, but it makes sense. Glad that I was right that Chartres as the best reinforcement spots. Thank you for the phenomenal work!
Looking forward to your comments in the next few videos then. The German strat I advocate for took many games to realize but now seems quite obvious. Will be interesting to see how it compares to the way you run them.
You might have some luck on axisandallies(dot)org or even better try "boardgamenation" He is a youtuber and he is developing a more modern player locater. Of course, you're always welcome to try here.
