Great job buddy, love that you're showing us the dice rolls on screen... and I also appreciate you're outside the box thinking, I don't believe anyone has suggested hitting both (at least from anywhere I've seen).
Even though a lot has already been said. Great video! Never thought of pulling this one off as you did right here. And as always; great video quality at the right angle!
Love your videos! I recently bought axis and Allies 1942 second addition and I love it now I'm thinking about getting the Europe and the Pacific second addition to create the global version and your videos have helped me in making that decision. Keep up the great work!
Thank you for your kind words Chris. If you are a fan of A&A then Global is definitely the way to go.You'll never want to play another version after that. Just make sure you have a table big enough to play on. The game is aprox. 32 inches by 72 inches.
GeneralHandGrenade thanks for the tip. I have already started the process of building my own table to accommodate this. Can't wait till we get it finished.
Great video! In most of my games, I leave a German ftr in Tobruk and a tac in Rome at the end of G1 to discourage this play. Pretty sure that extra 4 dice behind all that fodder would make Tobruk impossible.
You could get away with sending the UK Tac Bomber into Tobruk as well but it does make Taranto a bit dicey. That's how I was doing it to begin with and winning more times than not.
Great video. I first encountered the Tobruk raid actually and I'm quite satisfied with your version of Operation Compass. But there's a problem: The move Malta 1 Inf land on Tobruk with the help of transport from SZ98 (R1BR ¡ Malta 1I \98 1t 96\ ∑ Tobruk ∆ !) is illegal as SZ96 is Italian at the start of the round, if I have not mistaken.
I recently had my first G40 global game and I didn't do the Toronto raid or Tobruck, Italy became the reborn Roman empire, getting all but one $2 bonus. I'm curious how a turn 1 German airbase in Holland protecting the damaged German battleship with 3 fighters would influence the Toronto raid when 2 u-boats sink the British cruiser @ Gibraltar. Building this air base and 2 transports suggesting a German 10 transport build for the second turn. Oh, Germany adds 1 fighter to southern Italy airbase making 3 fighters protecting the Italian Navy.
From some numbers I ran through an odds calculator I'm getting about 88% chance of victory in Tobruk and about 80% in the sea zone, so this seems solid. My chief concerns would be if Germany went after the cruiser off Gibraltar or flew another plane into Tobruk. Do you have any ideas for countering those?
You would have to react to what happens in the game before you choose to do this or any other move. There's not much that you can do about the Cruiser but you could reverse places with the Fighter from Malta and the Tac Bomber from SZ 98. The Tac could pair with the Tank for added strength in Tobruk.
As the Germans I will always use 2 subs to take out the British cruiser off Gibraltar, which would make clearing the sea zone off Tobruk much harder. I think taking that cruiser out makes a big difference for the chances of the Italians in the Med, that is why I use 2 subs to do it. The consequence is leaving one of the British transport/destroyer pairs alive in the Atlantic but there isn't much they can do with that anyway.
So I used this strategy in a recent game and got basically the same results, completely gobsmacked the Axis player I was playing against and what he ended up doing was a panic buy with Germany and put down a cruiser, destroyer, and transport in the south of France then moved what was left of the Italian navy into the same sea zone, his counter attack left me with no UK ships in the med and he was able to eventually break through into the middle east. My question to you is where would you go from here? Continue to follow through with the "middle earth" strategy of putting a factory down in persia and slowly build up and push back or somthing new?
If there was no Sealion attack then certainly I would go through with Middle Earth. By spending 27 IPC's in the Med Germany would probably not have the ability to go Sealion in the first place because it takes almost all of their income on the first 2 turns to accomplish it. If you set up Middle Earth as early as possible then you will be able to push back the initial surge that Italy sends at you. If Germany spends too much money down there helping them then they will fail in Barbarossa and you will accomplish your goal of saving Moscow. The key to remember is that the real war in this game is fought on the land and not on the water. If you're putting down 6 units in Middle Earth every turn and they are wasting their money pissing around with boats in the Med then you will eventually wear them down. Don't give up on Africa and the Middle East just because Germany is down there spending money. Middle Earth is designed to put more ground units in the middle of the board than the axis can remove without ignoring the rest of the map.
So update on this strategy m axis player has fond that if he flys 1 German fighter to Italy on G1 turn its enough of a boost that the allied player dosnt gain a huge advantage in the region.
It doesn't seem realistic that Italy could dominate the Med and North Africa like it does in your game. I could see Italy not being at war on the first turn but maybe they should have given UK more units to be able to contest the area better.
My stupid opponent left me with only 2 infantry in Egypt, and a little bad luck on their part left 1 lone transport around Malta for Italy. I took over Egypt quickly and they fell apart
The best part is that even if your cruiser is sunk in SZ 96 and even though you've left Egypt almost bare, Italy can do nothing about it since they only have one transport and 1 cruiser and you've taken out their bomber's only landing spot - Tobruk.
Actually the bomber could land in Ethiopia, but even with the bomber Italy would have a 57% win chance in Egypt, which doesn't seem like a good decision to me.
Assuming that all goes well then Italy would be better off forgetting about Africa altogether and concentrating on Russia and shoring up the defence of western Europe. If they insist on continuing to Africa then they will be wasting their money.
Not to mention that they'd be taking away valuable assets from their other goals on turn 1 and beyond like killing the French fleet, taking So. France, and possibly Yugoslavia and Greece.
IMO if you want to strategize don't cite live games, you only get like 2 live games a week, so your sample size is tiny in a game that is extremely high variance. Cite simulations with ranges and standard deviations. To give you an idea here are 10 runs of your taranto raid (D/A means who wins and the # means how many survive) A1 A4 A5 D1 D3 A2 D2 D5 A5 A2 So looking at the results of who won/loss is a terrible way to go about looking at strategy in A&A you may have gotten that string of D1 D3 A2 D2 D5 and went "well this strategy sucks" even though you actually have an 80% chance to win the fight. For what it's worth your taranto raid if they scramble will win 80% of the time (20k simulations average TUV swing +11.87) and your assult on tobruk has 2 seperate components. Your attack on sea zone 96 will work 96% of the time. The tobruk attack will succeed 88% of the time. (average TUV swing +6.44) However if you do this, the italian player will simply build a mech infantry and an armor and attack the soviet union. Sinking your transport in sea zone 96 with a bomber (TUV swing -7) and run to kenya with the ethopians. A more useful strategy would be to not bother attacking tobruk and instead put the additional fighter in taranto. this improves your odds to 96% (a HUGE improvement) and the TUV swing goes from 11.87 to 22.85. basically on average Your fighter/strategic/tactical all get to survive and it's highly probable the cruiser survives. While if you don't bring the fighter into the battle you will often lose all of your air or lose all but 1 of your air. And 20% of the time you will lose the fight, conditional on you losing the fight 3/4ths of the time they will have their battleship survive. So 15% of the time you don't even destroy their battleship, which is a disaster, when italy has their battleship they will be able to secure their NO for holding the med. Therefore don't do the tobruk opening if you value victory for the allies. taking gambles like this is not a good idea in axis and allies. Massive overwhelming attacks are the way to win a game. Putting everything into an attack gives you both the best chance of victory and the best margins of victory. By Massively overwhelming somebody you will lose only subs/infantry/destroyers/aircraft carriers instead of valueable Armor/air/artillery
If you look at the title of my video you will see a question mark at the end. This was just an idea that I had and I'm soliciting responses from others who may have tried this strategy and how it's worked out over the course of an entire game and not just the opening round. Thank you for taking the time to respond and for the statistics. You will probably never see me break down attacks with a battle calculator on my channel because I don't believe that they have any place in a game of Axis and Allies. I don't simply play the game to win it, I play the game to enjoy myself. For those who like to play online and feel that they need to only do an attack if the computer tells them that it's a good idea then I wish them well if that's what pleases them. Cheers!
Battle calculators teach you intuition for how good an attack will go given relative force strength. I never use it in live play but using them outside of the table teaches you the concepts of how to actually go about attacking somebody and how much to commit to a battle. I could tell before doing the calcs that there was a very high probability of failure (my estimate was 1/6) because of the 6/7 vs 7/8 and similar Punch levels of the armies. Honestly doing the calculations was just me justifying my intuition that it was a terrible idea to not commit the extra fighter to the raid. Calculations let you learn how much "stuff" is needed to beat a given amount of other stuff. Though you probably can just use the following simple rules 1. Use your entire army if reasonable example attack both sea zones on G1 2. Attack fewer territories than more territory Example Don't attack normandy on G1, put every land unit into france instead. 3. Have between a 1/1 and 2/1 ratio of fodder/DPS (fodder is cheap stuff like infantry and submarines while DPS is stuff like fighters and armor) Overbuilding fodder is a less cardinal sin than overbuilding DPS Example You start in G42 with 10 air and 9 armor as the germans, and only 8 infantry, build mech infantry on your turn to balance out your ratio These rules can be justified using a calculator which will allow a player to get calculator perfect results without actually using a calculator in matches. Battle calculators are a great teaching tool to learn "what if I change the army ratio this way?" and to quickly understand basic combat math without having to think to hard. I find it sped up my games to use the battle calculator away from the table because now I don't even think about my turn 90% of the time which lets us finish a 10 round game in a single 8-9 hour session.
Great video GHG! Why attack only one when you can attack both? I've been running the numbers and came out with different results than another one of your commenters, but I did notice that your odds of success in Tobruk appear to be noticeably higher than your odds of winning Taranto with this configuration. Given that, I'd recommend taking the fighter that you propose sending into Tobruk and sending it in for Taranto instead. That should give you a roughly 65-75% chance of winning both instead of an 88-89% chance of winning Tobruk and a 43-44% chance of winning Taranto. Of course, if there is no German fighter scrambling this revision wouldn't be needed. If there is no German fighter but they take out your cruiser off Gibraltar, I think you could still pull off both attacks successfully. If there is a German fighter AND the Germans take out the cruiser, only then does this move seem like not the best idea.
The reason it might not be a good idea is because taking both Fighters from London could be a bad move if Germany decides to do a Sealion attack. You have to react to what both Germany and Japan do on their first turns.
Ah, that makes sense. Since Germany goes before England, the British Isles would be safe on G1, vulnerable on G2, and safe again on G3 (assuming your planes flew right back). Is a G2 Sea Lion a likely outcome?
If I'm not mistaken, the UK ftrs land 2 turns away from London, so they can't return until UK3 and cannot defend against a Sealion on G3. A G1 buy of nothing still threatens a SL enough to keep the UK from doing this, but doesn't take much away from the Russian front if they turtle up.
That's the one thing that discourages me from this strategy. I think I might only use it in a game if the German player spends all of his money on the Eastern Front. The other thing is, by UK1 Japan has already taken their turn and you would know if they have gone J1 or not. If they have you could spend all of the US cash on the first couple of turns in the Atlantic and set sail for London. If Germany still goes Sealion, that leaves them open in the Eastern Front. Regardless of what happens, I never, ever turtle as the Russian player.
If Germany bought 2 bombers G1, they could attack the British fleet G2 with planes while Italy takes out the French fleet I1. Could be the other way around too I guess. Italy just needs Germany to help
You could either go through Western Germany or France to get there. In G40 the only restriction for flying over territories is that you can't fly over a neutral territory, regardless of whether it is a Friendly Neutral, an Unfriendly Neutral, or a Strict Neutral. Once a Neutral territory is conquered by either side anyone can fly over it. It is 5 spaces away to fly from London to do the Taranto Raid using either route.
There really isn't an effective defence. The only thing they can do is land a German fighter on Southern Italy to scramble into the battle. You're probably better off getting revenge by wiping out the British fleet in the Med on Italy's and then Germany's next turn.
I don’t think you can get the infantry from Malta for the Tobruk attack. That’s loading a unit in a hostile sea zone. Other than that, this is how I have usually played UK, although now I would rather do your middle east strategy and clean up Africa later.
Take the entire fleet in SZ 98 into the Taranto Raid except the Tac Bomber and the Transport, bring 2 fighters and 1 bomber from UK. The Malta Fighter goes in. Grab the 1 UK infantry and 1 UK Artillery with the Transport and move it into SZ 96. Land the 2 units in Tobruk. Move all units from Alexandria into Tobruk. Take the Cruiser from SZ 91 into SZ 96. Take the Fighter from Gibraltar in SZ 96 as well. Mech Infantry is used to support in Ethiopia along with the Infantry in Anglo Egyptian Sudan and an Infantry and Artillery from India with a Crusier Bombardment.
I think it would be best to hold off on Ethiopia until UK2 to avoid spreading yourself too thin. At that point you could load up a bit more and take Ethiopia with more strength.
Not true... multiple posts have shown there are passionate players out there devoted to the underdog Italians. :) Posts like these only embolden those few die-hard Italian players. Thanks for this post since it adds another hurdle for ITA players.
