Defeating Germany after Heavy Germany Investment in the Atlantic

[colechristopher56]

In this version, my friends and I have developed a strategy with Germany that establishes ultimate German supiority. German’s land and air forces dominate Russia in at most 4 turns while German IPC investment exclusively goes to submarines. Eventually, Germany takes Russian territory and gets a massive economic advantage on the U.S. Germany easily wins the battle in the Atlantic and the Allies can’t get Berlin, Rome,  or Paris.

What can be done to stop this?

[Herr Rommel]

What’s Russia doing during all this? Are they turtling up right away or attacking all out? If Germany doesn’t put a significant investment into destroying Russia, then their initial Eastern Front forces will be overwhelmed after 3 or 4 turns.
As for the US, destroyers and a couple of aircraft carriers loaded with Britain’s and America’s starting fighters should be enough to make Germany think twice about Atlantic domination.

Have you read the thread that Black Elk made on Russia? That will help out a lot with Russian gameplay.

[Argothair]

I agree with everything Herr Rommel said. If Germany is dominating Russia after 4 turns of buying 100% submarines, then either you are making a rules error (incorrect setup??) or your Russia player has PTSD and is too shell-shocked to even try to fight back.

There’s also no way Germany can build enough subs to stop a dedicated Allied destroyer fleet. With starting income, UK + US have 73 IPCS = 9 DDs per turn. German starting IPCs is 41 = less than 7 subs per turn

That said, if Germany miraculously flooded the Atlantic with subs while gaining ground in Eastern Europe, I would build American bombers to trash Berlin and British fighters to defend Moscow. You can’t shoot down planes with a submarine wolf pack!

[Wolfshanze]

The obvious solution here is to pit this German player who buys all navy to play against the Russian player from Global 1940 who buys all navy and see how it turns out…

I’m breaking out the popcorn.  :-D

[taamvan]

Mr. Cole

Germany can only save at most 1 of the two fleets it starts with unless it spends its G1 income on surface ships to protect what it already has.  If it spends that way, on navy, there is no follow-on-force to take Moscow on G4-5 because its in the water not on land.

If Russia attacks Germany at the outset, killing most of what it has in the Ukraine, and all of what it has in West Russia, there is pretty much no way that Germany can reply in 1-2 turns with only what it has to start the game.  It does get 10 tanks and 6 planes that can attack, but that’s all and without any infantry cannon fodder, Germany is likely to lose its best stuff attacking Moscow at a loss.

[colechristopher56]

Thanks for all the help! To everyone, I should have mentioned that we have the 1942 edition. Does Black Elk accommodate Russian strategy for that version? Do anyone else have any other suggestions for strategy with that additional knowledge in mind?

[baron Münchhausen]

@colechristopher56:

Thanks for all the help! To everyone, I should have mentioned that we have the 1942 edition. Does Black Elk accommodate Russian strategy for that version? Do anyone else have any other suggestions for strategy with that additional knowledge in mind?

Do you mean Spring 1942?

[colechristopher56]

It isn’t Spring 1942.