How to counter this strategy?

[Hawk]

This game is played on A&A 2nd edition, no house rules.

R1: Russia moves all their eastern units on Yakut. Russia attacks Ukraine from the caucassus and Karelia using 8 infantry, 3 tanks and 1 fighter, taking it with usually between 3 and 6 infantry left. Russia destroys the baltic fleet with the transport, sub and 1 fighter. Both fighters lands on Karelia, the units from russia moves to Karelia and the 8 units purchased are also on Karelia. Karelia now has 12 infantry and 2 fighters defending it.

G1: Germany has several options here. The canadian transport is always attacked with the fighter from western europe. Germany can try to attack Karelia. The odds are good, but most likely all infantry used in the attack will be killed and only tanks will be left defending, which will be destroyed by the conterattack from the ukraine. . They can try to retake the ukraine, but to do so, they either sacrifice several tanks or take the units from south italy, forgoing the conquest of africa, or use the fighters and forgo destroying the british fleets. The other option is to retreat to germany until the japs get some pressure on the russians and go for Africa… all these scenarios seems like loosing options to me. Anyone has a better option?

Uk: Uk buys 1 carrier, 1 transport and 1 infantry. It performs a strategic bombing of Germany. If Karelia hasn’t been taken, both fighters from england moves to karelia. The transport from india fetch the infantry from persia and brings it to India.

J1: Japan buys 2 transport and 3 infantry. The entire hawain fleet is destroyed. Japan takes China and far east soviet and moves 2 infantry from japan to manchuria and 1 infantry from the phillipine and 1 infantry from berneo celebres to french indonesia.

US1: The american completely ignores the jap fleet in the pacific and buys 3 transport and 4 infantry, moves both fighters on the carrier and puts the bomber on england. The troops left from sinkiang moves in to consolidate india. by this time, the North sea is completely and forever in allies hands. Next turn, they’re going to take finland and India now has 5 infantry and 1 fighter defending it.

Resume: Germany is completely screwed. The move by the russian to consolidate all their eastern units on Yakut means the japs won’t be able to take it until J3, by which time the brits and the americans will have landed troops in finland/Karelia so that the russians can concentrate on defending the eastern front. So it seems after turn 1, the game is over.

R3: Withdrawl all eastern units to novosibrisk and move the tanks (if any are left) to russia. All new infantry units will defend the eastern front as the americans and the uk are taking over defending and bottling germany. Prepare to reconquer some territories weakly defended by jap infantry or make the japanese hesitate 1 more turn before having 10-12 infantry at the doors of russia.

What am I missing? How would you pros counter it :)

[madscientist]

Definitely take Karelia on the first round. Build 10 infantry on your first turn, take out as much of the UK fleet as possible, and dump 2 inf from Italy to Libya. On the second round, build 7 tanks, and move all your remaining tanks to the capital. Move the ten infantry from the capital to Eastern Europe. Since you would have destroyed the Russian planes on round 1, they won’t have as much attack or defense. If you still have the battleship and transport from the Mediterranean, move them so they can attack the North Sea fleet on round 3 along with your remaining Luftwaffe. On the third round, attack Karelia again with all your infantry and tanks within range.

This should be coupled with Japan building a factory and 1 tank on the first round, and landing all fighters in Manchuria, where the factory is built. Take Soviet Far East on round 1 with 2 inf transported from Japan. If they left an inf there, then use the fighter from Japan. Attack China with 2 inf from Burma and 2 inf from Kwangtung and 1 inf from Manchuria, along with the fighter from Burma and the fighter from Manchuria. Also transport 2 inf to Manchuria from Philippines in non-combat. On Japan’s second turn, attack the Russian stack in Yakut with the inf from SFE,and Manchuria and all fighters and the bomber. Build 3 tanks at the factory and transport 2 tanks from Japan. Thus, although you might lose some land in southern asia, you are poised to take Russia on Round 4 combined with Germany’s initial attack.

[Bashir]

Sorry to say, but this is propably the worst advice anyone can give you in this situation. The problem with your game is that you are too advanced to play without a bid. In the situation you describe the Axis will lose 19 games out of 20, because the game is not balanced. You are actually lucky the Russians won’t attack Manchuria and the UK follows up with the kwangbang…

The moves you are describing are almost identical to Don Rae’s essay’s which are a great help for beginning players and teaches the basics very well, although they are a little overprotective.

My advice in this situation is this.
G1: buy 10 inf (save 2)
Now here is the tricky part, you need to win several battles (without losing much forces) to even stay in the game here.

• The UK fleet must be destroyed at all costs
• The UK bb must be destroyed in the med SZ
• You can’t take Ukr back, otherwise your forces get destroyed the next turn.
• Take Egypt (attack with 3 inf and 1 arm)
• Stack your forces in EEU
  Even if the results of your battles are good, you will lose most of the time, because of the game imbalance.

I can give you some advice to maximize the allies in this setup.
R1:

• Buy 8 inf
• Attack Ukr with 9 inf and the arms you can bring. Retreat after one or two rounds of combat (optimal result is that Germany is left with 1 fig in Ukr) to Kar.
• Attack Manchuria with I believe 5 inf, 1 arm and 1 fig.
• Attack the baltic fleet with 1 tran and 1 fig
• Attack the sub in the WEU SZ with your sub
• Place everything in Kar.
  With some luck the game will be over for the axis after round 1… On turn 2, you can even afford it to buy 1-2 extra arms to enlarge your feint power.

But my real advice is to start playing with a bid. Around +/- 24 IPC’s will balance the game.

By the way, NEVER buy an IC with Japan on round 1!!! But I guess you know, because you have read Don Rae’s essays.

[Bashir]

1. Actually you can only attack Ukr with 8 inf (was a typo).

2. There are not a lot of people who are classics experts on this board anymore, you might want to try other boards…

[Crazy Ivan]

:roll:
  This is all pretty good advice as I recall. It will pretty much be up to the dice for you now. Good Luck!
    :roll:

[Jennifer]

Surprised Russia isn’t invading E. Europe instead of Ukraine, honestly.  E. Europe is a sure fire success, the Baltic fleet might be left alone, but so what?  Hit Manchuria with Russia, Kwangtung with England, and Fr. Indo China with America because there WILL be an America to hit it with.  Japan is now castrated.

Anyway, back to your question.  In my humble opinion, I think djensen is off on his build advise.  Build 9 infantry and 1 armor.  Same defensive power, uses all 32 IPC instead of just 30 and gives you 2 more offensive punch then 10 infantry would.

And yea, I agree that if you’re being hit that hard, you need to start requesting a bid to be the axis.

[Guest]

A couple of questions, if I may, in order to better understand the post.

First, is this an online game or face to face board-played game, and does it involve only two players?  One Axis player and one Allied Player.

Second, how many times have you played with two Axis and three Allied players?

[Bashir]

@timerover51:

A couple of questions, if I may, in order to better understand the post.

First, is this an online game or face to face board-played game, and does it involve only two players?  One Axis player and one Allied Player.

Second, how many times have you played with two Axis and three Allied players?

1. It is a board game wich can be played online.

2. I have only played once or twice with 5 people.

@Jennifer:

Surprised Russia isn’t invading E. Europe instead of Ukraine, honestly.  E. Europe is a sure fire success, the Baltic fleet might be left alone, but so what?  Hit Manchuria with Russia, Kwangtung with England, and Fr. Indo China with America because there WILL be an America to hit it with.  Japan is now castrated.

Anyway, back to your question.  In my humble opinion, I think djensen is off on his build advise.  Build 9 infantry and 1 armor.  Same defensive power, uses all 32 IPC instead of just 30 and gives you 2 more offensive punch then 10 infantry would.

And yea, I agree that if you’re being hit that hard, you need to start requesting a bid to be the axis.

1. Strafing Ukraine is a better option than taking/strafing EEU. The Axis can’t really retreat to EEU anymore, because you can strafe EEU on R2 which will propably cost you armor… So by strafing Ukr you will create a deathzone in EEU. So the Axis has to move backwards even more.

2. First of all it was my advice not djensen ;), but I have to disagree here. It might be the same defensive value and a little better attack value, but you need cheap fodder more than you need more offensive value. So I rather save 2 and buy an extra inf the next round than spend the whole amount on the first turn.

[Bashir]

One last note, you might want to switch to Russia restricted first. The Rusky’s can’t attack on their first round, wich will balance the game a little bit more. If the Allies are still winning like 15-5 you have to start playing with a bid to make it a game.

We started this way and when we progressed we got things balanced by first playing RR, then playing RR and a small bid (it went up from RR with +6 to +12) and finally we started playing full bids (ranging from 21+ to 24+). After that we added some extreme bids (32+ if you went with a full Asia bid) or we gave Japan all the techs and no bid which was really fun to play.

Those are just ideas which are fun to change the setup of the game slightly if you become bored with the KGF ‘shuck shuck’ method ;)