Well both games were played with a time limit of 5 minutes per turn, with 2 minutes for movement. I had never played Axis and Allies with an automatic limit, and I was also playing with a different interface than I’m used to. So I made a lot of ignorant mistakes.
On the first game I simply got diced playing with Russia. Germany went for a round 1 8 armor buy and stacked Karelia. Then it moved the stack to Archangel. I lost the attack on Archangel despite having 70% odds…
The second one was simply crazy. Made a lot of mistakes with Japan on round 1 and half my fleet was at the bottom of the ocean by J2 while the US were going full Pacific. Meanwhile Russia sunk the German Med fleet (missed the 3rd fighter buy) and stacked Ukraine on R2 due to some other German messed up G1.
Well, what happened afterwards was that Japan immediately switched production to only infantry, fighters and bombers and started sending it all towards Russia until the US eventually caught up with the remaining Japanese fleet off Africa and sunk it. But meanwhile Japan was able to send 1 big infantry stack through Yakut while taking India and overrunning most of Africa. And the airforce started landing on Karelia to protect the German stack that moved there that was preventing the UK from landing and joining a very big Russian stack on West Russia.
Since the UK was blocked from major landings on Europe (Germany, W. Europe and Karelia were all defended) it bought 1 IC for South Africa, and later 1 IC for India, after the Americans liberated it. And that also build 2 ICs on Phillipines and Borneo. The UK meanwhile had also gotten East Indies.
Meanwhile, the UK started worrying about the 8 fighters, 3 bombers and 1 Japanese sub within range of its fleet, so it decided to pull back from SZ5 to SZ6 and add a 2nd carrier and destroyer, giving it a total of 3 carriers, 1 battleship, 4 destroyers, 1 sub and 6 fighters. Enough to stop the Japanese. Alas, not enough to stop a kamikaze Japanese attack followed by Germany’s 5 fighters, 2 bombers and 1 sub. Just that battle was worth losing the game.
Germany then managed to build up 20 inf and 30 arm and send them to West Russia, forcing the Russians to pull back from Caucasus, which felt on the next turn. The UK and the US meanwhile had ICs all over Asia to try to help the Russians. Japan was fortified against the US but out of the game. But after conquering Caucasus I was thinking of sending that army to liberate Asia (all the ICs… yummy). However, Allies managed to liberate Karelia and take Rome. Game over, they got the 9 victory cities.
