Hello, I play pacific 1940 a lot. I have also played global a few times. Pacific 1940 second edition is a great game but I can almost easily win every time if I’m Japan and I attack on the third turn. A new rule was passed around late 2014 to allow the USA to receive a 30 IPC bonus if Japan attacks or declares war on them before turn 4. This seems to balance the game a little but I can still always win with Japan. The strategy for Japan is pretty much the same. Take the money islands, build a minor in French Indo China and Kwangtung and knock out China and India. Post in the Philippines with your huge navy and three fighters that can scramble and those six deadly kamikizes. Let Anzac and USA come to you so you can use the fighters to defend at 4 when the big navy battle happens. Eventually you will be making more than the allies with the money islands NO and the India NO. You should be around the 70-75 mark. Then when the time is right strike at Sydney or Hawaii and hold it and you should win as it will be six victory cities. For the allies, man this can be tuff lol. You better hope Japan attacks you on turn 1 or turn 4 because turn 2 and especially 3 it’s going to be difficult.
1: China: buy men and hit and run and fall back to the north west of China. You will be lucky if the Burma road is open more than two turns. Pull back and make Japan come to you.
2: UK: pull everyone back to India and just buy men!!! Try to bring your navy down to Australia and unite them with Anzac and hopefully later USA. If it looks like India is going to fall then pull your airforce out and send them to Australia to hopefully land on a Anzac or American carrier. If Japan hasn’t declared war early then take as many islands in the south as possible .
3: Anzac: small ships and transports are good. if it looks like Japan is going to invade then pull your forces to south Australia because from there you can hit any territory. Use your small ships to convoy raid or unite with the main USA fleet. Queensland is a great staging area for the allied navy early in the game. Also since there’s a airbase there fighters don’t hurt also since they can scramble.
4:USA: the big boy lol. The problem is when USA is neutral she only makes a freaking 17 ipcs a turn. While Japan is around the 40 mark and Japan has soooooooo many aircraft at its disposal. USA I say aircraft carrier early then mainly subs, destroyers, and a transport every turn with land units. A few rounds into the game get a navy base on the Johnson islands and start combining your fleet with the Anzac fleet and hopefully a small UK fleet. try to take the money islands by sacrificing transports because Japan will have a bigger navy early in the game. When the time is right move to Dutch New Guinea with your fleet and prepare for the big battle. Sometimes it’s better if Japan attacks you and sometimes it’s better if you attsck them. Hopefully you will have a lot of subs at your disposal. If you win the navy battle then Japan is pretty much toast even if they have India and China. Good luck and let me know how the war goes lol. I am playing anniversary edition on Saturday 😜
Game Play Corcerns
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Played our first game yesterday with some AAexperienced friends of mine. Of course, it took us a while to get used to the new rules and such but we made good progress in understanding how this game functions- mechanicwise anyway.
Some concerns:
For the game to go faster Japan needs to know what there doing. There was a lot of down time because of so many Japanese units to move. This will get better with time though. Good idea to write down J1 moves and possible J2 moves ahead of time once people get used to the game- otherwise the UK/ANZAC/US/China player can bring a book or watch some football or something. :-)
J3 or J4 seems like the best time for Japan to attack. A J1, J2, UK/ANZAC1 or 2 don’t really make much sense- suicide for the player that does. With this being said, it was kind of a bore for the Allies to wait 3-4 turns to do any rolling dice- not very fun, although understandable. Hopefully this will work its way out over time also.
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why waith as japan?
everybody in the lobby wants to waith, nobody sees that a J1 attack does allot more damage than waithing can do? -
The J1 downtime was an issue in the original AAP as well. My wife and I have both bored each other trying to make all those moves while the other does something else. I think we resorted to the writing down of the J1 moves there as well. That way the other person can at least SEE the moves you’re making instead of coming back to the board and maybe not following everything that happened.
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why waith as japan?
everybody in the lobby wants to waith, nobody sees that a J1 attack does allot more damage than waithing can do?Currently, I think it makes sense to wait with Japan. Spend all of your initial time and combat power and annihilate the Chinese while setting up to land a deathblow to Britain when you kick off the war. Even giving Britain all of her money for those initial turns will likely do nothing but provide a higher kill total for Japanese forces later on. The exception MIGHT be if Britain spends all of that money on ground forces and just hunkers down. That is our next strategy to explore but regardless there is no way the Brits can survive a few turns of the Japanese expending maximum effort.
So, the primary reason to wait is to pick apart the Allies piecemeal. Waiting lets you kill the Chinese while setting up to kill the Brits. China should in her death throes just in time to switch focus to the Brits. With any luck the Brits should dying just about the time the US is becoming a threat so that gives Japan time to redeploy to meet that threat. By that time Japan’s econ should be well in hand the game should just be a matter of time.
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Uncle Joe,
I tried beefing up and stacking infantry in India and I still lost it. However!!, it did take it two turns to fall, and although I was extremely lucky, I got numerous Anti aircraft hits, killing 8-10 planes over the two rounds, about a third of the attacking air force. Although that is not average rolls, it did do allot for the allies by taking out so much Japanese airpower that he was not able to plop down on newly built carriers later to defend against the USA.
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China is irrelevant. J1 attack takes away so much $ from the UK / US with territories and bonuses that the US +40 is really a +20 or so net, and who cares about the US being able to buy a carrier extra that isn’t going to be anywhere important for 2 turns?
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