Despite having the board game for a month, I haven’t had anyone to play it against. A friend of mine and I finally made some time to sit down and give it a go. If you want to skip the rest of the post, just read this:
This is the MOST FUN Axis & Allies board game I’ve ever played.
We made a ton of little mistakes during our game. Like mistaking a british tactical bomber for a bomber early on, forgetting to subtract IPCs for convoy raids, and me doing an amphibious assault against borneo, even tho i was UK and already owned it and there was no enemy on it yet (i thought borneo as dutch for some reason), as well as occasionally forgetting that we could move our ships 3, etc. etc.
Still, it was an amazing game.
It kind of went like this:
Japan went all out against China, and resolved to delay attacking the allies as long as it could. The united states build nothing but destroyers and submarines for the first few turn, turning hawaii in a staging point. The UK built nothing but infantry plus a couple artillery, while ANZAC built 1 art + 1 sub every turn.
Japan moved her fleet south and west. The UK took the 3 dutch money islands, as well as borneo :roll:, while anzac managed to take the no-money dutch half-island. Both the UK and ANZAC fleets (minus their transports) + 1 USA destroyer grouped together right above australia.
Japan saw that the UK and ANZAC both got their NO’s, and decided that would not be good, so Japan attacked on the 3rd turn. However he tried to do too many thing with his navy in a single turn. He annihilated the combined ANZAC + UK (+ 1 USA destroyer) fleet. He took out the 2 uk and 1 anzac transports. He made landings in borneo and celebes, the philipines, kwangtung, and i think one other place. He spread himself too thin.
After that turn, I used a UK bomber to kill 1 transport, the ANZAC’s 3 submarines to kill 2 more transports, and the USA used all 3 of her bombers to take out a further 2 transports, as well as some other ships.
In the end, Japan only had 1 transport left, and with a major USA fleet threatening anything in the Japan sea, she could not build any more transports. However, she still played well, using the next 3 turns to kill china down to 2 territories left, as well as using her single transport to take the Australian capitol. He built a major factory in hongkong on the 4th turn, and pumped out 10 tanks, which would have gone on to take the UK capitol if we played longer. The USA for her part, managed to retake the Australian capitol and destroy the remaining japanese fleet. After I retook the Australian capitol, he conceded.
Some things I learned:
- I have no clue how the allies are supposed to “win” by the book. Yes, the allies will probably win if you did not play by the book rules. But the rule book states that Japan needs only 6 victory cities to win. (if you were playing to 7 victory cities, japan would probably not win ever) BUT with just 6 victory cities, Japan only has to take India, New South Wales (australian capitol), Kwangtung, and the Philippines to win. If my friend had not made terrible mistakes in his fleet movement, allowing me to take out all of his transports, he would have won the game. In fact, had he simply built 3 tanks in new south wales, instead of building nothing on the last turn, i would not have been able to take it back, and he would have taken india in 2 more turns…. so i would have lost even tho he lost his transport fleet.
- USA needs to keep 2 full transports and some air within range of New South Wales at ALL TIMES.
- UK is screwed even if she builds only infantry every round. I have no clue what to do with the UK fleet also. If i move it back to india, it might survive but do nothing, If i combine it with ANZAC they both get destroyed at the same time.
- ANZAC has 10ipcs per round, and virtually no army to speak of. Japan was able to take Australia using just 1 infantry and a bunch of planes.
- why the hell doesn’t new south wales have a naval or air base? Why are they 1 territory north of their factory? I’m going to strangle some australian engineers.
- the incredible number of airplanes, plus airbases, make the game board very very dynamic. you can move your assets literally across the entire board, changing the whole face of things. AA Revised and 1942 are pretty static by comparison, I can pretty much see what the game is going to look like in 3 turns from any given turn (or at least I can account for a range of possibilities). But with Pac40, I can not really predict much at all what the board will look like by the next round. Awesome.
- as the USA, I figured I’d build a naval base at midway. From a base in midway, my naval fleet could threaten the Japanese island with my fighters and tacbombers, something i could not do from hawaii, as well as still have the option of moving 3 spaces. This ended up being kind of redundant, because Japan was always too well defended for my fighters to make a difference, and because having the possibility of attacking japan always kind of kept me from moving further away than the carolines. I won’t build that again. I also did attack and take Korea, building a major factory there the next turn. However i did not get to see if it was worth it or not, because he conceded before i could place anything there. The bad part about buying a major factory is that it costs 30 ipcs, which means you won’t be building any fleet that turn. Then stocking it with guys will remove your fleet purchases too. Guess I’d have to play that one out to find out if it is any good or not. I’m guessing it is a good purchase, but I might try just a minor factory next time.
tons of fun,
veqryn
