I was playing the Allies in a game of Revised. I was feeling a bit bored by the usual Kill Germany First strategy, and decided to try something new. Something out of the ordinary. Something unexpected! That something unexpected involved the U.S. putting everything it had into the Pacific. And building battleships! :) By the time I made my move, the U.S. had well over ten battleships, plus a couple carriers and some other naval stuff.
To counter this, Japan built mostly submarines, but wasn’t afraid to throw in the occasional carrier or destroyer. Meanwhile, Germany made good progress on the Soviet front, gradually pushing them back. (Probably the biggest flaw of this U.S. Pacific strategy is that it develops slowly.)
The U.S. moved its fleet out to the Solomon Islands. Instead of attacking, Japan kept its fleet by Tokyo, and added to it in the place units phase. That was a mistake. On my subsequent American turn, I attacked, fought for one round, and retreated. My 10 or 12 battleships each healed after that battle, in contrast to just two battleship heals for the Japanese player. I finished off the Japanese fleet shortly thereafter.
By now I had control over the Pacific, with a fleet possessing a whopping 15 battleships! :) Unfortunately, Moscow had fallen, as one might expect. Meanwhile, Japan was piling a lot of units onto Tokyo to guard against an American invasion. By this point, he’d lost his major non-Tokyo islands, and so was hurting a little income-wise.
The U.S. faced a decision at this point: it could move its fleet toward Tokyo and bombard Japan into submission. (A tempting thought!) Or it could move its fleet into the Indian Ocean, with the intention of killing any Axis units in French Indo-China, India, Persia, Trans-Jordan, or Egypt. I’d owned Africa throughout most of the game, so the latter option would give me the chance to maintain control over it. Due to that and some other reasons, I opted for the latter strategy. My basic plan was to use my factories in the East Indies and Borneo to ship about eight units to South Asia each turn, with a few extra units potentially arriving into Northeast Asia from Alaska.
The U.S. took French Indo-China and India from Japan; which by this point was too weak to put up much of a fight in a mainland land war. Between them, the U.S. and Britain had built up a sizable force in India. I was rather pleased with myself. But then, the Axis player used the massive German force that had taken Moscow to destroy my India force. He won that battle very convincingly, and had nine tanks at the end.
Unfortunately for him, the U.S. counterattacked with an amphibious assault. The U.S.'s 15 battleships destroyed those nine German tanks during the support shot phase; allowing the U.S. land units to take India without being fired on. Meanwhile, American units had slowly pushed northward, capturing territories like Kwangtung, China, Manchuria, and so forth. Units shipped in from Alaska had nibbled away at places like the Soviet Far East and Yakut. Japan had been almost completely driven off the mainland. Britain’s control over Africa gave it the income it needed to pester and distract Germany.
After those 9 German tanks were killed by battleship support shots, the Axis player conceded. He apparently realized that any land territory bordering the Indian Ocean was not a realistic option for him as long as that battleship fleet remained alive. Without the income from those Indian Ocean territories, and with the balance in East Asia gradually shifting in favor of the Americans, it was clear the economic balance of the game favored the Allies. This was the first and only game of Revised I’d won in which I’d lost Moscow but had failed to either take or seriously threaten an Axis capital.
By the end of the game, at least 2/3 of the overall Allied war effort and projection of power was being conducted by the U.S. British harassment of Germany constituted the other third. This was the strongest I’d ever seen the U.S. in any Axis and Allies game. This was a far more memorable and enjoyable win than a standard-issue “Kill Germany first” win would have been.
