Played 3+ rounds of Axis and Allies Global Sunday. Two players only - I was the Allies. , We’ve preserved the game’s status and will resume. Will try to highlight but understand many of my comments are from the allies perspective.
Germany opened the game by capturing the 3 French territories and Yugoslavia. I liked the capture of Southern France as it offered the Germans an IC and port. This allowed them to establish a presence in the Mediterranean. Japan opened with an seaborne attack on the Russian Far East. Under Alpha +3 rules, an attack on any Russian Territory bordering Mongolia activates that country as a minor ally. Japan opted to keep Mongolia neutral for a while. Another note about Alpha+3 rules: the ability to take AA guns as casualties matters. A British air attack over Western Germany achieved poor results as Germany exchanged its AA guns for British fighters. Of course, London’s extra AA guns gave me additional confidence to leave the home island lightly defended.
Given that Japan appeared committed to an Asian land campaign, Australia set about building its economy with National Objectives and DEI territories. Most US builds were in the Pacific. Britain Pacific built tanks to capture Persia and Iraq and flew some air force over to bolster Egypt. Britain Europe still had most of its navy after G1 so concentrated on preserving Africa until US arrived.
Germany and Italy tag teamed the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean nicely and eventually captured Malta. The British built an IC in Egypt and put enough planes there to hold off the Axis for now. Italians broke south from Ethiopia and are at the door of South Africa’s IC. Will have to do major builds there in GB4 to defend the IC. Germany has naval superiority in the North Atlantic but no transports left. Nevertheless, Britain will be bolstering the home island in addition to South Africa this turn.
Germany has been very good at husbanding lots of planes and will likely wield them to counterattack the Russians who invaded Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and Finland on R4. Russia has been building lots of TAC bombers and Tanks from Turn 1 as I was betting that Russia would be going on the offensive. Usually I prefer fighters but with all the Russian tanks, I thought I could use TACs at a 4 more often than not.
The Axis spent probably north of 30 IPCs on tech development die rolls and has only one breakthrough to show for it. Italy’s fighters attack at a 4. For what it’s worth, I all but begged Mike not to try any tech die rolls. Those IPCS could have been spent on U boats to starve the British.
The Japanese fleet struck on J4 and trashed Anglo-American navies and air scramblers in the PI and Guam. Allies would have been better served concentrating everything in the PI. Expect risky counterattacks from all 3 allied powers on damaged Jap ships in Guam. Given the emerging economic superiority of the Allies, I am willing to engage in attacks with marginal expectations. GB Pacific , Australia, and US have 100 IPCs among them. Japan has about 37 reading the board.
