Siberian Suicide

[Fortress]

I don’t mind giving up one side of the board to go for the win on the other. However, if it’s blatantly obvious that that’s what you’re doing, then the US simply spends 100% of its income on the other board. That makes for a tough win.

The obstacle in a Europe win isn’t Moscow so much (and that’s really what you’re trying to work around by killing 18I and 2 AA). It’s that by the time Germany gets to and takes (and holds) Moscow and Stalingrad, they had better either already have Cairo or a solid Atlantic Wall or both. But neutering Japan means mechs and tanks driving west out of India, and the US putting the equivalent of Germany’s entire income into the Atlantic every turn.

The toughest go, as the Allies, I’ve had of it in Europe is when Japan is making 60+ and the US has to make sure the war isn’t lost in Sydney/Honolulu. If Japan starts throwing away pieces and position early in the game, and doesn’t get the IPC bump because of it, it makes life a lot simpler for the Allies.

[Guest]

I guess you guys are right.  Too expensive.  Thanks.

[Spendo02]

If you want to win in Europe as the Axis AND involve Japan then Japan has to spend 3 turns posturing for a J4 India Crush, but instead of landing in India skip forward to Iraq.  Japan landing multiple TT in Iraq, followed by a move of Japanese fleet into the Med will help secure Egypt WAY earlier than anticipated WITH a sizeable fleet locking the Allies out of the Med.

This basically is the only reasonable contribution of units Japan can make to a European win for the Axis.

All other avenues require Japan to win the pacific or keep the US splitting resources between two theaters in order to allow Germany/Italy to secure the European theater.  The cost/benefit of Japan marching on Russia really doesn’t change much unless you suicide all your aircraft to soften Moscow which requires an AB in China and landing on a German stack past Moscow and even then the units you throw away in order to do so far exceeds the loss of the Russians for doing it.

Bottom line, Japan either wins the Pacific on its own, keeps the US sending IPC into the Pacific, or plays for Egypt and locks the Allies out of the Med which STILL requires Germany to be able to take Moscow on their own.

[knp7765]

@Omega1759:

On Pacific, a combination of fighters / infantry on Japan is much cheaper defense than what the US needs to cause a lethal threat. A combination of planes / subs as a counterattack is much cheaper than defending against it. Japan can use land based planes to supplement their counterattacks. The US needs to hold zones / land which makes things a lot more difficult and costly.

You are SO right there. There have been a few times when I play Japan that I simply hold out against a US invasion. While the US may have trashed my fleet and is occupying SZ 6, he has to build a decent invasion force, which like you said has to be transports + infantry + artillery @ 14 IPCs per set. The US will be staging all this on Hawaii. He will bring up 3 more transports with 3 inf and 3 art then next turn I simply plop down another 6-8 infantry and stymie his invasion plan. His invasion fleet gets larger and larger while my infantry stack also keeps growing. Meanwhile, Germany is beating up Russia and closing on Moscow.

[Eqqman]

If the Japanese are forfeiting control of SZ6, how are you getting the income to keep plopping down these additional infantry?  Presumably you’ve lost all your non-Chinese income to Convoy attacks.

[ch0senfktard]

@knp7765:

You are SO right there. There have been a few times when I play Japan that I simply hold out against a US invasion. While the US may have trashed my fleet and is occupying SZ 6, he has to build a decent invasion force, which like you said has to be transports + infantry + artillery @ 14 IPCs per set. The US will be staging all this on Hawaii. He will bring up 3 more transports with 3 inf and 3 art then next turn I simply plop down another 6-8 infantry and stymie his invasion plan. His invasion fleet gets larger and larger while my infantry stack also keeps growing. Meanwhile, Germany is beating up Russia and closing on Moscow.

@Eqqman:

If the Japanese are forfeiting control of SZ6, how are you getting the income to keep plopping down these additional infantry?  Presumably you’ve lost all your non-Chinese income to Convoy attacks.

My thoughts as well.
If the IJN has been destroyed, then ANZAC and/or USA should be taking advantage by stationing submarines in convoy zones. The Japanese income would soon then become nothing, no need to attempt to stage an invasion.

[Spendo02]

@ch0senfktard:

@knp7765:

You are SO right there. There have been a few times when I play Japan that I simply hold out against a US invasion. While the US may have trashed my fleet and is occupying SZ 6, he has to build a decent invasion force, which like you said has to be transports + infantry + artillery @ 14 IPCs per set. The US will be staging all this on Hawaii. He will bring up 3 more transports with 3 inf and 3 art then next turn I simply plop down another 6-8 infantry and stymie his invasion plan. His invasion fleet gets larger and larger while my infantry stack also keeps growing. Meanwhile, Germany is beating up Russia and closing on Moscow.

@Eqqman:

If the Japanese are forfeiting control of SZ6, how are you getting the income to keep plopping down these additional infantry?  Presumably you’ve lost all your non-Chinese income to Convoy attacks.

My thoughts as well.
If the IJN has been destroyed, then ANZAC and/or USA should be taking advantage by stationing submarines in convoy zones. The Japanese income would soon then become nothing, no need to attempt to stage an invasion.

I’ve made this point before:  For the US it is economically more viable to just convoy all the Japanese gains than to invest in taking the land gains from them.  There comes a point where Japan’s gains become convoyed out and it cannot do anything to stop those convoys.  It starts with US subs and bombers to chase the Japanese fleet away from its industrial centers, and from that point its just a game of attrition where Japan has to spend 8 IPC on a DD vs the US 6 IPC on a SS to stop the convoy bleeding.

You can basically approach Japan like you do Italy and India - they are entirely convoy-able once you address their fleet - regardless of the cost (think UK1 sinking the Italian BB at the cost of their ships in the med).

[Cow]

Well when Japan puts units in siberia… it chases the russian units back… that is it… I don’t know what you expect.

@zhukov. You deal with china/ukpac/anzac later. It is a J3 dow, it sets japan back a round… but you dump guys from japan on J2 and J3 as well.

[Omega1759]

@Eqqman:

If the Japanese are forfeiting control of SZ6, how are you getting the income to keep plopping down these additional infantry?  Presumably you’ve lost all your non-Chinese income to Convoy attacks.

You need to position your Japanese fleet / airforce to allow for a counter strike at zone 6 that would destroy what is there. It is much harder to defend zone 6 directly. Since you don’t leave your fleet there, the US will be tempted to do an amphibious assault, which can be easily dealt with ground buys.

[Spendo02]

@Omega1759:

@Eqqman:

If the Japanese are forfeiting control of SZ6, how are you getting the income to keep plopping down these additional infantry?  Presumably you’ve lost all your non-Chinese income to Convoy attacks.

You need to position your Japanese fleet / airforce to allow for a counter strike at zone 6 that would destroy what is there. It is much harder to defend zone 6 directly. Since you don’t leave your fleet there, the US will be tempted to do an amphibious assault, which can be easily dealt with ground buys.

Flip is a great location for such a strategy and also allows you to keep Anzac and UK from thinking they can take DEI anymore.

[Omega1759]

@Spendo02:

@Omega1759:

@Eqqman:

If the Japanese are forfeiting control of SZ6, how are you getting the income to keep plopping down these additional infantry?  Presumably you’ve lost all your non-Chinese income to Convoy attacks.

You need to position your Japanese fleet / airforce to allow for a counter strike at zone 6 that would destroy what is there. It is much harder to defend zone 6 directly. Since you don’t leave your fleet there, the US will be tempted to do an amphibious assault, which can be easily dealt with ground buys.

Flip is a great location for such a strategy and also allows you to keep Anzac and UK from thinking they can take DEI anymore.

Or Hong Kong, or zone 36 with a naval base. Becomes more difficult if the US takes the Carolinas…

It’s all about position in this game.

[cenator01]

As far as I can see, following comments:

• If Japan attacks the stack of Russians, they will quite loose airforce and ground forces, making it much more difficult to keep up the fighting with India, ANZAC and the US.
• If Japan does not declare war on the western allies, UK and ANZAC will ALWAYS declare war on turn 2 (even for just picking up their 3 National objectives). There is Never ever a reason for UK/ANZAC to not declare war on turn 2. The US will declare war on turn 3 anyway, and if not attacked by Japan, collect more income due to the Phillipines and keeping quite some more fleet and airforce.
• By focusing on Russia for 2 turns, Japan already surrenders. The US focusing the first 2 turns in building up and consolidating their pacific fleet and India&Anzac taking the mony Islands, Japan won’t get going, but will be contained very quickly.
• A contained Japan within the first 4 turns means, the European Axis have NO chance of winning, except for perfect dice.

[knp7765]

@Eqqman:

If the Japanese are forfeiting control of SZ6, how are you getting the income to keep plopping down these additional infantry?  Presumably you’ve lost all your non-Chinese income to Convoy attacks.

Well, this has happened before when Japan actually did pretty well on the mainland. All of China was captured and even Calcutta. However, Japan did lose the DEI and it’s fleet due to the US Navy. So I had a moderate force on the mainland and while I was getting convoy raided, I still had enough money to buy troops for Japan itself.
I would have 2 or 3 fighters on Japan as well, but didn’t want to waste them trying to attack US warships. Also, I simply couldn’t afford to build any warships of my own or more aircraft, so I just couldn’t get the US fleet out of SZ 6.
By the way, I would also point out that this was an advantage I took over our US player’s playing style. He kept trying to take Japan out when he should have sent those transports down to liberate India. ANZAC didn’t have enough troops to do that but the US could have easily done so.  As a result, I managed to make just enough money to keep Japan stocked in infantry and prevent an invasion of my capital while having just enough of a force guarding India to keep the ANZACs away.

[Cow]

As far as I can see, following comments:

• If Japan attacks the stack of Russians, they will quite loose airforce and ground forces, making it much more difficult to keep up the fighting with India, ANZAC and the US.
• If Japan does not declare war on the western allies, UK and ANZAC will ALWAYS declare war on turn 2 (even for just picking up their 3 National objectives). There is Never ever a reason for UK/ANZAC to not declare war on turn 2. The US will declare war on turn 3 anyway, and if not attacked by Japan, collect more income due to the Phillipines and keeping quite some more fleet and airforce.
• By focusing on Russia for 2 turns, Japan already surrenders. The US focusing the first 2 turns in building up and consolidating their pacific fleet and India&Anzac taking the mony Islands, Japan won’t get going, but will be contained very quickly.
• A contained Japan within the first 4 turns means, the European Axis have NO chance of winning, except for perfect dice.

No.

Killing siberian stuff is easy. Usually you get 5 siberian territories chasing them back… then it turns into a mexican standoff.

You get the dutch islands and all the usual stuff. It is just a round later. I don’t know what you guys are doing.

[Guest]

OK I think I might just have something viable for dealing with those stupid Siberians.  With this one the idea is to use threat of overwhelming force to coerce the Bolsheviks into turtling while you drive the SS panzer army up North and then block the enemy horde at Novosibersk.  I’m gonna call this one the Novosiberia Blitz.

G1 build 6 mech, 1 armor.  Take France and Yugo, lose artillery before mechs in France.  Move 3 tanks and every unit in range to Poland, including the 2 infantry from Denmark with the transport.
R1 Siberians in Buryatia
J1 Japanese take Chahar and all units from Manchuria and Korea go into Amur

G2 build 10 tanks in Germany, invade Baltic States and Karelia, mobile units from France head East. Planes in Poland
R2 Novgorod forces run screaming to Archangel. Siberians in Yakut
J2 take Suiyuyan. Amur force chasing the Siberians West

G3 All from Baltic states and Karelia to Novgorod (total is something like 25inf, 3 art, 4 armor, 6 mech, 3 AA).  Second panzer army goes to Baltic states (10 new tanks plus up to 6 tanks and 4 mechs from Paris, plus air units).
R3 Russians evacuate Archangel to Smolensk and/or Vologda. Siberians in Yenisey
J3 Land a million airplanes in Suiyuyan and build airbase

G4 All to Archangel; planes in Novgorod.
R4 Japan can airstrike either Vologda or Smolensk and land in Archangel, thus allowing the Germans to blitz into Moscow.  If Soviet forces are split to defend both, then the Germans can kill either force easily, perhaps both of them.  Only good option is to pull back in to Moscow.  Siberians in Timguska.
J4 Clear anything in Vologda, if there is anything, but there probably wont be anything.

G5 tanks/mechs blitz to Novosibersk; pull inf/art back to Novgorod
R5 attack SS panzer army with infantry @1?  It’s 20 tanks plus some 6-10 mechs
J5 If Siberians do not attack Germans, kill them with Amur force and air.

G6 Stalingrad and Caucasus

Note how at any point in this little parade the Russians could attack the Germans, but losses would be so terrible that all they really CAN do is pull back.  If they stand in the way they will be crushed by this big tank force with air support and loads of infantry/mechs.

[Omega1759]

@Vance:

OK I think I might just have something viable for dealing with those stupid Siberians.  With this one the idea is to use threat of overwhelming force to coerce the Bolsheviks into turtling while you drive the SS panzer army up North and then block the enemy horde at Novosibersk.  I’m gonna call this one the Novosiberia Blitz.

G1 build 6 mech, 1 armor.  Take France and Yugo, lose artillery before mechs in France.  Move 3 tanks and every unit in range to Poland, including the 2 infantry from Denmark with the transport.
R1 Siberians in Buryatia
J1 Japanese take Chahar and all units from Manchuria and Korea go into Amur

G2 build 10 tanks in Germany, invade Baltic States and Karelia, mobile units from France head East. Planes in Poland
R2 Novgorod forces run screaming to Archangel. Siberians in Yakut
J2 take Suiyuyan. Amur force chasing the Siberians West

G3 All from Baltic states and Karelia to Novgorod.  Second panzer/mech army goes to Baltic states with air units.
R3 Russians evacuate Archangel to Smolensk and/or Vologda. Siberians in Yenisey
J3 Land a million airplanes in Suiyuyan and build airbase

G4 All to Archangel; planes in Novgorod.
R4 Japan can airstrike either Vologda or Smolensk and land in Archangel, thus allowing the Germans to blitz into Moscow.  If Soviet forces are split to defend both, then the Germans can kill either force easily, perhaps both of them.  Only good option is to pull back in to Moscow.  Siberians in Timguska.
J4 Clear anything in Vologda, if there is anything, but there probably wont be anything.

G5 tanks/mechs blitz to Novosibersk; pull inf/art back to Novgorod
R5 attack SS panzer army with infantry @1?  It’s 20 tanks plus some 7-11 mechs
J5 If Siberians do not attack Germans, kill them with Amur force and air.

G6 Stalingrad and Caucasus

Note how at any point in this little parade the Russians could attack the Germans, but losses would be so terrible that all they really CAN do is pull back.  If they stand in the way they will be crushed by this big tank force with air support and loads of infantry/mechs.

I have not done all the Math, but it looks like if the Russians buy 1 Tac + some artillery and they will crush your Mech forces easily with a counterattack.