Early Barbarossa

I would really like to here the communities take on this subject. Praises and criticisms. I realize I’m late to the ball, but here I am and I’ excited about getting into this game.
Here is my take.

This board and map are great.

I love the hugeness of it; this thing is just massive.

The geography and how that effects play was very well thought out. Africa is squashed down abut as much as possible and there is more room available in Europe as one could have reasonably made without completely distorting the world map. The point being , the map still looks like the world while still being able to provide effective space for game play- that is a tough balance to achieve.

The idea of making the Himalayas and Sahara impassible was inspired. Of course they are impassible to large armies. If the Axis want to do damage to the British Empire in Sub Saharan Africa, they need to either turn the corner at Alexandria or win the Atlantic or Indian Oceans.

The neutral spaces are very well done. More on that when I review the Neutral Countries.

But the main thing the map gets right is what it’s supposed to get right, it provides the right geometry to promote good game play. Their are major regions and regions within those regions and each set has its own keys to being manipulated for offense and defense. That makes for interesting game play.

Even better, I haven’t found any rinky dink ways of manipulating the geography in ways that don’t feel true to the intent of the game/WW2. The space in the Pacific is an obstacle. The Space of Russia is an obstacle. As they both should be. The benefit from gaining Scandinavia is big, but its not a game changer. The Far East or the Black Sea can’t be used as some unanticipated flanking move. One doesn’t want to be tied down to replaying WW2 as accurately as possible, but one doesn’t want to completely break with reality either.

Every game I play I learn new things about this board. I’ve played 4 intensive games with myself and am still feel like I am a long long ways from mastering the geography of this board. That is a good thing.

Certainly there are things I could quibble about.
The names for the Chinese Provinces could be better. In that , as someone who lives in China, I would prefer the proper current Pinyin names for them, A westerner defiantly made this game. But I understand they are trying to keep with the Pre 1949 feel for the region and using the terms the west used back then; so ok.

Having Kazakistan so far south is a bit weird.

There are times where I wish certain spaces were larger; I’m looking at you Bessarabia and SZ110. But most of my spatial problems stem from my style of game play which is still rooted in monolithic stacks of enormous proportions which worked well in the Axis and Allies of old.

Which brings me to my biggest opinion about this board. This board is infinitely superior to the previous incarnations of Axis and Allies.

This is a very good and interesting game and it starts with the map.

What are your thoughts?

@Herr:

@creeping-deth87:

chances are you’re going to lose the battleship you took to the channel in the opening attacks, which leaves your Baltic fleet pretty thin

You can also use the battleship for the SZ 111 attack and retreat it after one round. The British are then typically left with a damaged battleship that can’t escape because SZ 111 has no harbor.

That is usually where I send the German battleship, SZ 111. My attack on the Channel is all planes and maybe a couple of subs. Although, it has backfired on me when the fighter in Scotland doesn’t scramble and I get very good hits as Germany and end up sinking all the UK ships. Then my poor battleship is stuck all alone in SZ 111.
A good part of that scenario is it gives UK another target, but they have to commit planes to sink it (usually at least 2). That’s less UK planes bothering me somewhere else.

I was just scrolling through some archives - I know this thread is 2 years old, but BluGerman maybe you’ll get a notice and it might help in case you feel like reliving an old dream.

This is the best plan for a G2 Novgorod crush I can think of, but it works only if the opportunity exists:
G1
  Buy a carrier and 2 transports.

Kill all the Royal Navy with subs and planes
      I like to strafe 111 with 1 sub, 1 bat, 1 sbom, 1 pair tbom + fig.  The bat automatically repairs next round.
      Be sure to use 2 subs to kill his des/trans in 106 to keep a sea lion pressure up.
  Take Normandy with 1 inf, 1 art, 1 arm
  Take France with all remaining available land units
  Strafe Yugo with 1 pair of planes, 0 arm, retreating to Romania.

Activate Bulgaria with 1 arm
  Activate Finland with 1 inf
  1 pair of planes on your carrier, 1 on Norway, 1 on Poland, and the rest on West Germany.
  Move your arm from Hungary to West Germany.
  Leave your arm in Poland there.
  Move 1 art from Germany to West Germany.
  Move the rest of Germany’s land troops to Poland and Hungary.

You should now have 4 inf, 1 art, 1 arm in West Germany ready to transport to either Novgorod (via 127), Scotland, Gibraltar/Morocco, or even Nenetsia if you’re feeling saucy, depending on the situation.  The rest depends on Russia’s moves.  An attack on Novgorod only works if he moves all of his land troops, including his AAguns, down to Baltic or Belarus in order to make a stand at East Poland, which he probably won’t do after you’ve strafed Yugo.  G2 Novgorod is only feasible if he has no more than 8 inf/art, 2 fig, 1 tbomb there.  You could probably still do it with 9 inf/art, but the odds start declining drastically.  If, however, he’s left Baltic States wide open, then you get to throw another tank in the mix.  Move your whole fleet up so you can bombard with your bat and cru.  Attack with 2 sbombers and 2 pairs of fig/tbomb (from Poland and Norway).  Your planes already on your carrier should move into 127 to prevent him from scrambling, and then land in Finland making room on your carrier for your planes from Norway.  Press into Eastern Poland/Baltic States.  Italy btw should have been building/moving inf and AAguns over to Romania to protect your southern flank.

It’s a devastating move because every inf counts for Russia on a G2, and you’ve just killed 8/9 plus all his planes.  (If he didn’t put his planes up there, then you haven’t lost any planes in the attack either, and you might even have an extra ground unit.)  Plus he’ll need to use at least 2 probably 3 more troops to retake it in order to prevent you from building 3 more tanks.  In which case your 5 inf from Karelia plus planes can retake it in time to build 3 tbombers.  You’d almost certainly take Moscow turn 5.

However, this move is easily preventable by leaving your AAguns there on the first round.  It also prevents you from leaving a fig on Rome, exposing you to a more crippling Taranto.  (You might be able to pull a fig from 110, but if you did that, as England I would find it worthwhile to scramble.)  Also, assuming Russia takes Novgorod back, or if you fail to take it, your fleet will be stranded there for at least 1 turn, lest it expose itself to the RAF without the shelter of West Germany’s aircover.  A successful G2 Novgorod is well worth these costs, but unfortunately you have to take the risk first without any assurance there’ll be a payoff - and there’ll probably won’t be against a seasoned player.  It’s more of a gimmick move - very fun if you can pull it off.

P.S.  I mentioned earlier you should take Normandy.  Usually I’m all for throwing everything into France.  But if G2 Novgorod doesn’t pan out, you’re going to want to use your planes to attack the rest of the British fleet, which might be amassed in 109 under cover of up to 6 scrambling fighters and might be as large as 1 des/2 cru/1 damaged bat, which you don’t want repaired.  Normally, you’d be able to land everything in Brussels, but if you’ve got aircraft in Poland and Norway, you won’t have enough to protect Brussels from a UK1 attack, not even with 3AA guns.  Which is why taking Normandy is crucial.

The US would usually not care if japan goes directly for north america since the US can drop a large load of units in west US and/or central.  Japan losing the DEI is easily worth the allies losing alaska n western canada.

Holland airbase may sometimes be built on round 3 to deter an American airstrike on the German transport fleet after sealion.  If you are seriously committed to sealion on the very first turn no matter what, then building the airbase G1 it is a better deal than a carrier because you will go into G3 with a battleship instead of a carrier.  Normandy naval base will repair it for you so 2 hits to the battleship saves 2 planes just like the carrier, but the BB also attacks @4 and the base costs $1 less.  The best part is they might take the bait and attack it and lose planes, which is good for Germany in any sealion scenario.  More likely your extreme level of commitment to sealion should lead the allies to play conservatively with their air forces, so there will be no attack on your battleship, no Taranto attack, and USA may build in preparation for sealion rather than focus on Pacific defense.  The big downside to it is you are basically locked into sealion because if you don’t go through with it, you will have to tie up an awful lot of resources defending it for minimal benefit.

@soulfein:

-middle east fac(s)
-convoy raiding sz97 till ita turns into china in 41 v3
-trying to hold india to fly air to moscow and/or helping egy after moscow s fallen
-looking to normandy drops only after japs caged n usa can stack some transports in sz91

Bam…that’s it.  Most games are going that direction.  Rome and Cairo are the kickbacks before Moscow goes down.  From there it gets even- very long slow grind.

The battle is won in the Med/Africa/MidEast region period.  It gets very tactical and dicey here, which is why I think the game is even, Allied advantaged as the game gets longer, past 10 rounds.

FM7 - to answer your question - Italy opens Barbarossa on I3, and Germany follows on G4.

To both FM7 and Spend - too much for my poor brain to handle tonight - I like the discussions - it gets molecules moving. I’ll try to take it all in and answer within the next couple days -

@Gargantua:

Why Romania?  Why not just spend the 30 on extra ground units?  Or make up for it by buying extra armor in later rounds?

Like the concept though… the invincible army :D

building the forward factory does a couple of things. One it allows for Germany to build those cheap infantry and artillery combos that give maximum offense and defense. It also allows you to push into the south very easily once Leningrad has been secured. Lastly it allows for (against the less experienced British generals) a false sense of security for the British, if they go heavy in Africa or Canada and do not base their strategy on heavily defending London for the first 1-2 turns (one being the most important) then you can take London from them with ease and lose no steam against the Soviets. This however leads to a whole other strategy that I use against such an unsuspecting UK player.