Early Barbarossa

@kyle47

If you remember, I said how I was going to play a game where the Allies were the Hard AI and the Japanese and the Italians were the Fast AI. Due to the Fast AI’s incompetence (especially regarding Japan, what is in my opinion the most difficult nation to play), I had to carry the whole Axis as Germany by myself, and the first time I tried I failed.

Using your strategy, I was able to achieve great success.

Everything went as planned. I was able to continuously push at the Soviets starting from turn 2, and even though the Soviets captured Finland and Norway, they lost 15 units available to defend Moscow (they were hanging around Scandinavia), and in the end just increased the income I would take when sacking Moscow.

I had two army groups, Army Group North and Army Group Center. A smaller formation in the south was tasked with securing the southern flank, protecting Romania and pushing forward once the Soviets retreated from those areas.

Army Group North moved into the Baltic States, and Army Group Center moved into Eastern Poland at the opening of Barbarossa.

Calculating my troops could sustain it (the huge Soviet stack in Leningrad moved northward to attack Finland as previously mentioned), Army Group North moved into Belarus and Army Group Center into Western Ukraine on turn 3, and consolidated into Bryansk on turn 4.

The Soviets scraped together as many units as they could into Moscow but they couldn’t stop my army (now reinforced with those 10 tanks I bought on turn 2 along with all the tank forces I had at the start of the game that wer still alive), and I sacked Moscow, all my tanks still intact, on turn 5.

This was critical for an Axis win, because, as expected, Japan and Italy were completely ineffective (Japan never got close to fully capturing China, not even by turn 10), and the siphoning of Western Allied resources to deal with Germany allowed Japan to stay in the game as a thorn in the Allies’ side until the end.

The Allies put up a fierce response, ferociously fighting in the Middle East and in the landings against Europe, but were eventually broken by German armies.

Shout out to Italy, who, while totally useless in Africa, did a good job helping me protect Western Europe.

The remainder of the game after the fall of Moscow for Germany consisted of two main operations:

Mopping up operations in the remaining Soviet territories and pushing down southward into the Middle East to get Egypt and the final victory city and retaking Scandinavia from a weak Soviet army.

Breaking up the Allied attacks on Western Europe.

A huge boon came when the Allies declared war on the strict neutrals, and attacks on them tied up 10-20 units.

The Japanese just did whatever at this point, it didn’t really matter.

Long story short, Egypt was captured. I was actually ready to conduct a Sealion for next turn in case Egypt didn’t fall.

The game file (sorry it’s 2.6 prerelease, you’ll have to download it):

2023-9-24-World-War-II-Global-1940-2nd-Edition.tsvg

So yeah, great G2 strategy. I might adopt this as my default move if I’m doing a J1.

You may see equal success with either plan, such is the weakness of Russia against Germany.   However, since you can smash them early or later, you should do it early before they have any chance to consolidate and grow–you have no way to reach threshold income (60+) without Russian territory, and if you take it, you take it away from them and for yourself, a double whammy.    Once you have control of 2 of his factories you are flooding tanks into this front, that moment should be as early as possible rather than building your own fleets or factories in order to do it later.

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.

@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 -

Yes the airbase is neccesary because this allows the jap planes to fly the seven spaces needed to land in Leningrad and the space below it which I cant remember the name. I think suiyuyan is perfect as its a good distance back from the russian mec forces moving from moscow but it also still allows planes from there good movement down to the burma china boarder but back up towards the far east. I was trying to do it without an airbase originaly but it was important and if you land in leningrad you can fly back all the way to suiyuyan and just keep on doing bombing runs until he has to many interceptors.This coupled with the german attack worked well. I think round 2 is early enough but I might try the same thing but on round 1 and take out those ruskies on the front before they have a chance to retreat. I dont know though. this is what i did in the game I m playig now.R1 France, Finland, bulgaria, R2 Yugo, Greece, Russia(strategic Bomb as well). R6 in Moscow need starlingrad got 27 dollars off the ruskies.My opponent is doing some crazy stuff so will see what happens. :mrgreen: