The most effective russian players I’ve encountered are the ones that are able to build up a force that is able to threaten a counter on a german stack. If a good german player wants to go for Moscow they are able to get it, however I’ve seen plenty games where the UK/USA are putting enough pressure on the German player for him to stop just in front of Moscow. If the Russian player only has bought inf at this point there is not much of a threat for the German player to keep russia contained and slowly kill it economically. However if there is a stack of paired inf/art the pushback power is a lot bigger and thus Germany can be challenged and Russia may be able to break the German wall.
Russia
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Ah, but you forget about a tanks advantage of mobility. Many people underestemate the ability to be able to attack so many different places with a tank. They are perfect for finding week points in your enemies defences and making them pay for these weeknesses.
My enemys are very skilled and don’t offer many weaknesses to exploit.
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Game is won or lost at Moscow, the rest doesn’t matter so much. Hell I might even start pulling some infs from siberia back (you get the nuetrals if japan attacks).
The western front is relatively easy for germany to take back or reinforce… step 1 for uk would be to knock out norway/finland and get guys into russia. America can focus on italy (UK just does the initial strike on the italian fleet). UK should begin to handle the north while you wrestle the mouth of the crocodile. USA punches the belly.
i like to mix infantry and artillery. You don’t want to get tricked and watch germany blitz down to india… that would be super hilarious to see and be so out of position for all the powers other than russia to take back.
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My two cents says - if Germany attacks G1, then builds armor repeatedly, they’ll see a shortage of infantry soon enough. Their entire western flank, as said by others, will be eroded quickly. Killing tanks with infantry/artillery and a couple planes will be a nice laugh.
Don’t forget the power of the strafe to whittle down your opponent’s fodder, then fall back into reinforced positions.
As far as infantry vs. aircraft, oh yes. Most of my early games saw me buy an aircraft for the first three rounds - I like 4 fighters/2 tacs with Russia - but I’ve abandoned that over my past 3-4 games in favor of the all meat and potatoes purchase… land units only. After all, this isn’t a trade war we’re interested in, but a game of taking and holding key positions. The days of trade wars are over, imo. They were left behind in Anniversary. Aircraft can’t take a piece of land… all it can do is kill and retreat. I now prefer to set up overlapping defensive structures with a slowly growing mobile reserve, to be able to threaten multiple places.
Russia has to learn that they don’t have to fight for every IPC. Some are ok to let go. A trade war will result in a gradual erosion of Russian land units, and death.