Super Stack or Stupid Stack?

@JDOW

May I ask how that plays out? Has that meant Italy gets Cairo early while UK pressures Germany?

Except early Red Navy build is a wasted buy. The only reason why I would do it is if Germany went all in on Sea Lion and it failed so your army is equal to theirs and even then the Kreigsmarine is never a serious threat so unless USSR red navy is going for Italy or he is going to send them against Japan, it was a stupid buy.

@hcp:

Zhukov, might I ask that, under such FIC/Hainan naval base case, are there conditions that you would still consider stacking Yunnan using the remaining troops (ANZAC, Russia, Chinese, … and potential the 4 UK mech)?  I wish to see if there are other ways to delay the J5 India fall (by land).

This depends on many factors, including what Japan and USA are doing (is USA going KJF?, did Japan move all their land units south or are they keeping some units up north to face Siberians?, are the Japanese stacked at Human or Kweichow?).  Generally speaking, it’s more important to defend India.  But if you can defend India and still stack Yunnan, it might be worth it.  You don’t need 50/50 odds, in many cases, especially in kjf, it’s still worth stacking Yunnan if Japan attacking Yunnan will result in a net negative tuv exchange.  But note that if you take this risk (inviting a high-risk Japanese attack) you can’t assume these fighters on Yunnan will be available to you later to defend Moscow.

It seems to me that if Japan wants India bad enough it’s usually possible for them to take it on J5, but that comes at a cost if Japan needs to spend resources on naval and air bases and neglect securing the crucial money islands to do so.

@Entek:

AFAIK in league you can’t add any units to China or to France with a bid, and you can only add units to territories or Sea Zones that already have units.

The Chinese bid is perfectly legal in the Global `40 league (unless it just changed).  Strictly speaking it is also legal to bid Chinese units which they cannot buy in the normal course of a game, but that probably will be changed if it hasn’t already.  There has been plenty of discussion on that topic.

Placing a French bid in Paris should also be perfectly legal.  I don’t think doing so would be that helpful since at best maybe you’ve delayed the German attack on S. France or Normandy by one turn, which i don’t see as having a lot of strategic impact on German play.

yes.

I could be undefeatable by anyone currently living on planet Earth and never skip a sacking of France on Germany 1 or failing Germany 1, at least whacking him good and doing it with Italy. (Although, with at least 4 fighters there, I highly doubt I would let Italy even try.)

@oztea:

Dooming moscow is not a gamebreaker in this edition
It opens the possibility of getting france back in the game, if the Allies can push past normandy

At 17 if it controls all but FIC, it is a power that is near Russia’s IPC stockpile when it fell.

This is interesting, trade Russia for France (at some point). The axis strengthen would be way out of range unless most of it was lost in the battle for Moscow (make them pay). The US swoops in to destroy Italy and you now have 3 allies all in western Europe (knocking at Germany’s front door), instead of two coming from the west, and Russia in the east. If Italy does fall the 3 allied powers will have back to back turns (ooch).

In my experience so far a good Russian player playing conservatively can make Moscow close to impossible to take.   The way Russian territories are set up allows them to fall back and shadow any approaching German army until the Russians have reinforced their stack to the point where it can turn around and chase out or destroy the invaders.  There’s no real downside to this vs standing and fighting as you’re only giving up 1-2 ipc provinces as you fall back and you’re continuing to preserve and grow your Russian stack at a rate faster than the Germans can hope to reinforce theirs (assuming, of course, that GB and the US are putting any sort of pressure on the other side of Europe).  I’ve pretty much given up going for it and instead have resolved to find some way to take Leningrad and Stalingrad.  I’ll admit that Germany and Italy, given free reign to attack Russia can eventually bring them down if they focus all their strength on it but how are they doing this while preventing or counter-attacking allied landings?  There’s just not enough IPC’s available for them to effectively do both.