Hey wittmann.
yes, the Inf rush of W. Russia and the rest going ukraine is the best move in my opinion (Though i don’t leave a unit in karelia, archangle). You get overwhelming odds in W. Russia and you’ll be in a great position after you take it (Germany, unless they ignore the British navy won’t have enough forces to safely take you on). However, don’t invade Ukraine, go in, do one die roll, then retreat. So far, being aggresive has given me the best results. In one game I even had the mighty motherland come roaring back her R1 attacks were so great. On R4 she blitzed all of her territory back, took W. Russia, Ukraine, and next thing you know a giant horde of ruskies is invading E. Europe and frtiz called it quits. Oh, and Moscow falling on G3 was the norm in the vanilla set up rules.
As tempting as it is the Manchuria attack is to risky with to low of a chance of pay off. It’s a bother for japan if it succedes, but nothing that’s going to slow them down unless you are going a major KJF strat with the UK and US. And if it fails, as it often does, then that’s just that many units you have less for the ostfront. The best with this one is to pull back the Siberian units, and the oppertunity usually presents itself for these units to make a daring counter attack into China on R3-R4. With the only IPC values being in China, it is effective to do air buys for UK’s India IC and simply use the close lines of attack for the Russians to do counter attacks into china when they get the chance.
if you really want to use russia to help against Japan, take EVERY SINGLE UNIT, and just swarm east. It is hilarious to see the look on the axis players face to see Moscow abandoned and the Russians steam rolling the Japanese. and the best part is, Russia is such a sad prize industrial points wise, if it somehow works (probably won’t) Then UK and US can take on Germany assuming they carve up Japans territories and defend their own.