Operation Barbarossa Prevention 2nd Edition

Tanks for Russia!

Last game I played with the Allies, my strategy with Russia was to buy six tanks a turn ( 3 to Novgorod, 3 to Ukraine) as well as pulling every inf, mech arty, tanks in Belarus or Western Ukraine to strike back at a German push in East Poland. By doing this, I hoped to delay Barbarossa until G4, thus buying time for the Siberian troops to get to Moscow (First 6 reinforcement R6).

At first, it worked perfectly. My opponent could not start invading Russia without fear of being killed by my counterstrike. He launched a heavy Barb G4. I stricked him with everything I had and got really good dices but stayed in the fight for too long, taking Eastern Poland with 8 tanks who got smashed by Luftwaffe/Wehrmacht attacks G5. My initial idea was to not take the territory and retreat to Western Ukraine under Inf cover but I’ve been to greedy. My opponent was at Moscow’s gates by G7 and I attacked him again, this time with bad dices, and lost too many men so he got my capital G8 (still won the game by dominating the Pacific and preventing Germany from taking Cairo). My Siberian troops doesn’t made it back also because I choose wrongly to annoy Japan with them.

I think that my initial idea of buying tanks for Russia, start retreating R4 (mixed with full Inf/Art buys in Moscow) and catch with the Siberians R6 is a good one. Had I not been so aggressive, it would have worked better for Russia. What do you think of this strategy?

While I admire Russia’s aggressiveness, I am not sure buying 6 tanks per turn is viable against an experienced Germany.

First off, Germany can build more tanks than you can. 
Second, Germany shouldn’t worry about Russia’s counterattack- in fact they should set up a ‘counter-counter’ because if Russia wins the counter, she will have a small stack of tanks that are vulnerable to German reinforcements and German Air.  Once Russia’s tank stack is gone- its army is broken. (barring amazing dice).

That’s what happened. I got counter/countered because I stayed in the fight for too long in Eastern Poland instead of retreating my troops to Western Ukraine. I think that my opponent is an experienced one but that he spent too much IPC in my opinion in the first German turns to counter UK Europe with Bombers and Subs buys (altough the planes helped a lot to take Moskow).

My last attack on Briansk shouldn’t have been made. He had not enough ground troops to take Moskow the following turn. I liked a lot to be aggressive with the Red Army but that last attack wasn’t necessary at all. A power trip of mine I think. :evil:

Tanks buys can be great also to strike Germany hard if they try Sealion (successful or not).

@Sire:

…and catch with the Siberians R6 is a good one.

Sorry guys. Should have posted all these posts on the A&A Global 1940.

This is going off the assumption that Germany buys all navy first turn. Germany should buy 7 arty 12 infantry with her 66 dollars second turn and 10 arty 1 mech 1 tank turn 2. turn 3 you’ll have 52 so that is 13 mech. turn 4 will be 11 mech 1 tank. You are setting yourself up for a turn 7 take of Moscow, and a turn 4 DOW on Russia, so now you buy all planes on turn 5. you will have 50 so you can buy either 5 fighters, or 4 bombers. Turn 6 you will have Ukraine so you can buy 3 tanks there. Depending on what Russia did, you should have taken lenningrad turn 5 and now you should have 60 to spend. So after 3 tanks you will have 42 left. That is 3 bombers and 2 infantry. Moscow should now be a 100% chance to take. Try it out and see if it works for you.

BTW. my strategy is to have all my infantry and arty to be outside the gates of moscow on turn 6. Everything that was purchased from turn 2-6 (minus the 2 infantry) will be able to hit Moscow on turn 7. He literally has no way to defend against this. The Europe board, IMO, isn’t won taking Moscow, but taking Egypt. So GL there! :)

@theROCmonster:

This is going off the assumption that Germany buys all navy first turn. Germany should buy 7 arty 12 infantry with her 66 dollars second turn and 10 arty 1 mech 1 tank turn 2. turn 3 you’ll have 52 so that is 13 mech. turn 4 will be 11 mech 1 tank. You are setting yourself up for a turn 7 take of Moscow, and a turn 4 DOW on Russia, so now you buy all planes on turn 5. you will have 50 so you can buy either 5 fighters, or 4 bombers. Turn 6 you will have Ukraine so you can buy 3 tanks there. Depending on what Russia did, you should have taken lenningrad turn 5 and now you should have 60 to spend. So after 3 tanks you will have 42 left. That is 3 bombers and 2 infantry. Moscow should now be a 100% chance to take. Try it out and see if it works for you.

BTW. my strategy is to have all my infantry and arty to be outside the gates of moscow on turn 6. Everything that was purchased from turn 2-6 (minus the 2 infantry) will be able to hit Moscow on turn 7. He literally has no way to defend against this. The Europe board, IMO, isn’t won taking Moscow, but taking Egypt. So GL there! :)

It looks like you won’t be able to hit Moscow until turn 8 with those builds.  The 10 arty  you build on turn 3 will not reach Bryanks until turn 7, as well as part of your turn 1 build which has to start in West Germany.

@manstein39:

@theROCmonster:

This is going off the assumption that Germany buys all navy first turn. Germany should buy 7 arty 12 infantry with her 66 dollars second turn and 10 arty 1 mech 1 tank turn 2. turn 3 you’ll have 52 so that is 13 mech. turn 4 will be 11 mech 1 tank. You are setting yourself up for a turn 7 take of Moscow, and a turn 4 DOW on Russia, so now you buy all planes on turn 5. you will have 50 so you can buy either 5 fighters, or 4 bombers. Turn 6 you will have Ukraine so you can buy 3 tanks there. Depending on what Russia did, you should have taken lenningrad turn 5 and now you should have 60 to spend. So after 3 tanks you will have 42 left. That is 3 bombers and 2 infantry. Moscow should now be a 100% chance to take. Try it out and see if it works for you.

BTW. my strategy is to have all my infantry and arty to be outside the gates of moscow on turn 6. Everything that was purchased from turn 2-6 (minus the 2 infantry) will be able to hit Moscow on turn 7. He literally has no way to defend against this. The Europe board, IMO, isn’t won taking Moscow, but taking Egypt. So GL there! :)

It looks like you won’t be able to hit Moscow until turn 8 with those builds.  The 10 arty  you build on turn 3 will not reach Bryanks until turn 7, as well as part of your turn 1 build which has to start in West Germany.

He bought those artys on turn 2 - they will be in front of Moscow by turn 6 on my count.

Correct, the arty buy was on T2.

@Eggman:

What happens next is entirely dependent on the rest of the Allied strategy.  By round 6 USA/UK should have done something that will warrant Axis attention.
[…]

Hey eggman,

I read you post and I my reply might sound offending to you, sorry about that in advance. I honestly have to say that I have serious doubts if your advice would work.
have you ever tried these strategies in real games? Some of them sound of bit theoretical to me.

If the Axis took Morocco and the Allies took it back, awesome!  Build an Air Base in Morocco as well and you can have up to 6 Fighters scrambling on defense, this is 2 IPC less than the price of two Carriers, and the two Carriers only give you 4 Fighters on defense

1. why 6 fighters? Where is the second airbase?
2. A carrier also has a defense value of 2 and can take tow hits.

If the UK held on to the Middle East, then you can use ICs in Egypt, Iraq, or Persia to dribble up units to help the Russians hold the south.  Usually you might be doing this by vectoring them over to the Ukraine.  You can also produce Fighters that then get transferred up to Moscow.  UK air based there can provide the attack power for Infantry or Mech coming up from the south, while being available on defense for the capital.

Have you ever tried that? When should these forces arrive? You can only build 3 units in egypt and only after UK put an IC there (which cannot happen in round 1) –> You usually can just start to produce on round 3 but still have to fight Italy in northern Africa. But even if you defeat them quickly. You can produce 3 units which still have to fight through iraq. So how many units arrived in your games in Ukraine and in which round?

If you’re not going to hit the Med, then you either need to get the US fleet into the Channel so that the UK can make direct drops into France, or you have to move up to Norway.  If you go the Norway route, then I recommend that the UK places an IC in Iceland so that the USA can shuck troops E. USA -> Iceland -> Norway rather than E. USA -> Gibraltar -> Norway.  Shucking through Iceland is more efficient since you won’t have to leave ships behind to guard the TTs at the halfway point like you do going through Gibraltar.  Landing in Norway also takes a German NO, so it effectively cancels out the loss of Leningrad.  This also provides more immediate relief to Russia since German units will have to be left behind to counter the Allied presence there.  If you can hold Norway right after taking it, build a Naval Base there at a minimum so your TTs can head back to Iceland in 1 move in future turns.  Then you can make an IC later.  If it’s safe, you can have the first batch of TTs go to Gibraltar in order to still be able to reach E. USA in two moves.

According to my knowledge you cannot build an IC on iceland because it (a) does not have an IPC value of 2 and (b) is an island where ICs cannot be build by the rules (except England and Australia).
Furthermore:
How should the UK IC help US troops being transported quicker?
Why naval base in Norway? You can hit Norway from SZ 125.

I am sorry for being so critical but this sounds a bit off from reality to me.

Cheers

I reread the post again.

Re airbase Gib/Morocco: I guess you suggested to build 2 Airbases there.
Re iceland: I guess you meant Naval instead of IC?

@JapanDOWRound1Fan:

I reread the post again.

Re airbase Gib/Morocco: I guess you suggested to build 2 Airbases there.
Re iceland: I guess you meant Naval instead of IC?

You’re correct, my post is full of errors.  The two Air Bases for Africa are Gibraltar & Morocco.  I haven’t run the battle calculator to see if 6 FTR always defends better than 4 FTR + 2 CV (I suspect it doesn’t), but keep in mind that the 6 FTR option also gives you that defense on both of the SZs bordering these territories.  If you go with the CV option, then you have to split those 4 FTRs between the two SZs if you need coverage on both sides, which is not an unlikely occurrence if both Germany and Italy are still in a position to threaten your ships.  Anyways this is obviously pretty dependent on the situation as it’s no guarantee the Allies will end up in control of Morocco.  I’d say the odds would be good though as otherwise the Italians have decided to pass up an NO.

With a Naval Base on both Iceland and (later) Norway you have a route to provide direct aid to Russia that is subject to the least amount of Axis interference.  Of course, the Axis can make a lot of trouble here by stocking West Germany with a large air force and maybe dumping some boats in the North Sea, but I’d argue this is still helping Russia since any IPCs used to hold the North Sea are not being used to take Moscow.

I’m not sure why you say you can’t build an IC in Egypt UK1.  Presumably you are worried about a Sea Lion threat, but if that is the result of your buy, then you’ve basically already prevented Barbarossa.  A direct German attack on London can be the best thing that ever happened to Russia.

It would be correct to say that I haven’t done these exact things much in my own games, as I usually just take the eventual loss of Russia as a given and focus on making sure I don’t lose Cairo.  In the meantime I try to build up a force that will allow me to make a landing somewhere that can’t be stopped.

Hey, thanks for your post and sorry for my late reply.
UK can of cuz buy an IC in Egypt UK1, depends on the German buy and how you deal with sealion. I agree that one should not fall into panic vs sea lion, while I usually still do not buy the IC UK 1. IF I would not care about SL I would rather build a TT in Southafrica UK1.
Sorry, I for sure sounded too confident in my previous post!

Re Iceland/Norway. Usually I would say this is rarely the best route:
Sz91 is almost always better because you have way more threats from there (From Italy to WGR) and you can also drop mech units early which was start walking then.

Usually the northern route limits your threat-potential and is easy to defend for the Germans and removes any pressure from Italy. I would say you need a special situation/Reason/invitation from the Germans to take that way:)

Cheers,
Tobias

As Soviet Union I prefer to buy something like 2 mechs and a tank for my forward ICs and set up for an quick strike into Finland/Norway and Iraq on Turns 4/5.  Those NO IPCs come in handy, but it has to be a hasty retreat thereafter.  Sometimes, if the German army is split I can pull off one or two successful attacks against the rising tide, but only if I don’t leave myself vulnerable to the counterattack.  Of course, if Germany attacks prior to Turn 4 then the Soviet invasion of Scandinavia/Iraq must be abandoned.