My Germany's Round 1 Set up

Hi Whitshadw.  You build a destroyer, 3 artillery and 3 tanks, so its kind of a compromise between Barbarossa and sealion as plan B.  Here are some of observations of your opener as described (these are not criticisms, just observations  :-) ):

1. Most players will scramble 4 fighters to z109 and in that battle odds are they will lose the destroyer and 1 fighter and you will lose your sub and all 3 planes. Hitting z109 does increase sealion threat IF you take out that transport but your attack is too weak to get it (transports sink last).  Losing those planes will guarantee sealion would fail if UK builds infantry.  IF your planes survive z109 you will have to land in Holland, so to protect them from UK then French attack you should also land some fighters from z111 with AA guns as hit soakers.  Also, ignoring z110 means UK could merge fleets in z92 and then return to z110 if they see you build transports for sealion.  Knowing this, a good UK player would be very unlikely to waste planes attacking your ships in z112 under scramble cover.

2. You have to activate Bulgaria in noncombat movement phase and you can’t blitz when activating friendly neutrals; your tank would have to stop in Bulgaria.

3. You are sending more than enough ground units to wipe out Paris without risking air units being shot down to AA.

4. You left Yugoslavia alone when you have lots of unused units available who could to take it.

5. You might want to NCM the fighter from Slovaakia-Hungary to Rome for scramble in case UK hits z97.

I just feel that 110 is too big of a target to pass up.

A ballsy UK might hit 112, u only have 3 boasts and 3 planes in west ger.

@Whitshadw:

Which is what I want cause I have 4 units defending at a factor of 4 with a battle ship to soak 1 hit and my fodder being the destroyer and cruser.

So basicaly round 1 I would have taken out the entire navy of England with minimal loss’s on my end.

It’s the reason that England looks so strong at 110 with 3 planes defending and a battleship and 2 crusers this way the odds are on my side.

Remember England dosnt know if I’m doing a Sealion or not and this set up gives trm something that they can not over look.

You are likely to lose your navy too round 1.

So what happens if your opponent doesn’t think its a good idea to take your bait?  You never can count on the other guy doing what you think is rational. For instance, in the real war Stalin thought Hitler would be crazy to attack Russia while at war with Great Britain.  Maybe Stalin was right, but of course Hitler didn’t see things quite the way Stalin did.

As far as deception goes you have a point.
There will be people not knowing what to do. Deception is always good. In fact, in my experience, it is the only way the axis can win this game against strong allied player(s) because if they make no mistakes they’ll win.

Having said that, Variance is right of course.
I would like to say the deception is too obvious. Experienced allied players most likely will not have Britain fall for it and you will be forced to go Barbarossa with 4 land units less than normal, to Russia’s comfort.

Furthermore, the attack on SZ109 really is asking for trouble. Make up your mind and attack 2 of the 3 SZones around Britain you really want out of the equasion with overwhelming force. For example: take out SZ111 and SZ109 by sending at least 24 combat factors into SZ109 and 18 for SZ111. This leaves enough room to also attack either SZ106 or the Cruiser at Gibraltar, or both if you want to gamble.

I want to point out that my personal experience with whatever Sea-Lion Germany can bring about, is not very cheerful for the axis.
The Americans will liberate London and leave Germany with only a small income to face an invasion force of 30-34 American men and aircraft in the west and an incredibly strong Russia in the east, who will have been producing 60-70 IPCs per turn…
The only good thing Sea-Lion usually brings about is Italy taking Caïro and having a shot at more African territories. Too bad London has just been liberated and will start fighting Italians again…

@Whitshadw:

I feel the odds for that are slightly over rated while if you choose to scramble 4 planes and knowing that I would only do 1 round attack and see how the match stands. I highly disagree that after the first dice roll all of England’s fighters hit. I see 2 hits with a possablitys of 3 at max that’s if your lucky

Hey Sir,

thanks for posting your thoughts.
I have to admit I cannot follow your logic here:

In your scenario German attacks with, tac, fig, strat, sub vs DD and 4 figs.
So lets play average luck.
You score 2 hits and lets assume UK takes DD+Fig as casualty, UK scores 3 –> You take 3 air as casualty to keep the sub to kill the TT?

Even in this scenario which is about average luck for both of you you lose 3 planes including a Bomber to kill UK DD, sub, Fig --> This is a horrible exchange!!! Doing such exchanges on purpose with the might, precious and ultimately important German Luftwaffe is a nail in the coffin for the Axis for sure.

And there is even a decent chance that UK scores 4 hits which would be a disaster for the Germans.

The general rule for the German opener is: Use you superior attack force to create SURE battles, minimize the chances of disaster and maximize the chances to kill everything while almost losing nothing.

You can easily attack sz109 with 6 air and 2 subs (assuming you build a carrier G1) and attack sz111 with 4 air, battleship and sub and attack 106 with 2 subs.
In both battles you remain a huge favorite against scrambles and if you get lucky you might get a chance to retreat in the sz111 battle to save your BB (the key is to kill the DD as you want your subs to be invincible when attacking 109 and 111.

Cheers,
Tobias

@JDOW:

Even in this scenario which is about average luck for both of you you lose 3 planes including a Bomber to kill UK DD, sub, Fig –> This is a horrible exchange!!!

• 1 TT of course, but the exchange remains horrible :)

I’d send 2 subs>109.What I like about his strat is it can help save more of Italian navy.

I like it!  Its crazy but again this game is based upon dice in the end. If it was a low luck game then I would have to reconsider.