A German opening I’ve been having success with involves taking all the UK DD’s off the board.
Opening buy: Carrier, Sub, DD
Standard attacks on Paris, Southern France and a strafe of Yugoslavia.
What I do on the water:
2 subs to 106; 2 subs to 91; 1 sub, 3 fighters & 3 tac’s to 109; 1 BB, 1 fighter, 1 tac (can land on the carrier) and 2 bombers to 111.
106 and 91 usually end with 3 subs surviving. The other battles are dependent on scrambling obviously, but I like my odds no matter what.
If UK scrambles 4 planes to the 109 battle then they’ve hurt their chance at a successful Taranto (especially if the battle in SZ91 goes as planned) and left themselves wide open to Sea Lion. Even though Germany would lose a few planes I’d gladly welcome a scramble in this situation.
I’ve done this a couple of times in face to face games and ran it about ten times using Triple A; the result is usually 3-4 German subs left on the board (not counting the one that was purchased) with nary a DD in the Atlantic to do anything about it.
Just to see how it would go I tried it a few times with the UK scrambling its 4 planes (well, one belongs to France but who cares about them) and the results aren’t any better: UK loses the RAF while taking out (usually) two fighters and a tac. With the RAF out of commission the Germans can buy as few as 5 transports and still take London turn 3, not to mention Italy gets to keep more of its ships than usual.
Thoughts? Questions? Holes in my plan?