You should always strafe France with Germany and take it with Italy. And that is IMHO for sure, man. There are several reasons for this. First, this is a balanced game and every strategy is equal, because the map and territory income is designed to support all kinds of operational directions. In the real world it would be derogatory to place Italy behind the wheel and go for Africa first, but in all A&A games it is a rational idea, since the designer gave Africa like 20 IPC income, Middle East 8 and on top of that Italy can get as much as 15 IPC NO if they control the Med and adjacent territories. Plus the 9 from France and possible some from Romania and Bulgaria too, we are talking from 50 to 60 Italian IPC every turn, man. Second, its pretty boring to play the same strategy over and over again, so this will fresh it up.
The beauty about this is the surprise, nobody expects it. But you cant be narrow minded, you must think in a new way, kind of like the Dark Sky way. Italy must be the aggressive and Germany must turtle.
First, Germany must make a perfect strafe on France and Romania, and at the same time sink as many ships as possible, and send a Fig and Tac to Italy and Tobruk. Buy Bombers and make sure UK cant build much on that island.
Now the Allied players should be pretty confused. Is this a trick, a bait or just outright retarded play from the Axis team ? I expect a lot of WTF,s and OMG,s from the Allied players. Maybe UK send a ton of aircrafts to France ? That is good news, now the Italian fleet survive, and a lot of expansive and valuable allied units are gathered in a killing zone.
Further down the road, and I cant stress this enough, Germany must keep on doing perfect strafes on France until Italy can take it and hold it, and buy tons of infantry to turtle against Russia, maybe even an occasional artillery and Tank too, and keep SBR UK.
Italy must take Africa and the Middel East, threaten Russia from the Caucasus area, and threaten West India too, maybe in a joint operation together with Japan ?
Of course this need some play testing, but I am not able to see why it cant work the first time you pull it of against some unprepared casual player.
If this strategy dont have a name yet, I would suggest Benitos way, or Benito is the driver, or Fuhrer Benito, or something up that alley