UK Greece - Mid-Game Operation

The geometry of the med. makes it very difficult to project power.  Once you leave the safety of SZ 98 behind, pretty much every Axis aircraft can reach your fleet.  Unless its fairly late in the game, there wont be an American follow-on to bring up the planes you will need to defend your position (also would need Gib. air base).

It is a vulnerable area, the Balkans, but like the Atlantic Wall, you aren’t going to be able to hold what you take unless Germany has already been substantially defeated by losing its air force, navy, army stacks etc.  One of the 3-4 mobile armies that are prowling the eastern front can easily divert and destroy everything you could place there, Romania being an especially popular mobilizing area right next to you.

This strat works well in the G42 scenario though, in a KGF.  Again, Germany still had to be under immense pressure (7 American bombers on London, Germany bombed every turn, 10 transports off Gibraltar) in order to stretch them thin enough to prevent him from stopping our UK takes, and again, his air force was mostly decimated before the assaults even began.

This would not be a big threat the way I would play germany. The way to defend the west from landings is to have a big mobile stack in W germany, Infs in east germany and some arts in paris. That way you can counterattack all of the coast. the only troops that I would need to send would be the W german ones. Since you have already committed ships and troops to the landing, there is less of a threat to the atlantic wall, so I can afford to send the troops. I also get the additional bonus of killing some allied fleet.

It’s always the same problem with landings, because you have 2 objectives:

• keep the fleet alive
• keep the beachhead alive

It can be difficult to protect both, because Germany and Italy usually have a large airforce which are capable of reaching both. If I have to choose, I will protect the fleet. Especially if I have a factory in Egypt, I can always get more troops next turn for another landing.

I like building an airport on the beachhead (in this case, Greece) so I can defend both fleet and troops with 3 fighters. I think I even once built an airport on Cyprus, but that’s just for the fleet of course.

For me, landing in Greece isn’t about taking it permanently, it’s about drawing resources to me that would otherwise go to Russia. Of course, you could argue that other territories are better suited for landings (e.g. Normandy). I like toying with the Med however :-D

The problem with all KGF’s is that you have to protect separate fleets in different sea zones and territories, sometimes having to protect/project power into SZ 91, SZ 112, SZ 110, Denmark, Gibraltar etc. and all at the same time.  Since bombers can hit the American transports crossing they have to have coverage built or kept with them all the time.  And once you attack, you leave the safety of your airbases.

Then it gets worse;  when you attack with the US/UK fleet each fleet has to be able to withstand the scramble on the offense separately (their buddy’s planes and ships just sit there during the attack, so you’ll need even more stuff to help).  The UK doesn’t have money to rebuild its fleet and do something else, and during the middle/late stages of KGF it needs to be protecting a fleet and building waves of landing units it doesn’t have.  It certainly does not have the money for extra bases, factories or the stuff to power them, unless there is zero pressure on London.  They cant split up because the entire sea/air force is needed to make a sound defense.  All Germany/Italy have to do is hit that spearhead with everything and the Allies lose.

Then it gets even worse;  the Americans cross very slowly and so your initial attack is basically a one shot.  Fighters would be ideal because they could back up a UK landing but they can only cross with help in one turn.  This gives you one chance to set up.

Small piecemeal attacks just get annihilated, and you cant hold Norway until the German fleet is dead, and you cant kill that until Denmark is yours.

You might think that attacking from the other direction is a solution but the reality is that you are spreading the UK even thinner and they are gonna kill your ships.  The Axis can concentrate all their power on the weakest point of the offense, wherever it is.  And, they can reach any occupied Europe territory from their initial bases…if not with ground units then with an invasion force or fleet (that is “What the hell is Italy doing in your games”?)

KGF, in my xp, only works when Germany kills itself through excessive attrition and piecemeal attacks.  The Axis have a pretty strong advantage offense or defense and even when they goof up badly they can recover and still be attacking BOTH UK and USSR and have them on the ropes.

@Ichabod:

My preference is to play Germany / Italy and or all of the Axis forces. I also think that every Allied strategy will “never” work against me. But being honest with myself, I really wouldn’t like a Greece landing that would stick and stay there. That’s really out of position for me with an Axis point of view.

If the Axis are in a good position to quickly drive off a Greece landing, than maybe I won’t do that attack. Also, I only advocate this strategy if Japan doesn’t do the J1 attack and kill the UK Pac battleship.

Against a different opponent, this Greece strategy worked very well (which of course reinforces my belief). It helps that I caught him off guard. I started by landing just 1 transport of stuff so as not to tip off my plan. Then the next turn I landed 2 more transports worth of stuff. The first 2 ground units were completely safe unless he wanted to attack them with air (which most people wouldn’t). The next 2 transports came up from South Africa the same turn I landed on Greece and were in position. The second turn I built the IC when I landed 4 more ground units, 3 fighters and 1 tac. bomber. Also, the US prepared to simultaneously land on Normandy and Norway the same turn Greece was hit. UK supplemented US landings with fighters and ground troops. At first he didn’t think the Greece landing much of a threat compared to the US landing. But once the threat grew to such a size that it could start moving forward towards the Ukraine or Northern Italy without an adequate response, the game was basically won. I built and held an IC in Greece. Enough units were there to cause a standoff which stretched out the Axis forces too much. US landings on Norway led to Strategic bombing raids on Germany proper. Normandy was held via standoff too. The standoffs resulted in less spending on resources against Russia to the point that it would take him too long to gain a high enough probability for the Moscow attack. These initial landings occurred on Round 5.

Hi! I actually prefer to play the allies :)  I am also a fan of miniature invasions, especially if the Italian fleet is dead (it seems to be dead if they didn’t retake it immediately).  A miniature invasion of Greece, an mIC and some reinforcements can fast become a big problem for the axis. but, so can any beachhead on the continent. In my “plan” with the allies, I would ideally use the Americans to do this. The British will often have mIC in Persia, Iraq and Egypt, doing all of their production, and sending what they can to support Russia and protect caucus and Stalingrad from the Germans. Spending that extra UK cash when they already produce in the theater will make them weaker on the Russian border.

Once i read my reasoning, I see that it is not ideal at all to have the us in greece like that. It might be better to just do the Spanish beachhead and have UK kill Turkey, building a mIC there. If you have the forces to kill turkey, you should only take avg 8-10 IPC loss in the attack, taking Greece will lose you 7 IPC for the TT.  You might as well build you mIC in Turkey at that point.

Historically, I suspect a large part of why Churchill pushed to invade Greece was out of (1) a sense of honor and shame about having failed to defend Greece in 1941, (2) a longstanding Greco-philia in elite British culture, and (3) an interest in drawing the post-war border with the Soviets somewhere rather southeast of Vienna. I’m not sure there were any strictly tactical justifications for a Greek invasion. Greece is mountainous, full of islands, and didn’t have any strategic raw materials or industries.

In Global 40, I’m happy to land in Greece if I have a loaded transport to spare in the eastern Med…sometimes you can overestimate how much force you’ll need to wipe Italy off of the African continent, so if you have extra forces in the theater and you’re not in imminent danger of losing Stalingrad, then Greece is a natural place to stage a “diversion.” Germany can deal with a small landing in Greece without too much trouble, but if the British resources are there anyway, then you might tie up more Axis resources in Greece than you would in Persia. And if the Axis totally ignore your landing, then I suppose you may as well turn it into a beachhead.

But this whole idea of intentionally preparing for a Greek landing, and buying multiple additional units specifically to support the landing, seems off base to me. There’s nothing that exciting in or near Greece. It borders Albania and Bulgaria, both of which are only worth 1 IPC. It’s not a chokepoint on the way from anywhere to anywhere else, and nobody needs it as an airbase or naval base. You don’t flip any national objectives by playing in the Balkans. I guess in BM there is a small NO for Greece, but you also need Sardinia or Sicily, and if you’ve got enough naval dominance to start picking off islands in the central Med, you should be trying to build up to capture Rome, not messing around with a diversionary nuisance campaign.

As pointed out UK landings in the Balkans won’t flip the income tracker very much, but could be a good diversion of axis resources. Sounds like the UK is probably doing this Greece mission on its own, so a couple things would need to happen for it to be effective (as short lived as it might be).

1. Italian navy sunk (probably UK1), so they can’t use it to quickly respond by hitting your fleet, or transport units over to crush your landing party. Being you probably lost your UK Med fleet in the early rounds, you might consider adding a new carrier to your make shift fleet so the Luftwaffe bleeds if they hit you a second time.

2. You should probably clear out N Africa so Italy can’t grow its income by pushing into the French territories (depends on what the US is doing, maybe you want that so USA retakes them and gets the otherwise lost French income). Also because you are transporting most of you Egyptian’s to Greece you don’t want the Italians to get any ideas. I know you can easily squash any Italian threat because they can’t get more ground units over w/o navy, but it could distract your reinforcements to Greece. On a side note often times I see the Italians use there remaining transport to get some of those N African units back to Europe where they would be more useful after a Taronto attack.

3. Catch the axis out of position (no mobile ground units in range of Greece), which is possible IMO. You don’t want them to push you back into the sea the same turn you land. Being this could be a solo mission you will need to hold Greece to bring in reinforcements on your next turn. It would be a good Idea to get an AA gun in there too. You can bring in reinforcements from Egypt each turn if you station your fleet in sz99 (tpts move back-in forth), but then you aren’t convoying Italy so you should also probably try to get some subs into sz97 as well. If you station your fleet in sz97 for convoy, then you would need to either split up your trts and only get 1/2 the units in every turn, bring in units every other turn, or have a flow of units moving to Toburk/Syria to shuttle them across in one turn (the later would require some advanced planning).

What is the goal once you take Greece?

Do you want to build an IC to mobilize more ground units or was it strictly a diversionary tactic? I guess this decision might rest on how the axis respond, and it’s unlikely that they just ignore it (although they may not be able to immediately respond). So they will either redirect units already built (which is good because they were meant for Moscow), or possibly build some mobile units which would take a couple turns to get to the Balkans.

So yes I think an allied landing in Greece can make things interesting in the right situation. Besides being a diversion of axis resources UK ftrs can fly directly from Greece to Moscow in one turn. So if it gets to hot you have a several options IMO. Stay there and force them to hit you chewing up valuable mobile axis units (and maybe some air) that even if they don’t die are now 3 turns from Moscow. Could attack axis units that are in range just to remove them from play. Could also do a defensive retreat having some units jump back on your tpts to cause havoc somewhere else (like wack a mole lol), while the others either attack killing axis ground units that are in range, or forcing them to come down to finish you off as your ftrs fly to Moscow.

One other thing that was kinda touched on is if Greece is a safe place to transport over some ground units for 1 turn, then it would be a great place to use as a staging point to attack Turkey as part of a neutral crush. Say you only have 3 UK transports in the eastern Med, you can drop 6 units on Greece from sz99 (if axis don’t have ground units in range to kill them). Then next turn those 6 units walk into Turkey (along w/any units in Syria or Iraq), and the 3 transports are used to ferry in 6 more units from Egypt/TJ for 12+ ground units and air power to quick take out Turkey. It’s similar to having the USA stage ground units on Gibraltar, and next turn walk them into Spain as the US transports head home to pick up units to return the next turn. Doing both of these at the same time would be pretty cool.

I’m currently playing as the Allies in an OOB G40 game and I’m coming up on UK6. Turn one I stacked heavy in London and cleared a lot of the Med. The axis did a J1 attack and it looked like Sealion was off the table so I did a buy that I have never done which was a CV in South Africa UK2. That badboy has been holding down the Med strong, especially when you consider the med was wiped after Taranto. That carrier along witha few allied destroyers and a cruiser is just enough to hold off part of the Luftwaffe in range. So I may just have to land a few loaded transports on Greece my coming turn, considering most of the German ground forces are at the gates of Russia or preventing US landings in the West and Italy is turtled. This is the perfect time to spring a landing in Greece. Mind you I only have 3 transports loaded but the Axis are a full turn away from dealing with it. I’m going for it. If I can land planes next turn and hold it a factory might be in play. Especially with 20 US ground units in Gibralter and a small stack of UK ground and air on my Iraq factory. This is quite juicy.

Anyone else ever buy a CV in South Africa early with UK?

Yep, I even suggested a carrier buy in my above post (#1). Would either be built in S Africa or Egypt (if you built an IC).

You sure did…good call…

Lots of good ideas here guys.

If the UK Tarantos, they are pretty likely to lose the first carrier they start with.  They probably should bring it to the battle, as it can soak 2 casualties but this carrier (HMS Illustrious?)  ends up being really valuable if it survives.

If you bid a sub, you can bring 1 tac 1 sub 2 figthers 1 strat 1 DD.  This is not enough, but it doesn’t force you to bring the carrier in to die.  I call this “Taranto lite” but its not going to work if they have 3 scramblers.

So, since you probably can’t save it all, you have 3 choices

1. bring it all and kill Italy fleet (Taranto)
2. bring it all but the carrier (Taranto lite)
3. hide it all and play the long game, perhaps combining UK Pac fleet with whatever you’ve got

If you don’t control the med after UK2, building either factory (Iraq or Egypt) on UK1 or UK2 is kind of dangerous (since Italy can invade Syria, or hit your surviving planes, or otherwise set up to grab the factory before you can protect it).  As others have pointed out, you already have 2 other factories to use; you don’t abs. have to have that production its just right up in the Axis’ face.

In that spirit, I’d say that the greek invasion is something that shouldn’t happen early in the game, or in a way that you risk any TTs that you have.  Even UK is doing awesome, it will need a grand fleet or more to defend against a massive airstrike, and you can’t risk losing it before then.  All continental invasions are easy for the Axis to rebuke, so you need to make this crucial sacrifice of ground units at a time when Germany cant respond or it takes away crucial power from the eastern thrust.

As we’ve discussed at length, UK isn’t calling the dance and so they cant do any factories or expensive builds if Germany is going to invade.  If they aren’t going to invade, its open season on your buys but you don’t have the $$ to power more than 1 focus at a time.

Some suggestions

buy TT for SA, along with an arty.  Have the TT that is in the red sea shuttle back and forth every turn, naval base to naval base, this is almost as good as an Egypt factory and you do both, UK owns the levant.  Forget sea power;  just use land to take and hold the oil.

buy subs 1 per turn in SA.  don’t do Taranto (or do Taranto lite).  Get these guys together in the red sea, hold open the canal, and contest the med with planes, ward Italy off.  If they don’t play or cant, use these to crush Italy’s income, after you eliminate all their DDs.

Especially in G42, build the Persia factory and use that to save India.  With a combination of Allied planes, a delayed Japanese threat (J2 or later), and every guy and mech and tank you can bring, you can make india hard to take.  During a G40 J1, probably this wont work as well as it takes longer to seize Persia and get that started. (UK3 first units built)