IS Kill Japan first viable

Agree with Shadow. Don’t deviate from inf and fighter for UK1. You can go all infantry and one arty if you want. Usually the Sea Lion goes to Scotland first so make sure you move all units to London. You will have a good idea if Sea Lion is coming. If he doesn’t show it, I do Taranto. The only German open (just about every time now) is to not buy any units on the first turn. This can confuse and stifle just about any Allied player and leaves your options completely open.

Make sure you buy a third fighter for Calcutta UK1 and leave 3 fighters there, assuming two bombers are in position to hit it which they should be. I also recommend a tank.

I’ve just played a couple of games against Omega1759 who has a very aggressive assist China as Russia strategy - runs hard as into China for a few turns to slow Japan. Worked pretty well. I thought I had an assist China philosophy in Global 1940 until I played him!

Recently, I’ve been scrambling to SZ111 and SZ110 usually unless it is really unfavourable. Normally, scrambling results in a reduction in TUV loss and as others point out, TUV parity is generally a victory for Allies.

Low luck makes Taranto less of a gamble for the UK so it likely to be worth while even if all the London and Scottish fighters are dead after a scramble. Don’t forget to buy 6inf 1ftr if you do this or Sea Lion will be too easy.

J1 DOW allows freedom in the Atlantic so I’d be inclined to threaten Norway US3 via Iceland with the starting TT if possible, which it should be.

As others have said though, it depends a lot on what they’ve left in SZ26. Could actually be 3CVs as well as the Cruiser, BB, 3DDs and maybe a sub. If that happens, it might be better to give up on Hawaii for a few rounds. You can fly the planes to Queensland to help in the money islands, India and China battles.

Yea, if they have all 3 carriers in sz26 all bets are off (need to go def). If that is the case though you will probably still be holding the Phil Isl (w/navy sunk), and can save the Phil ftr (fly to Queensland or Burma?)

Congrats. Allies are said to be almost impossible to win with, without a bid and even more on low luck.

I think USA helping in the Atlantic is really important so long as they do enough to avoid losing in the Pacific.

@simon33:

Make sure you buy a third fighter for Calcutta UK1 and leave 3 fighters there, assuming two bombers are in position to hit it which they should be. I also recommend a tank.

I’ve just played a couple of games against Omega1759 who has a very aggressive assist China as Russia strategy - runs hard as into China for a few turns to slow Japan. Worked pretty well. I thought I had an assist China philosophy in Global 1940 until I played him!

Recently, I’ve been scrambling to SZ111 and SZ110 usually unless it is really unfavourable. Normally, scrambling results in a reduction in TUV loss and as others point out, TUV parity is generally a victory for Allies.

Low luck makes Taranto less of a gamble for the UK so it likely to be worth while even if all the London and Scottish fighters are dead after a scramble. Don’t forget to buy 6inf 1ftr if you do this or Sea Lion will be too easy.

J1 DOW allows freedom in the Atlantic so I’d be inclined to threaten Norway US3 via Iceland with the starting TT if possible, which it should be.

:-D

Don’t forget the UK1 DOW and aggressive offensive play with them (this gets the US out of the war for a while which is unfortunate but the killed Japanese units and the bonus UK Pacific/Anzac is worth it). Basically the goal is throw so many punches at Japan that their land forces collapse (meanwhile distracting them from taking the DEI). By the time they are ready to go after the DEI, Anzac will have many planes and the US will be into the war. At that point, the Japanese player has to choose between DEI and leaving sea zone 6 unprotected.

On land, China will be a viable force.

It’s a high risk / high reward strategy, it’s hard for Japan to deal with but Japan can be extremely resilient.

Once Japan is slowed down, UK Pacific can shift pretty promptly to reinforce the Middle East and Russia. Russia can fall back and survive but leaving Caucasus, Stalingrad uncontested is not an option.

Meanwhile, the US needs to force Japan to spend some on naval build (build subs that Japan needs to hunt down, be in a position to kill the destroyers), but should be able to form a pretty large Atlantic fleet to put pressure on Germany.

If Japan’s economy isn’t taking off, the US will need to spend a lot less in later rounds and Russia gets its dividend that way.

Without a bid, I think that a UK1 DOW is risky unless Japan does a non-traditional set of moves on round 1.  If Japan has his 3 transports unloading ground units on Kwangsi, those forces plus the 21-strong air force can annihilate anything the Allies can assemble in Yunnan.  I see a +50 TUV swing when I ran a typical calculation.  Japan will be free from worries of a US counterattack for a while, and can continue to collect the 10 PU bonus for a couple more rounds.  That just seems to be too much of a benefit.

If Japan did not drop off six units in Kwangsi on J1, a UK1 DOW is much more viable.  Also, the strategy could work out if you used a bid to strongly reinforce Mainland Asia with a bunch of infantry.

@Arthur:

Without a bid, I think that a UK1 DOW is risky unless Japan does a non-traditional set of moves on round 1.  If Japan has his 3 transports unloading ground units on Kwangsi, those forces plus the 21-strong air force can annihilate anything the Allies can assemble in Yunnan.  I see a +50 TUV swing when I ran a typical calculation.  Japan will be free from worries of a US counterattack for a while, and can continue to collect the 10 PU bonus for a couple more rounds.  That just seems to be too much of a benefit.

If Japan did not drop off six units in Kwangsi on J1, a UK1 DOW is much more viable.  Also, the strategy could work out if you used a bid to strongly reinforce Mainland Asia with a bunch of infantry.

Absolutely! Although you don’t necessarily need to hold Yunnan for this strategy to be successful (it definitely helps), you just need to contest it.

You also need to keep an eye on those Japanese transports and make sure that they won’t outflank you by taking the capital. Always a tricky balance.