Sink one of the Italian destroyers + transport on UK1 and he will be down to 1 destroyer, 2 cruisers, and 1 battleship. That can be easily wiped out on UK2 if you brought over your Indian planes. On average you would lose 3 UK planes and Italy has no chance to prevent the British from reclaiming the Med in the early game. Egypt should not fall in the early game unless the Allies goof, there is horrible dice rolling, or the Germans spend considerably to support the efforts.
@Arthur:
Sink one of the Italian destroyers + transport on UK1 and he will be down to 1 destroyer, 2 cruisers, and 1 battleship. That can be easily wiped out on UK2 if you brought over your Indian planes. On average you would lose 3 UK planes and Italy has no chance to prevent the British from reclaiming the Med in the early game. Egypt should not fall in the early game unless the Allies goof, there is horrible dice rolling, or the Germans spend considerably to support the efforts.
How do you wipe it out if your fleet is lock outside of the Med into the red sea?
Omega: Usually a retreat to the Red Sea is accompanied by bringing over planes from India to help out. If you can also get a bomber to Gibraltar, you have sufficient force to hit a Italy navy parked next to Egypt. Careful ship blocking can be used to prevent Germany or Italy from capturing Gibraltar. The moves have to be well executed, but usually they work marvelously.
If I don’t do Taronto, then my philosophy would be to give Italy enough rope to hang itself. If the Italian navy leaves the comforts of their home port (air base) in the first turn UK can generally hit it with the RAF and sink it (making Egypt safe).
@Arthur:
Omega: Usually a retreat to the Red Sea is accompanied by bringing over planes from India to help out. If you can also get a bomber to Gibraltar, you have sufficient force to hit a Italy navy parked next to Egypt. Careful ship blocking can be used to prevent Germany or Italy from capturing Gibraltar. The moves have to be well executed, but usually they work marvelously.
If you add the bomber it does reduce the odds of a air strike disaster on the Italian fleet (only 6% odds of seeing the fleet surviving). It’s still a battle in which you can lose a number of precious planes.
You don’t worry about removing offensive potential from India? Without air, India has a lot less offensive and defensive flexibility.
A retreat to the Red sea can work, but what are the strategic advantages that a 92 merge does not accomplish?
@WILD:
If I don’t do Taronto,
I think that is rather like coming up with a strategy for getting out of a straight jacket. Don’t get into one in the first place!
@WILD:
If I don’t do Taronto,
I think that is rather like coming up with a strategy for getting out of a straight jacket. Don’t get into one in the first place!
LOL, sometimes you don’t get a choice, they just show up and take you away to the funny farm where life is wonderful all the time……or you just get sick of the same old dance.
Back to the point, a Taranto with a 92 merge is possible under the right scenario. Keep the CV out, take the plane which has to land on it as a casualty but that also assumes there is fleet in SZ110 to merge with.
Back to the very original point of the Afrika Korps plan, we can assume that an I2 capture of Italy was due to either extremely good/bad dice rolls or inexperience on the side of the Allies. It is not the result of a good general strategy that can be repeated regularly against strong opponents.
@Arthur:
Back to the very original point of the Afrika Korps plan, we can assume that an I2 capture of Italy was due to either extremely good/bad dice rolls or inexperience on the side of the Allies. It is not the result of a good general strategy that can be repeated regularly against strong opponents.
The capture of Egypt by I2 was done as following. UK did not do Taranto, no Ethiopia or Tobruk but reinforced Egypt and made red sea fleet. Fighters in London attacked the lone Bismarck (full health) and bomber 2 subs in SZ106 with all atlantic ships (destroyer and cruiser). India did not sent its aircraft, the main reason could be because I sent the Japanese fleet 3 sea zones from India. The player was playing the UK for the second time so inexperience might have mattered.
I1 bought 1 Fighter and took Trans-Jordan with 4 Infantry, Alex full force and Sudan full force. Then Germany send 1 Fighter to Trans-Jordan and 1 Tactical and Fighter to Alexandria (imagine if all airforce is send) in G2. UK2 recaptures Trans-Jordan to open suez and prevent Italy from reaching oil. This takes 4 Infantry, 1 Artillery and 1 Tank out of Egypt supported by 2 Fighters and 1 Tactical that return to Egypt with 2 Infantry from Persia.
Italy then attacks Egypt with 6 Infantry, 3 Artillery, 1 Mech, 1 Tank, 3 Fighters, 1 Bomber and bombarment with Battleship and Cruiser the following turn taking Egypt.
This was the scenario and if I played myself as UK I had it done diffetently. Personally I love the boxing strategy, so no SZ92, Taranto or Red Sea but encirclement and heavy reinforcement of the Med.
However, with the Bismarck alone within RAF reach, two subs convoying your canadian coast, Germany doing a Sea Lion buy and positioning transport to take London, Japan a India buy and positioning to take India in 2 turns I guess you might expect similiar UK reactions and thus indeed a strategy to follow in next games.
Also remember my original Afrika Korps strategy is based on a G4 capture of Egypt. I got lucky but might be lucky again because of the threat I create with both Germany and Japan before the UK even starts his first turn, making him reconsider going 100% med offense/defense.
Thanks for the details Afrika Korps. You will need to start testing this strategy against higher quality opponents since almost anything is going to succeed against relative novices. The top League players have several hundred games played in their lifetimes. They very rarely make a significant blunder. Letting Egypt fall on I2 is a massive blunder and almost any Axis strategy would succeed at that point.
ShadowHawk, I absolutely agree that this game needs more experimentation in early stage strategies. My point was that the testing of the new strategies need to be done against competent opponents since almost anything will work against people who have only played the game a few times. You learn so much when you go against an opponent who has many years of experience with a wide variety of situations. I keep getting better as I lose in League matches. I often gain nothing when I win.
Sir Arthur Harris would you like to try the newest Afrika Korps strategy against me online? I have not played online before but it should not that hard to start / download right?
Sure, Afrika Korps. Try downloading TripleA and play a few rounds against the AI so that you are acquainted with the software and playing on a computer. For the match, let’s used the G40 balance mod since that is the most popular and fairest version for League play. Lots of strats work on a no-bid no-balanced game, but only a good one can work in a BM match.
@Arthur:
Sure, Afrika Korps. Try downloading TripleA and play a few rounds against the AI so that you are acquainted with the software and playing on a computer. For the match, let’s used the G40 balance mod since that is the most popular and fairest version for League play. Lots of strats work on a no-bid no-balanced game, but only a good one can work in a BM match.
Oke let me check it out.
What is the difference with normal version?
The balance mod has several extra Allied objectives so they end up getting a bit more money during the game. I think that is better than the other option of having extra units to start the game.
Yea it seems balanced mode would sink this strat
I certainly would be willing to try out a strat in balance mod, bid, or no-bid/standard games. I am far more impressed if a plan works in balance mod than in a no-bid game. Many good strats can win ~75% of the time for a good Axis player against a good Allies player when doing a no-bid game. That is why bids have been breaching +30 for the Allies.
@Arthur:
I certainly would be willing to try out a strat in balance mod, bid, or no-bid/standard games. I am far more impressed if a plan works in balance mod than in a no-bid game. Many good strats can win ~75% of the time for a good Axis player against a good Allies player when doing a no-bid game. That is why bids have been breaching +30 for the Allies.
Unfortunately I have reconsidered after downloading TripleA. I am not a regular Axis and Allies player and are also not planning to do so because of time investment. Together with my father and brother we have enough fun and challenge already. We will play the newest version available but no mods or bids until we ‘break the game’ as seems the case. Another thing we do is to prefer to use the available miniatures in the box over the possible options to make with chips.
Therefore I will stay with theory crafting and trying to optimize the strategy instead of spending counltess hours online trying it out.
To be updated soon!
Best of luck with your testing! You will find though that the online matches, while considerably less fun than a physical board with miniatures, is far easier to find strengths and weaknesses since it is so trivial to use the battle calculator for every move.
