Germany Turn1, what SZs do you feel must be attack?

Most people attack 106, 110, 111 and ignore 91 and 93.

If you’re doing a G1 DOW you might attack 106, 110 and 91. A few people do 106, 111 and 91 but not sure of that idea. Never heard of anyone attacking SZ93 as Germany. So many better targets!

Nope. There are many choices in the opener, but only 1 clearly optimal path, IMO.
111 send 6 hits
110 send 8 hits
106 i think 1 sub can only go here

You also have a BB that can turn either of the 110/111 into an incontestible blowout–if they have bid pieces that can intervene, not a bad idea to do this. I prefer not to, as losing the BB means even a holding action at sea is a longshot, and it broadcasts that you won’t be placing on the water.

There is 1 fighter and 1 tac that cannot reach these battles, the fighter goes to Rome, the Bomber to Paris.

This is the critical path approach, you can try other things but after a while you’ll realize that the failure to kill 110/111 (even leaving 1 tipped BB) leaves UK with a huge advantage compared to starting from zilch. If you shuffle stuff around such that you have fewer than 6+8 hits you risk getting scrambled, so the only way to do new and different things is to abandon one of the two proposed attacks, which frees up a ton of pieces that dont have anything nearly as productive to do (pile on paris? fly to med?) as killing the UK initial navy. Once the bid is above 20 they should set up to scramble over 111, then you are forced to either send the BB or reconfigure the opener.

Not sending the bb to 110 probably makes the scramble advised.

It’s hard to completely say what one should do. I personally think it’s wise to go after UK battleship and hit the Canadian fleet regardless of action.

The standard opening would be to attack 106, 110 and 111.

I personally like to take the gamble on the cruiser in SZ91 with 1 sub (and thus making SZ106 also more of a gamble or take 2 subs and leave SZ106 untouched). A hit in SZ91 means the UK has to commit more planes or take a gamble on the Italian fleet in SZ96. This helps Italy a great deal.

If Germany invests in a small fleet or bombers, it means you can leave SZ111 untouched as this fleet is unable to escape since it does not start from a harbor. So more adventures players may leave that fleet for G2.
Leaving SZ111 means you can invest in either clearing SZ93 or SZ109 by force (as the UK has a 4 plane scramble in that last SZ). In my last 2 games I’ve tried to go for a strong German presence in the med by taking southern france and clearing SZ93 during G1. This has had very different results.

In the first game Italy grew to +40 IPCs and ended up taking over all the oil and the whole of the Med. My buys as Germany however were not yet optimized for this strategy so I wasn’t able to take full advantage of the opening.
During the 2nd game the results were disastrous. Due to an overstretch that we hadn’t foreseen and some very unlucky dice roles (never blame the dice for your own incompetence but still…) the UK was left with both it’s 110 and 111 fleet, which meant Germany was forced to commit all of it’s airforce in G2 to try and clear the fleet. Effectively crippling it form the start.

So my conclusion for an opening on SZ93 is that I’m currently not yet sure if it is completely worth it. I’ll probably give it another try or 2 in the next few games to see the effects.

@taamvan said in Germany Turn1, what SZs do you feel must be attack?:

There is 1 fighter and 1 tac that cannot reach these battles, the fighter goes to Rome, the Bomber to Paris.

The fighter can also reach Tobruk, which helps defend the Italian pieces here against a UK opening to try and cripple the Italians in Africa even before their first round. If the fighter is there and they still attack, it usually means Egypt falls relatively quickly.

The bomber then goes to Rome to have a 3 plane scramble, forcing the UK to commit more fighters from London to clear the SZ97 fleet.

SZs 106, 10 and 11. I always send two Subs at 106.