Germany reinforcing Western Ukraine after Italy declares war on Russia

@Herr:

@oysteilo:

@Herr:

Isn’t that a bit slow?

I1: take Bulgaria
I2: units move to Romania
I3: can-opening into Bessarabia and/or Eastern Poland

So in that scenario, the German followup will be as late as G4.

I think the important can-opening happens around (I4), I5, I6 in order to break through into volgograd and caucasus and later to threaten middle east by italy taking NW persia

The idea of can-opening is, to take the territory with Italy in order to allow Germany, and especially the German planes, to reinforce it against a Russian counterstrike. So I don’t think that any Italian drive to the south servers the purpose of can-opening because Russia is unlikely to have sufficient forces to strike back at either Volgograd or the Caucasus anyway in case the Germans would have taken it without Italian assistance. Which doesn’t imply that going that way is bad for Italy because there’s a lot of bonus to be had. But if you’re talking can-opening, then I’d say Bryansk on I5 would be the way to go.

@aequitas:

With Bulgaria, Yugo and Greece given to Italy, what punch will Germany have?
Any Allied player will be happy to harvest Italy…

Agreed. I’d much rather give Bulgaria to Germany to assimilate those troops and add some punch to the German drive into Russia.

I might be using it idfferent than you. The other idea of canopening is to force a russian retreat.
let say you stand in rostov with a german and italian stack, with at least 40 german tank+mech and 5-7 italian units., and 7+ italians. Then ussr has to retreat to moscow. if he stacks byransk, you can take tambov with the italians, and moscow falls on the german turn. Since ussr has to retreat, you get to take cauc, stalingrad and begin taking the middle east immediately.

@ShadowHAwk:

@Charles:

Ok, so a while ago Italy became upsetting for me after Taranto…now Japan is upsetting me.  I tried this strategy as the US and succeeded. My opponents got wise. Now whenever I play as Japan I get mowed over by this strategy :cry:  now we need a “How to beat Plan Orange” guide.  Seriously.

P.S. The key to this strategy as the U.S. is to simply place a submarine or more in each Japanese convoy zone (in a standard game there will be 10); just work out the details of getting there and Japan is going to be losing ground in Asia very soon because they either have to build a ton of destroyers, or build a few destroyers(only taking out your subs in big zones like 6 and 19), or totally ignore which is admitting defeat. Good luck Japan.

Maby play the standard 2nd edition rules without a bid so the allies need to devide their attention a bit more.
Good to see that the allies are becomming better at dealing with the axis.

But I never use bids!
@simon33:

@Charles:

Ok, so a while ago Italy became upsetting for me after Taranto…now Japan is upsetting me.  I tried this strategy as the US and succeeded. My opponents got wise. Now whenever I play as Japan I get mowed over by this strategy :cry:  now we need a “How to beat Plan Orange” guide.  Seriously.

Here’s what I might try:

Take Guam.
Base one DD + scrambling fighters off Philippines, Guam and Japan. That only leaves two holes for the Asian coast, SZ18 + SZ36. The latter is a long way around for the US to go. Basing a fleet in SZ18 can plug the other hole. You need to pick off the UK and/or ANZACs if they come through the bottom though.

The above won’t work if Japan is already being pushed back significantly.

If I’m the U.S. and Japan does this, first thing I’m going to do is say “Yay! My subs forced 3 destroyers and 9 fighters to sit around and do nothing!” Now that’s before I even get a chance to counter it…

@Gamerman01:

What about airbase on Normandy/Holland

Not sure about it but I’m saying that I think that spending enough for protection of the Kriegsmarine (in general) may just be inviting Russia deeper into the Fatherland, regardless of the interesting differences between defending with an additional 2AB or 2CV or even going 1 of each?

@Whitshadw:
All strategy for both sides is indeed largely hypothetical, since a large part of the game (for both sides) is more dynamic than a fixed strategy can cover for: action and reaction dominate the field! That is so educational about the forums: strategies being discussed assume a certain action already. Discussing the (possible) reactions to the assumed actions is what makes it so interesting.

Having said that, Axis are largely the side that plays a certain action. The allies then need to come with a proper reaction. And even that is a lot harder than it looks.

I really appreciate that Cow

Oh yea, the old battle of who rolls better 2’s  :-P

@ronrye:

Was I just playing against someone who wasn’t very good at playing Germany?

Perhaps, but not necessarily.  You might have been a little extra good at playing Russia.  Maybe the dice were a little lucky for you or unlucky for Germany.  I remember a game where Germany went into Russia with four huge thrusts – Finland into Karelia, Poland into Baltic States, Slovakia/Hungary into E. Poland and Romania into Bessarabia.  All four armies smashed the Russian early defenses with a lot of stuff left.  Then strong Russian counter-attacks end up decimating half the German force.  After that it was very slow going for the Germans.  The Russians managed to keep putting up strong defenses and whenever a particular German army was whittled down enough, a Russian counter-attack would wipe it out and the German drive was set back again.  I think the Minor IC in the Ukraine was exchanged between Russia and Germany about 4 or 5 times.
So your German player wasn’t necessarily bad, maybe just inexperienced.  Perhaps he learned his lesson and will take Moscow from you next time.  He seemed to do pretty good at taking London.

@Zallomallo:

Yes, an act of war by Japan on UK or ANZAC(and maybe France?) puts them at war with the US.

It does not put them at war.  It allows them to declare war.  There is a rather large distinction, as Japan can end the turn in seazones with US ships (or attack seazones with both US and UK/Anzac ships, ignoring the US ships) that are still friendly to them until the US declares war on the combat move of its next turn.

Japan declaring war on France has no impact whatsoever.  Japan can declare war on france and as long as they don’t attack FIC, they’ll continue to collect their National Objective.  Even if they do attack FIC, japan only loses their objective.  It does not permit the US to declare war.

germany has more units on the front and will crush the smaller ussr stacks.