1941 tournament scenario

@xlome_00 Sea Lion is one of those attacks where the threat is mightier than the execution. If you buy a carrier for the Baltic Fleet on G1, that’s a reasonable purchase anyway to protect your supply lines to Norway/Finland/Leningrad/Baltics. If you move the German Med transport to the central Med, it is protected by the Italian fleet and can reinforce Libya, which is a reasonable move anyway. If you then bring the Italian fleet to take Gibraltar and retake Morocco, that helps score your NOs, so that’s a normal attack. So all of these preparatory moves can be done with minimal cost to the standard Axis war effort.

But then the American bomber cannot sink the German transport without landing in either Egypt (where it will die on a G2 Egypt attack) or Caucasus (where it spoils the Russian NO.)

If they leave your Med transport alive, you move it to Western Med on G2 where Italian fleet protects it again, build a second transport in Baltic on G2 plus an extra plane, and now you are threatening UK with 3 inf, 3 tank, 1 CA, 4 ftr, 1 bmr on a hypothetical G3 sea lion.

UK can of course defend against this, but they will have to build a fat infantry stack in London instead of factories, ships, or air power. This could cost them the Atlantic fleet or at least force them to retreat it back to Canada; if they built a factory in Africa / India, they might lose it because they cannot afford to build units there on a critical turn. Meanwhile those infantry in London will just sit there inefficiently for several turns because there are not enough transports to ship them anywhere, and not enough warships to protect the Atlantic fleet in a forward position.

Your second Baltic transport is reasonably useful for shipping inf/art to Leningrad, and the extra fighter can of course be used for trading on the eastern front, defending France, etc. as usual.

So you never actually attack London in an AA50 game – you just quietly threaten to attack it, thereby forcing the Allies to waste much more money on defense than you spent on creating the threat.

@taamvan Can you say a bit more about what Japan is doing in your games? It’s true that with a well-executed KGF Germany will be contained to the core territories of France, NW Europe, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania – but that’s still worth $30 a turn and it takes the Allies a very long time to build and load enough transports to crack it.

Meanwhile, a pure KGF usually leaves Japan free to take India, then the Caucasuses, then Moscow – the Allies can certainly rush a few fighters to Moscow, but sending even one ruins the only practical Russian national objective, and if you build too many then you never get enough Allied ground troops to crack the German turtle – fighters in Moscow can’t reach to support an attack on France.

In my experience, without a bid and with NOs on, the Japanese attack on Moscow is much faster than the American attack on Paris, let alone Berlin. How does the Pacific play out in your games?

I think you can do it, but the problem is, if you can justify building the Aus IC then you probably don’t need it.

In recent months I’ve seen more and more US all Pacific (or 90% Pac) strats and with strong US play in the Pacific you don’t really need the Aus IC.  It would help, but the US can protect Aus and take EI.  Bor is a little harder, but once those islands are taken there really isn’t much need for UK support.  It’d be nice to have a little more UK support but its not necessary and certainly not at the expense of letting Russia get crushed by Germany.

I’d consider it under a few circumstances but never in rd 1.  I’d wait until UK can get at least one of its NOs.  And in this case probably the Pac NO.  With the initial UK trn and Aus troops, if you time your taking of Car Is correctly then the US can reinforce with Naval protection.  At this point if you are guaranteed to be able to count on that NO for 2-3 turns.  You might be able to afford the investment.  This would replace the potential IC in Norway.  UK can usually afford an IC in rd 3 or so.  Most cases it probably gets put in Nor, but with a strong Pacific game you can substitute it in for Aus instead.
But again if it looks that good to potentially place in Aus, you might be able to do an Indian IC instead, which is probably better.  And finally if the US was able to take EI, you might be able to place it there.  It really depends on how patient you are and what the overall board looks like as well as your overall strategy.

This thread has what you are looking for.

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=12873.0

The point is that randomness is assumed here… I am just as often allies as I am axis and it makes no difference.

that being said I think the game sides are equal. The stats show that.

Any decent A&A player wont care what side he plays.

If you ate truelly concerned about the skill issue, just review the tournies from R3 to the finish.  every player from that point knows how to play the game.

Yep, and it’s even more funny do it to the USA in a Polar Express campaign. Priceless

Also, western axis could make a try with SBRs on London if UK makes the error of not buying SAF IC. 16 damage on a country that is colecting about 25 or less? Deadly