Taking Russia

Hi @tin-can-of-the-sea this should be helpful.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/19929/germany-playbook-overall-strategy-guide/206?page=9

You can also check out some league/play boardgames here and see what people did. Although not a whole lot of oob box games being played these days, there are a few and you can search back and find plenty.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/category/65/play-online-axis-allies

@tin-can-of-the-sea heh heh no worries. Just watched platoon the other day lol

@tin-can-of-the-sea I’m in the same (u-)boat as you. Only played a couple of games as Axis but I also find Moscow hard to take. Currently going 100% for taking Moscow and Calcutta in a game I’m playing at the moment and probably leaving myself too vulnerable elsewhere, but I want to prove to myself I can do it, then try to improve it to a more optimal appraoch once I’ve got the hang of things.

@flyingbadger

Hahaha I see what you did there!

@tin-can-of-the-sea

It’s incredibly easy to take out Russia as Germany, but to tie up loose ends with possible confusion let’s address the setting.

For starters, Germany has the option of attacking within G1-G4 before the Soviets get to declare war on them after the timer has passed up. So the question would be what turn are you attacking them? I personally like to attack on G3 as this is the perfect time that Germany has really kicked Britain’s teeth in, established themselves as a dominant industrial powerhouse having taken out France, Bulgaria, possibly Yugoslavia/Greece and Finland with Axis troops ready at the border of Russia.

Secondly, if you’re struggling to take out the Soviet Union it leads me to believe that the Soviets are imposing some sort of special strategy on you. If so, can you tell me this strategy so I can help you counter it and if you dont know the name best describe the moves that they do (i.e if they make a defensive fall back line or stack Moscow with tons of units).

As for myself, when I break through the Russian lines and start to march onto the Soviet economy, Germany tends to just steamroll and snowball their economy, with TONS of troops marching onto Moscow city that it’s basically impossible for Russia to defend Moscow, not because they lost units but because they aren’t making as many as I am after I’ve taken out the majority of their land in the Western portion of the USSR no problemo with the only issue being an Allied invasion.

So we’d need to know the circumstances at what turn your attacking, as well as if the Soviets are imposing any special strategies, and most importantly how your attacking with your units.

Assuming no bid:

G1: Take out 106, 110 and 111. use 2 subs to 111 and sub and BB to 110 and 2 subs to 106
Buy: 6 art and 2 inf
G2 Buy 10 art (berlin) and mech and or armor. If all your subs are dead buy 1 sub that you move to 125 G3
G3 Buy mech and armor only and declare war
G4 Buy mech and armor only
G5 buy as many planes as possible, You probably need to start worrying about the atlantic , so you may have to build infantry in western europe
G6 Buy as many bombers as possible, see G5. If you control Ukraine, buy 3 armor here

Also have a few italians available for can opening in Russia

You should be able to take down Russia G7

Of course this is not absolute and you may need to do adjustments depending on what the allies are doing.

@tin-can-of-the-sea

Ahh okay that makes sense then why you are struggling against Russia. Russia pulls their units back and makes a Maginot Line from Leningrad to Ukraine and in between with units to counter attack if you move forward on any end of the Russian border… a classic case I know exactly how to solve that doesn’t require any Italian can openers.

So I really like Oysteilo’s first initial purchases but obviously it varies, you just wanna make sure that the 70 IPC’s you get on G2, all of it should be going toward Barbarossa with infantry, mostly tanks, artillery, maybe mech, and even some tactical bombers.

Now, on G3 you’re going to move units in, but in a special way to which the Germans did in real life against France in using the art of Blitzkrieg to which you’re going to concentrate a large amount of your forces in a given undefended area.

See the problem with YGH’s Russian Strategy and even GHG’s as well is that most of the Russian counter attacking units are on Leningrad and Ukraine, their industrial hubs, which makes sense but you can take advantage of this. The only territory that doesn’t border either Novgorod or Ukraine is East Poland which borders both Belarus and W. Ukraine. Now having looked at their videos they for the most part only have a total of 9 infantry to bring in from Belarus and W. Ukraine so they aren’t going to attack you with that little amount of infantry meaning you’re free to move almost everything you have on the Eastern Front into Eastern Poland. Now I wouldn’t move absolutely everything since you’re going to also want to bait out Ukraine assuming you’re going after the Southern Portion of the Soviet Union so what you will do is you’ll put a large stack of infantry and potentially artillery as well on Bessarabia to draw out and tempt the USSR player to leaving Ukraine and attacking it, or they do nothing and you blitz your tanks and Mech and even send in some Luftwaffe to take Ukraine and just like that you have immediate access to the entire southern economy of the Soviet Union.

@tin-can-of-the-sea

Yep, see most people want to secure the Northern Front of the war to take the victory city of Leningrad but you go up there and there’s only territories of 1 IPC value for miles dude you make no headway whereas down south you’ve got atleast 5 territories worth 2 IPC’s to go along with the national objective you get for taking Stalingrad AND the separate one for taking the Caucuses boosting your economy by a largesome amount.

Well, you dont actually have to stop pouring money into Barbarossa to get to work on the Med and Western Europe.

A German Strategy called Afrika Korps that was made by GHG which is an absolute ingenious strategy that Germany should do to winning with the OOB rules that involves taking a built up German navy and troops down to Africa to assist Italy against the British.

And what better time to do this then before you even start your Barbarossa attack. That way you dont have to worry about consistently spending money on a 2 front war. You send the troops needed down to Africa within turns 1-3 and by G3 that’s when you’ll be declaring war on the Soviets.

@tin-can-of-the-sea

No problem man!

I think you’ll find great results when playing as Germany and following these procedures.

I’d recommend watching GHG’s video of Afrika Korps since he does a fantastic job explaining each step that Germany should take with some very minor tweaks that I made to the strategy but it’s still the same well rounded strategy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxSfedTpnbI

it is a whopping hour long so watch until you get the basic gist of the strategy since obviously him to include alot of other youtubers don’t intentionally make these kinds of strategy videos over an hour long but do it anyway for the purposes of covering absolutely everything that should be addressed so no confusion is left in the air.

If there’s anything else you’re wondering about, you have but to ask

Amazing this forum is still active, even cooler that there is still talk about the Afrika Korps strategy and even a Youtube video!

Here is the original idea back in 2016: https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/28581/the-afrika-korps?_=1640243275057

I am playing again in 2 weeks with my father & brother, after a 1.5 year break. I will focus on Barbarossa as well, and likely use oysteila build orders. Maybe spend some more on Atlantic Wall when USA goes for KGF with my JDOW1 in G3/4.