Building Factories

@Klaykowalski:

I thought I read somewhere that when a capitol is taken its factory turns from a major to a minor. Does anybody have any input on this?

There are no such things as major or minor factories in 1942 SE… factories are factories.  As mentioned, that rule is for the 1940 Editions of the game.

Agreed…  using bombers to industrial raid can be devastating…  Especially when the opponent gets a 50% hit ratio on your bombers.  I think using bombers to threaten navy or trade territories makes much more sense.  There’s nothing like going in with four bombers, losing two of them and getting a total of 3 damage to an opponent to see the futility of industrial raids.

of course, your mileage may vary…

Kirk S.

Great post Black Elk. Here are my usual US buys for the first 3 rounds.

1st 3 bombers. Save 6
2nd 3 bombers, Transport, infantry
3rd 2 bombers, Transport, 2 infantry
4th turn on can change based on bomber losses, German plane buys, and what Japan is doing.

The point with this build is to merge allied fleets off sea zone 13 on turn 3.

Or how about this as another possibility. Instead of the Bid, Allies can move 1 factory to a new location.

For example, Russia could move the Karelia factory to Vologda. UK could move the factory from India to Eastern Canada, or Egypt, or South Africa.

Might work as well, for producing new strategies without breaking the first round battles.

@empulliam:

New on the forum, just curious as to what you all think about an opening move I use with UK pretty often. On the first turn, build a factory in India. I consider the UK pacific fleet pretty much useless against Japan, I say let US deal with it since they have the money, so i abandon it in favor of a land based strategy. I’ve seen people try building a factory in India where they move the one inf over from persia and pull the plane in from the carrier and try and defend it. The problem with that strategy is that if Japan wants India bad enough on the first turn, the math says they can take it. (They will lose some fighters, but having a factory on the mainland seems like a worthwhile trade). Here are my moves (only on the Pacific side) for turn one.

1. send the carrier in India to get the unprotected transport by Kwangtung.
2. Send the Australian sub to get the Japanese sub
3. Put 2 inf from Australia onto a transport and attack New Guinea (Not a huge part of the plan, but technically the math is in my favor)
4. Move inf from Persia into India
5. (here’s where things get dicey) send everything in India, plus the fighter from the carrier, into southeast Asia. Unless the Japan player catches on to what I’m doing, the first two units he allows to be killed will be the infantry there. I don’t really care so much about getting the plane, so unless i’m doing really well I just retreat after I destroy the ground units. This way, Japan has no ground units in range to capture the factory, and next turn I can reinforce it with 3 tanks, and from there just send ground units up the coast until Japan is kicked out of mainland Asia. Then I would use the factory to reinforce Russia from the East.

On the 1st Edition of 1942 this is almost suicidal because the Japanese player should focus everything on preparing to attack India from J2 onwards and he’ll be able to do so unless you commit the Soviets to defend the IC. Which is almost suicidal as well because Germany should also be pushing hard into Russia and it will usually mean that the Soviets will lose Caucasus.
You’re also leaving Africa to Germany if you follow this.

sz15 can be attacked with 2 fig 1 bom, vs 1 bb 1 cru 2 tran the odds are

61% all G units dead
15% only 2 trans left
17% BB + 2 trans left
7%  all G units survive

This is asuming that the UK destroyer at sz17 was killed with G air on G1.

Either Germany needs to buy more navy to protect the BB, or it must either attack Egypt G1 or take Gibraltar on G1.
Otherwise it will be possible for the UK to launch a solid attack.

Aniversary Is cool to have but other than having Italy I just wasn’t all that stoaked about it. The sculpts in mine were really bad in alot of ways I ranted about this along with others when it came out . 1942 Second Ed is awesome and with a bit of tweaking you can probably get a better experience than AA50. HBG and FMG have a set of Italian minis and roundels you could easily use. As far as balancing goes you could simply combine Germany and Italy and simply use your Italian pieces in place of Germans where it calls for them or use some house rules.

You can get the Aniversary rules too but I’m not sure where.

While I might dodge some stones being thrown here AA50, was not a favorite of mine. For what it costs to get a copy it’s not worth it. There are a ton of threads on here as to how to make your own version of AA50.

Personally the attraction of this game for me was to have the game in my AA collection. I have all the board based AA games except for Guadal Canal and AAE40.

@oztea:

No, Japan attacking Russia isn’t implausible, and I don’t really have a problem with it.

But the problem I see in it, is that as japan….you already have almost all your stated goals accomplished.

A weakened US fleet Most of the colonies of the West captured Still no war with the Russians China on the defensive

So, idle units are the devils plaything…and you just HAVE to do something on your turn.
So you lash out at Russia.
I would never want this to be “not allowed” in the rules.

I just want it to be a bad idea for Japan…
Like no territories of value up there, or a big stack of 6 INF and 2 AA guns across the border that is a tar pit you don’t want to condemn your men to.
Instead…we will get a token russian force…that turns tail for Moscow…and Japan is obliged to follow them…because it has nothing else to do.

Indeed, it should never be disallowed, just very unattractive: add a tank or two and a fighter in the East, as far as I’m concerned. In the game the Japanese can attack the West, the Chinese and the Russians. In the real war they barely had enough force to take on just one of them and have a chance at winning.