The Japanese Piracy Strategy: An insane plan that somehow worked

@arthur-bomber-harris said in A Nameless but Effective China Strategy:

Round 2: Japan captures 3 out of the 4 of the following territories: Malaya, Java, Sumatra, and Celebes. In your game you only captured Malaya.

Everything goes down the drain if you don’t have a strong J2 turn.

I’m not a fan playing against myself - it can make you go blind and miss obvious moves. The J1 was Cow, and J2 - 3 were Andrew’s moves from our mini-test.

The real problem is turn 3. The Allies have mid-sized fleets off both India and Queensland. As for as I can tell, Japan has 3 options for J3:
*Option #1 - Put the IJN in between the Allied fleets. This is what Andrew did, and is probably the least bad option. Most likely outcome is you trade the IJN for both Allied navies.
*Option #2 - Attack one of the fleets. Face the multi wave counter attacks ready on either side. Most likely outcome is you trade the IJN for only 1 of the Allied navies.
*Option #3 - Retreat north. Allow the Allied fleets to merge into a fleet bigger than the IJN. I haven’t played against this yet, but it feels like Japan is turtling.

Note - the absolute best realistic outcome Japan can hope for in the first 2 options is wounded capital ships limping back to a NB while facing another turn of Allied attacks.

I really hope I’m missing something and there is a 4th option.

@tamer-of-beasts

We’ll see. I’m just super afraid it’ll increase American morale if I attacked first. Worth a shot though as morale never undermined most campaigns on either side.

@Baron:

@ShadowHAwk:

The american public and congress did not want to declare war but the president and some staff did.
Without the attack on pearl and the public cry for revenge i doubt it that the congress would even declare war because the public would not like it at all.

I always find it funny that Americans judge the japanese attack on pearl as a violation while at the same time they where violating the rules even more.

But history didnt work out that way, japan did attack the US after being provoked plenty and germany just declared war on the US ( but hitler did more stupid things )

Probably Hitler was hoping that his Japanese allies would do the same against Russia and Stalin.
He would have needed that oriental soviet troops be stuck with Japan.

Yeah, he was hoping that would have happened. If he didn’t declare war on the US, then the War would have been separate still.

So my latest strategy with the Allies was highly experimental but successful. First off, let me say that many house rules were used. We’ve never used house rules before, so we just recently began the journey of spicing up the game. The most notable house rules we used in this game were the Neutral Block rule, transport trucks, transport planes, and a Generals rule (Japan, Germany, U.S. , Russia, and U.K. each get randomly selected commanders with different perks) Now, onto the strategy that I call “Operation Roaring Bear”: At the beginning of the game, I sent 2 Russian infantry south. Britain bombed out Iraq, so Russia marched one man into Persia and Iraq at the same time. In Africa, the U.K. used aircraft to destroy the Italians without taking their territory. Russia was able to take all those normally useless Italian territories and turn them into sweet sweet 3ipc bonuses a piece. At the same time, 1 Russian infantry boarded a British transport and sailed to Brazil. The Americans used a handful of heavy bombers to destroy all the South American armies, and the Russians collected a nice chunk of change. It was pretty hilarious to have Moscow entirely surrounded and still collect enough money for 10-12 infantry per turn. Then after the Germans failed to take the city, the Russians steamrolled across Europe.

In my play group there’s a guy who takes S. Euro with Germany and starts to build a small navy there. With the Italians, that combined fleet is enough to bottle the allies at Gib for a long time. I’ve seen it come out of the med from time to time depending on the situation, but usually he just drops enough men to hold Gib for a very long time. Without an allied presence in the med, Italy can typically make a lot of $$$ and either build a defensive force for Germany while they press towards USSR, move into the middle east and threaten USSR’s underbelly/India, take out UK’s SAF IC, or some combo of the above. It seems very hard to stop if done right, but I’ve yet to play with or against him when he’s the European axis and does this, so I don’t know the details of what happens in between my tours of the others’ boards when I’m waiting for my opponent to take his turn.

Doh, thats right.  I misspoke, you save one if concerned Japan might be invaded by US.  It can stop bombards and is cheaper than throwing a ftr away doing it.

So only save a kami if you think Japan is about to be invaded.

@strategic:

I am trying to devise a wonderful strategy, for both sides, so I need to collect data. Just copy/paste the survey and write 1-5, 1=worst/least important, with 5= best/most important. Do as many, or as few countries as you would like, and include details if enhancing. Thank you in advance.

Survey:
Infantry
5 for everyone except:
Japan 3
ANZAC 2

Mech Infantry
Germany 3
Russia 2
UK India 2
Italy 2
Everyone else 1

Artillery

Russia 3
Germany 3
UK (both sides) 3
Italy 3
China 3
Japan 2
ANZAC 1

Tank
Germany 5
Russia 4
Japan 4
Everyone else 3 except:
ANZAC 1

Fighter
Japan 5
Germany 5
UK 5
ANZAC 5
US 4
Russia 3

Tac Bomber
Japan 5
Germany 5
UK 4
ANZAC 3
US 3
Russia 2

Strat Bomber
Germany 4
US 3
Japan 3
Everyone else 2

In my experience so far a good Russian player playing conservatively can make Moscow close to impossible to take.   The way Russian territories are set up allows them to fall back and shadow any approaching German army until the Russians have reinforced their stack to the point where it can turn around and chase out or destroy the invaders.  There’s no real downside to this vs standing and fighting as you’re only giving up 1-2 ipc provinces as you fall back and you’re continuing to preserve and grow your Russian stack at a rate faster than the Germans can hope to reinforce theirs (assuming, of course, that GB and the US are putting any sort of pressure on the other side of Europe).  I’ve pretty much given up going for it and instead have resolved to find some way to take Leningrad and Stalingrad.  I’ll admit that Germany and Italy, given free reign to attack Russia can eventually bring them down if they focus all their strength on it but how are they doing this while preventing or counter-attacking allied landings?  There’s just not enough IPC’s available for them to effectively do both.