Ways to Annoy Japan in the Non-KJF (in 1942 Online)

Note to moderators: I may have accidentally originally posted this in 1942 Second Edition. But it was definitely not intended for 1942 Second Edition otherwise I would have mentioned UK fighters landing on US carrier at Iwo Jima sea zone.

There was a topic on a Discord that I thought best covered in some detail. So I’m writing it up in a thread here; that way when a similar question comes up in future I can reference this thread instead of writing it all out again.

“I am looking for ways to disrupt and be annoying to Japan with US without fully going KJF after a successful attack on PH.”

My reply:

Some players pigeonhole powers into “roles” then don’t think about how to combine effectively. Don’t let that be you.

Specific moves, the same - players pigeonhole a move into a “role” then don’t consider the range of tactical applications.

Where to land R1 fighters is a topic on its own; there’s actually quite a lot to it. But for this, let’s just keep it very very simple and say end of R1 has 4 inf Yakut, 1 inf Evenki, 2 fighter Archangel.

(To which inevitably there’s a response saying R1 open was 20 W Rus / 1 fighter to Egypt, or R1 did 12 W Rus / 9 Ukr with bad dice at Ukr so wanted to land 2 fighters on Caucasus, or maybe someone just doesn’t like the coinflip odds Germany has to capture Caucasus with ending turn with 4 infantry equivalents and AA gun defending despite multiple “commit without opportunity to retreat” off 1) AA gun hitting German fighter, 2) German failure to capture Caucasus allowing UK counter of destroyer/fighter/bomber with good chance of retaining both UK air units particularly the deadly UK bomber (unlike UK1 countering the Trans-Jordan sea zone and losing the bomber). Yes, I acknowledge once again I simplify for the purposes of limiting the scope of discussion, as I typically do.)

(Or let’s say there’s a slightly more nuanced objection that USSR keeps a fighter at Caucasus to pick off the German Baltic transport in case of UK1 vs G Med fleet failure. We respond UK doesn’t even intend to UK1 hit G Med fleet; that UK/US dump to French West Africa. Then there’s a discussion about G sub splits in Atlantic, R sub submerging, probabilities, USSR assuming what Germany will do and pre-emptively making its moves beforehand, whether that is in fact reasonable or not, and so forth. Simplifying again, I say that just isn’t a discussion we’ll have for now, we’re just going to assume the simple version for purposes of this rant.)

(continued)

R1 2 Fighters on Archangel

Or, at least 1, anyways.
One of the applications of Archangel fighters is threatening Buryatia, which is usually pretty silly. USSR wants to devote scarce air power to a 1 IPC territory in far east, can only be used to counter Karelia out of all Europe next turn, and Japan just wipes out whatever ground USSR committed to recapturing Buryatia? Really? Ugh.

And if Japan commits towards capturing Buryatia, slowing J push to India? Well really now. USSR is the major Allied stack controller in Europe for quite some time. If USSR is to challenge the German stack, one should be able to see how an additional 12 IPC worth of units should make a difference in terms of pressure that can be applied. USSR bleeding out against Japan is the dream scenario for Axis, PLEASE bleed USSR out against Japan so strengthen the round 4 German-USSR balance in Europe, PLEASE do!

So it should be understood, USSR threatening Buryatia is usually a paper tiger threat.

But what if that weren’t the case?

UK Bomber at Kazakh

What happens if UK1 doesn’t hit the G Med fleet? Suppose UK1 instead flies bomber to Kazakh. And here I’ll say again, there’s a lot I’ll leave out, like what happens if G1 retained control of Ukraine so landed fighters on? Then UK1 bomber to Kazakh gets destroyed on G2 before UK2 can move to safety. So in this theoretical scenario we assume R1 successfully captured Ukraine, or G1 decided not to stack Ukraine; in either event UK has this information before UK commits to its move so it moves the UK bomber or not accordingly. But let’s say for this theoretical scenario UK1 bomber on Kazakh is safe.

Okay what then?

Then if USSR has a fighter on Archangel, then R2 has a credible threat to recapture Buryatia even if Japan moves 3 infantry from Manchuria in. If R2 does that, UK can land bomber on Buryatia safely while that bomber threatens both Japan’s sea zones.

AMAZING! But not really, right? Because Japan can leave a battleship escorting existing / newly built transports, and lone bomber vs lone battleship only has 18% to clear (6% to win outright). Bombers are expensive and it’s not a great attack. If it pays off, great, but it probably won’t.

And if Japan decides to put a little more on defense, like a carrier or destroyer? Then UK has even less to attack with.

But let’s look at it, really. Does UK really only have 1 bomber to threaten?

Not necessarily. The sea zone west of Japan can be hit by 2 UK fighters and a bomber, assuming UK1 2 fighters on Szechwan.

And if UK builds 2 bombers on India, UK can even threaten with 2 fighters 3 bomber. Well, the sea zone east of Japan can only be reached by 3 bomber but . . . ?

But maybe not. Because if UK has a carrier at India sea zone, the fighters have a landing zone even if hitting the sea zone east of Japan.

Dream Vs Reality: I Can Be Everything Everywhere All At Once Or Something Or Maybe Not

So at this point maybe some players start getting excited, thinking about how they can overload threats against Japan with lines that also transition well against Germany. But it really doesn’t work that way. Sure, a player can pull off “tricks” but in the end fighters have better defense than bombers. Infantry take time to push forward. Tanks are expensive. The map is what it is, so logistics are what they are, and optimized lines are what they are. Maybe a player gets a better idea of how much they can move around within probabilistic boundaries, and realizes preconceptions of “hard” boundaries are perhaps a lot fuzzier when seen up close, but in the end there are still some probabilistic realities that need to be dealt with.

So here, what are the realities? Japan has a pretty massive starting fleet that UK cannot take head on by itself. Japan has the income, Japan has the logistics. If UK tries to play “tricks” with expensive units like bombers or carriers, if Japan keeps a level head UK’s expensive “tricks” end up costing too much in the long term considering the temporary gain. At least, that’s how we MIGHT think about things (maybe all those are assumptions that should be challenged.)

Overloading Japan

To appropriate a chess term, “overloading” is when a piece ends up just needing to do too much defensively.

So what does Japan ideally want to do? On J1, Japan wants to avoid US moving to Iwo Jima with destroyer + air, threatening any new Japanese naval builds. Japan can deal with such a US move by moving its main fleet to Japan’s sea zones and reinforcing, but this restricts Japan’s movement, particularly a consolidated Japan fleet means Japan isn’t free to drop to Yunnan sea zone, which affects its timing on India. Make sense?

Sure, US1 to Iwo Jima is a bit of an aside to the OP’s question about pressuring Japan without US commit. But contextualizing again, turn order is important. Japan doesn’t know what US will do. So Japan has to handle the US1 to Iwo Jima threat without knowing if US will actually follow through.

If Japan doesn’t hit US Hawaiian Islands fleet there’s also the US1 to sz45 (northeast of Australia), threatening US2 3 fighters to India. Which has its tradeoffs of course; if Allies want to send US into Mediterranean to bleed Germany out, one can see where US3 threat on Med is not really compatible with US2 fighters on India. Or for those that don’t, basically Germany has threats to sea zone west of Morocco and south of Italy; Axis typically control a lot of territory surrounding that early so Allies don’t really have safe landing zones. As Allies can’t move fighters around freely, transitioning between India-region fighters and Med pressure is not a “natural” transition. So, again leaving a lot out, this is where US1 to Morocco (sacrificing transport) and US second carrier start to be more of a thing. Explicitly, moves that are bad in the short term can make sense in the long term.

But back to overloading Japan. Besides threatening the Iwo Jima sea zone, Japan also wants to threaten the Solomon Islands sea zone, the sea zone northeast of Australia if J doesn’t hit Hawaiian Islands fleet, and the India sea zone with a destroyer+ to prevent UK sub builds. Plus Japan wants to defend the sea zones around Japan against up to a pretty massive threat as was described above.

So one sees, Japan can definitely do multiple, but not necessarily everything well.

Connecting The Pieces

Simply, you see where USSR1 fighter on Archangel, USSR1 capture of Ukraine, and UK1 bomber on Kazakh (and potential India bombers buy) are connected, plus India sea zone carrier.

And though not explicitly described, one may sort of guess at some of the adds. Like really, what happens if UK1 leaves a naked carrier in India sea zone? Japan smashes with battleship/carrier/2 fighters? Really? Then UK2 counters with 2 fighters 3 bombers, maybe 1-2 subs? Or maybe Japan just sends fighters to clear the UK carrier, then Japan risks fighters, and has less to hit ground targets with.

Or let’s say Japan hits Hawaiian Islands fleet or doesn’t hit it. If Japan hits then Japan doesn’t have to think about Solomons / Iwo Jima / northeast of Australia so much. But that will bleed out at least one Japanese fighter, and restrict the options J2 has against Asia.

(continued)

US Bomber East Canada

With US submarine, “keeps Japan honest” or whatever. Keeping US bomber on East Canada limits attack opportunities into Med pretty soon, but it’s an option for a little while.

US/UK Naval Bombardment

US sets submarine at Hawaiian Islands to fight; increases odds from something like 50% to 68% that Japanese cruiser will not survive. If Japanese cruiser does not survive, then if UK did the right move, there could be US1 naval bombard vs inf/bomber/fighter followed by UK2 naval bombard. It’s not a great attack by Allies, but if it connects it can wipe out at least some Japanese air; depending on Japanese player greed / “dummy check” maybe better odds. Allied fleet assets arrive that much later in the Atlantic.

Wrapping Up

So in response to OP, it really isn’t about just taking ONE power and pressuring ONE opponent. Effectively you really want to use turn order and combinations, and have contingencies so what’s used against one power isn’t mono-use (so the counter won’t leave you stuck with nothing).

Generically, use Allied subs and bombers if you want to do some sort of dual threat. But discard thinking about the magical unicorn “can do all things everywhere all at once” because it just doesn’t work that way normally. Each theater needs some sort of cost-economical strategic core; when the minimum there is established (which is a lot less than a lot of meta might argue is a “minimum” but there is still a “minimum”, one can use bombers etc. to threaten multiple theaters

How To Counter Bombers? Tanks and Infantry, Probably

So if bombers have his multiple theater threat, then how to counter? Tanks and infantry are usual suspects. Bombers give better trades to the point air-heavy trades can favor attacker (e.g. 4 inf 5 bomber vs 5 inf; expectation is attacker commits less but destroys more). But at some point, stack battles have to be fought, so defending against air-heavy can use tanks; tanks can blitz to front lines quickly to reinforce, with faster movement defender needs to maintain less defensive stacks.

Bombers are also not great at defending for cost, so again tanks have the edge when it comes to stack battles.

But there’s some odd bits too, like if Allies go mass bomber their navies tend not to have overbuild on defense. So Axis switch to air can pressure Allies to retreat navy while building more escorts, leaving Allied bombers without cost-effective ground units.

So there’s different ways to counter bombers, if a player keeps their head on straight. So if you play some games with loads of bombers and opponents just don’t know how to counter, well, remember you can’t really evaluate the effectiveness of a strategy until it’s used against strong players. Bit of a discussion as to what constitutes “strong” but that’s perhaps a fun discussion best left for another time.