Are you playing against a bid? If so where was that bid placed?
If not, consider this. Many people on this board (myself included) believe that classic is unfairly biased towards the allies, and that they will win 80-90% of the time (basically barring really bad dice) because of their superior position at the start of the game. If you are playing without a bid, I would suggest that your strat would probably win you more games than you lose. But I would also suggest Russia can do even better by strafing as follows. Strafing is defined as attacking for 1-2 rounds before retreating from combat:
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If no bid is placed in UKR (3inf 2arm 1fgt), strafe UKR with all 8 inf plus 2 arm, with a plan of retreating to Karelia after you have destroyed either 1 or both of the German arm (but without killing the fighter). Your goal is not to take Ukraine, but rather trade russian inf for german arm. On average it should take you 2 rounds of combat to destroy 4-5 german units (3inf 2arm) for 5 Russian inf. That’s a good trade for Russia.
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If no bid is placed in MAN, strafe MAN (3inf 1fgt) with 5 inf 1 arm with the intention of retreating to YAK before destroying all japanese units. Your goal again is to trade 2-3 Japanese inf for 3 Russian inf. Without those 3 inf in MAN, the Japanese only have 4 inf in all of Asia to attack with on Turn 1. It makes attacking China much riskier, and potentially the US fighter in China might survive that attack. Thus it is a good trade for Russia to do this attack on R1.
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If you are playing against a bid, and your bids are between 21-25 IPC (standard on this board), and some of the bid (say 4 inf) was placed in Eastern Europe on the bid, then against your R1 opening, I would attack Karelia on G1 with everything:
Karelia (18inf, 2arm, 2fgt) vs (15inf, 7arm, 5fgt, 1bmb):
3inf 2arm 1 fgt UKR
7inf 1arm 1fgt EEU
3inf 1arm 1fgt FIN
2inf GER (via trn BAL sz)
2 arm 1fgt 1bmb GER
1 arm SEU
1 fgt WEU
Assume AA gun takes out 1 fighter on the way in. Median results would be:
Round 1 of combat: GER hits 8-9 (say 8 ), RUS hits 8.
Round 2 of combat: GER hits 7, RUS hits 5-6 (say 6).
Round 3 of combat: GER hits 6, RUS hits 3.
Round 4 of combat: RUS hits 1, GER takes KAR with 4arm, 4fgt, 1bmb. This is actually a better than average result for Russia (because we rounded GER hits down on round 1 and RUS hits up on round 2). If we had rounded median hits up for GER instead it would look like this:
Round 1 of combat: GER hits 8-9 (say 9), RUS hits 8.
Round 2 of combat: GER hits 7-8 (say 8 ), RUS hits 5.
Round 3 of combat: RUS hits 2, GER takes KAR with 6 arm, 4fgt, 1bmb.
So end result is Germany takes Karelia with 4-6 arm (median result). If Germany also sends their lone sub against the Labrador UK transport with success, then UK only has 1 transport 1bb 3fgt 1bmb to try to liberate Karelia on UK1. If that fails, Russia has no ground units to liberate Karelia with on R2 and must build and place in Moscow on R2. Russia will only have 1 arm 0 fgt left which will not be very threatening to either Japan or Germany in the midgame as they press on Moscow.
I’d recommend the strafes on UKR and MAN would improve your R1 result.