Japan counters to a West Russia stack

what Hobbes is saying is 100% true.  But, where tanks become a real problem for the allies is on Persia.  Stack 8+ there and use German force to open Kazhak.  Even if the Allies know to look for it, the mere threat of it is often enough for them to give up the Caucausus complex.

Thanks!  :-D

@Frontovik:

I TRY allot of KJF’s, but then i again, i TRY.
What i always notice is: no IC in India, and perhaps none in Sinkiang
if you build one, it’ll die, makin KJF much harder than easier
i always see japan with KJF reach 40, i guess this is normal (They go india full power, china, SFE). but then you need to come up with US and pacific fleet and try to stop them
all troops on EUS should go to africa aswell
problem is, germany gets + 50, but perhapd with some SBR from US and UK, and UK landing north…

what’s everybodys opinion?

I just on a very nifty game with the Axis (no bids btw).
And what you describes is what exactly happened.

On J1, I didn’t do Pearl Harbor, luring the Allied player into the pacific. Offcourse, the USA needs to invest a whole lot more in the Pacific if he wants to reign those seas opposed to Japan.
So, while Japan was going 50-50 on land and sea units, taking territories here and there, Germany was having a field day now that the USA was putting 100% of it’s IPC’s into the Pacific.

By turn 6, the initial USA fleet was vapourized, having taken only 1 Japanese island (and Japanese income at +40), Germany was at +50, Britain pretty much locked into London, and Russia stacking INF in their only territory, Moscow.
At that point USA was unable to stop me from invading Brazil with Germany in the next turn, the 2nd USA fleet would be at leats deminished to 50%, and UK was about to lose their last transporters against a strong German BB, stacked AC, some subs and a destroyer.
Japanese transports would have been ready to head for Alaska aswell, but the Allied resigned.

Agreed, there were some lucky rolls, but I think all in all….the USA needs to invest way too much in the Pacific to make much of a difference there, whilst leaving Germany with 1 opponent less.

@Jennifer:

6 Transports = 48 IPCs + 15 IPCs for Industrial Complex.  Total: 63 IPCs
12 Transports = 96 IPCs.  Total: 96 IPCs

That is not an equivalent comparison.

Norway is only 3 IPC, so it can only produce 3 units.  So 1.5 TRNs worth of units.

US sets up 4x4, requiring 8 TRNs to get 8 divisions to Europe per round.  With a Norway IC, to still get 8 divisions requires 6 TRN plus Norway production (they do get 1 extra unit this way).

But for UK… 3 IPC’s is about 15% of their mid-game income.  And as I said, that means eitehr keeping ARM in the mix for them to TRN, or allows 3 INF to be upgraded to ART, and thus add 6 points to their attack (an extra dead German every round).

US only needs 64 IPC’s of TRN’s to send a full 8 divisions to Europe every round.  And if UK can keep their income to where they can fill their 4 TRNs, that is 16 divisions per turn.  And that is serious trouble for Germany.

@ncscswitch:

@Zooey72:

The key is to keep your fleet(s) (because of reinforcements) 3 sqares away from the main Jap fleet.  They can’t move out in force to destroy you because they need their air power in Asia.  Than just gobble away at Japan until you have the force to destroy the Jap fleet when you consolidate.

Staying 3 squares from Japan’s main fleet leaves you these options…
Turn 1… move to SZ44
Turn 2… move to SZ48
Turn 3:  Attack either New Guinea (1 IPC) or East Indies (4 IPC)
Turn 4:  Attack the other one.

For everything else, you WILL be in range of both the Japan Fleet, and their bomber.  And to move THAT far in the alotted time, you will have at most… 1 AC, 2 FIG, 1 BB, 1 SUB, 1 TRN 2/ 2 INF on board.

Not much for if Japan sends ANYTHING your way…

I agree with you for the most part, but the explanation would take too long and not really the question of this thread.  So I will take it up at a later time.

The quick explanation is that the first turn for the US is gone, they don’t move.  You can’t, the Japs have the Hawian sea space.  But you build defensively, ACs and fighters.  The Jap navy will pull back as it normaly does because they need their AF in Asia (don’t forget it takes a while for the Japs to overcome existing forces in Asia).

For the japs to fully equip their carriers against the US would take the Jap AF out of the Asian campaign.  They can’t afford that.  Early in the game a small allied push in Asia would wield great results if the Japs commited thier AF to the Pacific.

I think you’re right, the US going against Japan whole hog is not a good idea.  I am a “traditional” player as far as that goes.  But if played the right way it can win you the game.  It is risky, I won’t argue that.  But isn’t that what makes the game fun?  Doesn’t it get boring as hell to have the traditional game of “does Russia fall to the japs before Germany falls to the allies”?  I have seen the strategy work, it just takes more skill to pull it off.

Here’s some thoughts and experiences I’ve had with Japan recently:

If you’re a pretty confident Japanese player, I would suggest completely skipping Pearl Harbor. It is a waste of your time because the fleet there poses no real threat in either the Pacific nor Atlantic theaters. Any units you lose there (especially aircraft) is a detriment to your war effort, and any fighters you have left positioned there are way out of reach to be useful in the next round.

Now, why do I say that the Pearl Harbor fleet poses no real threat?

In the Pacific theater, it is simply a waste of time for the US to pursue attacking Japan head-on, provided the Japanese player is skilled. Japan will outdistance the US in IPCs soon enough, and starts with a tremendously stronger navy that’s even stronger on defense. If Pearl Harbor survives and the US says “gee, I’ll go after Japan”, then you have won a victory right there already. This means Germany will have an easy time in Africa, as well as have a fairly easy time keeping the UK from landing anywhere and force him to buy lots of defensive navy. The US really has to pour their entire income into navy to screw with the Japanese; while it can possibly be effective when islanding hopping using solomon islands, this lets a whole lot of steam off of Germany which is deadly.

The Japanese navy really shouldn’t fall provided you expand at even a moderate pace. You start with 2 carriers and 6 fighters, and if you need to you can put another carrier in the water to create a ridiculously strong defensive force, as well as add subs periodically, all the while dumping troops into Buryatia and walking them through Russian territories. The only way that Japan will have trouble is if all 3 Allies come at him from the start, and that will certainly end in swift defeat as Germany runs roughshod over Africa and the Russians.

Now in the Atlantic, what threat does the Pearl Harbor fleet pose? Except for that one extra fighter, nothing at all. The carrier and sub take something on the order of 4+ rounds to get into a position to defend the transport system. By round 4 you shouldn’t be needing protection unless something went horribly wrong. By round 4 the Baltic fleet should be scrap or very nearly scrapped, and you should already have sufficient defense from the first couple rounds of purchases.

So what do I do with my forces when I skip Pearl Harbor? For one, I’ll use the extra aircraft to increase the chances of the China fight going down in one round. Usually the bomber/fighter in Japan are used against Harbor, but now they can be used against China, which gives you great chance to knock out all that equipment in one go, thereby decreasing chances of you losing infantry which you need early on to keep your gains.

With the Philippines fleet, I will sink that UK transport that’s off of Egypt, instead of sinking the destroyer in Kwangtung. This heavily decreases the attack force that the UK can bring on his next turn; usually with that transport alive he can bring 2 infantry (1 from rhodesia, 1 from persia) and along with the infantry from Trans-Jordan to attack Egypt again (there’s nothing you can do to prevent the first time UK attacks Egypt, but you can mess with his second turn chances).

The destroyer in Kwangtung poses no real threat in any case, especially since I retreat all navy to defend SZ60 instead of using them against Harbor. There is some variability here such as where the carrier/fighter went, but it shouldn’t matter. If there’s a carrier + fighter defending the transport, then I’ll still sink it and be glad. If the carrier went with the destroyer to ensure the kwangtung’s transport’s death, then I don’t care as it poses no offensive threat. Fighters from the Philippines fleet can land in Libya if the dice went bad and you had to lose your Japanese carrier.

I will use that fighter from the Carolines to sink the British sub or transport if they’re around because it has nothing better to do, then it goes to SZ60 with the rest of the fleet to defend the newly built transports.

And recently I’ve been messing around with the idea of starting with a 2 complex buy. It does sound crazy, but hear me out: this ramps up the pressure against Russia much faster than transport builds because of tank’s movement vs infantry. You give up fast island hopping, but you gain Russian territories faster as you can have a nice constant stream of tanks that are mostly in range of each other to counterattack if the Russians decide to push back. With infantry swapping in Bury/Indochina and their slow movement, it’s hard for them to adjust and support each other, as well as push quickly.

You can still island hop with your initial transport. It will be slower, but on the other hand, you do not have to worry about letting up land pressure. If you rely on transports mostly then you’d have to replace the transports or build a complex to keep the land pressure going if you island hopped. With the double complex buy, that’s the end of having to buy more infrastructure right there. Island-hopping slowly isn’t so bad anyways, since it’s not worth a ton of IPCs and you can use free troops from islands and battleship shots. IPCs you miss out on the islands earlier on is very much offset by the territories you can take earlier on the Russian front.

Now, definitely with a 3 tran “normal” buy, you have more flexibility. You can screw with the US and keep him somewhat honest; with a 2 complex buy he can go with a 4x4 fleet but if you have transports potentially invading Alaska/West Canada, he’ll have to run a 3x3 or risk getting snared up easily later on. You can do some pretty fast island hopping, and the transports will help a lot if you’re getting KJF’ed. Of course if you’re getting KJF’ed you should see it coming and definitely in that case go with transports, but if not, then I would definitely recommend trying 2 complexes some time.

And on a parallel note, there is a nasty/tricky move you can do to upset the Allies a bit. It starts with the concept of swapping, where you alternate dropping between Buryatia and Indochina every turn, which is a solid basic strategy since it secures more avenues of attack and lets you drop all troops you build in Japan every turn due to SZ60 bordering Buryatia. Now the tricky move is to actually drop 4 tran of stuff into Africa after you drop troops into Indochina, instead of going back and dumping in Buryatia. 1 tran can go take Madagascar while the other 3 take Egypt, Trans-Jordan, and Italian East Africa.

Now I don’t suggest counting on this or doing this all the time for a couple of reasons: 1) it disrupts your flow of troops against Russia. 2) sometimes the Allies already have a large force in Africa and can deal with you handily.

But if you want to risk it, it can throw a wrench into the Allies’ plans. If they have already shut Germany out of Africa and don’t have significant troops there, suddenly they’re going to have to do a big drop there which is going to mean less troops in Europe this turn. They will be forced to deal with it very soon or else your tanks will blitz up most of Africa next turn and eat up a very significant chunk of UK IPCs.

Sounds juicy.

I do wish to warn you that I will be leaving town this Saturday until Monday afternoon.  I was hoping to squeeze in a game before then, but I have waited this long, I can wait longer.  I just didn’t wish to surprise you.

During play, I should be able to crank out turns pretty fast.  Daak Dicey is new to me, but as long as I still get options for casualties on odd battles (subs…etc) it is fine with me.  I should not have trouble dedicating time to belt out a game.

Octo

And the danger is even grater if germany launches a rapid all out attack on Russia, while Japan musters up for the kill.