Japan Pearl Heavy… 4 tpt buy?

If you like playing with NAs and picking them to suit your strategy, give Axis and Allies Revised Enhanced (commonly abbreviated as AARe) a try. It uses National Advantages as an important part of core play, not just an optional rule. They’re considered well-balanced after several years of development and play-testing.

It appears I can’t post links, but you’ll find the sticky in the House Rules section on this forum.

Have fun.

Another thought would be about which is going to be easier to replace for you country.  Subs are great fodder and replacing them is easier on the pocketbook than FIG’s or CV’s, and especially if you are Japan.  US can afford to usually replace that kind of loss, but most other countries can’t.

For 72 IPC’s, I’d go with a mix like ones mentioned earlier, with DD’s, CV’s (+FIG) & SS’s.  If split over a couple rounds, maybe SS/DD first in case of early strike

@Bunnies:

(And why am I always beating my favorite dead horse “look at the board, look at the board, look at the board”?)

Because it’s so unrelevant? Or maybe your horse is to slow? ;)

So, you say, you specified that a country was deadzoned and was being traded.  Ask yourself if that’s enough to formulate a grand strategy.  Of course it’s not.

Not? ;)
Don’t get me wrong, I know that my game will only some dilettantish moving of plastic figures as long I have no planning above the next three moves. Know yourself, know your enemy … all that stuff from all that books.
But I also must take a look on the little decisions I have to make, like that example above. If I make such little things wrong, no strategy can help me. And I think, an strategy must pay attention to the overall board situation (as you said; not a dead horse in my eyes), my own weakenings in gameplay and the player that sits on the other side of the table. To judge that situation right and create the adequate strategy is a thing that I have to do by myself, and all the postings on this board can only help a little. But for that little tactical decisions and tiny precious moves which the game have in store these boards are an eye opener for me. And that’s why I’m looking for such little, delimited solutions for a special problem and hope, I’ ll remember that solution in my next game.

Conclusion:  Germany has superior trading ability.  Germany may leave defense forces of 2 infantry or more per territory, particularly in Belorussia and Ukraine early (since UK/US probably can’t drop units into those territories early, unlike Karelia and Archangel).  However, Russia should avoid leaving infantry in territories if it can help it.

I’ll try to remember that.

Note leaving infantry behind is sometimes good re: Tim’s post.

Known, but noted again. :)

And: thank you for your post.

7 IPC is plenty for a revised bid, IMHO.  Just need some punch to close Egypt on Germany 1.

Though, lately I’ve been getting sneaky and bidding 30 IPC to be Axis so I can work on KJF in “normal” games where my opponent is unaware I am going to hit him with it.  A lot of fun!  Had a few games given to me when my opponent sees a massive fleet emerge off the coast of S. America into the Pacific and his fleet is far away. :P

Normally I would go for transports.
That would be buy two on J1 (fleet total is 3 or 4 now) and on J2 buy one or two more.  Coordinate this with ground unit builds in Japan to fill all the transports and do the infantry push to Moscow.

In the current game, the Allied/UK player (RJ), placed his bomber within reach of Japanese home waters (Novo) and moved his Australian submarine up within reach also (Coral Sea).  This put any unprotected transport build in home waters at risk.  The added cost of either diverting fleet assets to cover them or building cover and still over building to deal with losses actually made me move toward factories on the mainland. Add in that he moved most of his India forces to Egypt and skipped on the UK1 DD vs Trans option.

I built two, one in FIC and one in Manchuria.  Sure, they will never out build the home islands but now my infantry push into Russia is independent of any transport issues.  For 30 IPC I have the equivalent of three transports that won’t sink.  I would have spent 24 for those same three transports plus a DD to protect them (12 more) then probably another transport to replace loses (8 more).  So it was two factories at 30 IPC or 4 Transports and a DD at 36 IPC.  The factories are at least one turn closer to the front so discount a turn of Infantry in the pipeline (6X3=18IPC) and now I have 30 IPC for factories vs 54 IPC for transports, DD, and infantry to fill the pipeline.  I will have to build AA guns for the factories to keep the SBR from becoming annoying but they will also be able to move up with the front lines making my kill stacks harder to hit.

As an additional bonus, I can still add transports to the fleet in later turns and if they are not moving gear to the mainland they are now available to support fleet operations / threaten Alaska/Austrialia/Africa.  This decision meant I could send the homeland transport to Hawaii with the fleet for a low odds invasion of Hawaii and the Kwangtung transport is busy supplementing the mainland, ferrying Inf from the islands, and joining the fleet facing India.

I won’t claim these are perfect moves but faced with an opponent who was looking to disrupt the J1 transport build, it was not a bad counter.  At least, so far…

i agree totally, so did his partner.  we both thought that after brazil he should have turned south and gobbled some african cash and then kept going through the indian ocean and back to the pacific.  it would still have been far too out position to save his other fleet and with his land unit requirements he couldn’t build his minor fleet up to a level that would make the usa blink.  once the trannies going into asia were gone, so was the game.

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.

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