Which is country is your first choice.

Hey - you made the old sculpts looks pretty cool…

I shot you an email, I hope I put it in right and you just haven’t gotten to it yet. I sent it to lfrank87@gmail.com.

@Maddog77:

Started playing w/ my brothers when I was 13 (1976) We actually took a 4’x8’ piece of plywood and painted a blown-up version of the board on it. We spent a few weeks in Dads workshop making little wooden playing pieces and painting them. It was quite fun. We set it up on the ping-pong table and spent weeks battling. We came up w/ a few variations on the rules, map and unit movements. The one I remember quite well is stealth subs! We would start of w/ our subs in the proper starting sz’s, but we would “submerge” the subs when moving them so our opponets did not know where they were until they “surfaced”. We’d plot the moves on paper so we could prove where they moved to and from. It was quite fun to have an opponet move his fleet into a SZ that was occupied by 4 or so submerged subs. The subs would “surface”, in some cases stopping the opponents full movement, take a few hits and watch the subs submerge. Great fun and a nice twist to the game.

That sounds like a great twist, I’ll have to try it sometime.

I was 14ish when I first played a game. All of us were newbies.

My dad was UK and USA and built a ton of bbs to bombard me to pieces. USSR built a ton of infantry and stacked moscow heavily and never moved out of it. I think he had over 60 infantry when the game ended, at least double whatever was left on the board, combined! I was able to conquer all of Africa with one lone Jap infantry which eventually was transported over to europe to help save berlin. Japan also invested in an airforce to bomb the massive allied fleet. Germany quickly spread out due to moscow simply falling back. But I was never able to mount a serious offensive vs moscow. eventually it was all I could do to hold onto europe because of the massive bb fleets both USA and UK sported. And still USSR held to their defenses and never switched to offensive mode. Ahh, that innocence of noobs.

You should probably start playing with bids to help out the axis.  You seem like a pretty good player who is ready to move on.

Quite frankly it doesn’t matter what Russia does on R1 (straight up) the Allies are going to win the game.

For the sake of argument though, I’ll Retake Man (heavy), probably take Chi, and do a variation of Pearl Lite.

The Reason bids should be considered is here is a typical R1 turn

1)  Attack Ger sub with Rus sub (either win or chase off ger sub)
2)  Kill Ger ships in baltic (2 ftrs, 1 trn)
3)  Strafe/take Ukr
4)  Strafe/take Man (or just reinforce yak)

There is just too much damage you can do.  Russia is far to powerful when played right.  Hence the need for RR with a 9-12 bid or just a 21-24 bid game.

Example: huge trade off in round 1 and 2 between Russians and Germans, both lose their arm. Spa landings are interesting once Ger hasnt got any arm.

Yup when Germany hasn’t got much or any armor they should not expect to hold both EEuro and WEuro for long. Conversely, if Russia doesn’t have much armor walk throughs in the Cauc should be expected.

Yeah, but you have to have the cash to buy HB.

Or have built up a nice stockpile of bombers prior to rolling tech. 3-4 can be enough to have a big impact on the game. For example, I love to sometime build a few British bombers just so when the Japs decide to lurch into Africa(after the Allies push Germany out). I get two rounds to roll for heavy bombers, and if I get a little bit luck those 4 bombers could kill 8 ships which should be enough to kill all or almost all of the Jap Fleet there including capital ships. Once that happens the game is usually over for Japan as their remaining fleet can be hunted down, or at least pushed out of position to be a factor.

Also depending on who you are, you can surround yourself with aa-guns, or just place them in all your countries. I just think HB are very defendable, provided of course you know your oppenent has them to start the game and you can prepare for it. Say you play a game where one side has HB and the other has IT.

No this is a red herring because all powers are susceptable to Heavies at some point and regardless of how strong you are you will have to figure you can’t prevent them. For example, if Britain or America gets HBs they can always bomb Germany without flying over 2 AA guns, true they can’t necessarily hit Japan, but with LRA they can. More importantly though with Heavy bombers the Allies can afford to give up Moscow if they need to as it opens Japan up to SBRs making them have to be able to win with what they have, if they don’t have enough to crack through the wall you’ll put in Karelia then they can’t take Moscow, and Russia gets the benefit of holding Moscow with no units! Because of this I think tech represents an enormous Allied advantage. However, should Japan get HBs they can SBR Britain as long as Germany survives without flying over two AA guns, and they should be able to do the same to Russia, if they position themselves right. The Americans too should be susceptable to SBRs unless they too get HBs before you can get to Hawaii with enough bombers.

Yeah, I totally agree with that! That’s one reason I don’t like tech, and you precisely laid out why. If you play someone who you know will tech later, then I say just get it out of the way and start teching early on, like you suggest, and your bound to get a tech. But if you tech, your opponents my tech earlier (or should), then it becomes a ‘luck’ race for tech and the first side which gets a meaningful tech or 2 then they are likely to win. Once and a while that’s okay, but I don’t want all my games to be like that.

But if you look at tech as a necessary investment you will not hate it as much. What I hate is when I spend 20ipcs a turn for several turns with an overall investment being 60-80ipcs without getting HBombers. Then once my opponent realizes I will get it eventually decides to roll 20-30ipcs of dice and gets it right away. That tech doesn’t require an equal investment for equal results IMO results in too much luck, but LowLuck/NoLuck variants attempt to rectify this.

USA, there lack of threats and high income makes them perfect

I voted for UK. Here is my take on the countries.

Germany - Fun to be the aggressor, but really you are pretty much always confined to the same winning strategy. Plough east with Tanks and aircraft, and blitz through Africa. You don’t get much chance to be creative.

Russia - You don’t get to explore the map much. You are basically trying to get lucky in the West while doing enough to hold off Japan in the East.
Not much strategy either, just sit back and hope to get lucky or that your allies save your ass.

Japan - I find playing as Japan WAY too easy. As soon as you build a factory on the mainland you WILL take it. Pacific is really only a secondary concern. You won’t take U.S. until Russia is done, and you won’t get to Russia before Germany does. Really you just have to blast through India, China and Siberia then spend the rest of the game walking into empty territories.

U.S.A. - By the time you have finally mobillized the game is already decided. Of course it is always a challenge to try and change this, so U.S. is somewhat fun to play

U.K. - The best to play because you are the most important factor in the Allied effort. Russia turtleshells 75% of the time. U.S.A. takes too long to get in the game. Really your strategy with the U.K. is what decides the game. Because of the huge expanse of British territory, you can fight on multiple fronts all over the globe. In my opinion, playing U.K. gives you the most chance to be creative, and still have to watch your own ass.

id say Ukaraine.