Axis and Allies Dice?

I have tried KJF with some succes. How I play it is that I never decide to go KJF until J1 has passed. That means I will usually not devote any Russian or British forces to fight Japan in the first round. Instead I will focus on the European theater and Africa first, building a UK navy and trying to sink the Med Fleet ASAP. The reasoning is that even with a KJF, you can’t let Germany just run rampant. KJF often means a long game, so keeping the African IPCs out of German hands is very important. With UK that will always be my number one priority, so it’s safe to say that I will never build an Indian IC on UK1. Of course, the Japanese transport will still be sunk in 99% of the games.

For me, the most important KJF triggers happen on J1 and can be summarized as Japan failing to take a critical objective (China, Pearl) or losing a lot of air and naval forces across multiple battles. If Japan does ‘big Pearl’ and takes heavy losses, exposing a battleship and carrier to a promising US counterattack, I will often go KJF. Same goes for ‘small Pearl’ and losing that battle. For losing China it’s a bit less clear-cut, since Allies often don’t have the units in that area to press on an advantage. In other occasions Japan could lose a BB in SZ59, or fighters in any battle, giving enough incentive for US to build a Pacific fleet.

After round 1, even if US went Pacific, I will mostly use UK to fight Germany and assist in the defense of Russia.

The sad thing about this form of KJF is that it is contingent on bad dice for Axis, and not used as a general strategy. The question is whether in those scenarios where Japan has bad dice, KJF might be viable but KGF could still be strictly better.

@Bunnies:

I wonder whatever happened to this game.

Re:

So what makes you say it’s completely over?

If you’re trying to go KGF, and Germany controls/contests Africa on the fifth turn, and you’re asking for advice, it’s probably an uphill battle.  You would only be asking for advice if you were unsure that you could protect Moscow / crack Berlin, and with Germany fueled by African IPCs, and without a veteran’s perspective on how to run a tight logistic game with the Allies, I would guess probable loss for the Allies.  All the Axis need to do is pump out a bunch of tanks and run a bit of interference with Germany’s airforce, which as you mentioned was quite strong.

It sounds like Japan is screwing around (no industrial complexes by turn five), which means you may have a chance, but again, I lack context.

If US was building some Pacific fleet, and Japan went infantry with very light naval/air support (pumping IPCs into 1 destroyer, then subs and/or fighters to match the US threat) then the Allies really are in  trouble, because then probably Japan has some idea of what it’s doing.

If Japan was unopposed in the Pacific and built battleships and carriers, though, the Allies are probably going to win because Japan can’t just lay back and make Germany do all the work.  Same if Japan used its transports to screw with Alaska/Hawaii/Australia/etc. instead of establishing a fast hard unit core in Asia/India to help support Germany’s push against Caucasus.  You might see Japan doing both (i.e. hitting island targets plus hitting Asia/Africa) with five transports, but four transports on turn five with no industrial complexes built means SOMETHING weird is going on - like I said, either Japan was prepared to meet some unusual threat, or Japan was screwing around.

Yeah - what happened in the game?
I agree with Bunnies analysis - against a decent axis player, this game is probably over. But against novice players anything is possible, they may perform unfeasible or uncoordinated moves. In that case it is all about putting yourself in the position to exploit this. By this I mean armor for Russia, establish atlantic navy to threaten Germany, Western Europe and Eastern Europe.

@MrMalachiCrunch:

I think novice players tend to be a bit more conservative.  Being conservative hurts the axis more than the allies being conservative I think.  With the axis having a better opening setup than the allies, they really need to maximize that before the allies can maximize their initial economic advantage.

A good way to learn is to play a game against yourself, but beyond the first few rounds it tends to lose its potential as a learning tool I would think.   It lets you script out the first few rounds of a strategy and counters but sooner or later the next step of learning is how to take advantage of good dice and how to do damage control with bad dice, basically how to take advantage of opportunities.

I completely agree, and playing against myself is exactly how I learned the most, followed by playing 1-on-1 against really good players online.

@LMD:

Every game has gone to the Axis (about 14 games now), and every one has been a KGF strategy.

Do not play KGF.

We routinely go with the Norwegian Gambit (preserving the UK battleship) and have never failed.  Yes, we lose the R fighter on Germany R1, but one Russian fighter does not make the difference.

Do not play the Gambit. Maybe the Russian fighter combined with the lack of the BB as a target is more important than you account for.

This advice isn’t global, of course KGF and Norwegian Gambit are viable strategic and tactical options.

But if it doesn’t work for you, try something else.

R1 Attack on WRus and UKR. Move 6 INF into Bur, 2 INF to Yakut.

US1 build an AC, DD for Western US, placing Hawaii ftr and WUS ftr on the AC. Move Bomber to Alaska. This way you threaten SZ 60 with the fighters, SZ 61 with the bomber. If J2 doesn’t go for Bur, you can reinforce Bur with 2 fighters on US2 and maybe sink undefended transports in SZ61, landing in Bur.
Then go for the Solomons. Try to build to 2-3 transports (moving ground troups to the Solomons. ) and a few planes every now and then for the Pacific (over time, not necessarily in one round). Have a surprise tranny take an island or 2. Threaten Borneo, Phillipines and East Indies all in one go from the Solomons.
Use the US sub and the UK sub roam the islands, threatening transports and ACs.

The main goal is to threaten Japan and lure Japan into spending scarce money on expensive navy. If Japan ignores your moves, be more aggressive. Phillipines is a victory point, so are Shanghai and India.

I am not saying that this is a very great strategy. But it forces many decisions onto the Japanese player.

And if you have problems in the Atlantic, try building the AC, 2xDD on UK1 in SZ2, then be aware you might land the US ftr on the carrier on turn 1.

I don’t understand how Moscow can fall on G4, much less both London and Moscow.  Russia must play aggressively, building a mix of infantry, artillery, and tanks.  If Germany sends straight tanks, the Western Allies can drop the hammer much faster.

in 1 game, the americans tried to take tokyo twice but failed

@Zhukov44, you could be correct, although I still think an allied pac-strat is an ineffective strat. I’ve only faced this once though, and my Germany grew too strong so the opponent lost.

But I’m not yet as theoretically knowledgeable in AA42 as in Revised and AA50.

i wonder how many magic markers it took to make that map, :)