Kill USA First

But you can’t build an IC on HAW. And you can stall an attack by moving one inf to BC.

@Tavenier:

Has anyone tried an invasion of Alaska, next turn land a lot of aircraft and more land units and then build a IC there?

That may work in the global game, but not Pacific. Considering the resources you have to put into it I don’t see it lasting. The US can drop up to ten units a turn, while you’re stuck at three. That means you have to invest in planes or transports to keep up.

Add to this that the US forces are doing a huge favour to the Allies by tying down Japanese units (need to hold Alaska). This leaves a hole in Asia that the Brits are going to charge through. If you’re feeling magnanimous with the ANZAC forces, and why wouldn’t you be, you can put their money into a navy to cover some of the shortfall for the US harrying Alaska.

In the end, I don’t think it will bear fruit.

That said, if you get lucky and actually manage to take the Western US, it would be pretty hard to catch Japan.

I’m in the middle of a game right now as the Allies and the Japanese player took Alaska with 3 tanks / 3 INF, moved about 6 fighters and 3 TACs there then took BC. The next round US took back BC, destroyed all Japan’s transports and damaged 5 capital ships off BC before retreating back to W. US to repair. Without being able to get all of his ships back to a naval yard to repair and with 3 fighters / 3 TACs, 6 Inf, 2 tanks, and 6 battleships I don’t see the invasion working out for Japan. Plus, now he has stretched his supply line to southern Asia so far and has to choose whether to rebuild a navy or pursue a campaign in Asia. Either way it should be just a matter of time before the Allies can squeeze Japan into defeat. Guess it depends on how lucky either side is with dice rolls.

tunnel vision it is

So really it’s similar to my normal strategy…

1.  Japan takes Alaska
2.  ?
3.  Very good dice rolls
4.  ?
5.  Axis Win!

@KH:

Jap turn 4;
It’s over….Japan wins, whatever USA did!

Please correct me if possible! This could be a tunnelvision…I dont see the US cure.

Cheers!

Same old story with never tried strategies. :-P

You should talk to Col Hajj and his theme: Naval Base in Alaska wins the game

:-D

…by the way.

You don’t really expect Dutch troops for A&AE40?

is there gonna be dutch troops from europe 40?  i thought only france was being added…

Ok let us take a serious look at this.  Your goal is to take the US completely with a turn 3 attack on alaska and/or pearl, followed up with a turn 4 attack on US proper, correct?  This also means you will completely show your hand if someone has ever seen this before as you will have all your transports in SZ 6 with your fleet.

By turn 4 you could have around, 3 (starting) 3 (J1 purchase) 3 (J2 purchase) or 9 transports worth.  On J4 you could also purchase bombers if you hit alaska first so you have an LZ.  This gives you 18 ground units, plus 6 carrier planes, and we’ll say 7 bombers.  The US will have earned 17 (start) + (23 x 2) US 1/2 income = 63 IPCs to spend to defend against this.  We will rule out the turn 1 income as she may not react that swiftly so 46 IPCs on hand, or 15 inf, plus 6 original ground units, plus 10 planes that could get there and an AA gun.  It gets worse if they buy men on turn 1 as well though, and/or the 2 Inf from Pearl.  And if you start on turn 2 it gets even worse unless you go for a turn 3 US capture.

And even if you win you get a 1 time windfall of war economy, and gain 15 IPC income a turn from your capture.

Meanwhile, UK income equals yours, ANZAC income is getting up there, and China should be about to kick you off the mainland.

I think Vareel is totally correct.  For Japan to attack the USA is not a sound strategy, even if your playing against a complete greenhorn.  I tried it playing myself and the US can totally block your invasion, even if not they can still plop down defensive infantry once you are within range.

Stuka’s got a point. I (embarrassingly) lost the US due to overconfidence in my second game. This is a live possibility, and a real worry for the US player.

Once the US is taken, it’s a fairly simple matter for Japan to focus all of her overwhelming forces on first the ANZAC, then the UK player, and push them out of their victory cities. China, trapped in their imaginary box and deprived of naval units, can only wait on the beaches for the next superior Japanese invasion force to come.

Looks like it’s all-infantry purchases for the US until after J4, just to be sure! Where’s that Canadian inf on British Columbia when you actually need him??

@KH:

Thanks for giving serious input on this Vareel and Spectre!

The strategy is slightly different though. I attack Alaska in turn 2 (6 stuffed transports). In J-turn 3, I move my 12 Alaska units to British Columbia and land 8 more landunits (4 transports) and all available planes to Alaska. This means US has 17 (turn 1) - 22 (turn 2) - 62 (turn 3) ipc’s to spend before the final attack in J4. I’m totally sure the US can not buy or get enough defense capacity to resist this. I tried naval blocking, but did not succeed yet. Japan could and should attack all early blockades. If US blocks the Alaskan route in US 1, Japan should buy an airbase in J2, kill this blockade in J2 and land in Aleutian instead of Alaska. At the end of the turn, place the airbase in Aleutian. Next turn, as earlier said, Japan should take British Columbia to create a landing space for all fighters and tac bombers in the next turn (J4).

In J3 I bought 3 bombers. They can participate in the final J4 attack and land in BC.

Cheers…

Ok, then your looking at another problem.  The US could strafe your stack if they choose coming in threw canada.  Also, with 17 (5 inf) 22 + 2 (8 inf) +62 (3 fig / 2 arm / 5 inf) gives them alot of ground units.

The biggest thing though, as a UK player, you should see this and begin going ALL navy as early as turn 1.  You have until turn 6 until Japan can even get near you.

Up to test this in a game?  I suffered the loss of WUS once by being a dink i’ll give it another go  :-D

@Vareel:

@KH:

Thanks for giving serious input on this Vareel and Spectre!

The strategy is slightly different though. I attack Alaska in turn 2 (6 stuffed transports). In J-turn 3, I move my 12 Alaska units to British Columbia and land 8 more landunits (4 transports) and all available planes to Alaska. This means US has 17 (turn 1) - 22 (turn 2) - 62 (turn 3) ipc’s to spend before the final attack in J4. I’m totally sure the US can not buy or get enough defense capacity to resist this. I tried naval blocking, but did not succeed yet. Japan could and should attack all early blockades. If US blocks the Alaskan route in US 1, Japan should buy an airbase in J2, kill this blockade in J2 and land in Aleutian instead of Alaska. At the end of the turn, place the airbase in Aleutian. Next turn, as earlier said, Japan should take British Columbia to create a landing space for all fighters and tac bombers in the next turn (J4).

In J3 I bought 3 bombers. They can participate in the final J4 attack and land in BC.

Cheers…

Ok, then your looking at another problem.  The US could strafe your stack if they choose coming in threw canada.  Also, with 17 (5 inf) 22 + 2 (8 inf) +62 (3 fig / 2 arm / 5 inf) gives them alot of ground units.

The biggest thing though, as a UK player, you should see this and begin going ALL navy as early as turn 1.  You have until turn 6 until Japan can even get near you.

Up to test this in a game?  I suffered the loss of WUS once by being a dink i’ll give it another go  :-D

haha Vareel is an experienced defender of KUS (although he didn’t succeed  :evil:).  When I first saw the P40 setup, I immediately thought there might be a broken KUS strat too.  So far I’ve only been able to play the 1 game, and though I succeeded, Vareel would have done better if he had seen it coming.  However, I’m still not yet convinced it is or isn’t a broken strategy.  I actually attacked t3, so that US wouldn’t be able to use it’s 40 extra to build defense, but it sounds like Stuka’s model has had a bit more play.  One question for Stuka - have you actually played it all the way out, because it took me awhile to gain any ground against UK/ANZAC even after I took Wus, and that was only after he had 3 turns to build, not 4 - and had he seen seen the KUS coming he could have done some better things with them early on.  When you are playing the test games, are you playing the UK/ANZAC turns?  because if you’re not I wonder if you’re keeping enough on Japan every turn to defend against a possible UK/ANZ invasion.

Yeah, had I been thinking it even possible I would have built up a larger wall of INF with the US, and went pure navy with the UK.  I got caught with me pants down lol.

Also, I probably would have tried to fortify Pearl heavy to defend the US fleet and hold Japan there so they wouldn’t have had a path into the south, at least not a fast one.

Hey there, this is my first post although I’ve been reading the boards for the last few weeks in order to decide whether to purchase AAP:40.  Anyway, went ahead and made the buy (and happy that I did, already had Anny edition, revised, MB and original Pac), but the sieze Alaska KAF strat has played out successfully for the Japanese in all three games I’ve played (all with the same seasoned vet friend) in much the same way as the OP mentioned it.  We’ve both tried it as Japan and it just doesn’t seem feasible to block the move:  because of Japan’s overwhelming initial airpower, as long as the Japanese player can hold onto Alaska, the Aleutians or BC, something like 26 planes (not to mention those on AC’s) can be brought to bear on U.S. by turn three (or 4, depending on your preferences).  Even if the Japanese player only has a few ground units available for the invasion of WUS, the airpower is overwhelming (remember, US can build max of 20 units by turn 3 invasion or 30 by turn 4 and realistically probably less given that the US has a starting value of 17 IPC on turn one).

Anyway, although I’m not nearly certain enough of the strat to call the game “broken” or anything of that nature, it does seem to be worryingly effective, in our case even when the American player knew it was coming.  Any thoughts on how to stop this?

Have the UK begin to purchase fleet on UK1 once he sees Jap trannies are staying north.  Focus on getting the UK income as high as humanly possible.  Also, have the UK starting land units begin to push hard into china, along with the starting china units to kick japan out of asia ASAP.  Do not fear declaring war on Japan if they are going after the US anyway, it doesn’t matter.

Have ANZAC focus on subs and planes.  Subs for raiding, planes for defending.  Try to make a stand with the US fleet at Pearl, this will keep japan’s fleet from moving back into position after the US grab for a few extra turns.

Get a chuckle when japan realizes western us is only worth 10, not 50.

That is really all one can do sadly.  Also you can block with 1 DD, then 1 Cru to SZ 7.  Without passing threw SZ 7 japan has no way to reach alaska delaying them 1 more turn.  Or at least giving you 1 turn with war economy with any luck.

Edit: Just to add I think the best method the US has to stop this is blocking SZ 7, this forces you to land on the islands and use British Colombia as your LZ for your planes on a J4 strike.  At the end of J3 you would have 20 land units in BCO at the most.  This means the US, on turn 3, would need to be able to kill said 20 land units.  By US3 at max a US player should have 3 inf, 1 mech, 1 art, 1 arm (starting) 2 inf (pearl) 3 fig, 3 tac, 3 bmr, plus 3 inf/2 art (T1 buy), plus 6 inf/1 art (T2 buy).  Or 14 inf, 1 mech, 4 art, 1 arm, 3 fig, 3 tac, 3 bmr.  Or 29 hits /w 63 punch.  This tactic would allow the US to hold for atleast 1 more turn.

Now an easy J counter would be to move starting transports into SZ 2 on J1 /w navy.  This is an interesting puzzle, but there must be a way to stop it.  And even if it cannot be stopped, I think UK could take the win anyway.

Interesting counter, Vareel, we’ll have to try large naval buys with UK as counter next time, although I’m still not sure if it’ll be enough to threaten Japan before WUS falls.

Also, I’m a little confused by your statement that WUS is only worth 10: I was under the impression that if captured by Japanese forces, it would continue being worth 50 IPCs (clearly an insurmountable figure if accurate).  Did I miss something in the rulebook that states that iWestern US is only worth 10 if captured by Axis, or did I misunderstand your comment?  Thanks in advance.