AA50 '41 scenario.
Germany has a tank stack on East Poland, say 10 armor, with 3 fighters on it as well as 3 bombers in Berlin. Say Italy has 1 Bomber in Italy. As Russia you do not want germany to be able to take Moscow or Caucasus because in moscows case is obvious, in caucasus case japan has some units in india/persia. Normally you could just move 1 Inf into Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine. If you do that though, and say you leave either one of those territories without enough units to defend against the germans, then Italy can simply attack Eastern Ukraine with its single bomber allowing the german’s to roll into a target of there choosing. It gets worse too, lets just assume that Italy has a tank hanging out in the balkans and perhaps even an infantry in Eastern Poland, and who knows maybe they have a carrier with 2 fighters on it in SZ 14 instead of the bomber. Now how many russian units do you have to place to block the germans? Lets say you leave 6 in each. Now the germans can attack both of those stacks with 4 inf each, or even as low as 2 or 3 if they feel ballsy, with a crapton of planes. Or they can do that to one of the territories and advance into the other with the armor stack that you no longer have enough units to kill. It happens all the time in that game. The can opener threat forces you to play in a specific manner and is annoying.
Try playing a game of Pacific where you reverse the allied turn order, tell me how it turns out for you. Actually, china can openers for the UK all the time for me, so switch it up to Jap-China-ANZAC-UK-US. Tell me if it changes the gameplay significantly, because it will.
Edit: actually change the turn order to Jap-UK-ANZAC-US-China, that will be the new turn order. Have fun keeping a pair of ANZAC subs, and/or 2 fighters on a US carrier, to open all the doors the US needs opened.
