Attention All Axis and Allies Fans!

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.

@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.

@Viceroy:

@kcdzim:

…
A) 1 sub, 1 bomber, 1 fighter to the north atlantic UK BB & transport
B) 3 fighters to the Med UK cruiser
C) 1 bb, 1 transport (loaded) to the Med UK destroyer
D) Amphibious assault from said transport, plus a fighter, a tank, and an infantry against Egypt.
E) Attacks on whatever territories of Russia are important or weak, depending on what they did.
…

Each battle may be rolled in any order though strategic bombing missions and naval battles in seazones with an amphibious assault are always prior to any other attack on those affected territories. In this case, C is ALWAYS rolled before D.

Once all battles have been rolled and completed, you move onto Non Combat Move phase. You cannot have another round of combat after this, so you cannot for example (as germany again) have a battle in West Russia and then attack Moscow with those units that just had a battle in west russia - all combat moves are done, and then all battles are done. Effectively, all combat moves are simultaneous and then all battles are simultaneous.

Other than amphibious assaults, there should be no point where you stage battles (attack one territory in order to attack another territory).

yes but for an opening turn the transport cannot be loaded, there fore this couldn’t happen.

Sure it can.  You can load a transport, move it, and unload all in the combat movement phase, even in the first turn.  Germany does start with a transport in the med and a bomber (bb) capable of reaching the UK destroyer to take it out clearing the assault for that transport (which you load from france).

Thanks will check out tripleA.

@habs4life9:

But how would you define “the start of the game”?

I would limit it to those territories that are under Russian control at the time of set-up.  It would not apply to territories that Russia conquers and then loses (recognizing that the rationale of the rule should apply to territories like the Ukraine–but when was the last time the British or Americans captured the Ukraine anyway?).  As a practical matter, the rule tweaking I suggest is intended from preventing the British (primarily) from bailing the Russians out in Karelia.

@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.

Welcome to the board,

+1 karma to start you off!

Here’s the thread discussing about adding China and Italy dice.

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=12875.0

Here’s the thread about FMG pieces to be used for AA.

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=13894.0