@barney:

HI Andresal

US can’t be at war  with Germany on their own initiative.  So US can’t be in Gibraltar either in your scenario.

Thought so, though it seems that the majority of the players who run the DS strategy also tends to do a J1 opener which would allow this anyway I guess.

Just some thoughts from someone who hasn’t really done the math nor played enough rounds to actually see this tactic through.

Can US really be at war, at their own initiative, with Germany on turn 3 (Combat/Movement phase?) so they can actually move to Gibraltar at all? Or are there any second edition additional rules that I have missed?

And then on down to the tactics on getting a strong fleet supporting units into Normandy or other mainland european regions:

Am I correct in assuming that Germany loosing it’s entire bomber force against, let’s say, a strong naval presence from US/UK equals a lost game for Germany? I am aware that Japan can still grow to be a monster and win the game for the axis anyhow but let’s keep focus on europe for now. Creating a fleet according to Nippon-kokus suggestion (or similar) would create a situation that requires Germany to respond with their bombers. Once there is a strong static fleet that Germany can’t attack without risking it’s entire air force it’s quite easy for the allies to maintain that ratio of units so that it stays safe. And what happens then? The US can land units basically every turn once the shuttle is running. 8 or 10 units are not frightening, I admit. Easily countered by Germany but the way I see it is that Germany from then on are forced to use their bombers plus land units each turn against a landing force. Using german bombers on that front every turn makes them unusable against the russians. I can certainly see where there could be a bit of trouble breaking through russian lines.

My suggestion would be the moves in DM’s reply with one small change, I would probably go with the cruiser to Sz 6 as well. If they want to strike it they have to divide their forces between the lone transport and the cruiser. The transport should be toast anyway and the crusier will have the same amount of defense except that it will face fewer possible attackers.

When it comes to Sz 12 I want to point something out again, it is only important to sink one of those ships (probably the DD). There is a small chance of not hitting anything at all while loosing both planes but that’s is a risk I am willing to take.

Sz 2 has one upside, there can be no freak of nature-rolls here. UK can get 1 hit each turn maximum, Ger player always knows what he puts on the line each round of battle and is quite likely to win the battle with at least the Fig still flying.

As far as I have heard the chance of victory when the bomber is brought in to Egypt goes up from about 30% to 75% (and the chance of a tie is changed from 40% to about 80%. If this is incorrect I stand corrected but as for my opinions that is the numbers I use. I’m also assuming playing with NO’s.

After reading the posts here I’m still in favor of attacking Egypt on G1 with the bomber included. In real IPC values only counting lost units and change in income, yes, attacking the navy is better. There are a few things however that has to be considered.

First of all, Italy badly needs their NO’s, probably more so than any other power. Getting Italy on the move early will most likely win an extra bunch of IPC later turns, a change that can’t be calculated like lost units in G1. The effect of the invasion isn’t supposed to show on round one but to improve Axis positions for future turns.

Attacking Egypt does not make attacks against the royal navy impossible, you just have to be either selective or take a few risks. The only real mandatory attack is to remove the destroyer off Gibraltar to remove the UK chance of hitting the Italian navy.

UK has a few options now, if they reinforce africa the rest of their navy will be sunk. Attacking anywhere in europe will also make a non-reinforced british navy vulnerable to German planes (especially if they added a bomber in the purchase on G1). So they buy navy? Ok, then we probably are where we would be on UK1 anyway, a UK navy that Germany does not want to hit unless desperate. They buy bombers? Fine, I welcome them to “waste” an entire round of production. Africa would be up for grabs for the Axis for a few more turns. Italy will most likely be quite close to UK on round 3 and all of a sudden you got quite a lot of IPC helping either against a european invasion or at the east front.

I can see trouble coming Axis way but that is due to other imbalances in the game and not due to the fact that a UK BB is super-important to strike round 1 (not saying I wouldn’t though).

Whether Germany should take Egypt or not is probably a matter of personal choice, taking Egypt will basically require using the bomber which unables it to take part in sea battles. Either way I think GER have to destroy at least the UK destroyer and not allow UK to even think about attacking the Italian fleet. Without their fleet Italy has a severe problem of getting anywhere at all and the game will probably be biased towards allied victory.

Among the pro’s of taking Egypt is that the transport might live, a lot easier for Italy to get 20+ IPC early and a much better position in africa. On the other hand you can’t strike the UK fleet as hard and the Egypt fighter can be a pain.

At the moment I’m leaning towards taking Egypt. However,  I do feel that the chance of winning the battle with ground forces to spare is a bit on the low end for me to be really comfortable with.

Newpaintbrush: Just a few pointers to your response to your message.

First of all, using transport in the Bury fight will remove the “0” from the UK battle leaving you with one free hit and then removing offensive units. The forces you have picked out to attack would have an average first round of 3 hits thus making it likely for carrier/fighter to survive first round at the same time as the UK fleet has an average of 2,5 hits.
Of course the decision to either withdraw or wipe them out is heavily based on the results of the first roll but if you do decide to remove that fleet you would be leaving your units in SZ59. Also, using naval bombardment with the Bury attack makes it impossible to disrupt attacks and retreat to SZ60.

That leaves us with a BB and possibly a number of transports in SZ60. Buying offensive vessels with Japan is not an option as I would think that would make this strategy a success. With Pearl untouched I could go with at least of sub/carrier/3 fig against SZ60 which I would do without hesitating at all. Since you are committing all your possible forces in the combat phase there is a slight chance I could go with a bomber there as well and that would most likely kill of most of the transports (if not all) you might have purchased and that would be a heavy setback for Japan.

And I don’t see why it should be such a huge setback for the German progress. You still haven’t allocated any resources against Jap with neither UK nor US. The heaviest cost should be the Russian fighter, other than that it doesn’t take more than 2 additional infantry and possibly an armor to delay the Japanese from the northern route (where the Jap really doesn’t expand his IPC fast enough). By turn 4 it should be possible to start hammering the German territories quite heavily (with smaller landings the previous turns) and the question is if the Germans are far enough into Russia by then.

Jennifer and mojo, what would you do in that case? You said you would kill the Russian fighter if you got the opportunity as well as wanting to kill the infantry in Bury. So where would that leave you? Attacking 6 infantry with 2 infantry + planes only seems like a quite bad option to me, which leaves the option of using the Tranny and transport 2 units to the mainland (Arm/inf I suppose). Would you use bombardment as well, leaving BB out of naval combat, or rely on the strength of the invasion force?

I guess you’d have to send a minimum of 3 of your planes to this fight as well (and even then it would not take that much of bad luck for this fight to go in the pooper) and it’s hard to avoid all Jap inf getting killed no matter what you send. More planes would severely cripple your ability to kill:
1. British fleet with Russian fig
2. US China/UK Indian troops.
3. Pearl Harbor fleet.

Attacking Bury will probably not get you much closer to Moscow since most of the land units will be dead. As a result you can’t really start moving through the northern route at J3 (landing on J2 and you figure the rest). Even so you will need a decent force to move since it is not hard for the Russians to stop with little effort. 2inf, 1arm and the remaining fig will in most cases do just fine killing enough infantry to halt the progress.
If you decide to go China or India you have to allocate even more planes preventing them being used at sea. Attacking neither will make these territories another wasted turn if you decide to march onto Moscow middle/southern route.
The way I see it you either leave quite a lot of stuff alive while getting a few fairly certain victories or taking some chances that could be quite dangerous in the long run.

I’m not convinced this is a good move yet. Another option to this (which I actually think is better) is landing the fig in the same way but moving it to aid a Borneo attack instead. Moving DST to the Japan tranny would give you a defense of TRN, AC and 2 figs. Spreading out the aussie fleet (possibly sub vs sub and the TRN attacking New Guinea and you have a whole lot of targets too choose from.

Might be confusing to say that you have a 1 square move to land safely since (AFAIK) you may not move into another SZ to land on a different carrier.

A while since I been here and I’m not sure if this move has been discussed before, at least I didn’t find it.

To begin with this is not a move to actually threaten Japan seriously just a way to either force them make some tough decisions and I would like some feedback on what you would do as Japan. I have avoided to include purchases as I feel these moves could be made in conjunction with several strategies.

Russian turn has a few moves that is important to make.
1. Putting the 6 infantry in the eastern areas in Buryatia.
2. Moving the MOS fig to the UK carrier of India.
3. Moving 2 inf (pref. from Kaz to Persia).
4. Hit West Russia with 8/9inf, 1art, 1/2arm.
5. Hit Ukr with 3inf, 1art, 1fig and 2/3 arm. The goal is to kill at least the infantry. Top scenario is to just leave the fighter alive and then pull back to CAU with the tanks.

Germanys matter doesn’t matter that much at this point for this particular move so on to the UK move where I will just explain the moves in Asia.

1. Move the entire UK fleet of Indias coast in position outside Kwangtung (SZ 59) and attack with 2inf and the fig from the carrier.
2. Move Aussie TRN to SZ 46 and the Sub should attack the Solomon sub.

Now the sea combat (59) should normally be won without any losses. I am hoping to remove 2 infantry from Kwangtung at the same time I loose my both infantry but fig stays alive. Always withdraw the fighter if thats the only unit left regardless of oppositon left in Kwangtung and land it on the carrier.

What have hopefully been accomplished is the loss of some Jap mainland infantry, which I feel is really important to their ability to march against Russia. The Jap player also faces some decisions. If everything goes according to plan you should have 5 units in SZ 59 with the rolls of 1,3,3,4,4. To attack this the Jap player would have to focus some serious firepower against this fleet. He would rather not have my planes defending for two turns. This makes it harder for him/her to allocate forces against the Hawaiian fleet and even though he could beat two, there are fairly good chances that he looses quite a number of units himself. I’d say he would actually be forced to hit the UK fleet, otherwise it either makes TRNs incredibly hard to place in Japan or leaving the fleet alive and given the opportuniy to join forces with the US and even use the 6inf in Bury to use on offense with the Russian fighter on the carrier.

If he allows the US fleet to live they will be ready to start hopping about in US turn 2 possibly reinforced with some UK tranny fodder and possibility to hit SZ 60 with Bomber and 2 figs for newly placed TRNs. This in combination with a factory in Sinkiang (with the lost infantry he really looses his ability to hit Sinkiang hard. And that’s only 15 spent IPCs. You still have 27 IPC to start building up the force to put pressure on Germany.

So, any ideas on the general idea or tips on how to improve it (or reasons why I should never ever ever do this :)?

Edit: And this assumes there is either no bid or at least no units places in any of these SZs or territories.

@ncscswitch:

Andreas, I hate to say this, but you are simply wrong about Russia.

Hehe, that is why I am writing here. To get views since I lack the experience myself. Anyway, I think I have gotten the responds I have been looking for, now I’m gonna sit down with my board to calculate some of my own “Worst Case Scenarios” using this strategy. It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just that I want to know what actions you would take with each and every nation to respond to Germany.