Don’t bother going to Alaska… put pressure on the coastline of SE Asia with your fleet and protect your valuable transports. If I remember correctly you ought to buy 2 transports and 3 inf on J1 or 3 transports and save 1. Take Pearl, start transporting your infantry from the islands to Manch etc. Keep pumping infantry in J2 and on J3 you can start thinking about building IC’s on the mainland.

Recruiting new players, even with 2nd edition is/was always hard, because of the skill level. Even if the opening moves for every country are optimized it is far from clear for new players. It takes a while to comprehend the mechanics of pushing, retreating, feints, death zones etc. If a new player is willing to pretty much lose the first 20 games he/she will become a worthy opponent, but most people are not that persistent to learn a game that takes a pretty long time to understand. When they finally are decent enough to understand why bids are a necessity it will have taken a long time. Times have changed as well… When I grew up I didn’t have internet or a computer, so when it rained we had to play board games, nowaday it is almost an exception if teens play a board game.

I understood perfectly what you trying to point out, but the point I was making, why do you want to play with these rules? If your are relying on luck you should stick to Risk imho. Axis and Allies was designed as a tactical game and not yatzee… And top notch players know how to handle those kind of strats, if Germany goes for tech, the US will do some tech roles as well, because in no RR no bid games Germany is under a lot of pressure from Russia alone and if they spend money on tech the US can easily spend IPC’s on tech as well (and more than Germany)

The risky Japan moves are quite useless, because you need your navy to assist your ground push in the west. Ok say you want to move your fleet to the atlantic, and Russia attacks Manchuria on R1 and the UK attacks kwantung on U1, you really need your navy to assist taking it back and establish a front in the west.

Your Japanese tech rolls on J3 will make Germany crumble! They will be under a lot of pressure and you are nowhere near Moscow, so again the Allies can easily counter your tech rolls with theirs…

I think with top notch players your winning% will drop below the 5% winning rate you might archieve with the Axis.

I think giving the Axis 90-95% is really optimistic if the allies are skilled enough. I would say only if the Allies get dicefucked during the whole game the Axis has a chance of winning.

The systems you describe are either based on luck or incompetence of the allies player. In the second scenario it would be much wiser to play the optimal Axis strategy than playing a risky strat.

1. Based on luck, in this scenario only heavy bombers, industrial advance and maybe long range aircrafts are useful, but wasting 3 inf every round really hurts germany…
2. Again based on luck, what is the fun in playing AA if you rely on luck? Go play risk…
3. Wasting a transport will delay the Japanese on the Russian front, spending 15 IPC’s more on a useless IC on Brazil is even more worthless. The fact that the allies see the transport comming for 2 rounds does not help a lot either
4. Wasting your Japanse fleet for 4 turns to move them to the Atlantic… I rest my case…
5. England buying an IC for India is not that bad for the axis, it delays the allies in retaking Afrika while they need to spend a lot of rescources to defend the IC in India (which will fall inevitably)
6. I hate to brake it to you, but Japan has only 25 IPC’s to start with, you simply do not have money for tech rolls in early game!

5 of the 6 scenarios which you describe will only shorten te game significantly. Ow if there is no RR or no bid, Rus attacks Manchuria and UK will attack Kwantung, leaving the Japanese in an even bigger hole…

Playing without bids or rr (+ bid) is just no fun… To win as the axis you have to get really lucky and that is just the reason why I stopped playing risk.

Attack Hawaii is mandatory on J1.

1. The Net IPC loss for the allies is way higher than the net loss for Japan.
2. You don’t want that fleet in the Atlantic.

Btw transports > IC on round 1… You can start to think about buying IC’s on J3 or further, you just lack the infantry support to make a decent push to Moscow if you invest in IC’s too early.

Don’t take Hawaii… Just take PH heavily. sub/carrier/2 fighters/bomber or something, the USA can’t waste rescources to Japan if they go KGF and it would cost them a lot to first counter and the delay for Russia will be devistating

US carrier on A1 is bad imo. I am a huge fan of the all inf build or 1 transport and rest inf on A1. This is because you can place your inf on the west coast and move them to wcan and on t3 you ship them all to europe and keep your shuck shuck optimal

In a Pafr bid(around 21-24), there usually goes 1-2 inf of the bid to Manch. And you are correct, a PowerAsia bid should be around 32…

@Lisi7266:

And the Allies don’t always win, neither do new players always get crushed…regardless of what has been said

In a no bid game, the allies WILL always win!(given that both players have equal skills) And a new player WILL always lose vs an experienced player, does not matter if he plays Axis or Allies.

simplistic??? Honestly, I find A&A anything but simplistic… If you play without bid it might be simplistic because the Allies will always win, other than that I think it is not simplistic at all. I also have the problem teaching new players, because you kick their behinds so hard that most of the time they don’t like playing it a second time :P Just because the basic tactics are hard to understand as a new player…

@Cmdr:

I don’t understand how Power Africa negates the ability of Kwangbang.  To be honest, unless Japan gets 6 IPC of the bid (1 Infantry for Manchuria and 1 Infantry for Kwangtung) I don’t see much that would stop the allies from attacking those territories.  Far better to destroy the Japanese fighter in Manchuria then cower in Yakut, I believe.

Why would you want to spread those two inf? If the allies can’t take both its not worth it… So if you have 5 inf, 1 arm and 1 fig vs 5(I don’t remember if it was 5 or 6), 1 arm and 1 fig… You won’t get the jap fig, but accomplish that Japan can easily walk through Asia and if you take kwantung (Germany will get a huge IPC boost, because they can hold Africa so much longer), you won’t really set back the Japanese…

Btw a PAs bid should be around 32 to make the game interesting…