The Berlin-Rome-Moscow axis and the Anglo-Japanese alliance.

Maybe the Soviet Union should have separate victory goals. Maybe establish a buffer zone in Europe and ‘Mao-ify’ China and if they do that they win.

Would have to rename the game: Axis, Allies and Comintern.

This is a very interesting idea.  I never really thought of a war between Japan and China/Russia with Japan NOT attacking the Brits or ANZAC.  You make a good point about Britain ignoring the fall of French Indo-China to the Japanese.  Also, if Germany never attacks Russia but concentrates on smashing France and Britain, then India, and maybe even ANZAC, could come under direct threat from Italy.  In that case, the UK would definitely not want to enter war with Japan.  If Italy did manage to capture India, then the Chinese would lose the Burma Road NO thus hurting their attempts to fight the Japs even though Italy isn’t technically at war with China.  That’s a flaw in the idea of China being in league with the European Axis countries.

So when the US enters the war at the end of round 3, they DON’T mess with Japan but move all their might over to the Atlantic to fight Germany and Italy, is this right?  That’s another interesting idea.  One problem I have seen with the US is even though they do have much greater economy, they have to split it between the Pacific and the Atlantic, which kind of cuts down the effectiveness.  If they can use all of their might and economy on just one front, Germany would have a hard time holding them back.  If they decided to re-enter the Med and go after Italy, it would be even harder for Italy to survive I think.  That might be the best way for the US in this scenario.  If the US defeated Italy, they would have Italy’s income plus their own massive wealth and that would easily out do Germany’s economy, even if Germany had Britain, France and all the European Neutrals under their belt.  On the other hand, Germany wouldn’t have to worry about an Eastern Front and could focus all their attention on holding the Americans at bay.

This offers some interesting possibilities.  I would be anxious to try this out in my next game.  Thanks for the idea.

I started a Global game using this scenario this weekend.  So far it’s only gone through 2 rounds (boy this game is long).  For round 1, both Japan and Russia re-positioned themselves but didn’t attack.  Russia stayed neutral and Japan concentrated on China.  In round 2, Russia still wasn’t quite ready but Japan was so they attacked.  Killed 12 of the Soviet eastern infantry and surrounded the other 6.  China is about destroyed, down to just 4 territories and 2 lonely infantry (they lost the fighter and the Burma road is closed)  However, Russia is moving tanks, halftracks and planes to the east and since they are now at war, their units can enter China and help out there.  Japan is very strong at the moment, but I’m not sure if they can last out for the long haul.  Plus, Japan’s biggest strength, their massive navy, is just about useless.

Meanwhile, everyone else is moving toward Europe.  The US has already moved almost everything to the east coast and has amassed a massive force there waiting for round 4.  The Brits have held off Sealion so far.  The Luftwaffe managed to destroy the Royal Navy, but the RAF also destroyed the Kriegsmarine so it’s kind of an uneven balance there.  The UK Pacific forces are starting to give the Italians a headache in Africa.

The weirdest part of this game is no massive buildup on the German/Soviet border.  Except for a few token infantry on both sides, they have both pulled all their heavy equiptment the other way.  Looking forward to seeing how this develops.  Since I am about to start my work week tonight, I probably won’t get back into the game until my next weekend (Monday/Tuesday nights).

@SgtBlitz:

It would be nice if you could actually play the scenario where Germany and Russia remain best buds for the whole game.  It probably would actually have happened like that in real life had Hitler not been such a backstabbing treacherous douchebag.

This tactic was one of Hitler’s best and worst desicion

Best because it stopped him from fighting a war on two fronts although in the end he did
Worst because it allowed the Soviets to build their forces up and provide them time to replace their army that Stalin slaughtered

Update on my game in progress.  I am up through round 5 now.  In the East, Japan is making slow progress toward the west.  A strong force in Eastern Russia just destroyed a large Soviet infantry force and has open territories in front of it.  Attempt to totally annihilate China failed, thanks to Soviet help.  China was down to 2 territories but now back up to 7 and threatening to re-open Burma Road.  Japan is fairly weak in Southern China, but so is USSR.  Strong Japan force in Northern China facing nearly equal Soviet force.

In Europe things are going bad for Axis.  Germany attempted Sealion round 4 and was a disaster.  All units lost but 1 bomber.  Seven transports protected by Aircraft Carrier but NO fighters, they were lost in Sealion attempt, promptly sunk by RAF.  USA is in the war now and has a massive fleet.  Took Gibralter, Portugal and Normandy from Germany and Morocco from Italy.  US & British planes destroyed Italian fleet.  Italians pushed out of Africa and Middle-East by Brits from South Africa and India.  Egypt liberated.  ANZAC fleet arriving after long journey from Australia to help out.  Rome is threatened.

It’s weird that Japan gets no NOs from this scenario.  One question:  If USA and UK finish off Italy and Germany, should they turn around and help Russia by attacking Japan?  After all, this scenario is basically two very separate wars.  Here’s another idea, what if USA and UK ended up JOINING Japan, attacking Russia and destroying Communism?  Or, should we just let the Japan/Soviet conflict play out?

Hey Clyde85,
I just finished my game earlier today.  One thing that might have been a mistake in this game was attributing the normal rules to it, specifically Russia’s status as an ally and Japan’s status as an axis.  When Germany grabbed up the European neutrals, I treated Mongolia as no Pro-Allied.  Russia gained an extra 3 inf in Western Mongolia and Japan simply attacked the other 3 in Eastern Mongolia to keep them from being turned into Russians.  With the nature of this game, Japan probably should have been considered Allied and Russia Axis.  After all, one of Germany’s NOs was trade of oil and wheat from the Soviet Union.  Also, I guess China was as you suggested, an unaffiliated beligerant.  They got the benefit of the Burma Road NO for a couple of rounds or so and probably shouldn’t have.  That didn’t really matter because once Japan closed it, they were pretty good at keeping it closed the rest of the game.  Even Soviet help wasn’t enough with too much going on up north.
Okay, here’s how it went.  Japan finally captured all of China Round 9 and had established a strong line 1 territory beyond the Chinese border, in Soviet territory, all the way north.  Just two spaces from Moscow itself!  In Europe, Berlin and Rome fell Round 8.  ANZAC liberated Paris Round 8.  Last German units destroyed Round 8.  Last Italian units destroyed Round 9.  USA and Britain rule supreme!
By this time, we were growing rather weary of this game so we decided that Japan was indeed an ally and USA and UK would help her to stomp out evil Communism.  On round 9, both UK and USA declared war on Russia and grabbed up a lot of Soviet territory, including Leningrad, which was pretty easy since they already had huge forces in Europe and almost all Soviet stuff was out east fighting Japan.  Round 10 Russia simply stacked infantry in Moscow and Stalingrad.  Japan eliminated the last forces outside of city territories and took Stalingrad.  Britain snatched up all but one remaining Soviet territory and Moscow.  Then USA leapfrogged over their British allies and took Moscow itself with 2 tanks, 3 fighters, 1 tac bomber and a fleet of HEAVY bombers.  Communism is dead in 1945.  Next, Cold War with Japan?
I think in a game like this, the Neutral rules and maybe some NOs have to be changed.  For example, the German NO of 5 IPCs for each Russian city could go to Japan.  Maybe Japan could get another NO for keeping the Burma Road closed.  Back when all we had was the Milton Bradley version of A&A, I came up with scenarios of different combinations of Allies.  The most devastating one was Germany and USSR together.  They could grab up a lot of territory without buying transports.  Then when they had more money, worry about navy and airpower.  The only weakness was no naval presence in the Pacific, which left Eastern Russia and Southeast Asia vulnerable.  Another thing about changing alliances is you often have to change the setup.  If Germany and Russia are friends, there’s no need for them to have huge forces facing each other when they are needed elsewhere.  One way you could fix this is to have the first round be Non Combat movement ONLY.  Or, you could simply devise your own setup from the starte.

This is the weirdest and most disturbing thread about global yet. Regardless of balance issues what would the purpose of allowing Russia to join the axis be? Would this be axis vs allies at that point?

Why not just develop this into a full four player game as per my suggestion, with each of the four (Germany/Italy, USSR/CCP, Japan, UK/US/KMT/F looking out only for itself.

Alliances are only by word, never binding, and temporary allies can never co-operate by sharing territory.

Winning conditions are the greatest number of Victory Cities held over your starting count after a pre-agreed number of turns.

The disposition of neutrals would have to be redrawn, e.g. a neutral could be “pro-Western Allies”, or even “Anti-Communist”.

Clearly NOs and the like need to be rewritten also.

On Victory Cities, that was another mis-calculation for me.  Usually, at the end of each round I count how many vicory cities each side has.  However, I kept counting the three Soviet cities as Allied and Shanghai and Tokyo as Axis, when it really should have been the other way around.  In fact, I’m not even sure that would work because throughout most of the game the two conflicts really were separate.  Russia was sort of allied with Germany in that one German NO for trade of oil and wheat from the Soviet Union, but that was all.  Japan had even less to do with the Western Allies, more of non-aggresion pact than an actual alliance.  It wasn’t until round 9, after Germany and Italy were totally destroyed, that USA and UK declared war and joined Japan in smashing Russia.  Even then that was more the player’s choice to wrap it up than the actual “game rules” themselves.  If I decide to try this again, I will definitely have to rethink the Victory City conditions and maybe even come up with some new NOs.

Also, I still think a new setup would be in order.  I think the reason Japan did so well against the Russians was because the bulk of Russian heavy equipment was all in the west facing Germany.  By the time they got some units with firepower up to face the Japanese, Japan had already built a sizeable force on the mainland.  Plus, the Japs had much greater air power which I think also told in many of the battles.  Oh yeah, I used that new “Alpha” setup in this game.  While that does cut down the air strength for Japan, they still had a huge air superiority over the Soviets.  If I had used the original setup, it might have gone even better for Japan and they might have actually reached Moscow.

One way you could counter this is never count victory cites as a winning mechanic. My gaming group always has played to total domination (generally ends in concession by the USA if axis wins or concession by japan if the allies win, try taking out up to 80-90 troops in a sea invasion!) and it would fit this scenario better than the victory city setup.