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@AxisandAlliesGeneral:

then when the time comes that they are bordering Moscow, launch your massive counterattack with infantry, mechs, tanks, and aircraft, destroying them and losing only infantry. Then, once the critical European battle has been won, buy mechs and tanks and retake your territories.

Umm, this is rarely possible.

Although I tend to agree with your point about focusing mostly on the Europe side as USA.

Japan is ridiculously strong (but then is on 1940 too).
Germany can be held a while and Italy should not grow at all, but the U.S. must invest nearly all its income in the Pacific.
Still makes a refreshing change from 1940 though.

Germany: Help Italy get to Egypt. Punch USSR in the face hard and grab factory territories. Use planes to keep UK from landing. Keep USSR on its toes until Italy and Japan open up extra fronts against the USSR.

Italy: Keep allies out of Mediterranean. Punch through into the middle east. Build factories in the middle east. Start a front from the south of USSR. Help Japan take India, sometimes.

Japan: Grab the DEI. Keep steady progress against China. Build factories on the mainland to funnel tanks into India. Use planes to stall US and ANZAC naval advances. Use your fleet on the offense very sparingly, it’s often more useful to keep your fleet in strongly defended positions and to threaten your opponent with it rather than commit to using it.

USSR: Build a catapult to throw men at the problem. Rifles optional. But seriously, stall the German advance with infantry. Gobs of infantry. You don’t necessarily want to win, you want to live long enough for the US and UK to save you. When the Germans start having to spread themselves thin, break through into Europe.

UK: Try to loose as slowly as you can in the pacific. Hold on to Egypt but don’t break the bank doing so. Get control of the Atlantic and the channel. Keep enough of a navy to defend against air raids. Then, use your navy in the channel as a bridge from England to Normandy (or elsewhere in Europe, Holland and Norway being good targets). Keep dropping men. Make the Germans fight a two front war. Hope ANZAC and US save you in the pacific.

USA: In Europe build lots of transports to funnel men to North Africa and Europe. Make sure you can survive German sub and air attacks on your transports by defending them. Using the UK fleet and UK airbases as cover for your navy can be helpful. In the Pacific, your basic goal is to pee aircraft carriers. Spray the Pacific with carriers like a dog marking it’s territory. Obviously not only carries, but they are much more cost effective than battleships as capital ships. You want to force the Japanese to commit to a naval battle then leave their navy on the bottom of the ocean. You can afford losses to your navy in a way they can’t. If you can get the Japanese fleet in range of an island with a lot of planes, that’s even better, planes are more cost effective in combat than ships. The Philippines and DEI are important targets. Take everything of value in the south pacific. Then, start landings in southeast Asia along with islands close to Japan like Iwo Jima. Strat bomb the living daylights out of them. Make sure the Japanese are too poor to even consider rebuilding a navy.

China: Die very slowly. Keep the burma road open when practical. Avoid big battles when practical. Keep the Japanese out of the USSR by being a thorn in their side. Make sure if you group your troops together there are enough to survive a big attack. The last thing you want is to huddle too closely together if the Japanese can win an attack against that stack, since you’ve lost everything at that point.

France: Use your troops in Africa to help Egypt live. Use your scattered fleet to try to harass Italy and Japan. Sailing the ship on the east coast of Africa to India is sometimes a good idea. If ever liberated, help push into Rome and Berlin.

ANZAC: Build a factory in Queensland.  Ensure you have your objective for the islands. Then, build a navy and try to land troops in the Philippines and DEI. You can move a transport from Queensland to Malay in a single move. Take advantage of that.

The polling shows an axis favorite as of right now. 4 people voted axis strongly 8 axis slightly 8 allies slightly.

A sub bid for UK makes UK1 smoother against italy sz97. I don’t play LL games without that bid, I’ll just take axis or do something else.

Bidding is a ritual that decides who plays what, so bidding for allies makes sense.

This is all there will be in the way of official errata for the box rules for a while.

We both had prior family engagements, thought I mentioned that in our last email, and Germany was a paper tiger after the sealion bid and all the failed tech rolls. Yes you were pushing India, and I probably would have lost it, but the us fleet was moving and ready to rumble, not to mention ANZAC actually had a BB and a fully loaded AC fleet ready to move! UK had sealed up Africa and Germany had a one layer offensive into Russia (no backup inf on the way). By the way you slipped the +10 IPC for Japan rule into the original Alpha setup when we played. That is part of the improved Alpha i think, Jim and I had never played with the Alpha setup before that so we never noticed.

I still think it would have been close. But I distinctly remembering you folding during the auction due to time after we decided to call it (9 hours of game-play) but I may be wrong.

Also I will send you some links concerning the tactical game I mentioned that we should demo next year at Ellis Con. I have made Terrain and stuff for it over the past few weeks. Its Axis & Allies on steroids.

Right.  But the problem we get into then is, there would have been a fighter screen inbetween the ships and the incoming British planes.   SO, to make this work correctly, you have to have an air battle, then if any remaining British planes survived they could carry on to attack the ships.    problem is, which fighters roll at a 3 and which roll at a 4?   I would argue the German planes are defending, and get the 4.    This would be a huge mess as if your fighter cover for your defending bombers which are actually attacking were shot down, then the German defending fighters would have to battle against the attacking bombers.

Further, this game waters down air units into 3 categories (up from 2, granted) but all the planes are in the swarm.   This is a game.   IRL, Spitfires would not be attacking the surface ships.  Mosquito variants (about 25+ which could attack, not counting recon/trainers) could do this, but then which do you have?   When you buy that tac bomber, is it a Fighter/Fighter-Bomber/Torpedo-Bomber/Bomber?

The game is dumbed down a bit in this, and we have to deal with it.   Stukas and Vals shouldn’t be 3/3s.   Mitchells weren’t going to be taking down Zeros.  Oh well.

Stack em up, roll them all at once, and in an Allied heavy game please don’t give the UK the ability to scramble from the home island.

@Pelanderfunk:

I don’t know what the official name is, but I looked around the internet for a long time before I broke down and made my own.  You can get “croupier sticks”, which are what the croupier uses to collect the dice in craps, but it doesn’t really have that “war room” feel to it.

I just bought some wooden dowels and balsa strips from a craft store, then I cut the strips into rectangles and wood-glued them to the ends of the dowels.

Yeah I was thinking of doing the same.