Axis and Allies Europe 1940 - Strategies

Ok, sounds like a lot of guys think it is not necessary to take London to win?
For sure you already have your “sealion” invading force on the board by turn 2 (as demonstrate by Siredblood) but i have to admit that 63 IPC for those 9 missing transports is a lot of money!

The main (and maybe only) reason why i thought about taking London (besides extra IPC) was to prevent US/ UK from using it as a launching platform to bomb/ invade mainland Europe by turn 5 and up!!

My current plan is this (almost cut/ paste from Siredblood’s Cobra-Kaï):
G1:
Eliminate Royal Navy in SZ106, 110, 111
Take France (leave normandy/ south France to Italy)
Ping-Pong Yugoslavia back in Romania (Leave it to Italy)
Barbarossa (Bessarabia + Eastern Poland)
Of course annex both Finland and Bulgaria
Build a Minor Complex in Romania (to pump tanks all along)
put a destroyer in SZ113 and regroup navy.
Italy 1
Buy 1 tank & 1 mech (to speed up with both tank from Albania/ North Italy and meet German forces near Bessarabia)

G2
Retake Bessarabia (unless Russian player is too dumb to give it a thought)
Take West. Ukraine
Strategic bombing of London
Move all my “Sealion” forces into West. Germany/ Germany (to "bluff away" Sealion)
Pump 3 tanks in Romania and keep all the rest of my IPC (42) to keep my opponent in the dark as much as possible!

G3
Take Ukraine
Drop 9 transports in SZ113 + 3 tanks in Romania
Italy 3
“can open” Rostov with tanks and all air force!

G4
Tank rush into Stalingrad with all tanks and air power (2 Tac, 2 Strategic)
“Sealion”! Bouum!
Pump 3 tanks in Romania and in Ukraine
Move back 6 of the 7 guys from Finland to Norway (will bridge to uk/ Scotland in T5)

G5
Rebuild forces in Stalingrad/ Ukraine, bring some planes
Strat bombing Moscow
Bridge some infantry from Norway to London and 1 to take Scotland
Buy a max of aircraft (strat. and Fighters)
Italy 5
“Regroup and can open” Tambov or Briansk with tanks and all air force!

G6
Moscow boum!

By then the Axis should have 8 victory cities (Italy’s role is to take Cairo and reinforce by turn 4 max)
I don’t even give a rat ass about Leningrad as it is already way too strong right off the bat!
Also on turn 6 i would start to take back infantry Eastern Poland/ Baltic states/ Romania that might be scattered to turtle them up on Warsaw!
At this point the goal is to hang on tight for 1 turn!

Of course all along Italy is putting 3 infantry per turn on South France and move them to Paris on turn5
Italy is also to put 1 destroyer in SZ92 on T4 simply to delay US and buy Axis 1 turn.

This strategy is stretched to the max and of course bad/good rolls might turn it into either a brilliant victory or a shameful beating!

Any piece of advise or parts that i am missing?

You should check out Young Grasshoppers videos for global(you’ll see all the units on the Europe map at start-up)
  Sometimes I find units do sort of spill over into nearby zones.In our last game we had a lot of units parked in Romania.We parked aaa guns and air units in the black sea and just announced that they’re all in Romania.Point the noses of the planes at the territory you want them to be in so there’s less chance of confusion.

@theROCmonster:

Honestly I think if anything the allies are advantaged in this one. US is just so powerful. Russia will always fall no matter what the allies do, but it then becomes a struggle for the axis to take Egypt. Normally a game will come down to the US having factories in finland/Norway, and possibly southern france and Normandy. While Germany has a ton of money, and Italy is making under 10 because of convoy raids. Germany has a ton of money that it tries to use to in both defense against a monstrous US, and a pretty powerful UK, while also trying to take Egypt. As long as allied players don’t freak out when Moscow falls then they have a good shot at victory.

The allies have to play very smart, and not rush into things if they are to keep germany from getting the final VC.

My recommendation is to hit him hard in Normandy and see about landing only a couple infantry in Norway.  Taking Norway loses him those IPCs plus the Scandinavian trade bonus, which will hurt his economy by at least a Panzer purchase per turn, and he can’t afford to split his attention so many ways.  Just like he is trying with Russia, give him a death by a thousand little cuts.  If you can convoy raid him (if you are playing with raids, that is), then you can knock him down even more.  Of course, I may just be a bit overaggressive– I can’t see what all you can, but anything to stop the Scandinavian bonus is a good thing for beleaguered Russia.

@jim010:

[You can’t block the G3 London attack.

If you get luck and survive with some UK ships, then you could stand in front of the Germans.  But I doubt it would prevent the Germans from pushing through - and that scenario wil not be the norm.  Likely you won’t have any ships in range except for the Gibraltar fleet.
[/quote]

Oh no? It happened in the game I played last night. Germany got crappy dice rolling and the UK player took a bunch of risks, managed to take down the German AirForce. That really changed the game and made it pretty much impossible for Germany to invade England. Amazing though Germany managed to sneak a fleet across into Mexico and distracted America for another 2 turns defending itself. It was decided after bad rolling in Russia that the allies would win out even with Amercia distracted and the game was called an allied victory.

I can’t since I don’t know the disposition of the armies off the top og my head, sorry.

I assume you meant to put “owned” instead of “pwned” when talking about a Barbarossa/Stalingrad game in reference to Battle of the Bulge or Guadalcanal. I agree here too. At least for me, a game such as that would probably have owned the others.

Nah, I meant “pwn”. I was using netspeak: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwned

I think some kind of A&A Russian-front game would be the brilliant, but I don’t hold out much hope of seeing one.

I won’t continue, since I’ve made my feelings clear and this is just one of those ‘we don’t agree’ type issues. I also don’t want to sound like I wouldn’t be able to enjoy / play the game because of it, which obviously isn’t true.

However, I will still say this…

No, they’d probably, like me, not give a damn.

I think some of them, like some people here, clearly would give a damn. For that reason alone designers should take certain things into account. I don’t hold WotC in particularly high esteem, since they have a habit of short-changing the consumer on many small aspects of games which in reality would take almost no effort or cost to put right. Larry only has input which goes so far, and he has my respect. But Wizards do too many irritating things, and to me, this is just another one of them.

Stalin also allowed German destroyers to sail around northern Russia to attack Allied shipping in the Pacific.

I personally believe that if the US/UK can drop land units off into Archangel/Karelia the game is essentially broken.  By all means allow them to send IPC aid to Russia, but historically Stalin did not want to share the glory of victory in Russia with foreign troops.

There must be a handicap to doing this; at the very least the turn it takes for Russia to convert this income into units and get them into action.

In a sense, the eastern and western fronts are depicted in different scales, certainly in regard to the numbers of units represented by infantry and Armoured pieces.  If it were accurate, the IPC income and starting units for Russia relative to the other Allies would be significantly bigger, perhaps 50%+.  That’s why introducing US/UK units into Russia can be so imbalancing.