Thx. The beginning of the game was really tough in the Pacific. As you said, the battle of Ukraine of R2 was a very big problem, and I guess a good part of the game has been played there. I have no idea if making this attack was good or not, since after all you had the possibility to retreat which kind of make up the lower odds ; but I believe you made a big mistake by rolling a second turn there ; of course, you were not supposed to be diced like that, and that’s really unlucky ; but after the first turn you had no more odds of winning, and in average you had nothing really nice to win…
After that, I guess you needed to invest towards Europa with the US, which enabled Japan to overcome them in the Pacific, and when you switched from Pacific to Europa, I was quite confident with the game. Defense in Europa was tough too, but I believe that without mistake on my part, you did not have real odds to overcome the axis in this area (since I had Caucasus, which was locking Russia outside of this fight).
Good game overall ; I think that as usual in a game with a good level on both sides, minor details made the difference.
Yoshi