Super Stack or Stupid Stack?

@JDOW

May I ask how that plays out? Has that meant Italy gets Cairo early while UK pressures Germany?

Pretty much all Japan can do against a concerted effort - keep em distracted and hope Germany can win.

I don’t see a flight path on the map that would be shortened by being able to fly over the Pripet Marshes, so I suppose that it’s not particularly relevant from an A&A perspective whether or not planes can fly over them.

Russians need only ATTACK Korea.  They don’t have to take.

Having Mongolia in play can be just as good for Japan as Russia.  Units can cross from Russia to China freely, and you can duck out of North China at any time and be immune to the Chinese

You have your choice of a PhD or a headache.  Take the headache.

@Cow:

Tell you what if 5 inf central, 1 armor egypt, 1 sub sz 98, 1 inf new guinea, 1 bomber archangel is not to your liking…

Then you can have allies at 18 ipc 1 unit per territory.

So you can choose either one of the above two conditions  8-). By ‘central’ Cow means Central USA.

@Cow:
Looks like you’ve got enough challenges now ;-).

@Ruanek:

@Xandax:

@MarkHC:

Bottom line, I’ve played multiple games as the Soviet Union where I didn’t let anyone attack my units except an infantry I left as a road block.  Even when Japan invades Russia turn one/two and tries to keep pushing, it still didn’t make much difference because they can only take a territory a turn.  So when Germany finally reaches Moscow, almost every single unit I’ve built as Russia is there defending my capital.  Sure, if time weren’t a factor, it’s a bad strategy, but I know that the Allies are going to be landing in force by turn 5 or so, so the Axis is not able to deal with the Allied pressure and overcome a huge Moscow stack.

If the allies are landing in force in turn 5 Europe is lost regardless of a large stack of inf in Moscow.
Nothing is gained in the game by removing USSRs chance to defend and making a German attack on Russia go faster. On the contrary.
The huge stack isn’t an automatic win.

Well, not having the huge stack gives the Axis a bit more of a chance to blitz and take the necessary 8 victory cities quickly.

Well - of course. And removing the Russian troops entirely would equally.
You cannot remove the turtle. You shouldn’t IMO make it easier to take Russia.
We should however figure out why turteling is so strong and address that cause instead of just the symptom.

If you make it any easier to take Russia, you’ve effectively turned Germany into a one trick pony and removed most strategy from the European board.

@oztea:

Dooming moscow is not a gamebreaker in this edition
It opens the possibility of getting france back in the game, if the Allies can push past normandy

At 17 if it controls all but FIC, it is a power that is near Russia’s IPC stockpile when it fell.

This is interesting, trade Russia for France (at some point). The axis strengthen would be way out of range unless most of it was lost in the battle for Moscow (make them pay). The US swoops in to destroy Italy and you now have 3 allies all in western Europe (knocking at Germany’s front door), instead of two coming from the west, and Russia in the east. If Italy does fall the 3 allied powers will have back to back turns (ooch).