Best way to divide a three player game.

@Cow:

It is still to your advantage to go to war sooner than later. J1 DOW is the way to go for this unless you trying to take over America, you get pretty good odds for it still.

I disagree with you here Cow. Pacific is a lot different than global. I even think it might even be best to wait till turn 3 to attack allies after they have declared war on you. This will keep America from getting her 30 dollar bonus, and her 40 dollar bonus for two turns. That is a total of 99 less, since you would take phil in a T1 attack. Haven’t played enough games to be 100% sure, but taking India is a lot easier, and your real problem is taking Hawaii. I don’t know how you can ever take Sydney if the allies are competent at all.

It depends on what side you are playing.  If your son is going to be Japan, tell him to follow the previous advice.  If you are playing Japan, follow the USA-killing strategy in the Pointlessly Broken thread and effectively win the game in turn 5.  Sadly something like 75% of the content in that thread is a needless flame war (as these boards are un-moderated for all practical purposes) but there is plenty of insightful commentary in there if you can suffer through it.

EDIT: I should point out that the war plans in that thread don’t translate that well into the Global game.  If the USA can afford to ignore Europe for the first several turns of the game, then it has enough to place into the Pacific that Japan won’t take it down.  Japan also has the issue of a possibility of expanding too quickly- since there are so many places it needs to reach, its forces will start to thin out all along the front.  At that point the Allies can start to pick off Japanese forces piecemeal and slowly turn them around.  I liken it to blowing up a balloon- if it gets too big, you can pop it.  The Japanese are protected from this effect on the Pacific stand-alone map since they will run into the edges of the map which provides cover for their flanks.

@jim010:

Yunnan gets smoked turn 2 if putting the money there.  If I want it bad enough, I can get the bombers on it.  3 inf, 1 art, 1 fht, 1 tac, 4 bmb will crush it.  Letting the BB go in sz37 won’t help much either.

I can’t get a stack to survive there early in the game.

if you wait until turn 2 yunnan has 17inf, 3art, 5fig, 1tac defending it. you could forgo attacking uk bb and attack yunnan but then you take it with 4 units left over so you lose 2planes or 3 planes if you want to hold the territory and let the uk have transports and a bb. if you place the entire 24ipc in yunnan the allies will win.

@Captain:

play a few more games.  Japan should take Phillipenes right away on J1 and the US should not be able to fortify it.

If they do that though they also need to take the uk space along the china coast to prevent both us and uk from their NOs.

I agree that China/ANZAC seems to work best as the 4th player.

I will point out the obvious: players should be planning their next moves during the other players’ turns. (and refining them as the situation changes. i.e. the Jap player moves a DD during non-combat to block your planned attack.)

When it comes to purchases everyone should be ready to IMMEDIATELY plop down the new units as soon as their turn begins. Very rarely should someone have to think what to buy in a 4 player game.

The disadvantage of more than 2 players is lack of coordination between the allies. The knock on the original game is that it was a 2 player game masquerading as a 5 player game.

makes me wonder how much the game was actually “playtested” honestly.  The errata is going to be bigger than the rulebook.

Maher C.

I think that they should re-issue a second edition and provide it to those who bought this shabbily tested game (don’t get me wrong, I like it and it has potential).  The should as least give those that purchased the disaster version with some sort of coupon or rebate.  Yeah right, like that’s ever gonna happen.

I think it was obvious that it was a misprint on the map. There is only a little snippet, the second I saw it I knew that was not right.

That’s the reason why I try not to pre-order but wait until the shops get it.  By the time you add in shipping to the discounted pre-order prices, it usually costs more than MSRP.  Damn shipping.  To make it worth my while, I would need to pre-order like 10 to go below MSRP.

Also coolstuffinc.com doesn’t offer free shipping to Hawaii or Alaska!

Ebay sometimes is cheaper even with shipping costs, but you need to hunt for the bargains.