Best way to divide a three player game.

Hello, I play pacific 1940 a lot.  I have also played global a few times.  Pacific 1940 second edition is a great game but I can almost easily win every time if I’m Japan and I attack on the third turn.  A new rule was passed around late 2014 to allow the USA to receive a 30 IPC bonus if Japan attacks or declares war on them before turn 4.  This seems to balance the game a little but I can still always win with Japan.  The strategy for Japan is pretty much the same.  Take the money islands, build a minor in French Indo China and Kwangtung and knock out China and India.  Post in the Philippines with your huge navy and three fighters that can scramble and those six deadly kamikizes.  Let Anzac and USA come to you so you can use the fighters to defend at 4 when the big navy battle happens.  Eventually you will be making more than the allies with the money islands NO and the India NO.  You should be around the 70-75 mark.  Then when the time is right strike at Sydney or Hawaii and hold it and you should win as it will be six victory cities.  For the allies, man this can be tuff lol.  You better hope Japan attacks you on turn 1 or turn 4 because turn 2 and especially 3 it’s going to be difficult. 
1:  China:  buy men and hit and run and fall back to the north west of China. You will be lucky if the Burma road is open more than two turns.  Pull back and make Japan come to you.
2:  UK:  pull everyone back to India and just buy men!!! Try to bring your navy down to Australia and unite them with Anzac and hopefully later USA. If it looks like India is going to fall then pull your airforce out and send them to Australia to hopefully land on a Anzac or American carrier.  If Japan hasn’t declared war early then take as many islands in the south as possible .
3:  Anzac:  small ships and transports are good.  if it looks like Japan is going to invade then pull your forces to south Australia because from there you can hit any territory.  Use your small ships to convoy raid or unite with the main USA fleet.  Queensland is a great staging area for the allied navy early in the game.  Also since there’s a airbase there fighters don’t hurt also since they can scramble.
4:USA: the big boy lol.  The problem is when USA is neutral she only makes a freaking 17 ipcs a turn.  While Japan is around the 40 mark and Japan has soooooooo many aircraft at its disposal.  USA I say aircraft carrier early then mainly subs, destroyers, and a transport every turn with land units.  A few rounds into the game get a navy base on the Johnson islands and start combining your fleet with the Anzac fleet and hopefully a small UK fleet. try to take the money islands by sacrificing transports because Japan will have a bigger navy early in the game.  When the time is right move to Dutch New Guinea with your fleet and prepare for the big battle.  Sometimes it’s better if Japan attacks you and sometimes it’s better if you attsck them.  Hopefully you will have a lot of subs at your disposal. If you win the navy battle then Japan is pretty much toast even if they have India and China.  Good luck and let me know how the war goes lol. I am playing anniversary edition on Saturday 😜

@mastermind93:

If I remember correctly, you can’t build a Major IC in a foreign territory. I do agree, though, on the importance of the Caroline Islands.

I think originally it was allowed. If not, i’ve been had ;)

@LHoffman:

@Proud:

@LHoffman:

@Proud:

I have 2 of every AA global game except AA50 since it was bloody expensive.

It’s bloody expensive now… $799.99 USD.

Guess what……NOT ON EBAY. I got my AA50 about a month ago for $300 from ebay. IF you go with amazon then ya its that big.

NEW? at $300 … I would still call that bloody expensive, for a boardgame, but not as bad as $800.

YEs its new and yes its expensive. But its better than Amazon.

@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.

@UN:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@UN:

Did you also put in the 10 Chinese infantry?  :?

yeah. Keep in mind that japan had 8 more planes than the allies.

I still call it luck. Grumble

I have a question. I think, since Japan has no navy at ALL in the Dutch East Indies I can have ANZAC send its submarine fleets to disrupt convoys there. But I’m not sure exactly how convoy disruptions work. It said it can’t exceed the combined IPC value of all adjacent territories or islands in the disrupted sea zone.

So if I had 4 submarines in SZ42, the most amount of IPC I can destroy is 19 IPCs (3 from Malaya, 4 from Sumatra, 4 from Java, 4 from Boreno, 3 from Celebes)?

Z42 only borders Java, so you can only disrupt Java for 4 ipcs

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.

I would like to thank you guys for the advice, because I won my game against my best buddy.

I immediately pushed my Navy South and took NSW from the Austrailians (he had alot of troops in Queensland).  I also built a factory in Kwangtung which the next turn I made 9 men there (and a transport) followed by 10 tanks the next turn.  I traded NSW for a few turns back and forth eventually killing off all the Australian troops two turns before America could send their then massive navy to Austrailia.

I used two transports and took Sumatra and Malaya with Battleship and Destroyer support, and smashed the remaining Brits and 3 Chinese in Yunnan at the cost of about 8 planes to the 4 British planes and several infantry.

With Australia clear of troops I moved transports and bombers into a poor India and took it over and blocked the United States from reaching Austrailia, Japan, or the Phillipenes.

Thank you all for the advice, but next time Ill attack sooner with Japan, the Brits got rich fast which caused me a big headache.

@bigopfer:

You are totally right Plum, the game is not worth the money they charged. The map IS amazing, the gameplay IS really fun. But you nailed it with the boxes, paper money, IPC chart, cardboard pieces, lack of tac bombers. I mean, I paid basically the same money for this game as I paid for my copy of AA50 and this AA40 Pacific is missing lots of the quality that AA50 had.

Exactly!  I was totally content with how they presented AA50.  Everything was high quality and all aspects of the game and its components were top notch.  Totally worth the money I spent on it.

While this game certainly has some high quality aspects about it, (especially the game play, which is all that really counts in the end) there are so many small blunders it’s really frustrating.  The income chart is what gets me the most.  It seems like the day before they shipped the game out somebody realized “Oh crap!  We forgot income charts!” and then threw together the first thing they thought of and tossed it in the box.  I’m surprised they weren’t scribbled on a piece of notebook paper.