The Japanese Piracy Strategy: An insane plan that somehow worked

Well, he could blow up Russia, THEN blow up Turkey at his leisure, but its more obvious for Germany just to take his 4 factories north of you and his 4 objectives and pour units into your last bastion.

I’m not a fan of KGF (at all or anymore), it does nothing to slow Germany down, reduce its income, or tie up more than 1-2 turns of troops.    Pouring all your resources into the Atlantic US1-4 is a recipe for getting VCd in the Pacific or, barring that, an overwhelming Japan that backdoors Persia and Russia.  Add to that handing 3-4 neutrals to the Axis that they can use to bulk their troop stacks, and its a more difficult…perhaps tenable KGF plan, not sure.

Even if Germany is totally snoozing in France, he has to be totally asleep to miss the USA buildup, still his mobile units can travel through Normandy or S-France without blitzing and blow up whatever lands…the geometry of Europe is far too favorable to the Axis (all defense areas are 2 spaces from build areas).

@Nippon-koku:

Great points all around.  I’m starting to think Japan would have to attack turn 1 for this to work, like Wild Bill suggested.  Get it right off the bat.

Maybe a better first round buy would be 1 factory and 2 transports?  I agree you still have to get men down to the DEI.  The good news: if you can keep America from heading down that way for a while you can take the islands with minimal sea power.

Exactly, with US at port the other Pac allies are backing up.

I like to save the IC purchase for J2 so I can place it on FIC, might buy 3 transports, or maybe 2 transports +dd to replace losses. J2 you can take Malaya, and start grabbing Money Islands etc….as you press Hawaii which could be ripe for the taking as well.

@teslas:

edit-
Brazil seems inferior to Central US/SE.Mexico? Both are 4 away from SZ 92. Both are 6 away from London.

The Central US territories additionally also allow it to get back to Hawaii. Brazil does not. Any reason why you prefer Brazil?

You’re probably right.  Two things for you to consider, though.

One is, maybe USA is not at war yet so you can’t land on Central USA.  Maybe ANZ or UK has taken Brazil.

Second is, you do have more options to get deeper into Africa.  But you’re probably right - Central America would be better in many cases.

Yeah, you are probably right about the islands.
I understand what you are getting at about Germany being able to put a Major IC in Norway. I have never put a Major up there, but I have put Minors in Norway before.
The rule states that to place a Major IC, the territory has to be worth 3 or more IPCs and be one of your nation’s original territories. One possible solution would be to use HBG’s 1939 variant map. I think you could still set it up to play 1940 and the only original German territories would actually be IN Germany itself. They couldn’t even place a Major in Romania.

In my play group there’s a guy who takes S. Euro with Germany and starts to build a small navy there. With the Italians, that combined fleet is enough to bottle the allies at Gib for a long time. I’ve seen it come out of the med from time to time depending on the situation, but usually he just drops enough men to hold Gib for a very long time. Without an allied presence in the med, Italy can typically make a lot of $$$ and either build a defensive force for Germany while they press towards USSR, move into the middle east and threaten USSR’s underbelly/India, take out UK’s SAF IC, or some combo of the above. It seems very hard to stop if done right, but I’ve yet to play with or against him when he’s the European axis and does this, so I don’t know the details of what happens in between my tours of the others’ boards when I’m waiting for my opponent to take his turn.

Yes let’s keep this to a report thread from now on.  However it is better if you go to the link at the front of this thread and report on Larry’s site.

PS- Mantlefan- Man up.

I haven’t ever bought Navy as Russia…everything Russia needs to do can be done without a Navy. Given time I would pour some troops into China to slow Japan down. As for builds I build a mix of guys tanks and atrilley for the guys. And depending on the situation if Germany doesn’t attack turn 4 I would strongly consider attacking them.  Also I put my guys and aterilly on the border with Germany and put my tanks one back so that I can move them up with the attack if I get to attack first but also so I don’t lose them if Germany attacks first. Honestly every turn that Germany doesn’t attack is a gift to Russia because it allows them to build up more forces which makes them tougher to take.

In my experience so far a good Russian player playing conservatively can make Moscow close to impossible to take.   The way Russian territories are set up allows them to fall back and shadow any approaching German army until the Russians have reinforced their stack to the point where it can turn around and chase out or destroy the invaders.  There’s no real downside to this vs standing and fighting as you’re only giving up 1-2 ipc provinces as you fall back and you’re continuing to preserve and grow your Russian stack at a rate faster than the Germans can hope to reinforce theirs (assuming, of course, that GB and the US are putting any sort of pressure on the other side of Europe).  I’ve pretty much given up going for it and instead have resolved to find some way to take Leningrad and Stalingrad.  I’ll admit that Germany and Italy, given free reign to attack Russia can eventually bring them down if they focus all their strength on it but how are they doing this while preventing or counter-attacking allied landings?  There’s just not enough IPC’s available for them to effectively do both.