The British Fleet

Not a good move? I think it’s very stong. Forgoing it and Egypt counter are my mine hesitations with this strategy.

Ncswitch your right. Pearl expects multiples survivors. Still, Japan usually has unhindered access to Asia and Pacific naval supremacy anyway. Now your just down some fighters. I still think saying thank you for the tranport and Egypt and waiting a round to destroy the fleet is better. It’s not like those Japaneese Pearl fighters do anything on J2 anyway.

@Jennifer:

I dunno what you’re talking about.  I usually end up using those fighters on J2 in some capacity…if not attack at least in defense.  Though, I’ve been toying with the idea of hitting other pacific targets.

With England, you could take Borneo and New Guinee on UK 1.  Remember, if you retake Egypt you will loose everything there on Germany 2 ANYWAY.  So why not stick a thorn in Japan’s side?  Now they’re down 5 of 13 island points.  That’s a full third of their water holdings.  It’s two places they’ll have to reconquer.  It’s two places easily won by the British (at the least you should get Borneo for 4 points.)  You can still defend with your fleet (1@1, 2@3, 1@4) and you can still draw away Japanese forces from Hawaii making him attack lighter.

Then just send your submarine to sink the other submarine.

or just use infantry in the attacks giving you a 1.414 to 1 chance to win and use the fighter and submarine to hit the Jap sub and land your fighter on the AC in Hawaii, thus making Japan loose even more in his attack on Pearl or at least forcing him to commit more then he otherwise would.

or use infantry for borneo and new guinee, send the sub to solomons, send the fighter to kwangtung and land it on the carrier in borneo again.  Now you have +5/30 (17% of Japan’s starting income) killed it’s submarine and it’s transport.

Remember, when dealing with the Axis the point is to force them to committ strong attack units where they don’t want them.  Get those units as far out of position as possible while maximizing the damage you can do.  After all, the American and British fleets are dead anyway.  Why not use them to maximum effect?  If you can kill off 2 or 3 Japanese fighters, Russia will be miles ahead in slowing the Japanese advance.  It’ll take at least 3 rounds for Japan to recover and probably more like 6 or 7 rounds.  That’s more infantry you can send to Germany, that’s slower Germany can go.

I said this too but I was thinking of using Indian forces for taking islands but I agree with you that even if you do retake Egypt on UK1 Germany can take it back if they want to so you might as well wait for America to liberate it on turn 3-4 because Japan can take Australia/NZ if they want to so you might as well do as much damage as you can distracting them as best you can.

If you do not re-take Egypt on UK1, on G2, Germany will gain a minimum of $5 on G2 in Africa.  And that is with only 1 ARM, 2 INF in Egypt, and a new amphib to T-J.  If they have more ARM in Egypt, then add another $1-$2.

So, UK loses $2 on UK1, and a total of $7-$10 on UK2, nearly 1/3 of their total income.

And Germany goes over $50 IPC’s, more if they are advancing against Russia…

G3, after Japan has trashed the UK fleet and re-taken the islands, and is poised to do an early seizure of Australia and New Zealnd in J3; Germany takes South Africa, Persia, and Madagascar.

By Turn 3, UK is down to an income of HALF OR LESS, depending on if Japan also went after India’s paltry force, and whether or not UK used their TWO TRNs to invade Norway.

How do you use the Japaneese fighters? If they land on an AC off Hawaii they are out of range of everything except Hawaii and the American mainland. Hawaii isn’t exactly a spectacular target and America would love for Japan to involve itself in a hopeless assault on LA. They can’t even land in Asia so the only defensive possibiliy is SZ60. I suppose you mean you don’t use them on Pearl Harbor.

Attacking Japaneese islands is a different idea than merging the fleets since you obviously can’t do both. I’m not sure how good this is. Now Japan CAN spilt its forces and favorably sink the American fleet and much of the British fleet. Yes Germany can divert resources to retaking Africa but by that same logic Japan can easily retake Borneo, especially if the Kwangtung tran lives. If you take New Guinea you weaken Australia. What good is gaining Borneo and Kwangtung for a turn or round if in exchange you then permanently lose Australia and NZ. (Often times these to are too far out of the way for Japan to bother with) India is weakened as well but of course that happens in Egypt counter as well so it’s a push.

@Jennifer:

This keeps going and going.  Yea, Germany’s got Africa for a while, but American/England are retaking from the west while England’s got a couple of Jap islands to re-supply it with cash.  Meanwhile, Germany’s trading in Asia and Japan’s got an IC in India to worry about along with having to reclaim islands.  (UK Purchase could be 5 infantry, 1 IC, plenty to defend the homeland against a Germany that doesn’t know what’s going on with England yet.  By the time they do, it’s too late to stage Op. Sea Lion.)

I didn’t know you wanted an IC in India … no I don’t agree with that I thought you were talking about existing forces.

Take Borneo AND build an IC in India?  Forget Borneo, I’m taking India on J1.

hmm….I’m witholding my response to this thread but it does bring up some interesting tactics for opening engagements.

Again, with THAT level of comitment in Asia, Germany is all over Russia like diaper rash… buildiing in Caucuses, etc.

And to get ARM to India right away, Russia has to forego Ukraine on R1…
That reduces Russian income, and leaves Germany with some nice bonus forces… probably enough to kill the WRS if they want to, leaving Russia virtually defensless…

Taking Borneo and having 5 inf in India are mutually exclusive events.  If you use just 1 inf and 1 ftr to take Borneo the most you can have guarding India without commiting Russian fighters is 3 british inf and 1 russian arm. Japan is 85% to take India on J1 with 2 inf 4 ftr and 1 bom. Japan will lose ftrs but capturing the factory is a 30 IPC ecomic swing.
Committing Russian fighters means forgoing any attack against Belo and Ukraine which sort of defeats the point of taking Borneo. Your essentially transfering Russian money to UK.

I have to agree there ShadowHawk.

The last thing UK needs with their income dwindling each round is a baby UK next to Japan’s base of operations.  UK has enough to worry about keeping London from the Germans.  Now they want to add anotehr island IC with half the production of London?

You either just build land units, and spend $15 for the IC, another $12 for INF, then however much more in subsequent turns just to keep $4 of income, or you have to spend ALL of UK’s income to build navy there, then more for land units to move around.

And again I’ll ask the question… what was Germany doing in the mean time… just a couple of TRNs in the Baltic when UK drops the IC, and it is Sea Lion time…

From your original post you are saying that you are uniting the entire Indian Fleet … does this mean you are not going to attack the Japanese Trn in Sz 59 … I thought this was a pretty standard move why aren’t you doing it?

I think that it would be nice if you would go into more detail about the projected USSR and UK moves.  I’d rather not post a lengthy reply, then suddenly find that there were 6 infantry and a fighter in Burytia (the UK fighter from the Indian Ocean) when I assumed there would be nothing, or find out that there was an Indian IC, or something similarly important.

Faced with an Indian IC and a unified fleet southwest of Australia - well, assuming no other unusual factors, and given that I don’t have a board in front of me, I can’t say for sure.  But I’d probably do something like build three transports off the east coast of Japan, or perhaps two transports and a fighter, leaving the Jap battleship at the east coast of Japan there as an escort, and unifying Jap carriers and the second Jap battleship at the Solomons off Hawaii, and sending sub, destroyer, fighters and bomber to Pearl.  I lose the sub, and possibly destroyer and fighter as well.  However, Japan will NOT lose any more fighters in the forseeable future, unless the US decides to attack Solomons, which is probably a bad move.  On J2, the Japanese navy moves west, or southwest from Solomons.

Basically - you sink 15 IPC into an industrial complex which must be protected; this relieves pressure on Germany.  Also, you unify the UK fleet in the Indian Ocean.  This is supposed to put pressure on the Japanese, and it does.  It also puts pressure on the Germans in Africa.  But now you have to protect London and Calcutta, and the only expansion point from India is French Indochina, which is only one transport trip away from Japan.  So now what?  The Soviet Far East collapses (no big deal), but more importantly, the Allied attack on Germany slows to an crawl, and Japan starts running a gigantic tank force into China, from where it can unite at Novosibirsk with infantry coming in from the Soviet Far East (and they cannot be dislodged unless the USSR has a gigantic force in Moscow, which is improbable given the fact that the Germans will have less pressure applied to them by the Allies).  The tanks in China can also hit India with any French Indochina infantry.  Japan can even just let French Indochina be taken, since it can take right back with six-eight infantry from Japan, tanks from China, and air force.  This is even easier because I presume that the Japanese transport off Kwangtung survives in your scenario, which means four additional units in Asia by the end of J2.

I’m not saying that unifying the UK fleet southwest of Australia combined with an Indian IC is a BAD move, but I think I would certainly change some things in your proposal, like two USSR fighters in India, among other things.  The general picture I get from the description is a UK strongpoint in India and better UK control of Africa for the first couple of turns, but a horribly weakened USSR-German front (the USSR fighters cannot afford to stay in India), as well as a considerably weakened UK/US vs. Germany attack.  The unified UK fleet can’t do much on offense because UK fighters from London can’t reach for a couple of turns (by which time Japan can bring the entire power of its navy and air force to bear), and the added punch of a bomber just isn’t enough against a battleship, two loaded carriers, and transport fodder, which is what you’ll face as early as J2.

Note that you probably won’t be able to unite the UK fleet with a US Pac fleet, because the order is UK-Japan-US.  So if the UK fleet moves within Japan’s striking distance, Japan will probably just kill it.  The order must be the US moves in, then UK reinforces, then Japan is faced with a unified navy - but that’s very difficult to do unless the UK fleet sneaks south of Australia, which means that it can’t slow the invasion of India or lend support to Africa at all.  As for forcing the Japanese to commit their fleet to attacking the UK fleet, and having the US counterattack the weakened forces, I don’t see it happening, given the map.

Speaking for myself…

As Japan, I build an IC and 2 TRN, saving 1 (also, my bid placement would nto ahve been 2 INF to Ukraine, but 2 INF to Libya, so I would have 2 more units in Egypt, thus able to take 4 additional territories on G2 instead of 1.  I also do not concur with your uses of Germany Eastern forces, but I’ll skip that for now.)

Now, as Japan:
1 INF FIC to India (vacant, taken w/o loss)
1 INF Manch to Bury (vacant, taken w/o loss)

China (2 INF, 1 FIG):
1 INF Manch, 1 INF FIC, 3 INF Kwang to China
1 FIG Manch to China
1 FIG Japan to China
(China taken w/ 3 INF, 2 FIGs)

SZ38 (2 TRN, 1 AC, 2 FIG, 1 DST, 1 SUB):
1 BB, 1 AC, 2 FIG SZ37
1 FIG FIC
1 FIG Carolines AC
Result: MUTUAL DESTRUCTION

Pearl (1 AC, 1 FIG, 1 SUB)
1 BB SZ60
1 DST Carolines
1 AC Carolines
1 SUB Carolines
1 BOM Japan
(SZ52 cleared, 1 BB, 1 AC, 1 DST, 1 BOM surviving)

The above is using the no luck sim at Frood.

NCM: 
SZ59 TRN and SZ60 TRN to SZ61
Bridge 2 INF, 1 ART, 1 ARM to Manch
Land 2 FIG China in Manch
Land BOM from Pearl in Japan

Placement:
IC in Manch
2 TRN in SZ61

Japan has cleared the Pacific except for the WUS BB and TRN.
Germany is free to raid like crazy in Africa.
Russia is down a FIG
Japan is +6 IPC’s, for $37 total.
I have 4 TRN in the inner SZ where they are immune to any attempt to reach them in Turn 2 by Allied air or sea units.

For the US to kill my Pearl fleet, they have to send their BB, TRN, and 2 FIGs minimum.  That leaves the US with a BB in the Pacific.  Add 1 DST on J2 to protect my 4 TRNs, and Japan is off to the races…

Good one ncscswitch. I like the way you handle Japan. The key for a KJF defense is to be confident.

However, how would you respond to the same + the UK bomber in Novo or Sinkiang?

I know Jen used it for SBR but let’s assume she hadn’t…

Would you do the same battles and buy that destroyer on J1?