Allied Playbook - G40 Collection of Essays - Compiled by jacobgeo24 Nov 18-19 2023

@Herr:

@oysteilo:

@Herr:

Isn’t that a bit slow?

I1: take Bulgaria
I2: units move to Romania
I3: can-opening into Bessarabia and/or Eastern Poland

So in that scenario, the German followup will be as late as G4.

I think the important can-opening happens around (I4), I5, I6 in order to break through into volgograd and caucasus and later to threaten middle east by italy taking NW persia

The idea of can-opening is, to take the territory with Italy in order to allow Germany, and especially the German planes, to reinforce it against a Russian counterstrike. So I don’t think that any Italian drive to the south servers the purpose of can-opening because Russia is unlikely to have sufficient forces to strike back at either Volgograd or the Caucasus anyway in case the Germans would have taken it without Italian assistance. Which doesn’t imply that going that way is bad for Italy because there’s a lot of bonus to be had. But if you’re talking can-opening, then I’d say Bryansk on I5 would be the way to go.

@aequitas:

With Bulgaria, Yugo and Greece given to Italy, what punch will Germany have?
Any Allied player will be happy to harvest Italy…

Agreed. I’d much rather give Bulgaria to Germany to assimilate those troops and add some punch to the German drive into Russia.

I might be using it idfferent than you. The other idea of canopening is to force a russian retreat.
let say you stand in rostov with a german and italian stack, with at least 40 german tank+mech and 5-7 italian units., and 7+ italians. Then ussr has to retreat to moscow. if he stacks byransk, you can take tambov with the italians, and moscow falls on the german turn. Since ussr has to retreat, you get to take cauc, stalingrad and begin taking the middle east immediately.

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.

3 boats a turn on the Atlantic side or the pacific side?

Pacific.  He was speaking of the type of Navy that could get built up between Anzac and US with a late DOW.  Without pulling guys from the Atlantic, US can’t put a ton of guys on the Pacific in those first 3 turns.  Just to match the Japan Navy the US needs 2 more carriers, 1 battleship, 1 destroyer.  That’s  60 ipcs.  In my opinion, US needs more navy since they need to be the attackers.  That would require neglecting the atlantic almost entirely (which isn’t an awful idea depending on how good the German player is).  That also doesn’t take into account that Japan buys a Carrier and can load it without spending the 20-21 ipcs for fighters.  The Naval bases also allow for 3 more fighters to defend if used correctly.

We started at 3:00 PM and finished at 2:30 PM the next day with a one-hour catnap.  We were able to complete 2 games of 1940 & one game of 1942.  I one 2 out of three games. (one1940 and one 1942)

Mission 1:  Sink Jap Fleet
Mission 2: SBR and Convoy them to the stone age
Mission 3: Hope you get enough into Europe to change the Axis fortune there.

Well you wanted to know how to slow the allies down. Fucking around with the USA would do it.