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

@surfer

Thanks for the advice! Yeah, I really messed up on those British and French bids.

Thanks for the advice regarding the other bid purchases.

@seancb said in [House Rules] Should allies receive a bid?:

one more thing, I’ll take a 16 bid

We actually have 1 game completed (if you concede it). Looking forward to another…waiting in the lobby right now.

YG, I haven’t seen Low Roller’s document (BGG requires a person to register in order to download files), so I can’t really comment on it – but here’s an idea that you might want to consider for your own rulebook project, since it may save you a lot of work and may perhaps also be safer from a legal point of view.

I imagine that your project to rewrite the entire Global 1940 ruleset as a combined document will require you, as a first step, to create an outline of the document that you want to create – basically, a plan for the structure of the whole document, arranged in whatever way you think will be best from the point of view of clarity and ease of use.  I also imagine that, as another preparatory step, you’ll need to make an inventory of all the parts of the Europe and Pacific 1940 rulebooks that you wll want to use, with page references to those parts of the two rulebooks.  One way to make that inventory would be to plug the page references into your structured outline, to give yourself a complete plan of where in the rulebooks you’ll need to go to write each section of your projected document.  (This may not necessarily be the way you were planning to prepare the project, but for the sake of argument I’ll assume that this was going to be your methodology.)

Anyway, what occured to me is this.  Having prepared a detailed outline of the type I’ve described, and having inserted into the outline all the required page references to the Europe and Pacific 1940 rulebooks, you might not find it necessary to re-write anything at all.  The document I’ve described would serve as a kind of sophisticated index – a conceptual one, not an alphabetical one – to the Europe and Pacific 1940 rulebooks that treats them in a combined way and that provides access to their content according to whatever logical structure you think would be most convenient for use by players.  The players would still have to go from your document to the rulebook page to which you referred them, of course, but the point is that you wouldn’t have to spend any time actually rewriting the two rulebooks, which would save you an awful lot of work.  Furthermore, since you’d neither copying-and-pasting the rulebooks (which would be questionable from a legal point of view) nor re-phrasing the actual content of the rulebooks (basically trying to get around potential copyright problems by putting the rulebooks into your own language), you might be on safer legal ground.  Essentially, you’d be providing people with a structured and easy-to-use way of accessing official rules, rather than either reproducing or rephrasing the rules.

@Dafyd:

I think that any question when we are trying to improve our skills is a good question…especially if we are really trying to learn.  The Hessian and ShadowHAwk are right.  The key to the Pacific are the two power fleets of Japan and the U.S.  The U.S. must go after the Japanese fleets.  Carriers loaded with planes are very important as well as the subs and detroyers.  As a side mission and with the permission of your Soviet ally, land troops in Siberia and help take back Soviet territories from the Japanese if they have begun to starve out the Soviet Far East.  It takes resources from the Japanese and can alter the attention of the Japanese player a turn or two if they are interested in defending Korea or pressuring the Soviets.

Good stuff here.  I’m a fan of 3 part attacks on Japanese fleets.  As an example:

Japan leaves a chunk of its fleet in SZ42 (off Java) for whatever reason.  They’re not worried about an attack because America doesn’t have the fleet off of Queensland to come after them.  What I’ve done in those situations is attack with the American ships, then follow up with India planes and Anzac ships/planes to finish them off. You’ll lose your American ships, some India planes and Anzac ships/planes, but if you wipe out half of the Japanese fleet it’s brutal for Japan because, as dominate as they can be, they can’t afford to lose too many major pieces.  America can lose a mini fleet and replace it; Japan cannot afford to be spending multiple turns rebuilding its fleet.

J1 DOW is strong. I won tournament games with it and league games. It is unbelievable against those who have not seen it before. You end up winning in the pacific by turn 7 or USA is full pacific trying to stop you while Germany and Italy wins in Europe.

Thanks for the welcome Variance!

You are guessing correctly ^.^:
If the UK (in our group) sees that Germany is going ‘full bore’ (I guess that means throwing everything at Moscow to defeat it G6 or G7), then it starts channeling its fighters from wherever it must build them (Britain, Canada, South Africa and India) into Russia and finally into Moscow. All this happens Either via the northern route or via Persia/Africa (building a key AB here and/or there).
  UK is OK to sacrifice its ships in the med. to keep every plane alive, annihilate the Italian Navy first and to prevent any new axis ships to appear there.
Subsequently the aircraft help to destroy the Italian presence in Africa (from set-up plus maybe 1 turn of reinforcements) and then the aircraft flies into the Middle east, ready to go into Russia whilst trying not to disrupt Russia’s NO of having Archangelsk-route. But the UK fighters in russia are more important than the Russian NO if the threat is high enough.

This is why our UK is always strong while at the same time being able to be in Russia with their FTRs on time, giving Germany (statistically) no chance on Moscow, not even if it goes full bore. If it doesnt go in full bore than all those UK FTR can go elsewhere as a very flexible force. For example, fly into the areas in Europe that the US captures, stay in the med, fly to India to recapture Calcutta or prevent it from being taken… you name it).

So perhaps we don’t play Germany as optimally as possible ;-).
The best I have ever come up with myself is hitting Moscow with around 230 attack factors G6 (buying 4 STR G5, 4 TAC/STR G4, ARM+MECH G3&G2, ART+INF G1) while Russia alone I believe cannot have more than around 195 defense factors, their AAA still excluded. Combined with the UK FTR however, this can easily be too much over the 230 German attack factors. This combined with sufficiently enough more allied units, a full bore axis attack on Moscow is in our group a statistical fail.

Anyway, a quick calculation shows me that an all STR German build can reach to approx. 200 Attack factors and has way less defense factors so my guess is it will fail to deliver the message to Moscow.

I am looking for Axis strategies to counter the allied dominance (in my eyes) but Perhaps I should then move on to another thread or start one myself  8-).

I will definately look into the tripleA program if I have the time, thanks!

@WILD:

Wow this thread was cool to revive. Haven’t heard from many of those guys much as of late, but they have some great insight for the allies.

Garg’s point was for the allies to win, they first must not loose. Keeping in mind that Cow was part of the conversation, and is one of the best Japanese players (that thrives on early Japanese attacks). Garg’s point of stacking Anz early and def Hawaii so the Japanese can’t steal a win on the Pac side is directly linked to very good Japanese play. It is also noted that the Anz needs to build some navy and air to help the US, but their main goal is to not loose Sidney.

There is also some good advice about how to use Egypt to supply air to Moscow to prop it up (building an IC & AB as early as plausible), while also building up Egypt to be a last resort defensive stand if Moscow falls. I also like that Q mentioned evacuating India as an option to turtlng and losing all your units. I have evacuated India in the past and traded it to stall the Japanese (they can’t land air on it, so it could be a good chance to kill Japanese ground units). This is a little painful because of the stupid capture capital/plunder rule that should be a one time only IMO (house rule). Those India units can really help in Egypt or Russia if they are alive, and is doable if the Anz and Hawaii aren’t weak, or are shielded. Plus once the Japanese take India they need to decide if they immediately head to the 6th VC for the win (Sidney or Hawaii), or possibly make a move on the Mid East, Egypt, Africa, or north to Russia (maybe linking up with more Japanese units pounding through China).

I agree with all this, generally speaking. Japan can take any one power at the time. The only way to slow down Japan is for all nations to cause Japan to enter attritive battles. E.g., put Japan in a position where they have juicy targets to hit (with something to compensate you for it, like time, loss of position or gain on another front), but too many of them to address.

Go back to SCHOOL Degrasse, nobody wants to hear what you have to say.

Oh wait… I guess I was the one who asked… :P

looks around

I bet it’s in the pacific manual too, or the original pacific Alpha.