Preparing for Axis game OOB in local tournament - Suggestions Welcome

@Alpha-Admiral Germany goes before Japan, so if you attack USA with germany, the benefits of waiting with Japan (low US income) are a bit scrambled. Also, you may not be able to kill the entire UK fleet without sacrificing the precious German battleship if you divert subs to other objectives.

The diplomatic rules in Global 40 give you precious time and space for the Axis to play and cavort all over the UK, France and China. You need to sacrifice that advantage at a maximum cost to the Allies.

@Black_Elk:

Here’s a little something I do, that I’ve found really helps to shave a few minutes off every turn.
It might seem simple, but you’d be surprised how much time can be spent digging and returning pieces to their trays, if you don’t have a good system in place…

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=35904.msg1411574#msg1411574

You can see an example image in there at the bottom using 1942.2 but I adopt the same system in G40. Once I started doing this, I never went back. Now I’m a big proponent of grouping by shape, and trusting in color differentiation for easy recognition, rather than the other way round. Hard habit to break, for the OCD sculpt collector, but it works. Even chainsmoking degenerates like me can make the extra effort to be better orgnaized haha.

Also, like others have mentioned before and elsewhere too, my group separates combat movement, and combat proper with the purchase phase. So the phases like this…
repair, combat movement, purchase, combat, non com, placement, collect.
If you want to pick up the pace it’s highly effective for focusing your players. It doesn’t change anything compared to the standard phase order of “purchase, combat movement, combat proper” other than the speed with which your players will make decisions.

interesting, i like the idea of sorting by unit type instead of faction, i may toy around with that in a smaller version to see how it feels before doing it with the G40 units (it’d be a huge pain to re-sort them again after, lol)

SZ 6 is a terrible spot for the Japanese navy if you’re being focused by the WAllies (it’s fine if you’re left relatively alone and are threatening Hawaii for victory). The DEIs are worth 20 to Japan, Japan+Korea money being convoyed is only 11. The Philippines are the best spot to station the IJN after conquering the DEIs. Add an airbase to FIC and you’re basically unapproachable. Not only does it extend that air’s reach, it also provides a scramble to protect newly built transports/destroyers to reclaim DEIs from the WAllies/reinforce IJN

The US is going to need a massive fleet to be able to survive in SZ 6/Carolines SZ or use several destroyers as blockers. Every plane you have in FIC w/ an airbase can hit SZ 6, same with the whole fleet at Philippines if it’s not blocked. Carolines SZ isn’t much safer because if you still control one of the islands in the adjacent sea zones (not uncommon as they are valueless, defended, and no facilities), you can “double up” your aircraft carrier capacity when attacking it: Planes on the carriers at Philippines attack the sea zone planning to land on said island and planes from FIC can attack the sea zone planning to land on the carriers. If they do block you with destroyers, then you can kill those with subs and/or planes and take the favorable casualty ratio. Since the US needs a heavily defensive fleet to be able to withstand your counterattack, your fleet at the Philippines is likely unattackable by the US fleet, putting planes on the island for scramble if need be.

If Russia stacks Bury Rd1, just don’t do a J1 DoW. Crush the Russian stack J1 instead, advance on China and set up a moderately successful J3 DoW (not gonna be ideal because of the Russian diversion. But hey, you get Russian money as a trade-off). Be content that Germany can get a comfortable take of Moscow without worrying about balancing haste and profitability.
If Russia pulls back for one round and then re-advances to Bury Rd2, this is probably the toughest Japan will have it. Very unlikely that they will take the Pacific victory (unless the US ignores them), but Germany will still get the easy take on Moscow and should be able to turn that into a Europe victory.

However, my biggest problem is USA being forced to split it’s IPCs between Europe and the Pacific theaters.  What?  Since when did the United States do an even split?  You’re disabling the American ability to flexibly respond to crises as they arise?  I.e., “looks like UK is going down due to Sea Lion and Russia is in deep doo doo.  Too bad we can’t spend more in the European theater, even though the Japanese fleet is destroyed…  Got to build more Carriers in San Francisco”  That’s crazy.

I agree here, I’ve since changed my mind about this.

Several people have said they will make charts and whatnot when the official final set is released.

Thank you Tex for providing what you have made.

@Robson:

@AllyAxis:

Was thinking about this strategy for Alpha 2+ global.

Has anyone done it successfully?

Attack J1 soviet far east, amur, sibera.  build a Major in Manchuria and keep UK India /china relatively occupied .  pin down the US fleet with carrier builds and park fighters on it to keep the US building in the pacific.

Get my Italians to clear Soviet buffer troops (usually one or two units between main armies)  and get the Italy Germany one two punch going.  I found that my mech tank builds were very effective and getting to Russia quickly to support.  but I may not build as many mechs this next game.  I was matching them tank for mech.  but that may only be necessary for clearing forces (IE forces trying to take rostov , caucus ) on the way to moscow.

Can Japan really turn the tide tho in the All Axis on the Soviets strat?  thoughts anyone?

Hi James,

I did it once succesfully. First turn I took France, Normandy and Southern France with Germany, so Italy can move  the troops from Northern Italy to Yugoslavia which was already taken by the Germans Round 1. With this support and Japan invading Russia Turn 2 and building a major Factory in Korea Russia was down.
The negative side is, that India and ANZAC had no problem to survive and invade the money islands.

Greets RobbyWestSide

Thanks Robby!  Glad to hear from you!  I have been taking Yugoslavia with the Italians,  but getting them into the eastern front faster is a nice key.  In my last Europe 1940 game I started with an Italian turn 2 attack and then reinforced with Germany.  Sounds like Cmdr Jennifer agrees with the Italians take, Germany re-inforces one two punch in the East.  I will definitely consider taking china from the rear,  but at the same time I need the 12 IPC’s to keep Japan viable if my resources and ground units aren’t going after the DEI  or UK india too hard.  excited to see this play out friday evening.  If my 2 other players show…  and I get to play the Axis which I should since its my turn.  I just have to watch out.  The Axis Cannot make major mistakes,  but the Allies can make plenty and still win the game.  Time is on the side of the Allies in the long term with the Awesomeness of the US’s 70+ IPC’s…

Thanks for all the input everyone.

A long time ago, back when we just had the Classic MB version of A&A, I started working on an idea to break all territories into smaller sections so it wouldn’t just be one battle and you get the whole territory.  For example, the Eastern US territory would be broken down into all the different states so if an Axis attacked it, they would have to fight state to state in order to win that territory, and maybe some of the larger states could be split into two or three sections.  I thought this seemed more realistic than just one battle and you win the entire Eastern half of the United States.
However, many problems became apparent fairly quickly.  First of all, I couldn’t always find more detailed maps of some of the territories like those in central and eastern Russia, territories in Africa, Southeast Asia, etc. 
Also, going from the World map to a single territory map you would have to change all the units.  For example;  you have 10 infantry, 2 armor and 2 fighters defending Eastern USA.  If you shrink this down to just that territory broken up into many territories,  it would have to be something like 100 infantry, 20 armors and 20 fighters spread out amongst all those territories.  Plus you would have to figure out where to put them and it wouldn’t necessarily be an even amount.  You wouldn’t have the same amount of units defending Washington or New York as you would some empty space.  The same would hold true for the attackers.  How many units would you have attacking each territory?  Plus, I didn’t have a clue as to how to break it down like this for Naval warfare.  How many actual ships does 1 battleship on the World Map represent on the smaller maps?
Finally, it occurred to me that this would make just one game of A&A take literally MONTHS to complete.  Attacking a territory would be like opening up a whole new game.  Granted, there are a number of unoccupied territories that you could simply “blitz” and not have to refer to the smaller maps, but any substantial combat would take hours to complete as your forces move to take a territory a piece at a time.  Also, this would possibly mess up some attacks and leave a territory in a “contested” state for some time.  For example;  Germany invades Eastern US.  Germany has 20 Inf, 8 tanks, 2 fighters and 2 bombers.  The US has 10 inf, 2 tanks and 2 fighters plus the AA gun.  Now, depending on how the forces get laid out on the small scale map, and also depending on luck of the dice rolls, there are any number of outcomes.  On the World Map, it would be one big battle and over, likely with Germany winning .  However, on the small  map, it’s possible that say the Germans did well in the north.  However, in the south the US forces defeated the invader and still have good forces intact.  Also, on this scale, there will likely be more US forces farther inland as reserves.  So now the territory of Eastern USA is basically half German controlled and half US controlled.  This would drag this one battle out even longer.  Now, it’s possible that the triumphant German forces in the North could possibly get whittled down to nothing as they try to work their way south.
Anyway, my point is that doing a game like this would make it take way too long and I would imagine most people would lose intereste after a while.  It’s an interesting concept but if you get too detailed the game loses its fun.

@LHoffman:

@spectre_04:

What is this new reduced Japan aircraft setup I keep hearing about???

I am pretty sure it just involves removing 6 planes from a number of different territories.

Actually, Japan loses 8 planes and a transport, while the Allies lose 7 planes and a transport(which would’ve been killed anyway in a J1 attack)