Invitation to Play League & Support Drive!

@Caesar:

@oysteilo:

That was a lot of questions!

for point 4. Why Yunnan, because it is the most important chinese territory. If China holds Yunnan at the start of their turn they can build artillary. If China does not need to fight Yunnan they will fight you everywhere else, such as up north and press towards the coastline. Yunnan is in fact one of the key allied “strongholds” comparable to sz 110, bryansk and later in the game, the middle east. It means the Axis should meet significant resistance here

I disagree with this. While it is important to keep it Chinese for the Burma Road, Japan can easily by pass it if it’s end goal is India. It is tactical but it doesn’t break the Axis.

Ignoring China can definitely break Japan!  Even if you take India early you will still have to invest in ground forces to get back the VC’s you lost to China and now you have no infrastructure to do it effectivley.  Its better to tame China early set up a supply line and get factories going on the mainland.  Its hard enough to maintain island dominace and you can’t afford to lose your income core as well ,China is that core especially the coast line.  Japan is a ripe fruit but if you let it rot from the inside out you are doomed.  I have seen it happen too many times and its what I try to do as the allies against Japan.  Having a big navy for Japan and controlling the DEI as well as getting calcutta are all good things for Japan but ignoring China can negate those advances.  Just my two cents from extensive game play face to face and league play.

It’s true that StuckToJo you’ve been victim of this tactic more than a few times!  :-D

AA is unique to the extent it fits in between light “war games” like the ones these guys like and the real mind buster/hex and counter games.  People who want more realism etc go for the latter while lighter players go the former, leaving us who want something in the middle with AA.  It’s hard to convince either type to go in for middle when they want something really complicated or easy.

Thank you very much Young. I’ll follow your advice. Would you recommend using your home rules (national objectives and R&D) also to complete newbies?

I think there are 8 for each nation. (except china)

If the US keeps investing heavily into the Pacific, Japan has two choices:

Get all the IPC you can early (per Cow’s strategy) or…

Play turtle in SZ6 and take the long road into Moscow from the East which generally requires an IC on Manchuria/Korea or both.  In particular you let the US spend its IPC to get a fleet to take out yours in SZ6 and utilize Kamikaze to disable CV so the US aircraft cannot land and have to splash.

You have opportunities to get the Japanese Air Force into Europe as early as J4 (J1 Chahar, J2 Suiyuyan, J3 place AB on Suiy, J4 fly as far as Leningrad (Kansu - Novo - Volo - Arch - Novg).

With the AB at Nov, J5 will be a full pummel of Moscow’s MajorIC allowing German Air Force to assist in the advance of its ground units towards Moscow.  You can also open up doors for the Germans to blitz by trading Jap aircraft to open up spaces the Russians thought they had defended.  J6 is a suicide of Aircraft against Moscow to weaken the garrison on Moscow for a G7 attack there.

You can also decide to rush for an India Crush and instead of turning to face the Allied fleet Post India Crush, race instead towards the Med to assist Italy in taking and holding Egypt with your fleet.  Building IC in Kwang and FIC assist in getting more units on the board once you sacrifice SZ6 to the US.  Realize you can stop the US from loading units onto a TT from an IC in Korea every round by just buying a DD in SZ6.

I played a version of Cow’s J1 attack where I had the US fleet chase me around the Pacific - sent a TT with a small fleet of CV, CR, DD and TT (with 2 Inf) from SZ6 to Caroline to Line and was in position to land Jap units at the Panama Canal.  I ended up taking NZ instead of Pamana due to a 10 SS purchase by the US when I was at Line Islands.  The US/Anzac eventually chased down and sunk that fleet, but that occurred by the time I got it all the way back to Java and had crushed India - sometime around round 6 or 7.

Just remember, even if Japan loses Tokyo, the Axis still needs to lose Berlin for the Allies to claim victory.  There are plenty of possibilities for Japan to assist in the European theater for the Axis win in Europe.

As for the Pacific - I have played Japan the last… 6 or so games and I have yet to win in the Pacific.  The closest I came was with Cow’s J1 attack but I was short 1 TT to take Hawaii which was unguarded.

@knp7765:

In one game I played a few months back, I think it was Alpha+2, both Germany and Italy failed to take France round 1.  Then UK sent some stuff in to back up the units France was able to purchase and believe it or not, Germany failed a second time.  This time Italy managed to finish off France though.  Very weird.  Axis lost that game by the way.

I’ve seen this happen. Makes for an exciting couple French turns.

by that point in the game we couldnt have stopped you… I’m thinking how we could have stopped it from getting to that point in the first place.  A couple of things come to mind… 1) not stockpiling the russian infantry in Amur and 2) when we saw you only bought 2 transports on G1 UK could have taken out the Taranto fleet and just bought infantry.  This might have stopped Italy opening a second front in Russia and stopped a successful sealion.