Most Surprising First Round purchases you have seen?

@gnasape:

Instead of doing too much, it might be advisable to hit W Rus hard with 10 inf, 2 art, 3 arm, 2 ftr, and create deadzones all around and trade territories with Germany until the reinforcements arrive.

This is usually what I do, and with a 3 inf, 3 arm buy you immediately have 7 armor which should be close to matching Germany and should prevent a German move to either Kar or Ukr for several rds.  You can follow up in rd 2 with 4 inf, 1 rt, 2 arm and your overall offensive units start to look pretty impressive:  3 rt, 9 arm, 2 ftrs.

I do understand what it does look like and I have just one suggestion play it out.  :-D  I also bought 6 tanks and 1 Fighter and that won me a lot of games.  I have also bought 1 Carrier and 3 Transports G1 and placed in SZ 5 and that won a lot as well.

To add to the fighters prowess each time you use them it is like using 4 tanks that if used right will seldom die.  Count that up over 2-5 turns.  I am not a fan of playing by IPC worth I thought I would just throw that out there.  I am a fan of position.  I think IPC’s are only a tool to fight with and not the fight  :wink:

Thanks for the input and I will play some more land games to see where that idea is coming from.  :-D

There are numerous errors in the rule book that comes with the game.  You may want to check out Larry Harris Tournament Rules (which are available from a link on the main page of this website).

The only “opening fire” that repeats after the first round of combat is Submarine Sneak Attack.

BB Shore Bombardment and AA fire are limited to only opening fire of the first round of combat.

Yeah, I would add the capture of India, reinforcing German-held Caucasus, and recapture of Africa from the Allies, also capturing Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, other things like that. Those are pretty standard goals for KGF.

There’s three things I usually do with the American fleet at Pearl.

1.  Attack with sub, destroyer, fighters, bomber.  Sub and destroyer are fodder.  Fighters land on Jap carriers at the Solomons.  Bomber goes back to Japan.

2.  Ignore it, if I can destroy the entire UK navy in the Indian Ocean and ALSO kill off 6 Russian infantry at Burytia.

3.  Send everything.  I really don’t like this, because using the transport off Japan slows Japanese progress in Asia.

UK assets at India can be used for a few different purposes.  One is to recapture Anglo-Egypt.  Another is to reinforce the Pearl Harbor fleet while weakening the Jap fleet (UK sub and fighter vs Jap Solomon sub; UK fighter lands on US carrier).  Yet another is to poke at the Jap fleet and threaten more (UK fleet attacks Jap Kwangtung transport, UK fighter lands on Burytia with the 6 Russian infantry, UK bomber flies west, threatening UK attack on Jap navy next turn.

@U-505:

I would have to say that you should be careful about advancing heavy Russian forces too far into Europe. Drawing Russian ground units away from Russia is a trap I frequently like to set with Germany. It gets really had to resist trading a bunch of advanced territories with Germany because the prospect of Russia making 30+ IPC’s a turn puts dollar signs in the Russian player’s eyes. With the Axis outnumbering Russia by 5 to 1 with air units, trading a lot of territories and ground units with Russia almost always favors the Axis, even if the unit trade is 1 for 1. No matter how much Russia makes, Japan always outproduces them by up to twice as many units and that point will get hammered home when a large number of Russian forces are aimed at Germany and their reinforcements going west dry up instantly because they are desperately trying to hold back the flood of Japanese units coming at them. Japan has a tendence to look benign one turn and the next turn be all over the map, in force, and Russia can quickly get into trouble by being too aggressive toward Germany. Especially if the eastern defensive structure is poorly maintained.

I completely agree.  I’ve used this “rope-a-dope” tactic a few times.  retreat with germany, attack with japan, and then usually around round 3-4 i counter attack with germany and squeeze russia out and hope that germany conquers russia so i can get the IPC’s.  I say thi cause usually the Allies have taken western Europe with this strategy at some point and I have to retake it.

@CrazyStraw:

Howdy.

I hadn’t weighed in on this thread, but I just got a story to tell.

Yesterday I played a game against a good player.  It was time-limited.

No joke, in a 5 round game I built 9tra 1car with Germany.

And it WON the game for me!

It was ridiculous!

It was absurd!

It was outrageous!

It was sublime…

So German boats can be good.  That would have been excessive in 99% of the games I’ve played, but yesterday it was exactly enough to get the job done.  Simple lesson: the Baltic is important.

I begin to see the value in LL / No Luck games and in non-time limited games.

My entire strategies in my tournament game had to change because of a time limit.  It caused a waste of two turns because I forgot to take into account that there was a time limit in each round.  (not a round limit, that would have been easy to work with, but a time limit.)

needless to say, I’m never making that mistake again!

Then you could bombard should Caucus be taken, but yes, it seems rather ridiculous.

Just do your best to last as long as you can until Germany kills UK or Russia, or both.