Most Surprising First Round purchases you have seen?

That’s why under Caspian Sub and tripleA ladder rules you can’t attack an enemy capital with ground troops in your first turn.

Like you mentioned, it turns a wonderful game into a coin flip and spoils the fun.

Russia’s abilities in AAR seem to have been a mistake (IMHO) by the creator.  Back in the day, I had some pretty neat games where the United States mostly ignored Europe while Russia beat the ever livvin snot out of the Germans virtually single handedly. (You did need the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy to generate threat and reinforce of course.)

Talk to me about the Russian triple one day.  I am not on that computer or I would repost it…won more games with that then any other version of Axis and Allies ever!

http://boardgamegeek.com/ look there

Uh, it shows $135 on Amazon… not bad for sealed out of print. But yeah, I would buy 1942 and print one of IL’s maps to play on. The 1942 map is too small.

@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.

I think the most important battles are:

Germany: Egypt, clearing the Med of british shipping

everyone else depends on their strategy.

well with what I stated Below.

The US is making 40-44 a turn. Japan is making 34-38 a turn and already outnumbered. I don’t need anymore trns… The trns were there because Fleet A was suppose to WIN… but under favorable odds to win instead got crushed…

in this scenario Japan cannot fight ship to ship with the States. Especially If i just build lets say 5 subs a turn… mix some fgts eventually of course.

And Yeah UK is matching Germany unit for unit in the battle on the western-front.

G1 Sea Lion is one of the major reasons why Larry Harris Tournament Rules are used rather than the box rules.