Whats the best place to pre-order A&A Pacific 1940?

Yes, my bad.  I was mixing in with the Global rules by mistake.

It depends on what side you are playing.  If your son is going to be Japan, tell him to follow the previous advice.  If you are playing Japan, follow the USA-killing strategy in the Pointlessly Broken thread and effectively win the game in turn 5.  Sadly something like 75% of the content in that thread is a needless flame war (as these boards are un-moderated for all practical purposes) but there is plenty of insightful commentary in there if you can suffer through it.

EDIT: I should point out that the war plans in that thread don’t translate that well into the Global game.  If the USA can afford to ignore Europe for the first several turns of the game, then it has enough to place into the Pacific that Japan won’t take it down.  Japan also has the issue of a possibility of expanding too quickly- since there are so many places it needs to reach, its forces will start to thin out all along the front.  At that point the Allies can start to pick off Japanese forces piecemeal and slowly turn them around.  I liken it to blowing up a balloon- if it gets too big, you can pop it.  The Japanese are protected from this effect on the Pacific stand-alone map since they will run into the edges of the map which provides cover for their flanks.

Is the definition of a garrison in Manchuria (one infantry) or must it maintain some combination more than that?

I agree with a J3 attack at this point. And yes, I also believe that there will likely be no ‘Pearl Harbor’ attack on the US.

The Carolines are an ideal spot to stage the IJN. I like to have the bulk of the fleet there and another group off the coast of China to support that efforts against the Brit holdings in the DEI and Kwangtung. Also, staging at Truk pretty much cuts the US off from doing anything useful to help the Brits for the first few turns as well as threatens the Aussies enough to force them to build ground troops for defense.

Given that the US will have spent only 39 or so IPCs by the time of the Japanese DoW it’s impossible for them to have anything to withstand the full weight of the IJN at Truk. That means that if they want to survive the will likely have to be back at the West Coast or someplace else out of the way. That adds another turn or so to the timeline before the US can intervene effectively to help relieve pressure in China/India.

Thanks for the clarification and the new rules errata! I’m omw to play another game tonight and this time I’m Japan.

That is awesome, I just did not realize that they had already gotten past the preliminary stages with AAE40.

Yeah the 68th anniversary of the sneak attack

idk. but I most definatley will implement the whole russia can fight china rule.