Topics created by Advosan

And where is the escort carrier. The escort and the heavy cruiser?
I also had merchant marine and german raiders in my game….german player love that boat!

@Bunnies:

Re:  KJF:

There are slow and fast variations of KJF - fast and slow, but neither is particularly effective if the Axis player responds appropriately.

The slow variation goes something like this - push Japan off the Asian coast with Russia, while US kills the Pacific fleet.  UK supports Russia in Europe.

The fast variation goes something like this - Sinkiang IC / India IC, then UK ground from India plus UK air, Russian ground, and US fleet all push in on Japan.

In both variations, what the Allies are planning is pretty clear; the Allies have to move around to set up their KJF plan.  That movement always weakens the Russian-German front, and is sometimes not too effective, as Japan has a lot of flexibility that it can use to punish the Allies.

I agree that KJF is not the superior strategy - I just find it more fun and necessary for the game to keep my interest for it to have playable alternatives to the traditional KGF strategy.

Regarding the dice being a friend of the axis I am not sure I totally agree here. Risky early round battles goes for both players.
USSR has the WR UKR/Belo/Norway
Germany typically has The Egypt attack, SZ2 and even the med cruiser can give problems.
Uk has the Egypt counter or FIC/Borneo.
Japan can definately struggle with both taking out a bury stack, taking China, sz52 and some UK pacific leftovers.

I think the best way to play the game is to keep the strategic options open, in order to exploit early game weaknesses.
For instance a US pacific campaign is a better option if Japan loses a capital ship R1. If Germany fails in sz2 the KGF scenario is of to a good start so allies might as well expliot it etc.
Some of the games Hobbes refers to, it seems like his opponent made up his mind about the strategy before the game, and sticked to it regardless of the outcome fo the battles, which I think was a huge mistake (and also you can’t expect USSR both to aid allies in a KJF and take out the German med fleet).

I’d say other things on your list should be:

3 transports 1 destroyer
4 transports
2 transports 1 industrial complex
2 industrial complexes

(The thought behind 1 industrial complex or 2 is very different; 1 IC mixes early pressure with infantry backup; 2 ICs just goes “hell for leather” as you may say.)

That pretty much covers it.

@Advosan:

Which makes the AES Gambit (all rights reserved by B.P.Wrath:)) safer for Russia.

Oo no.  I am not that baby daddy.

Assuming Japan doesn’t mess up horribly -

A fat Japan threat to Western US heavily slows early Japanese progress in Asia.  Let them threaten.  As soon as they move out of range, W US tanks blitz to E Canada, and W US infantry moves to W Canada preparatory to moving to E Canada for the E Canada-London or E Canada-Algeria drops.

If Japan sends its fleet anywhere but the Pacific region, US and UK both have starting subs that can harass Japanese shipping.  True, a Japanese destroyer or two can greatly decrease the Allied threat, but early Japanese destroyer builds hinder their progress in Asia and Africa.

If Japan heavily commits its fleet to, say, Mediterranean, or sends around South America or Africa, then a few US units in Pacific can really screw with Japan.  Later in the game, if there’s no Japanese navy or air in the region, US can start grabbing those high IPC islands with a transport (just 7 IPCs) while keeping off Japanese naval units with cheap subs.  Japan would be forced to either bring a carrier or battleship back, or build destroyers/subs, plus possibly pulling back fighters to deal with the situation, at which point US could build destroyer/carrier/fighters in Pacific and increase the pressure on Japan.  Once US has its infrastructure set up against Europe, it usually doesn’t need to invest much more expensive IPCs in naval for the Atlantic, freeing resources for Pacific harassment.

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As far as US fighters/bombers moving away from Pacific, there’s two scenarios.

Japan hits Hawaii heavily:  If Japan went to Hawaiian Islands fleet super heavy, you’ll probably see 1 battleship 1 carrier 2 fighters 1 cruiser 1 sub.  (This is possible if sending 3 fighters 1 bomber to Hawaii and taking Japanese air as casualties).  US’s counter of 1 battleship 1 bomber 2 fighters 1 sub (023344, 6 hits at 16 attack) attacking into Japan’s 7 hits (0123444, 7 hits at 18 defense) is not particularly favorable, even if you account for Japan having to sink its fighters before its carrier.  Consider what happens with a bit of bad dice - the US battleship dies plus a load of expensive US air, the Japanese battleship survives, and possibly a Japanese carrier and even a Jap fighter.

Japan hits Hawaii lightly:  US air doesn’t have anything good to hit in Pacific anyways.

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Of course the Axis have some counter to everything Allies do, and vice versa.  If there weren’t counters, then the game wouldn’t be particularly interesting; you’d just spam the attack for which there was no reasonable response, and you’d win every time.

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IF Japan screws up or has super lousy dice and looks to lose at least 2 of its 4 battleship/carriers by the beginning of J2, then US can think about KJF (Kill Japan First).  Otherwise, I’d send US air towards Atlantic ASAP to help in whacking the German battleship.  Ideally, you want to whack the German battleship on UK2/US2 at the latest.

Mm.  Without a whole lotta explanation, I’d agree with Hobbes’ last assessment.  BTW, all that carrier stuff - it’s not that it’s Hobbes’ pet strategy - it’s just that Advosan brought it up, so I threw in a reply.

Germany may be able to use clever builds to stall UK from building in sea, but I see no way to race Russia’s ground from the east (at LEAST requiring German infantry) and a combined UK/US fleet.  Japan takes a while to get going, and early gains by the Russians translate to IPCs in the bank.

Best, I’d think, is the strategies Hobbes alluded to.  I think implementation comes down to either 5 tanks 5 infantry G1 build, 8 tanks G1 build, or bomber/infantry mix, possibly building only infantry early, possibly concentrating on bombers early . . . I can’t say which.

I’ll comment more in another thread.

As far as this thread being an exaggeration - well, it is quite modest for Hobbes not to toot his own horn, and perhaps he doesn’t himself believe that he’s a juggernaut.  But I’d say that even if he got schooled in Revised, I’d say he improved.  Certainly, I’d like to see the implementation of his Axis strats.

It is an old idea od Caspian Sub of organizing the transport from US to Europe using two sets of 4 transports via EC.

But the major difference is you do not land in WEU but you go through UK and Norway. The difference is that while Germany can deal with isolated landings in WEU or SEU, or prevent them to occur altogether, the Norwegian way reinforces the push in each round with the new units, while you preserve almost all of the original ones so that when you enter neighbourhood of Germany – EE in this case, you have such a mighty force there, Germany cannot think of wiping out. Moreover it may allow Russia to reinforce it too, or a sweet 1-2-3 on Berlin.

You have two fleets operating, one mighty combined UK/US SZ5-SZ6, the other one SZ2 to ship the units from EC to UK.

Ideally you have 8 or more UK units in Norway when starting the push, you reinforce them with 8 US, next round you go with those 8 UK plus new 8 to Karelia, you reinforce with 8 US plus 8 new, thus you will enter the EE with about 20 UK units, 24 US reinforcements and anthing russia can spare and you would be able to hit Germany itself with all that brutal force.

It usually does not go that ideal, you might need to drop some units to africa, from time to time you might trade WEU in case it pays off, but nothing should destract you from this basic scheme, i would say. And there is another thing it takes four rounds from the units produced at EUS to get to Europe so it requires some good planning and patience really.

Per the FAQ, Formosa should have a Japanese roundel and Iceland should have a UK one.

Yes, that’s correct, but it’s also irrelevant to this issue.  If Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom territory, it isn’t a separate space, so whatever touches United Kingdom also touches it.  If it is a separate space, it’s not in play, since it’s not named.  Either way, it doesn’t matter which other spaces touch United Kingdom but not Northern Ireland.