Topics created by EvenkiNatlOkrug

@CWO:

The rulebooks in some of the early A&A games (I can’t remember which ones off the top of my head) included brief descriptions of each power’s strengths and weaknesses and of its general situation, followed by statement like “If you’re the kind of player who prefers such-and-such a thing, consider playing this country.”  Those were handy to new players, and they were a bit along the lines of what EvenkiNatlOkrug says about his own system for helping players decide which power fits their particular style.

If my memory serves, Larry’s summation about Germany was: “If you want to be the center of attention, consider playing Germany.”   :-)

Yep, this is actually where I got the idea. It’s in the rulebook from Revised. I’m not sure about all of them, but if you wanted a balanced game, you should play UK and if you wanted a big land war, you should play USSR.

In the designer’s Tournament rules (which can be found here), any power can collapse, and Russia has no special rules (the Russian Revolution rules are not used).

When playing as the US, I usually have 2-3 transports waiting in New York Harbor for over-seas duty. I mix in 1 tank with the rest of the shipment because I find my US army gets involved in smaller battles of about 10 units (Africa, Mid-East, Eastern France etc). As I can only ship a limited number of units per turn, the tanks absorb hits every round and survives to be bolstered by the freshly arriving 2+ infantry.
For everyone else I think tanks are money poorly spent.

Anecdotal Evidence

Starlight Sniper

Recently tried out some of these suggestions in a game, and it turned into a pretty convincing Axis victory.

My takeaways:

Taking Moscow was more important than Leningrad or Stalingrad. Germany pretty much ignored the southern half of the Eastern Front and just played defense in Bulgaria/Romania.

It’s pretty essential that Japan takes out China completely in the first turn, which allows Japan to focus land forces on Russia and India.