http://www.harrisgamedesign.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=761&start=0

This topic has been discussed to death at that link.

Basically:

1. Yes, the Revised rules are compeltely unclear with regards to what happens here, even LHTR and box rules both do not say explicitly what happens.

BUT

2. The game designer Larry Harris, believes that in this case, though the US forces cannot roll for attack nor defense since the UK initiated the attack and there are no multiational attacks, but they CAN be taken as casualties!!

In Axis & Allies Pacific, the rules there specifically state that if you have allied forces in the combat zone with enemy units and you initiate an attack, your allied units don't roll, but they can be taken as casualties. Larry likes this, believes most people abide by this, and this is the way he intended it.

If your goal is to contain Germany first, then it's better to counterattack Egypt on turn 1 so he doesn't continue to expand into Africa and get stronger. It's actually quite difficult for the Japanese to bring enough force to bear to kill Russia before the Allies kill Germany even with a first turn gain of 6 IPCs (3 in Indian, 2 in China, 1 in Sinkiang).

Delaying the Japanese is not a bad idea in and of itself, but putting a complex in India is pretty bad idea since you're giftwrapping the complex for him to use.

You have about 5 rounds before you have to spend a penny on defense against Japan anyways, so make use of that time to route the Germans.

Turn 1, the UK builds a complex in India as Japanese build 3 transports and 2 infantry. China is busted.

Turn 2, the UK builds 3 tanks in India. The Japanese can build 2 bombers if they wish or whatever else they want/need, but then they bring about 6+ inf 1 arm 1 art to Manchuria. Froces from China go to Manchuria, now you have like 8+ infantry there.

Turn 3, the UK builds 3 more tanks in India. The Japanese now attack with 10+ infantry (extras grabbed from islands), 1 tank, 1 artillery, 6 fighters, 1-3 bombers, and 2 battleship bombardments. Your UK forces lose badly with only about 5 inf 6 tank 1 fighter defending.

Thanks for the complex and a ton of money wasted in defending India which could have been used against the Germans!

The complex works ok versus lesser players because they really don't understand how strong their Japanese forces are...but it's not a good idea versus advanced players.

You can't build 10 inf with the UK - the deployment limit is 8 units. I would suggest buying 5 inf 3 tanks.

As for the UK not building an IC in India - I don't think it's a wise idea anyways. I don't do it anymore. It's not worth it because the Japanese can run it over on round 3 quite easily unless you give a ton of Russian support, and you're diverting very important money that you could be using against the Germans. Losing India isn't a big deal; in fact I use troops from India on round 1 to counter the German incursion in Egypt. I let the Japanese walk into India on turn 1 most games; that's literally how little I care about it (and I usually win as the Allies).

You start with a destroyer and a transport in the Baltic to defend against air attacks. Stick a carrier and a couple of fighters on it and your subs are going to be well defended. The subs are there to enhance your suicide capability against an Allied fleet as well as to take hits for other units if you're being attacked by air....

If you're talking about the sub in SZ8, use it to help blow up the battleship in SZ13, there's not much else use for it.

Yeah, it's quite amazing how defensive you have to play if you don't build any land units whatsoever against Russia. I've played against myself a couple of times buying full navy with Germany's first turn, and I essentially have to abandon scarily everything east of Germany/Southern Europe for a couple of turns! Including Eastern Europe...

What happens is usually Russia takes Belorussia with 1 inf and West Russia with about 7 inf 4 arm 2 art. There's 5 inf 1 art in Caucasus and 5 inf 2 art 2 fig in Moscow. This is all on Russia 1.

Without any land purchases, I suppose the Germans will take Belorussia and Karelia, and have between 7-9 infantry left in Eastern Europe after occupying Karelia with 3 infantry and leaving 1-2 infantry in Belorussia and 1 in Ukraine (and this is pretty hardcore, even possibly taking infantry from Western Europe to stack in Eastern Europe if you want to get up to 9 infantry). This is on Germany 1.

On Russia 2, the Russians will use up most of the 7 inf from West Russia using fighters and possibly 1 or 2 arts to retake Karelia and Belorussia, and then fully occupy Ukraine with everything else that can reach (about 6 inf 4 arm 1 art 1 aa gun), and then have 5 inf 1 art in West Russia and another 2 inf 2 art in Caucasus.

On Germany two you're in a quandary. You could counter the stack in Ukraine, but doing so would require a very large portion of your Eastern Europe infantry and tanks, and any fighters that you're sending is subject to AA gun fire. And after having done this, you're open to a counterattack of 7 inf 3 art 2 fighters from Caucasus/West Russia. I've tried counterattacking the Ukraine stack and  even had a leftover force of 1 infantry + 7 tanks, and the Russians still ran it over (with very average luck)!

Now, if you don't attack the Ukraine stack, you must immediately retreat to Berlin, because your pitiful 9 inf and X tanks will die to the full Russian onslaught since you have no land reinforcements whatsoever to speak of. Normally, you would have between 7-8 land troops to replenish Eastern Europe, so you could safely contest Karelia/Belorussia and not really fear a Russian push because it would cost him too much to go in so fast.

Meanwhile... here comes the US to Africa... and the US now has 60+ IPC's

How does the US get 60+ IPCs, Switch? You can only get income from your ally's territory if both of 2 conditions are met:

1. His capital is under enemy control
2. The territory you're liberating is under enemy control

You can't simply go into Africa and blitz the UK's territories to get credit for them unless Germany or Japan had occupied those territories and the capital. Essentially, the UK's territories in Africa are "dead" IPCs that no one collects on until the Axis takes the territories, or the Allies liberate those territories from Axis control, or the UK gets his capital back.

Yeah I remember watching some documentary in a humanities course about the Holocaust and it ends with something to the effect of "but does the monster really lie buried beneath these ruins [of cocentration camps], or does it lie within us all, dormant, waiting again to be unleashed?"

This hurts Germany more than you may think. Without spending any income whatsoever on land units, Russia should be pretty aggressive, and stack all forces from Caucasus + West Russia into Ukraine, as well as barely invade Belorussia + Karelia to collect income from those territories. Russia is going to be around 30 IPCs, which is going to be tough for the Germans to deal with.

On turn 2, the UK and US should land in Africa anyways; the UK starts with 2 transports available and the US could build more on turn 1 + a carrier, so Africa is hardly up for grabs.

Even though your German fleet is strong, you have left the Eastern front very open to the Russians for a quick turn or so, which can be very devastating if the Russian player is aggressive enough to take more territories away from you. And once the UK/US builds enough fighters, your fleet is going to be sunk.

I have to keep reminding my friends to start by purchasing units. They like to skip straight to combat first then worry about purchasing, but that takes much of the strategic planning out of the game.

A couple of extra points to consider:

You can try something which I call "fast-hopping." That is, don't use your initial Japan tranport to offload into Buryatia; instead send it to french indochina with 1 inf 1 tank. On turn 2, take Madagascar. On turn 3, take South Africa. Then you can work your ways upward with that tank blitzing. To compliment this maneuver, start with 3 tran 2 inf as your purchase, and on turn 2 send 1 transport to indochina, and then on turn 3 take Australia with that transport. That means by turn 3 you have taken Madagascar, South Africa, and Australia, which is 5 IPCs from the UK! Not a bad haul, in addition to India probably.

Also consider lending your German buddy your Japanese fighters. In a KGF game, one of the weakpoints of Germany is Egypt. The Allies are destined to retake Africa unless Germany tries too hard or has lucky dice. On turn 2 usually the Allies drop around a total of 4 inf, 2 art, 3 arm into Africa, and have fighters floating around. Germany has to give up Africa soon or is just wasting units defending Egypt.

Now the trick here is to fly most, if not all, of your fighters to Egypt on turn 2-3! Suddenly that 2 inf 2 art sitting in Egypt has a ton of backbone to it. It will be very improbable for the Allies to take your force out there unless they send additional land troops (takes a couple of turns to reach Egypt) or lots of fighters (less protection for their navy, less flexibility down in Africa). Hopefully the Germans landed 1 tank into Egypt on turn 2 in anticipation of this timely backup, so that it can blitz freely into the heart of Africa while the med transport brings more inf to reinforce Egypt. Suddenly Egypt is a hard point which the Allies did not expect at all, and lots of Africa is going to fall unless they really do something about it.

To fly your fighters there in a timely fashion is not difficult. You should/might have a battleship + loaded carrier off of Egypt after killing the UK fleet on the first round. That's 2 fighters that are going to Egypt to help your buddy out. After your first round attack on China, land 2 fighters into Manchuria. From here, they can reach Egypt! So you have 4 fighters in Egypt on turn 2, which is exactly when the Allies land there. This means they will be very loathe to try to blitz to Egypt on turn 3, and have to proceed very slowly into Africa at this point. The other two fighters you have might be dead or out somewhere towards the east because you may have wished to attack Pearl Harbor or at least defend your SZ60 navy. That's ok, on turn 2 you can sail them to Manchuria if you feel you are safe, then on turn 3 you can join them up in Egypt for a massive defensive force there. A 1-2 punch by the UK/US is going to be very difficult as their piecemeal separate forces are going to get chewed up in one round by that many fighters and some infantry from Germany to stiffen it up.

The problem of course is that you have 6 less fighters to push against Russia. This is significant, but I think it's worth the loss. Russia may push back a little bit or be able to hold his territories for a little longer than usual, but by and large you still have lots of land troops coming in and experience nothing more than 1 turn of setback while you wait for tanks/infantry to shore up your frontlines. The economic and logistics problems you cause in Africa, however, is priceless!

And at any time feel free to send your 1 inf 1 tank from fast-hopping up into Egypt to stiffen it up some more while you let your German buddy grab the IPCs, or simply blitz Africa while Germany sits there. You don't have to over-reinforce Egypt with German equipment, so don't send too much as Germany won't be able to push back into Libya without a large investment anyways.

And when you feel it's time, you can always simply just release your 6 fighters from Egypt to cause problems in Caucasus or get ready for a Moscow assault, or if Germany happens to be in extremely dire straits, then off to defend Germany.

Who says there's no teamwork for the Axis? 

I have 8 British ground troops in Norway, 4 British transports able to hit Karelia with 8 more British ground troops and two bombers in Russia going through West Russia to Karlelia.  I assume I can retreat into West Russia with the Norway British troops, because the British Bombers came through West Russia, but do the British amphibious assault ground troops need to stay in battle until they are eliminated or can they too retreat into West Russia?  Is there a scenerio where I could retreat the bombers and all 8 British ground troops from Norway into West Russia after the first dice roll, while at the same time keeping the last remaining amphibious assault ground units in combat for the second dice roll, or would having surviving amphibious assault units force all units to stay in combat until the amphibious assault units are dead?

Guerilla Guy is dead wrong. You can't retreat ANY land units if ANY of your land units are part of an amphibious assault. I can't remember which page of the manual says it, but it is very clearly stated that an amphibious assault makes all land units unretreatable regardless of where they came from. You can still retreat planes, but not land units. Guerilla Guy is right in that you can only retreat to where one of your land units started in, so if you just attacked Karelia with your Norway troops then they could retreat into Norway (planes can retreat anywhere they want really). But the second you include any troops from transports, all land units in that battle cannot be retreated.

Nothing in the Constitution or the Civil Rights Act about discriminating in favor of cute butts

Tsk tsk what would Angel say? ;p

Sounds like Risk lol.

allowing allies to build ICs in each other's territory

Geez we did the same thing in our first game. The US bogusly put up an IC in Australia and proceeded to island hop like mad.....

Russian Battleships!

My God, Russian navy and bombers are utterly useless. Mr. Harris could have cut production costs down some and just not included them. If you build Russian navy, the game is over in one way or another; they just do not enter into the normal gameplay equation except if you're already winning or if you want to lose...

is it true you can only build the number of units you are supplied with?

No, you can build any amount of any units that you can afford. It's common to run out of some pieces, especially battleships and bombers since those are in short supply, but you can go ahead and build as many as you want, just keep track somehow like you're doing with borrowing other nation's units. The chips are there for a reason too, to help you denote multiple units with just one plastic figure.