It is not every round; it is only the first round. You have to read the rules carefully; it does mention that you remove the battleship/aa gun from the battleboard after the first round, but it doesn't mention this every time that it talks about shore bombardments.

I think it was ambiguous in the box rules or something where it says you can only bombard land units, but I think in LHTR it says any unit and that's the way it's been played for a while...

I don't really want to play a game right now, Switch. I'm engaged with someone on Triple A, and Octo will be back on the 12th which is pretty soon and I'm not sure we'd finish a game since I have to go sorta slow with school and stuff, and I think you're biting at the chomp to duel him so I'd not want to delay that with a game right now which could last a couple of weeks.

Well the other options are simply getting transports into range of California. There are a lot of seazones you can use like hawaii or solomons or SZ42 if you're tricky. There's no real way to surprise the US and grab California without them seeing you move your transports within a certain range.

There's no real secret to it. From SZ60 you can reach Western Canada with all your transports (use SZ63). If the US player isn't prepared for it, then he could lose California. If you are building normal amounts of land troops for your shuck and keep a small stack in Western Canada (like the 5 inf around that area that you start with) and just keep an eye on how many transports can land in Canada, then it's not a problem.

Brokeback Mountain won best score o_O

The best song was this hip-hop thing called "It's Hard for a Pimp Out Here"

O_O

yeah unfortunately Red BB's are reaaallly cool... how much do they cost again?

Lol your ENTIRE INCOME for one round 

I think every Japan player dreams of landing a sucker punch in West LA (making anime in Hollywood o_O), but it's just incredibly hard to do so against an aware US player...I think it's a one-time maneuver that may work if the US player didn't have any troops in the west and you had 2 fully loaded carriers with 4 inf + 4 arm land in Western Canada and have 2 battleship shots as well, but otherwise it's just another unattainable dream 

Edit: I guess it's even worse than it looks because the US should have units in Eastern Canada to dislodge your forces, so all you're doing is delaying his shuck but delaying yours as well, which at best doesn't advance your cause.

I don't think I'm bad with Japan at all, but I seem to get a lot of bad luck on China, often taking with 1-3 inf instead of a nice stack of 5-6.

What strategy are you using against your opponent? He must have like compeletely retreated EVERYWHERE in Asia to have let you get the 50 IPC mark at J3  SFE, Bury, Yakut, Novo, Kazakh, China, Sinkiang, India, Persia, Trans-Jordan, and Caucasus would be + 20 IPCs....

Wow haha. My success with the Japanese sucks, no matter how quickly/efficiently I go at it (high level of play mind you). I find it really difficult to press well on all 3 prongs, as inevitably Russia chooses one of those prongs to break and can delay for quite some time. I play myself on LowLuck to fine tune the strategies, but I'm still losing as the Axis even when I start with dual complexes and the Allies have retreated from India/Buryatia, which is about as fast as Japan gets.

I even put a bid in Africa as the Germans so I threaten a naval link by sending the med fleet westwards with a carrier purchase in the Baltic, and though this does delay the US (since have to buy some subs for fodder before can tackle the fleet), for some reason it never seems to delay enough. The best I've gotten is a Japan takeover of Moscow on the same turn as Berlin fell, but this always seems to favor the Allies as both Uk/US are about 50 IPCs while Japan is at 60...I think I'll have to go play some more because lowluck does still have a luck factor involved and the Allies might have gotten a bit lucky here and there...

Damn it gets boring to play the game one way though (KGF). Germany is always the pinata that the 3 Allies are beating the living snot out of for candy, and Japan is always huffing and puffing to make a real difference.......

This is uusally a good idea if the UK also lands in Algeria on turn 1, provided that the German med fleet is off of Egypt and can't reach SZ12.

In SZ12 you will have a force of 1 battleship, 1 destroyer, and 4 transports at the end of turn 1. Germany can bring perhaps 5 fighters + 1 bomber against that, which is very reasonable. This is not a favorable fight for the Germans; while they will indeed win about 62%+ of the time, they will lose at least 4 fighters in the deal, which is great for the Allies in addition to that they weren't using their fighters against Russia that turn. You have a strong landing force in Algeria already by turn 1, and are ready to chase them down into Africa.

I can't deny that you can get rid of the Baltic fleet by UK3, but lots of people really like to miss the main point of the Baltic navy - what does it take out? If it takes out 2 transports and a battleship, and perhaps a fighter, as well as force the UK to build a carrier or 2 and lots of fighters when they could instead be landing earlier with transports, then I think the Baltic navy has done a great job.

There are easy ways to dance around the Baltic navy that don't require you doing silly things like exposing your bb/2 trans to an attack by 2 subs + airforce.

A couple of issues:

1. The British navy is susceptible to being hit by 2 subs as well as about 3-4 fighters + 1bomber if they take Norway and have the Russian sub "block" the Baltic navy. Subs can sail through all naval units unless there's a destroyer present. Therefore, the attack in SZ3 favors the Germans at no cost to their airforce unless you buy a navy.

2. You miss the second part of the equation which is the med fleet is going to Gibraltar on G1 so the fleets are linking on G2. The British can't afford to try to take out the linked fleets on G2. 5 fighters + 1 bomber + 2 tran + 1 battleship loses 73% of the time against 2 fighter, 1 carrier, 3 subs, 1 battleship, 1 destroyer, and 2 transports.

That being said, there are still very easy counters to a German navy which is attempting to link, but none of the answers I like have to do with the UK spending so much money on carriers/fighters early on when you can have the US do it for you.

Russia 1:
With $24 IPC's
1 Battleship, spending $24, saving 0...

LOL!!

One of my friends actually somewhat seriously considered doing this because he really really likes battleship bomardments 

One of my other friends purchased 2 destroyers in R2 to get rid of the German med fleet, but ended up retreating it into the Indian Ocean : P

Basically, SBR is an option for somethign you can use your bomebr for when their is NO other pressing need for that bomber in combat.

Even then, you might want to consider NOT doing it if your bomber is essential to a future combat, since your bomber may get shot down...

Yeah haha sometimes I get so paranoid I don't even SBR because I want my bomber for later normal combats.

Russia has no bomber, and if they buy one, they are either stupid, or the Axis is already screwed.

So true, just like buying Russian navy ; ( Those bombers look so cool because they're so big but they're never purchased