hey white out,
i find gametableonline.com has a good free java version of the game. some people have technical difficulties there but if it works for you it’s IMO alot easier than emailing a board back and forth.
re: your observations as axis. It is pretty typical for germany to slowly get ground down if the game goes long enough. They can make some headway in africa to offset this, and of course tactical decisions matter alot, but in the end if all 3 allies focus on germany it’s up to japan to come to the rescue.
as japan, killing fleets is nice to do, but successfully landing or producing large amounts of ground forces in asia is your best measure of success. You can choose to hit russia earlier or india earlier, but either way you need alot of ground forces to finish the job. This means building industrial complex’s or building and protecting new transports.
Also important in that dynamic is to make the most of your battleships, coordinating with transport attacks and air force to fight and win coastal battles with a huge advantage, minimizing your losses. If japan can dominate asia then when germany starts to get beat down japan is ready to take up the work of beating on russia. Getting enough land troops into the pipeline is the key to getting this done.