AAP40 Day 18 from Release Date–Opinion poll: What round should Japan attack on?

It depends on what side you are playing.  If your son is going to be Japan, tell him to follow the previous advice.  If you are playing Japan, follow the USA-killing strategy in the Pointlessly Broken thread and effectively win the game in turn 5.  Sadly something like 75% of the content in that thread is a needless flame war (as these boards are un-moderated for all practical purposes) but there is plenty of insightful commentary in there if you can suffer through it.

EDIT: I should point out that the war plans in that thread don’t translate that well into the Global game.  If the USA can afford to ignore Europe for the first several turns of the game, then it has enough to place into the Pacific that Japan won’t take it down.  Japan also has the issue of a possibility of expanding too quickly- since there are so many places it needs to reach, its forces will start to thin out all along the front.  At that point the Allies can start to pick off Japanese forces piecemeal and slowly turn them around.  I liken it to blowing up a balloon- if it gets too big, you can pop it.  The Japanese are protected from this effect on the Pacific stand-alone map since they will run into the edges of the map which provides cover for their flanks.

@calvinhobbesliker:

If the Jap fleet is at Singapore, what stops the US from taking Truk, which threatans all VC’s except Calcutta and San Francisco? What stops the US from landing in Korea? You need quite a few planes in japan to stop the capture of Korea, and those planes are needed in the CBI theater.

x4 fighters and x4 dive bombers.

At least by US2, and maybe even on US3, depending on where the US fleet is based out of.

That’s what I used my carriers for when I made this attack. I was attacking the jap carrier group and I knew that I was basically going to lose every unit. So as I lost two airlplane I would then damage and take the carrier as a casualty. That away if I did have something survive it could land or I still had a carrier at least. That was the battle where my friend said that offensive carriers couldn’t take two hits.

You said “build land troops in FIC”: is this on J2?  Because you’re not allowed to place a factory in a newly captured territory, correct?  So are you putting the minor IC in Manchuria or Kiangsu (one of the 3 IPC territories)?

@the:

…even though they have no attack value?

I guess it helps to think of the AC of having an attack value of zero. This means that it can be in with the combat move. (Also transports have an attack value of zero, but must be chosen last.)  Things that do NOT have an attack value are: AA guns, Naval Bases, Air Bases, Industrial Complexes.

In original AA, once had 1 transport  take out 2 fighters without loss. What was odd is the combat took like 6 rounds. 1st fighter wasnt killed until 4th round of combat. Thats a lot of misses from the fighters.

I remember I bought Risk for my 10 yr old son to try. He was doing really, reallly well his first game, then the dice turned against him for the first time.
As the tears welled up in his eyes I thought about what I could say to comfort him. I thought back to all my 20+ years of gaming experience.
All I could think of was: “I 'm sorry. I know it’s unfair, but you’re just going to have to get used to that.”

My opinions in summary:

–You need a factory on the mainland. It’s debatable where, but against a competent Allied player you’ll need the boots on the ground.

–You’ll need a lot more TRs. Time is your enemy and having more TRs means delivering more combat power where you need it faster

–I favor a J3 attack. Spend 2 turns pounding on the Chinese with all of your air and getting troops and TRs in position to take everything you need within 2 turns of the DoW on the Allies.

–Try and keep your fleet massed. None of the Allies has the slightest chance against the full weight of metal that Japan can throw around. Granted you’ll likely have to spread out a little to accomplish everything you need, but try and mass up agains ASAP.

–Keep Truk and Japan garrisoned with fighters/tac. As long as you do this and have minimal infantry on the ground they will be EXTREMELY hard to take due to the Scramble rules.

–The primary goal if this strategy is the complete destruction of China with minimal losses and then a heavy focus on India. You only need to fend off the US and Anzac - you dont not need to decisively engage them. PI must fall on J3 to remove the US presence and to get the naval base, but beyond that you dont need to fight them unless they expose themselves to a favorable trade.

I guess Manchuria will be also an option in global game if non-agression pact is not the game