normal game, all allies rush europe. japan blows up, chucks tanks at russia with industrial complexes in india burma FIC and sometimes manchuria and borneo.
japan normally skips new guinea and australia and new zealand and hawaii (only 5 bucks collectively and you get bonuses elsewhere anyway) and japan just spams tanks and races russia while allies race berlin.
japan takes egypt and transjordan for italy to get +5. Some players will take the other islands including me when it seems like allies are stalling… like shuffling men to archangel… I may as well get the income edge.
Most games, germany will defend france italy and berlin… so you either have to do a double drop on northwestern europe or go back to back on france. UK can soften up france and usa can take italy or france right after (since italy goes between sometimes replaces lost men in france and at that point you go with the easier attack between france or italy).
I highly recommend russia gets a mix of infantry/artillery/tanks. 4 inf 2 art 2 tank or 5 inf 3 tank round 1. Sometimes a bomber buy in caucasus is good if germany took more than usual losses in his round 1 attack (so you can snipe a japan transport and land in australia or india)
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as far as bids go. you can get an uk infantry in egypt (assume you play 1 unit per territory) a tank in eastern ukraine for russia… you can do sub in india (snipes japan transport). you can do fighter off bury (snipes japan transport and then flies home). you can do art in eastern ukraine and tank in belorussia (never a bad choice). Or artillery in bury and tank in soviet far east to attack manchuria round 1.
In your first game I suggest roll 1d6 and add 3 ipc for the allies bid so allies get an infantry or artillery minimum.
Axis can get diced on their first round so yeah an infantry in egypt is all you really need (makes the egypt attack a 50/50).
I don’t like playing more than 1 unit per territory, because then you start seeing 3 inf in egypt and you are like “really dude?”