Long time reader, first time poster.
Title: Smoked Out ('42)
Date: 2/25/09
Special Rules: Tech, yes (USA: long range, Japan: Heavy Bombers, Italy: Advanced Art); NO, yes
Victor: Axis, concession
Game Length: 6.5 hours (with cigarette breaks streching it out a bit)
Bias: Japan player’s first game, but his Axis partners were experienced and guided him through. Russian player was inebriated, but never did anything that would indicate an unstable state of mind, so to speak.
Description:
In the Pacific Japan got off to a slow start like you’d expect from a new player, but got a major break on turn 2 with heavy bombers. Though America had taken every island except for Japan and Iwo Jima plus S/E Asia the US still had to tiptoe around the Pacific trying to avoid the 5 bombers that were teched to high hell. Eventually US thought his navy would withstand the bombers and brought it out to the Carolines where it was crushed. America was making 70 IPC’s a turn so it definitely could’ve eventually taken Japan but by then the UK had fallen in disrepair and Russia was toasted.
Europe was bad. Russia did not have the success it needed on it’s first turn losing a lot of tanks in it’s attacks to create a buffer zone around the production facilities. Russia being Russia the funds were never around to rebuild those tanks. The UK held Africa, India and Australia to the bitter end (mainly because Japan had to spend 110% of it’s money to keep up with the Americans even with Heavy Bombers) but Germany had far too much money after taking Russia and launched an overwhelming Sealion. America ignored Europe almost completely because it had to spend a lot of money to counter the Heavy Bombers with cannon fodder destroyers and free hit battleships. Help came far too late for mainland UK which survived 2 consecutive German invasion attempts before finally falling.
Observations: America was far too preoccupied with the Pacific and although it gained a huge edge in production Japan’s heavy bombers cancelled it out alone. Long Range aircraft weren’t enough to get all the planes from the pacific onto the UK. Japan simply played the game to survive eradicating anything that got within bombing range while Germany smashed Russia. Italy had almost no success in Africa and shifted all it’s resources to claiming some of Russia’s carcass.