(Help) Germany starting move for Barbarossa (no sealion faint)


  • Anybody actually ever made a succesfull quick attack into Russia and captured moscow after 4 rounds of starting barbarossa?

    If I spearhead through Russia, I always lose valuable units and get stuck before moscow. I always go for a wide front approach (including invading through finland, where those transports that you buy to fake sealion come in handy) and try to bleed Russia to death.

  • TripleA

    Once but the guy was a novice, he had a big stack stuck up north which got trapped.


  • Thank you, Cow, Vance and Spendo02 (very detailed guide thx) for your guides and thoughts. They have helped me and maybe others to get started.

    Please stick to the topic, this is not a discussion since newbies like me wont benefit from that, just get us more confused. Please reply with detailed starting move (like Spendo02’s).

    Please explain the abbreviations you use.
    What is SBR?
    and how exactly do you strafe?

  • TripleA

    strafe is all luck, basically if you have a mid size stack say 9 guys and it is next to a guy with 27 guys… he will attack you with 14 guys hoping for 4-8 hits and hoping you only hit 3 times… then he retreats. it is a hit and run.

    SBR is short for strategic bombing run. with bombers or tacticals.


  • SBR = strategic bombing raid
    Strafing is the art of attacking a territory without the intention of actually taking it. This can be done for many reasons. Maybe you want to weaken it so an ally can take it, taking it might expose your units(especially expensive armor) to a solid counter, fast movement to the other side, an air only attack to clear for an allied blitz, or you need to keep your units in a certain key territory but want/need to kill some units.

    A common strafe that you might see is the Germans hitting Yugoslavia strong enough to kill 2-3 units first round and then retreating after one round so Italy can walk into it without losing too much.

    If you’re feeling very bold, you can try a G1 Barbarossa. This is can be used in conjunction with a J1 DOW if you want, but it could stand on it’s own as well. The earliest goal would be a G5 Moscow take, but you might have to for aim for a G6-7 take depending on what’s going on. A G5 is possible if Russia makes a mistake, you get good dice, or you can bomb him down.

    G1 Purchase 4mech, arm, dd or 3mech, arm, bmb or 6mech, arm

    Attacks

    Send all ground units in Holland, W. Germany, and an armor from S. Germany to France. Lose arty over mech,  unless you get really diced. You should have enough firepower that you won’t need the arty and you’ll need the mobility later.

    ss, bb, 2ftr, tac, 2bmb vs sz110
    2ss, 2ftr, 2tac vs sz111
    ss vs sz91 with the goal of helping Italy out on UK attacks
    ss vs sz106
    2inf, arm from poland + tac from Ger against Baltic
    inf poland, 2inf hungary, all 4 tanks in range against E. poland
    2inf romania + tac pol against bessarabia
    DON’T hit yugo on G1 or I1, save it for G2.

    On noncom, fly the ftr in hungary to S. Italy to help dissuade a UK hit on sz97. It can still hit bess or ukraine next turn. All in Ger to Poland and all in S. Ger to Hungary. You could send the tac in Ger against sz110 and the ftr to bess and polish tac vs baltic instead. Even if UK scrambles in either though, you’ll have good odds and should kill all the RAF in exchange for some air. USSR might counter Baltic, so maybe change the arm there to an inf and send the armor against E. Poland instead. All Nwy to finland and activate. Move the danish inf over to norway. Place the dd in sz113 with your cruiser/trn and then place all ground in germany. You could add 2 more mech instead of the dd, but then you risk losing the ca/trn to the soviet sub. Leave Bulgaria for Italy since they’ll likely have issues in Africa with no Sea Lion threat. Don’t strafe/hit yugo with Italy either.

    G2 buy depends on if UK scrambled. You might need to replace a ftr or two, but only do so if you really really need their D/scramble. For 60ipc, a bmb + 10 mech/arm is a good buy as well. Maybe get the dd if you didn’t last turn and your trn is still threatened. AA guns + your air should be enough to dissuade UK from attacking wgr, but you might feel the need to get a couple inf. So long as you buy at least 10 mech/arm in germany!

    Trade terr against ussr were you can. Advance your inf/art/aa in Pol/Hun to E. Poland or split the Ger stack to Baltic as needed. Hit Yugo with 2inf from Hun, an arm from E. Poland going through romania, and your 4mech, 4arm from paris. Don’t send any air! You want to retreat to romania after one rd so that your paris mech/arm have now advanced 3 spaces in one turn. You likely won’t take it and shouldn’t take any hits to your mech either.

    If you have non mech/arm leftover in france, you can hit W. France. But I usually leave W. France, S. France, Yugo, Greece, and Bulgaria for Italy since they’ll need the IPC to make up for not having a strong position. Advance your finnish troops to karelia/vyborg with the bulk going to vyborg so you have the option of countering any russian attacks with your tran plus 2inf that moved from nwy to finland. Kill the russian cruiser.

    Depending on your first turn buy, you should have somewhere between 7-10 mech, 9-10 armor, 18ish inf, & 5art on E. Poland by the end of your turn. With another 10 mech/arm being built each turn to add to your numbers. Land the 2-3 bombers you have in east poland so you can strat bomb moscow next turn. Try to get your bomber numbers up to 3-4 and replace your losses. 3-4 bombers hitting moscow every turn will quickly crumble ussr just as your mech army is charging at them.

    Advance your troops one space each turn. Usually I go the northern route with this strat to pull the russian main army north. E. Poland -> Belarus -> Bryansk -> Moscow. If you can take it on G5, then stage all your air in range the turn prior. Always try to judge when you’ll make the move and stage your air in range a turn sooner. If your bombing campaign has hit a bump or you get some bad dice, you might have to hold off for a turn or two. Just swing some mech/arm down to caucasus/volgo for some extra $$$ and they can quickly turn back and get in striking distance within a turn.

    Don’t stray too far into the middle east though. Your #1 priority with this strat is taking Moscow. The longer you hold off taking Moscow, the better chance the allies have. UK and US will soon start landing on your coast and you don’t want to fight a 2 front war. Any troops you divert away from Moscow and into the middle east will mean that many fewer troops against Moscow and that much longer you have to wait on taking the russians out of the game.

    As you take factories, start building more troops there so you can cut down on travel time to the front. You have 2 Italian armor, use them to threaten a 1-2 punch to open up the rear or hit moscow when ussr isn’t expecting it. As long as you have enough air threatening a Brit fleet, it’ll take some time before they can effectively land on Europe. Slowly build up some inf in w. germany/france to counter so long as you build at least your 10 fast movers in germany each turn. Italy can help defend the coast. That and the can opener threat will be Italy’s biggest contribution to the Europe win. If they get lucky or UK doesn’t hit sz97, maybe you might be able to grab Egypt with Italy. But you’ll likely have to revert to using the land route through the middle east once Moscow falls.

  • TripleA

    G1 barb is fun, but there is little to gain.


  • @Cow:

    G1 barb is fun, but there is little to gain.

    Au contraire mon fraire. You kill 7 infantry or about half of USSR’s starting income. And USSR can’t retake EPL. You also threaten S. Ukr right away, forcing USSR to either stack it, abandon it, or trade for a worthless terr costing them even more infantry. Baltic will usually be countered as well. So a lot of times, USSR is going to spend another 4-5 infantry on those counters. That brings us up to about 33-36ipc worth of stuff, or pretty much their entire first turn’s worth of ipcs. So now Germany has built up more firepower and starts off with much more to begin with while USSR is basically just over even and down a terr they won’t ever get back.

    But the biggest thing it gives you is a base(epl) to stage your bombers out of a turn sooner. The sooner you start the bombing campaign, the sooner you reap the benefits and the weaker USSR is. G1 take EPL, G2 land bombers in EPL, G3 SBR Russia w/3 bombers, G4+ sbr Moscow with 3-4 bomber/turn as needed. Waiting for a G2 attack means the SBR campaign looks like this; G1 nothing, G2 take EPL/Baltic, G3 stage bombers, G4 SBR away.

    Granted there are other ways of starting a SBR campaign sooner. I mean if you really wanted to, you could land those bombers on Romania G1 and plop an AB there, heck do Poland or Hungary if you really wanted to. G2 they take off and land in EPL which you took G1. Which means you have to kick things off G1 anyway, so why spend the $15(half your first turn’s income) on an AB which probably won’t ever come into play again when you’ll need the ground troops to keep the pressure up.

    Besides, there’s no way you can use those bombers against sz110/111 if you want them to land in position to SBR starting G2. So now you’re giving up hitting at least one of those fleets and giving UK an instant naval core to build around to start landing troops sooner. Not worth it imho, so G3 is the most realistic SBR start point and I’d rather not spend the cash for an AB when I can take and hold a territory in range of Moscow on G1.


  • @seththenewb:

    Besides, there’s no way you can use those bombers against sz110/111 if you want them to land in position to SBR starting G2. So now you’re giving up hitting at least one of those fleets and giving UK an instant naval core to build around to start landing troops sooner. Not worth it imho, so G3 is the most realistic SBR start point and I’d rather not spend the cash for an AB when I can take and hold a territory in range of Moscow on G1.

    Can’t you reach Leningrad on G2 from wgr?  I mean its not Moscow, but its a start.  I do see the point in starting early against Russia.


  • @Spendo02:

    @seththenewb:

    Besides, there’s no way you can use those bombers against sz110/111 if you want them to land in position to SBR starting G2. So now you’re giving up hitting at least one of those fleets and giving UK an instant naval core to build around to start landing troops sooner. Not worth it imho, so G3 is the most realistic SBR start point and I’d rather not spend the cash for an AB when I can take and hold a territory in range of Moscow on G1.

    Can’t you reach Leningrad on G2 from wgr?  I mean its not Moscow, but its a start.  I do see the point in starting early against Russia.

    True, I guess I should’ve specified the most rational starting round to SBR on Moscow itself is G3. I don’t usually like to SBR the minors, especially sukr & nov, because they fall pretty fast with this strat. USSR is going to be backpedaling their stack(s) anyway. So they can just build from Moscow & Volgo anyway, leaving you to pay for the damage. USSR will eventually have to pay for the damage to Moscow whereas it’s counter intuitive for them to pay to fix up an IC that’s going to be in enemy hands soon. If you were waiting for a G3 attack, then bombing those minors might help dislodge the Russians from them.


  • @g�ddan:

    Hi all,
    I’m new to A&A and I’ve looked everywhere here for a detailed starting move for Germany to go vs USSR, but haven’t found one.
    The player Cow was mentioning something along these lines in his Japan playbook thread:
    “I seldom do sea lion honestly. I just push russia. I don’t do anything fancy. round 1 france and yugo that’s it. finns and that other spot for extra infs.  g2 push everything up to russia. take normandy 2 guys and air. the rest push. then you push russia g3.”

    So I’m asking for detailed buy and move for G1 for Barbarossa with the intention to hit Moscow as early as possible.
    Thank you in advance.

    I’ve never been a big fan of a G1 Barbarossa.  I tried it once and it didn’t work.  You go into Russia half ass basically.  I find that a G2 Barbarossa is best, it still allows you to hit the Soviets fast but that extra round makes all the difference getting the full force of your infantry in.  I just finished a game with my friends last night where I played Germany and I won.  I believe I attacked Moscow round 7 or so and when the battle was over I still had 15 tanks left.  My positition in Western Europe was very strong.  The Brits and Americans took Spain and America was shucking 5 inf and 5 art to spain everyround on top of building three tanks a round by a minor ic there.  They still couldnt take Paris.  Here’s how I started the game:  first purchase was 1 destroyer, 1 Art, 6 Inf.  I started by sending all available ground units into Paris including the 3 tanks from S. Germany with the exception of 2 infantry that I left in Holland.  I strafed Yugoslavia by sending all the inf in S. Germany with the fighter in slovakia and Tac in Poland on there way to southern Italy.  That worked perfectly Yugo was left with 1 inf for the Italians.  I then bombed the Airfield in England so they couldn’t scramble I brought in 1 tac and 1 strat ( the tac was an insurance policy if the airfield was successful with its aa shot) I also used 2 fighters to escort the bomber and tac.  The airfield was taken out, I lost 1 fighter and the brits lost the French fighter. I then sent 2 subs on the fleet off England ( no Scrambles now) and I sent 2 subs and my Battleship against the fleet off Scotland.  I also sent the rest of my available air into both battles.  I lost all the subs and 2 aircraft I believe but the UK fleet was removed in both areas.  The above assault on the UK fleet is a gamble, if the dice dont go your way it can be catastrophic.  My result was about average or maybe a bit above average.  Its worth it though because now he cant send that fleet to the med to cripple the Italians.  My non-combats were the usual moves into Bulgaria and Finland.  I also non-combat everything else to the front with the Soviets.  The next round I purchased 6 mechs and 6 tanks for Germany and 2 Inf for Paris.  I sent everything into the Baltic states going to take novgorod and i a turn or 2 later I sent forces to take the minor ic on Ukraine.  I then went on to take Volgograd and just kept pumping tanks and mechs and bombers from my new russian ic’s.  I also started strat bombing Moscow that helped reduce the size of his stack……think he had 47 inf when i attacked.  This is the best way to play Germany I believe.  One thing to keep in mind is a strong Italy.  The tac and fighter I sent to Rome stayed there until round three, they helped clear the Med of UK ships this allowed Italy to grow strong.  Toward the end of the game Italy was makin around 40 IPC’s a round.  It’s so important to have a strong Italy to help defend W. Europe.  One last thing to mention.  I was helped greatly by getting advanced Artilery.  We play with a house rule that any nation that earns 30+ IPC’s gets one free tech role and germany got advanced art.  That did make it a bit easier but I still would’ve won without that.  Anyway I hope this wordy mistake prone run-on post helps you out  :-D


  • So been playing against the AI on TripleA, to speed up experimentation on G1 vs G2 Barb.

    I’ve done each three times and I am going to be honest I feel more comfortable with a G2 move on a single basis:

    Getting diced on G1 is Bad News Bears in Russia.

    With that said, I prefer no feint at all and instead go G1 10 Inf.  I prefer 5 Arm 5 Mech 1 CV on G2 and I land 2 Ftr on the CV and keep the Tac’s on Wgr to scramble.  Its too early for the UK to mass an attack with G1 attacks on SZ110 and SZ111, so you buy yourself 1-2 rounds before you have to worry about landings in Wgr/Norway/Denmark.

    ESSENTIALS:
    NCM your AA guns into newly taken territories to deter Russia from a counter that involves its aircraft.  Basically its a free 3 hits you can absorb before taking attack value unit losses with the added bonus of clipping out an aircraft or two.

    AB in E.Poland on the round you make your move into and can hold Belarus.  This enables your Bombers and Tac (is TripA rules wrong for TacB able to hit IC’s?) to hit Moscow and land in Belarus.

    I’ve found the G2 attack to require both the Yugo Strafe and taking Bulgaria on G1 to be VERY important to reinforcing your flanks and keeping the pressure on in tough to remove stacks of units.

    Now don’t get me wrong, the AI is nothing in regard to a human player, but the overall strategy feels safer and stronger on G2.  Even if you CAN eliminate a solid economic value of units from Russia on G1.


  • Dawk, all combat is simultaneous. So you can’t destroy the AB to prevent scrambling on that same turn. The attacker makes all his combat movements and then the defender has the option of scrambling before any dice are rolled. Then and only then do you start rolling for the various battles. What you’d be doing in essence is hitting the airbase after his air is already off the ground.


  • @seththenewb:

    Dawk, all combat is simultaneous. So you can’t destroy the AB to prevent scrambling on that same turn. The attacker makes all his combat movements and then the defender has the option of scrambling before any dice are rolled. Then and only then do you start rolling for the various battles. What you’d be doing in essence is hitting the airbase after his air is already off the ground.

    Ok that sounds like it makes sense I guess we’ve been playing wrong.  Almost no reason to hit an airfield then because they’re so cheap to repair and scrambling is so worthwhile.  Anyway that being the case I would’ve done it a bit differently then.  I would’ve hit the seazone next to England with everything I had and whether he scrambled his fighters or not he would’ve lost that fleet there.  I would’ve made sure to keep the Battleship so that it would block the fleet next to Scotland from moving to the med that round and so that it would possibly be in range of my air and subs round 2.  My intent on that attack on his entire fleet was to assure that Italy would have a few turns to grow.  If he didnt Bite and moved the fleet up around Scotland out of range of my air it would only buy Italy one more turn but it’s better than nothing.  That being said it would also give me an extra turn to reposition my aircraft to hit them if they tried to come into the med.


  • The trick is to have Italy bomb the airbase so it is damaged and they can’t scramble when Germany attacks.  Put the Italy airforce in France ahead of time so you can send escort fighters with the bomber.

    EDIT: sorry I didn;t realize he was talking about G1.  the italians bomb the airbase thing is a sea lion bit.


  • @Dawkland:

    @seththenewb:

    Dawk, all combat is simultaneous. So you can’t destroy the AB to prevent scrambling on that same turn. The attacker makes all his combat movements and then the defender has the option of scrambling before any dice are rolled. Then and only then do you start rolling for the various battles. What you’d be doing in essence is hitting the airbase after his air is already off the ground.

    Ok that sounds like it makes sense I guess we’ve been playing wrong.  Almost no reason to hit an airfield then because they’re so cheap to repair and scrambling is so worthwhile.  Anyway that being the case I would’ve done it a bit differently then.  I would’ve hit the seazone next to England with everything I had and whether he scrambled his fighters or not he would’ve lost that fleet there.  I would’ve made sure to keep the Battleship so that it would block the fleet next to Scotland from moving to the med that round and so that it would possibly be in range of my air and subs round 2.  My intent on that attack on his entire fleet was to assure that Italy would have a few turns to grow.  If he didnt Bite and moved the fleet up around Scotland out of range of my air it would only buy Italy one more turn but it’s better than nothing.  That being said it would also give me an extra turn to reposition my aircraft to hit them if they tried to come into the med.

    The fleet from sz111 can’t reach the med in one turn regardless of your BB’s placement, save your BB or send it against UK.

  • TripleA

    I just don’t like 3 inf and 1 armor vs 3 inf… those aren’t incredible odds.

  • '18

    Young Grasshopper has a detailed account of a G1 Barbarossa in a thread on page 2.  Interesting: he moved his Japan fleet into the Med after taking India and causing havoc in southern Africa.  It is a good read.


  • @FM7:

    Young Grasshopper has a detailed account of a G1 Barbarossa in a thread on page 2.  Interesting: he moved his Japan fleet into the Med after taking India and causing havoc in southern Africa.  It is a good read.

    For an American player who invests heavily in the Pacific in the early rounds and does not expect this, imagine the shock of realizing you are going to have to chase the Japanese navy all the way around the world in order to confront it with all those ships in the Pacific.

    Of course they could always try to just take Tokyo, but I don’t think the realization on round 4 leaves enough time to stop an Axis win in Europe with a Japanese Navy helping Italy sack and hold Egypt - the prize needed post Moscow falling.

  • TripleA

    G1 and J1 games get wild :D

Suggested Topics

  • 2
  • 4
  • 9
  • 76
  • 22
  • 13
  • 8
  • 17
Axis & Allies Boardgaming Custom Painted Miniatures

43

Online

17.0k

Users

39.3k

Topics

1.7m

Posts