In our (out of book) games we have the Germans attack the English home fleet with every thing they have (including German Atlantic U-boats going through 2 mined zones) to insure the English go down w/little German damage (on average). This leaves the Canadian (UK) mini fleet in tact, but sending German U-boats after it is dicey anyway, and just ends up getting your subs killed in a counter attack (which weakens the German navy as a whole). Keeping the German navy together seems to help, and you do get temporary control of the North Sea. This will generally bring the French Med battleship up to the Atlantic, because individually the English or French don’t have the strength to take out the surviving German fleet. It can also temporarily keep the UK from building ships off England (which is bitter sweet because it could cause them to spend all income in India early on).
At this point you have some options as Germany (I like choices). You can leave things as is (maybe buy a sub?), and the allies will eventually 1-2 punch the German fleet to destroy it (but they will have to build a boat or two to do so, and the CP mines can be a good deterrent). If you are bold with Germany, and maybe build a battleship early on, then the allies will have to respond (most likely the French as they will have the strongest allied fleet at this time if you did your job?). As the Germans you need ground units, and can’t really afford a naval race with the allies (they will eventually take you out unless you get lucky dice), but it can be a great distraction. For every IPC you spend on ships, the allies generally do the same (or more). By keeping the German fleet in tact and strong it also allows you to add a transport or two to help take Russian land, or keep the English from landing in the Russian north. I will also buy a sub for A/H turn1 to keep their fleet alive longer to see where it takes me. It isn’t much, but the allies don’t seem to like dicey or even battles when they are facing mines. They tend to look for overwhelming odds, or a 1-2 punch (where they can salvage their big guns and send in a clean-up crew). Also the UK will generally send a cruiser to sz17 on their first turn to protect the Italian fleet (especially if you bought that A/H sub).
We really like this game, but it has been my experience that the game is heavily weighted to the allies (OOB) for a couple reasons.
- The allied naval dominance.
We have adopted swapping the starting french sz15 fleet (battleship & transport) for a lone cruiser. This seems more like the support fleet they had at the time (most of their strength was in the Med in anticipation of what the Italians were going to do). Larry has also commented about this, and made this change in his tourney rules (amongst other set-up changes).
- Slow ground movement (hard for the CP to get reinforcements at their fronts).
We have been looking at Larry’s 2 move rules (also developed for tournaments to speed up the game), and so far have liked what it brings to the table.
Just my 2 cents WB