To explain myself.If one uses the invade uk 1st turn strategy with the long range, the only way that the axis loses is if it doesnt hit a 4 in 8 dices.Difficult,and it has happened only once to my group.If though ger invades uk the game is over.Even if the us takes it back,it still is lost again when ger plays.In the meantime
Now if one uses the strategy of ger taking over the atl than the game is again over.(only really bad dice on gers behalf can stop it).All airforce is focused on eliminting ships and all ger ships too.Neglect ussr as the ground forces are enough.In this case a buy of 2-3 fighters is necessary with the initinal buy and the rest in tanks.The new plane will continue pushing the uk left ships in 2 rounds.Eliminate the uk bb ship in med with bb and trannie and fighter and in the next turn uk is alive and isolated in its island.just use all air and ship to blockade europe and thats it.nothing cans stop the gers from kiling gradually the ruskies.if the japs do their thing and establish on coast asia-game over again.
First, get the LHTR rules
http://dicey.net/revised/index.php?sid=6958f87ef38160f8b2a8d574ce308701
They’re in the forum on this site. This has updated official rules released by the game designer (Larry Harris, his name is in the rulebook first page).
Note that one of the major changes is that techs are applied at the mobilization phase, instead of immediately. This means the techs you rolled this round won’t apply during your combat/noncombat phases. This means it is impossible to invade UK with all your fighters first round, and you cannot end the game that soon. So take that off your mind.
Germany cannot take over the Atlantic unless the UK is a stupid player. Uk should attack the Germany fleet with his 2 fighters and bomber first round. Although you can lose 2 fighters in some bad circumstances, you usually will lose just one while Germany loses his 2 subs, trans, and dest. A smart Germany will stack his fighters in western or norway, but the UK should just hide his ships in sea zone 3 until he thinks he has a big enough fleet to challenge Germany (build carriers and fighters). Germany can’t hit sea zone 3 unless they land all their fighters in Norway. If they land their fighters in Norway, you can see that and immediately move your fleet away during UK turn to sea zone 2. If Germany rolls for long range aircraft, which usuallly takes a lot of IPCs, Russia should take the advantage to take territories since Germany didn’t purchase units to reinforce, and UK should immediately dump out a carrier and as many fighters as possible. A loaded carrier can cause havoc on air fleets. You have to see that the initial Baltic fleet can’t attack your UK fleet in one turn, they have to move up or you have to move up. That gives you the chance to strike at it hard.
Germany can do stuff like beef up his navy first turn, but then UK should just be glad and hole up with infantry while Russia takes the opportunity to drive into Germany. Germany has to use most of its resources to sufficiently threaten Russia, since his factories are farther from the front lines. Even though Germany has superior production, Russia can more quickly reinforce his lines unless Germany is going for a full tank build. In any case, Germany cannot do both threaten UK and threaten Russia at the same time. React to what he does. If he tries to threaten UK, which takes a massive amount of resources with carriers and transports and troops, then Russia should find itself an easy time crashing his lines.
Germany doing a full tank build is fairly scary, especially if he’s smart enough to use their 2 movements to threaten many different Russian fronts. In that case don’t have the UK build a factory in India. Just concentrate on building a couple of carriers and load them up, then prepare transports to invade his coasts. Germany will eventually slow down with UK and Russia hounding him. At this point US should really try to put the brakes on Japan by building up a massive fleet. US produces more and Japan is focused on getting land troops so you should outdistance his navy and prepare to island hop.
One of the best moves I think for UK to do first turn is to move his Indian/Australian fleets and meet them on the west coast of Australia. This forces Japan to kill that fleet and leave Pearl Harbor alone. If he doesn’t kill this fleet, it can invade his islands easily. If your African fighter is still alive land it on the carrier as well so you can inflict maximum damage when the Japan navy comes to you.