I’m new to this forum and this is my first post , but i have been playing A&A for a year and a half now and I love the game. its my favorite board game ever. The first time i played A&A i played regular, 1980’s version and i was Russia…. i think we all know who that probably turned out.
Turn three i was pushed back to farthest eastern place and was alive only by Japan’s pity.
But anyway, i own Europe and Pacific, Europe being my favorite and i have a strategy that I believe is legal and if it is, i highly recomend its use. The idea of the strategy is based around Russia in European version of game (although you can implement the strategy with Germany as well, although its less helpful because in Russian there more about speed then sustainability).
So this strategy that has been developed and used by me and the group of people i play with is basically based on getting Russia’s tank groups come together in a strike force. Use them always as a cohesive unit and protect them at all costs. But do your best to keep them out of German tank range. Especially in Europe you dont want your tanks on the defensive, they are too valuable for that. They need to mantain their maneuverability and attack power. So, to keep your tanks out of the fight as best you can they should never leave the protection of a strong infantry group.
So, now that you have a tank defensive infantry force, you need your spear blunting infantry, you need infantry heading off German advances, troops that need to be neighbors to the Germans and ready to attack. So with this group you attack with it AND your tank force, your tank force having to Blitz through a terrirory to get into the fight, emerging themselves from the back territorys. Now during this fight your objective is NOT to capture the territory, it IS to win the battle, but not decimate the opposing force. You want to win the battle sure enough, but you want to win it with the least amount of German forces left, not ever going below one. Once you have clearly won, and the groups offensive power blunted, you retreat. You pull back to the safety of your infantry. This give the German’s two options,
1) they counter attack with their weak force against your newly reinforced one, exposing (most likely) once again their good offensive units to blunt themselves upon your cheaper units.
2) they fall back and regroup, and this also accomplishes your goal, the Germans once again pull out and buy the Westerners another turn of time to come knocking on Germany’s door.
The advances of this strategy are also two fold,
1) it blunts the German attacks
2) it protects your most powerful units, while forcing them to expose theirs, giving you the money edge you need to even stand a chance with the war of attrition against Germany. See, it seems to me the road for Russia is a rough one, its not like it was in History, your not after Berlin… not after the glory of the final assault. Your there to survive, fight tooth and nail as hard as you can for every inch of YOUR territory.
The more Germany throws upon Fortress Russia, the less units and less time the Germans have to use against the West.
Anyway, Good Luck if you use this strategy, its not fool proof, nothing is, but in my book it is a good one. Im reasonably sure its legal (atleast the way I interpret the rules). So good luck, thanks for reading.
" An appeaser is someone who feeds the crocodile, hoping it will eat them last," Winston Churchill