German bomber strategy - How to play and How to counter


  • Hmmm… landing 10 troops in Normandy is soooo scary.  That would require 4 soldiers plus the airforce to annihilate.  I’m not sure how Germany could spare so many soldiers.  It is such a long drive from West Germany to the beachheads. Wouldn’t it be horrible if the Allies dropped 16 troops and landed 5 planes to support it.  There surely is no possible way to defeat such a might invasion force.  Furthermore, I’ve lost so many games where Russia drives into Berlin on R5.  I can’t seem to find a tactic to prevent this crushing defeat.  Perhaps Cow can write a guide on defending Germany against the overwhelming Russian army.  Maybe I should buy 33 more infantry during the first two rounds and hide in my capitol.

    In the meantime, I am confident that Japan would patiently wait for the US to start building in the Pacific before starting its own expansion.

  • '15

    You can build warships AND transports…

    Let’s look at a couple of rounds of buys (as always, you’d need to see exactly what’s happening in that particular game to know exactly what to buy, but let’s try anyway)

    US turn 1: CV, DD, 4 transports, place in EUS, move the two infantry in WUS to CUS and one extra plane to the carrier you just bought
    US turn 2: 1 loaded transport, 1 inf, 1 CV in EUS, spend the rest in WUS (if you attack J1 then America will have even more money to spend and I’d probably add another 2 DD’s or a BB, but let’s leave it at 52 for now)

    UK turn 1: 2 fighters, save 8 bucks (or buy a couple of units in London).  Move all surviving ships to Canada (everyone seems to handle the UK ships differently, so let’s say you end up with a C, DD and a transport over there)
    UK turn 2: 2 CV, 1 DD in Canada (the DD if you didn’t spend that extra money on units)

    So on turn 3 the US and UK can go to Gibraltar with 4 loaded carriers (using the fighters in UK), 2 cruisers, 2-3 DD’s, 6 loaded American transports, 1-2 loaded transports from Canada (depending on which ships survived).  If Germany has its air force in Western Germany then only their bombers will be able to make it (unless Italy took Gibraltar or Morocco, neither of which they’d keep once America heads over).

    From there the Allies have plenty of options: hang in the channel and drop 14-16 troops and a fighter or two for good measure; take Norway or grab Southern France, go for Italy, etc.  Sure, if they move to 110 Germany can wipe them out, but at what cost?  If UK built another two fighters on its turn you’re looking at 18 units defending, 4 of which can take two hits.  Let’s look at how that plays out in battle:

    All the ships and planes I mentioned above, plus the two UK just bought for London, and we’re looking at 58 as an attack factor (should be ten hits, rounding up).  Assuming Germany bought 2, 6, 2 bombers, has lost no planes so far and has every one of them in position to attack, then they have 12 str bombers, 5 tac and 5 fighters, right?  14 hits, rounding up.  Four carriers gone, 2 DD’s gone, 2 C’s gone, 2 fighters gone.  Allies still have 8 fighters left.

    If Germany presses on they should wipe out all 8 of the remaining fighters, but they’ll lose 5 of their remaining bombers.
    Giant allied fleet is wiped out, but Germany lost massive air power (the crux of their entire plan), the Allies are sitting in Normandy and Russia has nothing to worry about.

    Again, all of this assumes Germany has lost zero planes so far, has all of their planes in positions to attack, the US did not collect its war income, etc.  (Someone argued that Germany may choose not to attack that fleet.  Fine, but now the allies are storming through Europe; next turn I’d drop every plane in Normandy and head back to EUS to reload).

    Germany is not winning the game at this point; even though they’re still out-earning Russia they’ve lost too much while Russia has built 35-40 ground unit and on top of that they have to get the US out of Europe.  That allows the US to…

    Go heavy on the other side.  I’ve argued this before but you can spend heavily in EUS for the first two turns and still be effective in the Pacific simply by returning the favor.

    Turn 2: the remaining 19 (possibly more from a J1 attack, but again, let’s assume they had 52) I’d buy a carrier (loaded with the planes from Hawaii) and save 3. 
    Turn 3: I’m likely spending the entire 73 (assuming we’re down two from the Philippines) over here now.  Loaded carrier, 3 DD’s, 2 subs. 
    Turn 4: Let’s assume 70 to spend (possibly more from Normandy, Norway, etc) Let’s go another loaded carrier and 3 subs, spend a few bucks on the other end.

    At the end of turn 4 the US has a solid fleet in the Pacific (four loaded carriers, a BB, couple of C’s, 5 DD’s and 6-7 subs) and is very likely holding onto a complex in Normandy, which can be reinforced by UK.  Add in the Siberian Russia troops hanging around to bug Japan (I like to put them all in Amur turn 2 and make Japan attack them, defend Korea and Manchuria or give up one of them) and this game is far from over.

    Is this a sure-fire way to beat the Dark Skies Axis strategy?  There are no sure-fire wins in this game, but it’s definitely a solid approach.

    You can’t beat back every Allied answer in Europe with “Well my planes would just wipe you out.”  Germany’s air force cannot be everywhere all at once.

    You can’t beat back every Allied answer in the Pacific with “Well Japan would be too strong to take down by turn 4.”  Even after India falls (whenever that may be), Japan still has to go get that 6th victory city.  Not a gimme once the US is regularly spending heavy in the Pacific.


  • If Germany does not attack the fleet, the Allies are most certainly not “storming through Europe”.

    Let’s assume that all 8 of your loaded transports are tank + inf, which offers the highest defensive power to your invasion force. Let’s assume none of them are destroyed in the invasion. Let’s assume you land all 4 of your UK carrier fighters and your French fighter in Normandy to defend.

    So you have 8 Infantry, 8 Tanks, and 5 fighters defending. If Germany attacks with their 12 Bombers, 4 Tacs, 4 Fighters, and only 4 Land units, they have a 95% chance of victory! And this is with the Allies throwing everything they have into Normandy. If Germany uses just a couple more units, or if the Allies kept some of their fighters back or used some artillery or lost some units landing, they’d have an even lower survival chance.


  • @ShadowHAwk:

    @amanntai:

    If Germany does not attack the fleet, the Allies are most certainly not “storming through Europe”.

    Let’s assume that all 8 of your loaded transports are tank + inf, which offers the highest defensive power to your invasion force. Let’s assume none of them are destroyed in the invasion. Let’s assume you land all 8 of your carrier fighters in Normandy to defend.

    So you have 8 Infantry, 8 Tanks, and 8 fighters defending. If Germany attacks with their 12 Bombers, 4 Tacs, 4 Fighters, and only 4 Land units, they have a 70% chance of victory! And this is with the Allies throwing everything they have into Normandy. If Germany uses just a couple more units, or if the Allies kept some of their fighters back or used some artillery or lost some units landing, they’d have an even lower survival chance.

    Why would i want to land in normandy? Why not just western germany if you have it lightly defended or norway. Or Rome also a verry nice city to invade.
    From gibraltar i can hit a lot of area ill take what suits me best not what you can counter best.

    Hit West Germany, same result. Can easily be countered. West Germany will also be better defended, so you’ll lose more troops than Normandy and be worse off. Norway might be harder to take back, but not if there are still German troops in Finland or if Germany has a couple of transports in the straits. And taking Norway would be that easy even if Germany hadn’t gone Dark Skies, so I don’t see how Germany did worse there.

    Rome might be a problem if Italy doesn’t have enough troops to defend it.

    The problem is that anywhere you can hit from Gibraltar, the bombers can counter attack.


  • Just some thoughts from someone who hasn’t really done the math nor played enough rounds to actually see this tactic through.

    Can US really be at war, at their own initiative, with Germany on turn 3 (Combat/Movement phase?) so they can actually move to Gibraltar at all? Or are there any second edition additional rules that I have missed?

    And then on down to the tactics on getting a strong fleet supporting units into Normandy or other mainland european regions:

    Am I correct in assuming that Germany loosing it’s entire bomber force against, let’s say, a strong naval presence from US/UK equals a lost game for Germany? I am aware that Japan can still grow to be a monster and win the game for the axis anyhow but let’s keep focus on europe for now. Creating a fleet according to Nippon-kokus suggestion (or similar) would create a situation that requires Germany to respond with their bombers. Once there is a strong static fleet that Germany can’t attack without risking it’s entire air force it’s quite easy for the allies to maintain that ratio of units so that it stays safe. And what happens then? The US can land units basically every turn once the shuttle is running. 8 or 10 units are not frightening, I admit. Easily countered by Germany but the way I see it is that Germany from then on are forced to use their bombers plus land units each turn against a landing force. Using german bombers on that front every turn makes them unusable against the russians. I can certainly see where there could be a bit of trouble breaking through russian lines.

  • '17 '16 '15

    HI Andresal

    US can’t be at war  with Germany on their own initiative.  So US can’t be in Gibraltar either in your scenario.


  • @barney:

    HI Andresal

    US can’t be at war  with Germany on their own initiative.  So US can’t be in Gibraltar either in your scenario.

    Thought so, though it seems that the majority of the players who run the DS strategy also tends to do a J1 opener which would allow this anyway I guess.


  • @ShadowHAwk:

    @amanntai:

    @ShadowHAwk:

    @amanntai:

    If Germany does not attack the fleet, the Allies are most certainly not “storming through Europe”.

    Let’s assume that all 8 of your loaded transports are tank + inf, which offers the highest defensive power to your invasion force. Let’s assume none of them are destroyed in the invasion. Let’s assume you land all 8 of your carrier fighters in Normandy to defend.

    So you have 8 Infantry, 8 Tanks, and 8 fighters defending. If Germany attacks with their 12 Bombers, 4 Tacs, 4 Fighters, and only 4 Land units, they have a 70% chance of victory! And this is with the Allies throwing everything they have into Normandy. If Germany uses just a couple more units, or if the Allies kept some of their fighters back or used some artillery or lost some units landing, they’d have an even lower survival chance.

    Why would i want to land in normandy? Why not just western germany if you have it lightly defended or norway. Or Rome also a verry nice city to invade.
    From gibraltar i can hit a lot of area ill take what suits me best not what you can counter best.

    Hit West Germany, same result. Can easily be countered. West Germany will also be better defended, so you’ll lose more troops than Normandy and be worse off. Norway might be harder to take back, but not if there are still German troops in Finland or if Germany has a couple of transports in the straits. And taking Norway would be that easy even if Germany hadn’t gone Dark Skies, so I don’t see how Germany did worse there.

    Rome might be a problem if Italy doesn’t have enough troops to defend it.

    The problem is that anywhere you can hit from Gibraltar, the bombers can counter attack.

    West germany is where your bombers are at unless you want them out of position so you suddenly have to protect your bombers as well. And Rome is also a verry nice target getting italy out of the game for a while.

    Your bombers will not make a huge difference against russia, besides if you are going to be funny ill land 3 AA guns with my army, now your bombers can face 3AA guns and a few land units your 4 inf alone are not enough so you will lose 1-2 bombers before we even start throwing dice.

    Sure the bombers are powerfull but they are a 1 shot thing, once used they lost most of their power.

    If the bombers are in West Germany, there’s no way your landing force is going to succeed. You’re facing land units stationed in West Germany to prevent an invasion, any units I built the turn before, and 12 Bombers. Against your 12 US land units? No way.

    Like I said, Rome might be a problem, but only if Italy doesn’t have the units prepared to defend itself. Additionally, I don’t see how this is a fault with Dark Skies. Any Axis strategy could fall prey to the Allies using this strategy you’re proposing to invade Italy turn 3.

    Go ahead and land 3 AAAs. I’ll laugh. Statistically, I’d only lose one fighter, and then you’d be three tanks or artillery short on defense. 4 land units, 3 fighters, 4 Tacs, and 12 Bombers against 8 Infantry, 5 Tanks, and maybe a few (5) fighters? You’ll lose big time. There’s an 94.5% chance the Germans live, and they’ll average 1 Tank and 7 Bombers left if Germany used 2 Tanks and 2 Artillery as their land units.


  • I do find it so interesting that everyone is focusing on a KGF approach to stop the Axis.  I’m surprised that so many people still believe that such a plan is advisable.  In my current game, Japan is at 46 at the end of J1, will be at 69 at J3, and around 80 at J4-5 depending on the cleverness of the Allies.  There is absolutely nothing that the Allies can do to prevent the Japanese advances during the first 4 rounds.  They neither have the starting troops nor the income for India and ANZAC to be much of a nuisance.  With 10 troops and 20+ airplanes, India will fall in an amphibious assault when Japan puts its mind to it.

    With the US waiting till turn 3-4 to start building in the Pacific, combined with 2 turns to get the fleet into position, Japan will be in such an amazingly strong position by the time the US brings about their fleet on US6-7.  India will have fallen, China virtually crushed, the money islands firmly under control, and 400 PUs spent on building up Japan’s forces.  At that point, the US will need to spend 100% of its income in the Pacific just to prevent further expansion of Japan.  Meanwhile the 2-3 rounds of spending in the Atlantic cannot possibly be enough to permanently cripple Germany.  Slow it down and delay a Moscow invasion for an additional few rounds, sure, but complete destruction, absolutely no!

    Hence I consider any KGF Allied plan to be intrinsically flawed and doomed to fail against a smart Axis player.  I would appreciate that serious discussion of an Allied solution focus on significant spending in the Atlantic only after a few turns of initial build in the Pacific so that Japan cannot grow unconstrained into a behemoth. I don’t want to know how the Allies could theoretically crush an incompetent Axis opponent…


  • Arthur, while I agree with the second paragraph of your plea, you should be more open to other people’s experience. A wise man knows he knows nothing, is the saying :-D.

    There are a lot of ‘smart’ axis players who do NOT J1, nor play DS and there is always (always), some1 smarter than you, just around the corner.
    In our first game I experimented a bit with the allies, building up a max presence in Europe at max speed. Borrowing from the Pacific, however turned out to be unsatisfying for me. I knew this from other German strategies but I wanted to see it against DS as well.
    Anyway, the USA can also build up for a GF a bit slower (not borrowing units from the Pacific).

    Consider this:
    If the USA is played in A&AP40.2, they have an income (from turn to turn) looking like this with a J1:
    17 + 55 + 55 + 55 (etc.). I must admit I never played A&AP40 (of any edition), but let’s consider this as balanced enough for the USA to at least be an effective opponent for Japan.
    This means that in 9 turns, they will have spent 457IPCs in the Pacific. If the USA brings this ‘requirement’ for the Pacific into a Global Game, after the first 2 turns of investing every IPC into Europe, they will still have 505IPCs to spend there (7*72) until turn 9. More than they would have had when playing P40 alone. Consider this compensation for the higher income Japan gets.

    The USA will still be able to stabilise the Pacific but it will be hard work.
    The hard and painful thing remains ofc, that with 2 turns (only) of focusing in Europe, the USA will only cause a hiccup for Germany.
    After that, the USA must decide if they stay in Europe (possibly only just to protect London), or if they move their forces out of Europe and into the Pacific. Through the med, around South Africa or through Panama is then for them to decide…
    This is still not necessarily a lost game for the allies, but if they are going to abandon Europe I admit the better option would be to focus on Japan right from the start of the game and slowly adding more and more focus on Europe later on. Which is why I suggested to start over from our first DS playtest, but that aside.


  • @ShadowHAwk:

    How does japan get more income in pacific then in global?

    I meant that Japan can get more income in G40 than in P40, if the USA spends first 2 turns in Europe-only. Sorry if that wasn’t clear enough.


  • @ShadowHAwk:

    How does japan get more income in pacific then in global?

    I thought that the NO’s where the same and the russian income is not that much. Compensates for the fact that russia can help china in pacific and that india can be reinforced from europe. That most people butcher india to kill italy first is a choice not a fact :)

    US needs to split its income to really hold back the axis everywhere, They need to slow down japan with the help of the rest while building up to start harassing germany and italy.

    With spending about half the income the US can build a fleet together with the UK to counter dark skies pretty fast. Yes you will drop less units in afrika at the start but your goal isnt to hit where germany is strong it is to hit where they are weak untill you build up enough to attack him head on.

    I still don’t see how this is a counter to Dark Skies. If the US can get an invasion fleet capable of taking Rome or West Germany (as you suggested) by TURN 3, then the Axis are in trouble no matter what strategy they used. How would building land units have helped? It’s not like buying Bombers prevented Germany from taking Moscow on Turn 3! “Oh, if only I had bought 20 tanks instead of these bombers. I could have taken Moscow before that inevitable Turn 3 Italy invasion!”

    If anything, Dark Skies would be the optimal counter to such a US strategy, as it can easily counter attack anywhere the allies land, whereas land units would be unable to reach anything more than two territories from Berlin and West Germany.

    Of course, I still don’t believe a turn 3 invasion of Europe is a viable Allied strategy.

  • '22 '20 '19 '18 '17 '16 '15 '14 '12

    I have to say, having fought the DS strategies 4 times and beaten it twice, there is no “hidden” or “calculated” way to beat it other than you load up the CVs in the Atlantic and grab your balls and see what happens.  It really is not much more complicated than that.  The USSR needs to watch its options vis-a-vis being aggressive with Germany. UK needs to hold Egypt using the bid. That is that.


  • I’m just hoping for a more detailed discussion of plans that generally work, yet have a suitable balance against Japan and Germany.  Obviously a plan where the US spends all of their money in the Atlantic will eventually crush any German strategy, but at the same time lose the game in the Pacific.

    I would like to know more than just “build lots of CVs”.  Germany can simply ignore the loaded aircraft carriers.  They have little to do except convoy raid for a few PUs per round.  No point of spending 200 PUs on loaded carriers just to do minor raids!  Transports have to be part of any allied plan.  Where should troops land and how do they get reinforced?  At what round should the Allies start dropping troops in Europe?  Can a Neutral Crush work against Dark Skies (it failed miserably for me)?  How many turns should the US spend in the Pacific before starting to spend in the Atlantic (or vice-verse). Should Russia go purely defensive in their build or mix in a fair bit of artillery/tanks/planes?

    I would like to know more about how a good Allied player beats a good Axis player using this strategy.


  • Why would Japan do a China crush?  That seems like a strange tactic for a country capable of crushing India, grabbing the money islands, swiping Philippines, and wrecking havoc in the Pacific.  How does attacking the Allies make it tougher on Germany?  I completely miss the connection since it appears that you will focus on Germany if Japan is wasting its time in China but have to build in the Pacific if Japan is doing what it is supposed to do.

  • '15 '14

    @Arthur:

    Why would Japan do a China crush?  That seems like a strange tactic for a country capable of crushing India, grabbing the money islands, swiping Philippines, and wrecking havoc in the Pacific.

    In a nutshell: G40 is about getting Moscow or the economic edge as Axis in case Russians turtles and keeping an impotent Infantry army.

    Crushing China means Japan penetrating Russia from the East, stealing Russian income and support to get Moscow.

    I do not advise that Japan should always crush China and neglect India. But rushing India with Japan is certainly overrated.


  • Very well said, JDOW.  Crushing India is often not worth the loss of fighters.  Getting Japanese support into Russia certainly can swing the game.  Japan certainly can pump 6 units into Asia while maintaining good spending to hold the money islands.

    You are highly ranked in League play and far more experienced than I am.  What are your thoughts on spending heavily on bombers for Germany?  Do you do that strategy or seen it played well by opposing players?


  • Indeed the India-crush is overrated!
    If Japan ‘crushes’ India while the USA is in the process of JF, the axis loose the game. It is that simple, because the cost in Japanese air is indeed too high. I may not have a lot of experience with/against a US JF strategy yet, but this is just so simple and so obvious, even I can predict that with ease :evil:.

    Like JDOW stated in another thread, Dark Skies is a strong German strategy, but not better in itself than (for example) a heavy Barbarossa. I have said this earlier as well and I am not convinced otherwise now. The axis are just super-strong together and will only loose the game if the allies can sucessfully contain one of them. And I guess they have around 15 turns to do it. Which is maybe too hard as it is now (oob anyway), but that’s not due to DS.



    Since enough people are having VERY much problems with it, maybe it is an idea to start a little anti DS-project?
    I wouldn’t be playing myself because I can’t play A&A for more than a couple of weeks in a row, plus I don’t consider myself experienced enough to produce reliable enough results. I simply don’t have enough games under my belt versus the A&A cracks of the league ;-). But I will certainly follow the progress and assist such a project in any other way I can with great pleasure, ofc.
    Some ace axis players who can be considered very skilled with DS and Japan (for example bmnielsen, perhaps?) then play 10 or more games in a row using the DS strategy + whatever they see fit with Japan, while some other high level players from the E or 1 ranks of the current standings who are willing to participate take the allies. After a few months we could have enough data (game results) to come to some sort of a preliminary conclusion, not?



  • '15 '14

    @Arthur:

    JDOW[…]What are your thoughts on spending heavily on bombers for Germany?  Do you do that strategy or seen it played well by opposing players?

    This is C&P from another said, where I wrote:

    "I think bombers are a valid strategy but they are not necessarily better than a brutal and perfectly executed Barbarossa (which I personally fear way more as Allies). Furthermore there are no TierE players yet complaining that bombers are imbalanced.

    I simply think the high winning percentage a) correlates with the fact that Axis are strong in general and b) that playing bombers makes the game more complex and dicey and that specifically less experienced or mediocre players simply do not know how to react appropriately (yet).

    The most important thing is: The counter strategy is not created on the flip chart but by playing each move precisely. Many people say “I did this and that and bombers still beat me” but in the end the execution was just poorly. Successful play always depend on execution and details. "

  • '15 '14

    This is C&P from another thread,

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