This thread is a good read. Â :-D
I think Wrus + Belo might need some more detail. I think it was mentioned, but I think it may be the best Russian opening in terms of defending Kar. I’m not a huge fan of the Ukr attack anyway, dating back to Revised - lol, but if your intent is to try and keep Germany out of Kar (at least not holding it), all the Ukr attack does is drain 3 inf and probably 1 rt from threatening Kar on Russia 2. Even if the strafe goes well the rt has to retreat to Cauc. BUT with the belo attack you can attack with 3 inf, 2 ftrs and not only are you eliminating 3 German inf they could go to Kar, but your inf are in position strike Kar (whereas in Ukr they would not). You can get away with an inf or rt buy on R1, b/c with every thing else going to Wrus, Ger should not be able to stack Kar on G1.
The Attacks:
Belo - 3 inf, 2 ftrs
Wrus - 9 inf, 3 rt, 4 arm
Place 7-8 units in Mos
You leave Kar and Cauc empty.
Which brings me to:
@Black_Elk:
Another Russian opener, which has not yet been properly considered in this thread. The tricky Tank on Non Com! haha
:-D
I love it! Â :-D
I’ve been doing the Inf, but I’ll definitely try this b/c it is perfect with this open, since you can take Wrus with 9 inf, 3 rt, 3 arm.
Now you can move the novo/kaz inf to Mos. From here they can go to Wrus on R2 or more likely you can use 1 inf + 3-4 tanks to retake Cauc. 1 inf if Ger moves in only 1 inf, or 2 inf if Ger moves in 2 inf.
Now you’ll also have to take Ukr, but Germany likely left ony 1 inf there. So typical Round two attacks for Russia will be:
Kar - 2 inf (arch), 1 ftr if ger left 1 inf (add 1 inf from Wrus if Ger brought in 2 inf)
Ukr - 2 inf, 1 ftr
Cauc - 1 inf, 3 arm (2 wrus and the 1 arm from Sze)
Belo - is optional here in round two because you don’t want to bleed off too many inf or an rt from Wrus that can threaten Kar on R3. But if you do want to do it and you are bringing in an rt, make sure you use the rt in Belo and not Ukr. You want to make sure at the very least the rt is in range of Kar. But you don’t want to bring in more than 2-3 units so you might have forget Belo if it means another rd of deadzone for Kar.
Now the big thing are the purchases. In rd 1, I like 8 inf. It’s not sexy but it turns out 4 inf, 3 rt only help marginally in preventing a G3 stack. You are running too close to 1:1 inf:rt ratio which doesn’t help once you get the the second rd of combat, but the extra inf fodder allows your 3 rt a full two rounds. But either purchase will work fine, so you can’t really go wrong there. But round 2 is the key purchase and also why I like the 8 inf in rd 1. You should have 28 ipc so here’s where you drop your armor. depending on trading during rd 1 and 2 you may be able to get away with 7 inf, 1 arm save 1 (you fill your 8 placement spots) but you can also go 5 inf, 2 arm, or 3 inf, 3 arm depending on what you need to threaten Kar with.
I should add you’ll probably need to be able to kill the G trn in rd 1 with the UK or on Russia 2 with the sub. The numbers can get dicey if Ger can transport another 2 units to Kar on G2. At that point it really depends on how many inf your Russia 1 belo units killed in defense or how many inf Germany lost on the front lines reclaiming.
Anyway, I wanted to bring this up b/c the Tank non-com works perfect with this open since you have to retake Cauc anyway and the tanks move two so you still keep max pressure on Kar even if you have 3-4 arm in Cauc at the end of Russia 2. Â :-D