Axis and Allies Anniverary Edition for sale

Italy wasnt going to be a stand alone nation in the early concept stages - hence the cover not having any Italian represtation.

Bonus - Bull Halsey appears twice - but most of you prolly observed this.

I echo Tim and Fleetwood Dan.  They make great points.
Doesn’t matter that much if you’re talking '41 or '42.  Zhukov seems to be referring to '41, the fantasy scenario.  Even in '41, with less “cash”, I am known to buy 3 researchers J1.  They have all the units they need, but how much more powerful if they can get their 9 fighters to be long range or jets?  I’ve taken Hawaii in J1 in '41 with jets before.

Packrat, long range air with USA or Japan is devastating.  In my experience, it’s more potent than heavy bombers, with those powers.

In my experience (at least 30 tech games) tech does not favor one side over the other.  They can both afford their researchers, and both sides, as pointed out, get huge boosts from certain techs.

The main Problem is, the game isn’t fun for every player, if you can only win as allies by almoust complete neglection of Japan. The Japanese Player will have a poor gaming experience. On the other hand, you won’t win the war in the pacific.
I recently invested loads of Russian troops, a UK factory in India and the US heavy into the pacific (1941 scenario) and didn’t come close to a win in the pacific and lost to europe. Eventough the Japanese player made a major mistake and i got lucky when he attackt some groundforces with mainly planes. The best I could achieve was a stall with Japan earning somewhat 50 IPC a turn (playing with NO).
While Germany on the other hand was playing extremely conservative, but finally crushed the USSR (rolling really good dice), so the US Invasion froce stationed in the atlantic.

Whats missing in this game?
I guess a industrial complex in India to start with could slow the japanese advance, while still saveing IPC for UK (doesn’t have to build one). This would make the game more challanging for the Japanese Player (otherwise there is no opponent on the continent) and gives the UK player more action on the pacific side of the board, while still able to build up some fleet to fight the Germans/Italians.

Clever thread title… +1 karma.

Edit (title is completely relevant to your post - sorry, was reading very late at night)

I second Dondolee’s thoughts.  When starting out bear in mind how the game is ultimately won - for the axis, by taking Moscow before the allies can take either Rome or Berlin.  It’s a race to see who holds out longer.

Japan should efficiently grab land in the first two or so turns, build up factories in South Asia (rounds 1-4) and then ply tanks and infantry through India > Persia > Caucasus > Moscow.  Send enough troops through China and Siberia that you’ll have enough to punch through, but sending the bulk of your force on the southern route.  As you play more games, take note of which strategies allowed you to occupy territories faster and get a better flow of troops to russia.

Italy and germany’s role is to stay rich and keep russia poor.  They generally don’t have enough power to crack russia without some early luck, so you just need to treat 'em rough and keep 'em honest.  Never let russia get their 10 IPC objective - this is a death knell.  While you want to deny and pressure russia as much as possible, your main task is to not let UK/US kill you - a tough balancing act of agression/defence.  There are many ways to skin this cat, but piles of infantry and scattering of tanks are the best place to start from a learning perspective.  You’ll soon find the limitation of infantry - while extremely cost effective, they can only be in one place at a time.  It’s hard fighting two wars that are 5 spaces apart. While boats and planes pack less punch for the money, they can threaten a much larger area.  Once you get a handle of the flow of the game, you’ll find many ways that german planes and boats can improve your effectiveness.  As dondoelee points out, this is playing with fire and you expect to get burnt a few times while you figure it out - start simple.

Cheers

Bought mine a month ago for 82 bux off of amazon, guess i got lucky

@Cmdr:

If you are lucky and Japan is not primed to take India round 2, an Indian IC can be a godsend.

If Germany did not hit Egypt, than an Egyptian IC is even better! (Italy has no chance, not with 4 Infantry, Artillery, Armor, Fighter, Bomber in Egypt at the end of England 1.)

I like one in Philippines as well, FIC isn’t half bad either.

France works well for the Allies too.

If your building in France, Phil, Man, or FIC doesn’t that mean the game is well in progress and your at stages you can’t really plan for at the begining of a game?  And if the UK happened to take France it is so darn close to it I would hesitate to build an IC there (unless making massive amounts of cash).

A Brazil factory seems pointless/ a liabilaty, A Norway factory for the UK seems redundant (unless they are making massive amts of cash) but may be OK for the US player.  Canada seems silly.

I have never been in a position to be able to consider an early IC build in Egy or India.  If one insists on an early factory build I would say SAF is easily the most defendable option, but the better option if it can be done would be a T2 Aussie buy

Yea, but the beautiful thing about this map is, Germany and Italy are two spaces away from each other.

Odds are, if one can be counter attacked, then so can the other but neither can just run infantry from one to the other without tanks.

i can see italy being scared at that point since the americans/ british would love an industrial complex near germany to get so they can make men.  This will make most likely a turn of tanks/men going to russia. Instead they willb doing a battle of the bulge.