German bomber strategy - How to play and How to counter


  • @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,

  • '15 '14

    @ShadowHAwk:

    Keeping the US out of the war for 3 rounds also means that the allies lose 52 effective ipcs for those 3 rounds. They cannot be used, and troops being 2 turns to late are a lot less important then troops being on time.

    For Japan it is a disadvantage to keep US out of the war.
    I prefer a DOW2 because US is not in position to do damage on the Japanese fleet which can be split without any risk.

    Giving US too much time makes a) the DOW way more difficult and b) gives India lots of money which makes it way harder to get a shot on India or to force them to sit in India and not progress towards Yunnan.
    In this case US must play very offensive and position its fleet and air as close as possible to the Japanese sea zones near China or DEI.

    Delay of DOW should only be done to support the Germans by delaying any US invasions in Europe. Or in case Japan does an air strike on the Chinese army.


  • I’m quite late to this conversation, but my thought is this:

    The counter to this German bomber strategy is to choose not to use it, and to avoid playing against players who do. I mean this with all respect!

    I can speak for myself, and probably many others, in that I don’t play A&A purely as a series of mathematical equations. If that were the case, there are plenty of other games out there to scratch that particular itch. I play because I’m also interested in history, as well as the history of warfare, and World War II in particular.

    I’m always a bit suspicious of the constant search to discover a mechanical ‘break’ in this (very elegant) game. If I learned I could win every time by buying 20 infantry every round for Germany, personally I won’t just start buying 20 infantry a round every turn until someone stops me. That’s not my definition of fun. For some, it is, and that’s fine - diversity is a beautiful thing.

    Give me 6 infantry, an artillery, 2 mech infantry, 2 armor, a fighter, and a destroyer for 60 IPCs as Germany. If I’m feeling whimsical or aggressive, replace the 2 armor with a bomber. That’s my definition of dark skies!

    When I read through this thread, not once did I start considering that I should try it as a strategy - why would I? Part of the enjoyment - for me - is replicating/advancing themes from warfare conducted early in the last century. If anything, it helped me realize that I should buy a few more bombers, but that’s about the extent of it.

    Some see this as as a dice game with strategy - I choose to see it as a strategy game with dice. Mass purchases of one unit for the purpose of maximizing movement and mathematical assurance, in my opinion, shift the game toward the former. Again, a matter of personal preference.

  • '17 '16 '15 '14 '12

    @Stalingradski:

    I’m quite late to this conversation, but my thought is this:

    The counter to this German bomber strategy is to choose not to use it, and to avoid playing against players who do. I mean this with all respect!

    I can speak for myself, and probably many others, in that I don’t play A&A purely as a series of mathematical equations. If that were the case, there are plenty of other games out there to scratch that particular itch. I play because I’m also interested in history, as well as the history of warfare, and World War II in particular.

    I’m always a bit suspicious of the constant search to discover a mechanical ‘break’ in this (very elegant) game. If I learned I could win every time by buying 20 infantry every round for Germany, personally I won’t just start buying 20 infantry a round every turn until someone stops me. That’s not my definition of fun. For some, it is, and that’s fine - diversity is a beautiful thing.

    Give me 6 infantry, an artillery, 2 mech infantry, 2 armor, a fighter, and a destroyer for 60 IPCs as Germany. If I’m feeling whimsical or aggressive, replace the 2 armor with a bomber. That’s my definition of dark skies!

    When I read through this thread, not once did I start considering that I should try it as a strategy - why would I? Part of the enjoyment - for me - is replicating/advancing themes from warfare conducted early in the last century. If anything, it helped me realize that I should buy a few more bombers, but that’s about the extent of it.

    Some see this as as a dice game with strategy - I choose to see it as a strategy game with dice. Mass purchases of one unit for the purpose of maximizing movement and mathematical assurance, in my opinion, shift the game toward the former. Again, a matter of personal preference.

    As always, Stalingradski is the voice of decency and historical integrity.

    I agree with this “gentleman’s agreement” approach.  This kind of idea was floated back in the alpha days when sealion was unstoppable and it took official setup changes and the Soviet NO to get that down to a reasonable level where now sealion is possible but rarely done and the game is much better for it.  Now we have this other thing that seems close to unstoppable in the hands of top players, and the situation might get out of hand when and if us middle-of-the-pack players get the hang of it.  We could just all agree not to do it, but what about in league and tournament games?  Rules are rules.  I think the bomber thing is really goofy and unhistorical but it is now part of the game unfortunately.

    So if the axis decide to do something as radical and crappy as dark skies, maybe the allies should do something equally radical and crappy.  I hereby propose a ridiculous and untested approach to handling a mega bombers situation.  This would no longer look anything like World War II, but if it works then the allies having this crappy option in their back pocket might deter axis players from going dark skies (much like how we all know the sealion solutions that deter them from going full bore sealion most of the time).  So here is an untested and very crappy anti-dark skies strategy in principle:

    The Russian Rotate

    • USSR builds only mobile units and everything goes EAST.  Far East troops go into Manchuria.  Startup units on the Eastern front withdraw to Moscow then keep on going East.  Moscow is abandoned round 5, but the goal is to Kick Japan off the continent, starve them, and deny them the pacific win.
    • USA and ANZAC mount a Minimal defense of Hawaii and Sydney until late game when Japan is to be killed.
    • UK focuses exclusively on deterring sealion and holding Cairo.
    • USA puts almost everything into the Atlantic to help UK hold Cairo and London and thereby deny them the Europe win, starve them economically and kill them later
    • If Germany tries to follow Russia into China they will drown in Chinese infantry because by then all China will be free
    • This is probably a 20+ round kind of game

  • @variance:

    (…)
    The Russian Rotate

    • USSR builds only mobile units and everything goes EAST.��������������  Far East troops go into Manchuria.��������������  Startup units on the Eastern front withdraw to Moscow then keep on going East.��������������  Moscow is abandoned round 5, but the goal is to Kick Japan off the continent, starve them, and deny them the pacific win.
    • USA and ANZAC mount a Minimal defense of Hawaii and Sydney until late game when Japan is to be killed.
    • UK focuses exclusively on deterring sealion and holding Cairo.
    • USA puts almost everything into the Atlantic to help UK hold Cairo and London and thereby deny them the Europe win, starve them economically and kill them later
    • If Germany tries to follow Russia into China they will drown in Chinese infantry because by then all China will be free
    • This is probably a 20+ round kind of game

    I like the out-of-the-box thinking, Variance :-).
    I will certainly try something like this sometimes, but I must admit I feel uncertain about 1 thing with this:
    If Moscow is abandoned early, and completely unchecked, Germany doesn’t need to keep a (very) large portion of their army around the City to prevent Russia from retaking it, nor do they loose a lot of troops/air by an assault of subborn defenses. So all their forces can just go for Cairo instead of just a small portion of 'em, and they can assault Cairo turn 9/10 which is early, compared to when they first need to deal with Moscow.
    Now will the UK/USA be ready in Cairo? Minimal defenses for the Pacific requires quite a lot. On the other hand, if Russia removes Japan from mainland Asia, Japan will have a lot less resources to spend, freeing up more for the USA to spend in Europe…

    Maybe it can be done as well with a 3-turn JF from the USA, after which they switch to putting everything in Europe from turn 4 and onwards.
    No way Japan will survive this sandwiching from Russia/China/India from one side and the USA from the other. They will be dead in the water. I don’t think Japan will have even a minimal influence on the game left, after turn 6. The battle for Cairo will be the game-winning one. Unless the allies can liberate France, they cannot loose Cairo.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17 '16 '15 TripleA

    I’m playing against a German bomber strategy for the first time. What I’m finding to be the most significant challenge is their range. 7 spaces let’s them hit the west Gibraltar SZ from France or West Germany, while simultaneously threatening Russian stacks on the eastern front. I’m finding that really hard to defend against. So I had a couple of ideas (assuming the intent is to restore balance – I’m not necessarily in favour of either of these rules in principle, but for the purpose of play-balance, they might make sense.) They are influenced by my observations in early games that saw Germany have a tougher time once they commit fighters and tac to the eastern front and they aren’t available to threaten atlantic shipping. As well, the combined price reduction and increased movement have increased the lethality of bombers. Apologies as well if these were already mentioned but the search function wouldn’t work for me so i couldn’t see if these ideas have already been raised.

    My first suggestion is a fairly simple one: to remove the airbase movement advantage from strat bombers. This would maintain their range just enough that they can’t threaten Moscow and gibraltar and everywhere in between West Germany. They could still operate out of Germany and protect the coast of Europe, or Russia, but it would open up some shipping lanes in the Atlantic.

    If that’s seen as too extreme, or if the effect on the pacific might be deemed too undesirable, my second suggestion is to give strat bombers the extra movement point if there is an an airbase at takeoff AND landing. In the pacific, there are so many airbases on islands, Australia, and Japan oftens by an airbase for SE Asia to increase fighter and tac range, so this might not affect the pacific as much as the European theatre.

    Just some food for thought.

  • Liaison TripleA '11 '10

    After several tests - it is my opinion that although annoying, the bomber strategy is not overpowered or unbeatable.  In fact it’s slightly sub optimal, and much higher risk.

    The allies just need to throw their navies out in such a way that only bombers or mostly bombers can reach.  Allied fleet configurations that are slightly sub par (60-70% for the bombers to kill) are preferred.  This entices the Axis attack.

    The Axis will either bite, and end up losing the edge they need in Russia, or ignore, and the allied fleets will make gains.

    If you can find a way to take out 3 or 4 bombers, that seems to be just enough.

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