INTRODUCTION
Several of my gaming buddies have wondered if it’s really possible to win at 1942 Second Edition as the Allies while concentrating on Japan. Assuming equally skilled players on both teams, and a bid for the Allies in the general neighborhood of 12 IPCs, I would say the answer is “Definitely yes.” Taking down Japan is more complicated than taking down Germany, but if done properly, it’s no less likely to succeed. In this post, I’ll try to highlight some of the most important ideas for a successful Allied attack on Japan. If you disagree with my ideas, or if you have extra ideas to add, please chime in!
I will start by going over some of the recommended opening moves, explaing why I think these moves are crucial, and showing how they set you up for a successful attack. Then, I’ll move on to middlegame strategy, explaining how to a pick a route across the Pacific to get to Japan, how your choice of route should shape your choices about what to build, and how to know when it’s safe to advance one sea zone closer to Tokyo. Finally, I’ll briefly cover how to handle the European side of the map when attempting to Kill Japan First, and sketch out what it looks like to win against Japan.
OPENING MOVES: KILLING THE CHINESE TRANSPORT
The Japanese start with two transports – one just off the coast of China, and one in their home sea zone, near Tokyo. The transport off the coast of China is guarded by only a single destroyer, and it’s in range of the British fighter, carrier, and cruiser that start in the Indian sea zone.
Unless you are going to attack the Japanese fleet in Sea Zone 37 (discussed in the next section) you must kill this transport. It is not optional, it is not a minor issue, and it is not a matter of style. If you don’t kill the transport and you don’t kill the SZ 37 fleet, then any competent Japanese player will beat you in 90%+ of their games, no matter what else you do. Killing one transport doesn’t seem like a huge deal given that Japan can just build four more on it’s first turn…but because the Chinese transport is already on the board, and already in a forward-deployed position, it punches far above its weight. The second transport will turbo-charge an early Japanese attack on India, allowing Japan to take India before you have a chance to reinforce it with significant numbers of Allied fighters, and even if Japan doesn’t want to attack India, the extra transport will accelerate Japan’s economy – being able to load more troops onto the mainland on turn 1 will mean more income for Japan on turn 2, which means even more troops will hit the mainland on turn 3, which means more income for Japan on turn 4…there’s a kind of compound interest effect at work.
So: make sure you send two units (not just one unit) to kill the transport. If you’re playing a full luck game, I recommend using the cruiser and the fighter, not the carrier and the fighter – sending just the carrier and fighter gives the transports a 15% chance to live, which is way too high. Using the cruiser and fighter drops the odds to 4%, which is more reasonable – although I also think it’s fine to use all three units, which drops Japan’s odds to 2% and has a 62% chance of leaving you with all three units surviving in the Chinese sea zone, representing a major inconvenience to Japan. Sure, they can wipe you out, but that might not be what they wanted to use their units for. Knocking out the entire Indian fleet without losing 3+ Japanese fighters is likely to pull so many Japanese units out of position that the Americans will be able to stack in the Solomon Islands on turn 1, a full turn ahead of the usual schedule.
OPENING MOVES: ATTACKING SEA ZONE 37
A weird quirk of the 1942.2 map is that Japan starts with a carrier, 2 fighters, and a battleship in the East Indies with no escort ships to help defend them. By attacking that fleet with the combined British fleets from both India and Australia, plus bringing in the British fighter from Egypt, you can knock out 2 of Japan’s 4 starting capital ships, making it much easier for America to win the naval war in the Pacific and push west toward Japan’s core territories early enough to make a difference in the war.
Some players will combine the naval attack with an amphibious assault, using both transports and 2 infantry from India plus 2 infantry from Australia to attack the 2 Japanese infantry in the East Indies. Often players will bid an extra sub in the Indian Ocean to boost the odds of the attack succeeding (from 55% to 80%).
I’m not a huge fan of this opening, partly because it’s so heavily dependent on the dice, and partly because it has such a limited upside. Yes, if you win, you can knock out expensive Japanese capital ships and steal 4 income from Japan. But even if you bring the extra sub and roll better-than-average, you’ll have something like 1 sub, 1 CV, 2 ftr left in Sea Zone 37 protecting your 2 transports. Japan can immediately stack up in Sea Zone 36 (the coast of Thailand, one sea zone away) with 1 BB, 1 CV, 1 CA, 2 ftr, 1 DD, and 2 loaded transports. The Japanese can also immediately support their fleet with another 2 ftr, 1 bmr that can carry out missions in China and then land in Thailand, plus 1 sub that can lurk in the Philippines, ready to support a J2 attack.
Meanwhile, you’ve left India weakened by taking 2 infantry off of the subcontinent, and your fleet is hopelessly outclassed, so you have two options, neither of them good. Option 1 is to bring the survivors of the East Indies campaign (usually about 2) back to India with your fleet and land your fighters in India. India will be safe (for now), but the Japanese will kill your fleet and your transports, retake the East Indies on turn 2, stack in Burma, and have an extra transport relative to where they’d be if you had just attacked the Chinese transport instead of attacking Sea Zone 37. This is the best case scenario for the Allies – in total, you’ve probably killed a Japanese CV, BB, SS, DD, & 2 fighters while stealing 4 income for one turn. Meanwhile, you used up 6 points of bid for a sub that got killed in battle, failed to trade Burma, and failed to sink a Japanese DD and transport. Add it all up, and your net gains are worth about 55 IPCs, even with above-average rolls. That’s a lot of money, but in my opinion it’s not quite enough to justify the risks of the campaign. After all, you might roll below-average on your initial attack, leaving the Japanese BB and CV intact with a loss of, e.g., only 2 fighters, and failing to take the East Indies at all. That would leave you with net losses of about 45 IPCs, not even counting the probable loss of India on turn 2.
Option 2 is to leave the East Indies infantry in place, run away with your most of your fleet to southern Australia, and send both of your fighters from the carrier back to India for defense. Assuming you were smart enough to pull back the infantry from Persia and Burma to protect India and you built 3 infantry in India on your first and second turns, that leaves you with 9 infantry, 1 fighter, and an AAA gun protecting India on J2 against a force of something like 4 inf, 2 art, 1 tnk, 4 ftr, 1 bmr, 1 CA, 1 BB – giving you only 30% odds of holding India on J2. Sure, you could up those odds somewhat by sending reinforcements from Russia – but with 9 points of your bid going to an Egyptian infantry and an Indian sub, plus one Russian fighter going to Egypt on R1, plus the other Russian fighter that really should go to Szechuan to protect the Flying Tigers…how much more can you ask of the Russians?
If you want, you can dial back this opening by using the Indian transport to ferry troops from Egypt to India, and skipping the attack on the East Indies land territory. That leaves you with more options, since India won’t be so vulnerable – but again, it’s a luck-dependent strategy that can lose you the game on the first turn (by throwing away both eastern British fleets without accomplishing any strategic goals), but doesn’t really have the potential to win the game on the first turn (because even if you kill 2 of the Japanese capital ships, they still have 2 others, and can generally afford to build more warships as needed).
OPENING MOVES: DEFENDING EGYPT
If you are planning an attack on Sea Zone 37, then you must make absolutely sure that your starting fighter in Egypt survives a G1 attack. The only ways to reinforce Egypt prior to G1 are to put a bid unit there, and to fly in a Russian fighter. I recommend that you do both unless you know your opponent is cautious to a fault. If you only bid the infantry but don’t send the Russian fighter, Germany can attack Egypt on G1 with 55% odds of killing your fighter. If you only send the fighter but don’t bid the Egyptian infantry, Germany has 40% odds of killing both the Egyptian and Russian fighters – still too high, given the stakes.
Defending Egypt also has the advantage of…defending Egypt, forcing the Germans to either stop at Libya for a while, or make a risky, inefficient attack on Trans-Jordan. If Germany stops at Libya on G1, then on B1 you can walk the infantry in Trans-Jordan over to Egypt and maybe leave your two British fighters in Egypt for one more turn to continue to delay the German advance. What you can’t afford to do is take units from Persia or India over to Egypt by transport. If anything, consider moving in the other direction – use the transport to pull two units from Egypt to India, retreat your Egyptian units south into Sudan, and let Germany have Egypt without a fight on G2. You can always fight on for the rest of Africa, reinforcing with a transport from Britain or Eastern US into Morocco and/or French West Africa as circumstances allow.
Whereas in a KGF game it makes sense to sacrifice the long-term health of India to shut down Germany’s Africa campaign in order to deny Germany crucial income, and so you can afford to plan on a B1 counter-attack in Egypt that uses troops from India and Persia to re-conquer Egypt, in a Kill Japan First game you need all available resources in India. By turn 3, you want India to have a few offensive units (1-2 artillery, 1-2 tanks, 1-2 British fighters), plus enough infantry to support them on a raid, plus enough infantry to leave behind in India that you can be confident of surviving an early amphibious assault by Japan. The idea is to force Japan to either tie down significant resources defending Burma / Yunnan / Thailand (collectively worth 4 IPC, and all within two moves of India), or to concede income to the British by letting the British trade or even keep them. You can’t put pressure on Japan from India in the opening if you’re diverting Indian troops to defend Egypt. Bare survival isn’t enough – you want to have a striking force in India.
OPENING MOVES: STACKING RUSSIANS IN SIBERIA
One sad truth about Kill Japan First that is hard to accept is that it takes an extreme level of reinforcement for the Russians to successfully stack Buryatia on R1. It cannot be done on the cheap. Even if you bid an infantry in all three eastern territories (Soviet Far East, Buryatia, and Yakut), and move the entire infantry stack to Buryatia, you still only have 8 inf – which the Japanese can crush by attacking with 4 inf, 1 tnk, 2 ftr, 1 bomber + 1 BB bombardment, giving 78% odds for Japan to take Buryatia with a land unit. If you really want to stack Buryatia, you need to bid a land unit in all three eastern territories, move the entire stack to Buryatia, and fly in a Russian fighter from Karelia to reinforce the infantry stack, which drops Japan’s odds of a taking Buryatia to only 40%, and guarantees that Japan will take heavily losses in the air even if it does win. If you’re going to bother to put in that much effort, you may as well also send a tank to Sinkiang on R1 – if Japan doesn’t adequately defend Manchuria, then you can take Manchuria on R2 with 8 inf, 1 tnk, 1 ftr.
All of this assumes that you’re killing the second Japanese transport with the British fighter on UK1 – if you leave Japan with two transports (e.g., because you’re attacking SZ 37), then you can’t afford to stack Buryatia at all on the first turn, full stop.
If you don’t want to stack Buryatia, evacuating the Russian Pacific coast altogether and stacking in Yakut is perfectly reasonable – you can bring in the two infantry from Evenki to get up to 7 infantry even without a bid. I like to bid 1 artillery in Yakut to help support the stack and send over 1 tank from Archangel, leaving me with a stack of 7 inf, 1 art, 1 tnk in Yakut. Since you own Buryatia (for now), Japan can’t put planes into the territory on its first turn, so they can put a maximum of 5 land units into Buryatia on J1 – which you can easily destroy with your 7 inf, 1 art, 1 tnk and still have enough survivors (on average, 3 inf, 1 art, 1 tnk) to make a counter-attack very expensive for Japan. Japan can’t afford to put 5 land units into Buryatia on turn 1, lose them all, and destroy another 5 Russian land units in Buryatia on turn 2 without stalling out in virtually all other theaters.
If you stack in Yakut and Japan takes the Soviet Far East and/or Buryatia lightly, with only 1 infantry, you can probably afford to trade back one territory, but without air support, light trading is not healthy for Russia, and if you split your forces or whittle them down too heavily, then you will be forced to retreat. Consider landing one fighter in Archangel on R1 so that that fighter has the option of heading east on R2 if the situation calls for it.
OPENING MOVES: REINFORCING CHINA
China – and specifically Szechuan – needs reinforcements in a Kill Japan First opening, for two reasons. First, there’s a lovely American fighter sitting in Szechuan, and if you protect it for one turn, you can send that fighter to reinforce Moscow or India, and maybe even have it join up with the US Pacific Fleet at some point. If you’re really creative, you may be able to use the Szechuan forces to can-open a path for a British Indian tank, or to take back a coastal Chinese territory somewhere deep in the middlegame. Second, Szechuan borders Russian territory, in the form of 2-IPC Kazakhstan. If you let the Japanese into Szechuan on turn 1, then they’re going to start hoovering up Russian income on turn 2, which is way too early.
It doesn’t take much to reinforce Szechuan, because it’s not a coastal territory – Japan can’t bring in additional troops by transport, and most of its air force is out of range as well. The maximum attack on Szechuan on J1 is only 1 inf, 1 art, 2 ftr, 1 bmr. To beat that, you need either 3 inf, 2 ftr or 5 inf, 1 ftr. You start with one fighter in Szechuan, so if you land the British fighter in Szechuan after you use it to kill the Chinese transport, then you just need one more infantry, which can come from Kazakh on R1. If you don’t land the British fighter in Szechuan, then you need to either fly in the Russian fighter from Moscow to compensate, or you need to come up with 3 land units from somewhere, which probably means a bid. If you bid one American infantry (or artillery) in Szechuan, then Russia can reinforce Szechuan with 1 infantry and 1 tank (from Moscow) instead of sending a fighter. Bidding an American artillery in Szechuan also has the advantage of turning the surviving Chinese into more of an offensive force – a group of 2 inf, 1 art, 1 ftr can hit a stack of up to 3 Japanese infantry and win (82% odds), but a group of 2 inf, 1 ftr really shouldn’t be hitting more than 1 Japanese infantry at a time.
If you really want to, you can bid a unit in both Szechuan and Sinkiang, and also send in 2 infantry and 1 tank from Russia. If the Japanese take heavy casualties in China or don’t unload any units onto the Chinese coast on J1, then you can probably get away with buying a factory in Sinkiang on America’s first turn, attacking Anhwei from Szechuan on A1 to make sure Japan doesn’t have any legal attacks on Sinkiang on turn 2. After that, you can buy a tank in Sinkiang every turn, and make attacks of opportunity with both the Russians and the Americans to tie up Japanese forces and ruin their planning. It’s not an optimal strategy from a financial point of view – expect to lose money on the deal relative to just flying in fighters – but if there’s any chance that your opponent will struggle to adapt to an unorthodox situation, the Sinkiang factory can be extremely disruptive without requiring you to give up too much in the way of efficiency.
OPENING STRATEGY: PROPER BIDDING
If you plan on attacking the Japanese BB and loaded carrier in Sea Zone 37 on Britain’s first turn, then I have no problem with three of the traditional bids for Kill Japan First – a British sub in the Indian Ocean, a British infantry in Egypt, and a British infantry in India all make sense. The sub lets you win the SZ 37 battle, the Egyptian inf keeps your Egyptian fighter alive long enough for it to join the SZ 37 battle, and the Indian inf helps India cope with Japan’s second transport in the aftermath of the SZ 37 battle. Those three bids synergize nicely. If you can’t afford all three bids (because your bid is less than 12 IPCs or because you want room to put units elsewhere), consider skipping the SZ 37 attack.
If you are not attacking Sea Zone 37, I do not recommend the Indian sub or Indian infantry. India will be fine as long as you destroy Japan’s Chinese transport on UK1 and properly reinforce India during the game, and the Indian sub doesn’t pay for itself unless you are going to take out the Japanese BB + CV.
I also do not recommend bidding an American destroyer in the Atlantic, because the western pair of German submarines have an excellent alternative – they can just kill the Canadian transport and destroyer instead, leaving Britain with zero boats in the Atlantic. Since the American transports survive, Americans can land 4 units in Morocco on turn 1, but even with a second destroyer, the American fleet will still be killed on G2, because to drop off troops in Morocco, the Americans have to get within fighter range of France.
Instead of putting units in the Atlantic or India, consider bidding units in China, Siberia, or Eastern Europe. Szechuan is always the correct place to put your first extra Chinese unit, since anything in Anhwei or Yunnan can easily be destroyed on Japan’s first turn. After you place in Szechuan, you can place in Siankiang if you really want to keep going in China. An American AAA gun can be an interesting second bid for China, since there’s no way of getting one there without a bid or a factory, and Japan will need to rely heavily on its air power to wipe out a reinforced China.
One interesting idea that I have not yet tested is to bid a second fighter for the American carrier in Pearl Harbor. If Japan sends the traditional attack of 2 ftr, 1 bmr, 1 sub, 1 CA to attack Pearl Harbor, then it’s a 50-50 battle that Japan can’t afford to lose. If Japan also throws in the CV, then Japan’s odds go back up to 74%, but they’ll almost certainly be leaving a naked carrier deck in range of the American counter-attack, and the Japanese bomber (if it survives) may be exposed as well. If Japan tries sending additional air force to make up the gap, that may slow down their gains in Burma / China / Siberia.
END OF OPENING SECTION
That’s all for now – I’ll write more soon and move onto the KJF middlegame!