G1 strategies for Sealion

Doh, thats right.  I misspoke, you save one if concerned Japan might be invaded by US.  It can stop bombards and is cheaper than throwing a ftr away doing it.

So only save a kami if you think Japan is about to be invaded.

Well you also need the 124 sub to cancel the NO for russia for at least a round maby more.

I think you just made your plan worse.

I pointed out that the attack on G3 isn’t strong enough to take London. You have just made your G3 attack weaker, which means that london definlity isn’t falling.

@Cmdr:

@Fishmoto37:

@ghr2:

your board is very shiny

I  guess you are refering to my board. It is covered with a plexiglass sheet. Protects the game board and keeps it in place.

Keeps coffee and beer stains off I guess, huh?

Only coffee!

@simon33:

@taamvan:

Simon33,

Yes, we set up at the game shop at 10AM when it opens, and end around 5-6PM.  Game 111 is tomorrow at 10AM.

Wow. How many rounds does such a game go for? Typically, the first round goes for about 1.5-2 hours in my experience. Later rounds might be under an hour but I can’t see getting to 10 rounds in this time unless you play significantly faster than my experience.

A few things help with this though.

Deside before the game who gets what. That way the axis can already plan germany ahead of time, so germany takes like 10 minutes to play.
Also since japan isnt affected at all by allies ( except russia ) you can also plan that 1 ahead.

A laptop with excel and some setup so you can buy using that. Saves you calculating. Also allows the allies to plan their buys ahead of time without the axis knowing about it. Just not having to calculate what the total costs of you units is and easy swapping between buys without redoing all the calculations really saves time. Again even a 2-3 minutes saved each nation is already 20 minutes a round.

Plenty of dice so you can throw a round in 1 go. Does not sound like much but saving even 10 seconds each combat adds up to about 1 minut saved the first round for germany. And with bigger combats the time saved goes up as well. Can easy save you 5-10 minutes each game round ( that is 1 hour in a 6 round game)

Russia Far east movement goes before the rest of russia ( if there is only non combat play that part and then do the western front ) since russia is so vast your dice throws will not affect this area anyway and it allows the japan player to think while you are playing russia.

Using these small things depending on the side i play i can either play the allies really fast 5-10 minutes each country maximum. I normaly buy and plan all the allies while japan is busy.
UK-Eu isnt affected and once combat moves are shown you already know if USA and UKP and ANZAC are affected and how. Sure some non combat might affect it but using a laptop swapping a few units out for others takes seconds.

@special:

Well, i was being sarcastic about taking Canada 😉

Of course, as Axis there wouldn’t be anything wrong in going after Gibraltar, or controlling the Atlantic, or even snatching brazil.
But as a US player allowing all this, that would be really really bad play.

i agree with that.

mostly, because it is not this difficult to keep the axis out of gibraltar.

SZ 6 is a terrible spot for the Japanese navy if you’re being focused by the WAllies (it’s fine if you’re left relatively alone and are threatening Hawaii for victory). The DEIs are worth 20 to Japan, Japan+Korea money being convoyed is only 11. The Philippines are the best spot to station the IJN after conquering the DEIs. Add an airbase to FIC and you’re basically unapproachable. Not only does it extend that air’s reach, it also provides a scramble to protect newly built transports/destroyers to reclaim DEIs from the WAllies/reinforce IJN

The US is going to need a massive fleet to be able to survive in SZ 6/Carolines SZ or use several destroyers as blockers. Every plane you have in FIC w/ an airbase can hit SZ 6, same with the whole fleet at Philippines if it’s not blocked. Carolines SZ isn’t much safer because if you still control one of the islands in the adjacent sea zones (not uncommon as they are valueless, defended, and no facilities), you can “double up” your aircraft carrier capacity when attacking it: Planes on the carriers at Philippines attack the sea zone planning to land on said island and planes from FIC can attack the sea zone planning to land on the carriers. If they do block you with destroyers, then you can kill those with subs and/or planes and take the favorable casualty ratio. Since the US needs a heavily defensive fleet to be able to withstand your counterattack, your fleet at the Philippines is likely unattackable by the US fleet, putting planes on the island for scramble if need be.

If Russia stacks Bury Rd1, just don’t do a J1 DoW. Crush the Russian stack J1 instead, advance on China and set up a moderately successful J3 DoW (not gonna be ideal because of the Russian diversion. But hey, you get Russian money as a trade-off). Be content that Germany can get a comfortable take of Moscow without worrying about balancing haste and profitability.
If Russia pulls back for one round and then re-advances to Bury Rd2, this is probably the toughest Japan will have it. Very unlikely that they will take the Pacific victory (unless the US ignores them), but Germany will still get the easy take on Moscow and should be able to turn that into a Europe victory.

I’ve noticed a change in how we play UK lately. We usually will draw countries at random so nobody is stuck always playing Russia or Italy, although we do have one player who actually prefers to play UK/ANZAC more often than not.
Anyway, in past games UK used to scramble almost every time on G1. Usually this results in the death of the RAF while taking a good chunk of the Luftwaffe with them. Lately however, UK tends to not scramble preferring to keep all the RAF for use in hopefully more profitable ventures. Not sure if this really works, but it is very handy to have those planes around, especially when working with destroyers to keep German subs from convoying them. Also, a good stack of 5-7 fighters sitting on London by round 3 often dissuades a Sealion attempt.