@taamvan said in Australia first? Kind of?:
The consensus here is that UK should either buy 6 infantry or 1 fighter, or 2 fighters and 1-2 men/arty. That’s still not enough stuff to stop Germany esp later on the the game so that’s just the obligatory 1st turn UK buy.
My friends would get pretty mad at me if I forfeited the game on turn 1. I can’t say I’ve never whined about getting diced or making a bad move, but I’d play out at least 4 turns just to make it fair to them. Think about good you feel when you get amazing luck and get to stomp on the competition–you should let them do that too even when the stomp-ee is you.
Once all their stuff is together and they have 2 transports, they have a variety of things they can do. Yes, that fleet is still vulnerable but now UK has to spend turns 2-4 being wary of Egypt and the MIddle East/Middle Earth zone being threatened. You can’t build in peace and consolidate your position. Really, the kicker is what I said originally–Italy is a gigantic liability to Germany if its weak and Germany has to divert planes and soliders to protect rome rather than having Rome as a helper. The US can easily take Rome with a 4-turn-build fleet and the German player would divert mobility units to SItaly (infantry are too slow to get there and Northern Italy’s stack is weak as well cutting off the lines of communication).
Once America is in SZ 91, the writing is on the wall for the Italian Fleet and Capital anyways, unless Germany does something about that. Its more about buying time with Italy, and getting that can opener ready so that Russia falls before Italy does.
It is precisely because of that (have to forfait a game that is screwed from UK1 up) that i was looking for alternatives for taranto. But the experience shows that either on UK2 or UK3 you still end up with a big (sea) battle against italian air and navy in a kind of taranto2.0. off course the rest of the board also looks a bit diffrent. Once again yes in 90% of the games taranto will work out, but in the 10% it doesn’t (dices can be cruel) it is almost a game over.
An argument pro Gibastion is the fact that sea lion becomes nearly impssible for germany (on the condition you keep your UK fleet and fighters intact until UK2.
An other plan i have ben playing with is to save the UK carrier in the red sea, and built a BB in south africa on UK2 and a carrier in india on UK1 (when no j1 DOW). Thus combining those two fleets you are almost equal in size as the japanese navy (2 BB and 2 carriers versus 2BB and 3 carriers).