@andrewaagamer So after I made my arguments here, I thought things over, and realized I hadn’t touched AA50 41 Scenario in a while, so I straight up took the day off work and solitaire’d 6 games in TripleA (I used no bid because I was lazy). I did a 100% all-in KGF strategy for the Allies every time and tried a variety of strategies for the Axis. Basic rundown below:
Game #1: All Axis Powers 100% Aggression against Moscow. Allies won on ~Turn 5 because I tried pushing Moscow with Germany on G5 and the dice didn’t go my way. Even if I had succeeded, Allies had a solid chance to still win because they were already in Italy and US/UK were both ferrying 3 transports full of units + bomber spam across Europe, so Germany was more-or-less on death’s door. Japan meanwhile, despite going 100% for Moscow, was only in Novosbirisk with like 3 tanks, and in Persia with 2 (they had bigger stacks behind this, but they after the main German/Italian push had failed, USSR would be able to stall out Japan long enough for UK/US to finish off Germany).
Game #2: Same strategy as game #1 because I thought I got unfairly diced in the Moscow fight. I refined my Allied play a bit (Game #1 was pretty rough around the edges because I was rusty as all hell) and this time Italy ended up falling on USA4, meaning Germany never even really got a chance to push for Moscow because they were under too much pressure at home. Once again Japan was not close enough to Moscow with a large enough force to make a difference by time the game was decided. Allies win.
Game #3: Germany 100% guns it for Moscow, Italy plays defensively, Japan 100% guns it for Moscow. Same result as game #2, except this time Germany didn’t get very far into Russia as the Soviets were able to exploit the lack of an Italian southern flank and constantly harass the Germans by pushing Ukraine with 3-4 INF stacks in Ukraine, threatening the NO in Bulgaria-Romania. Same old story with Japan. Italy playing more defensively didn’t change the result, as they died USA4 anyway (they had pretty mediocre dice on more than one occasion but I doubt that better dice would have bought me more than one more round anyway). Allies win.
Game #4: Germany tries to replicate the “Dark Skies” strategy from G40 to stop the UK fleet buildup, Italy 100% guns it for Africa, Japan plays for NOs. I tried a bit of a “Kill Britain First” (minus the sealion, I just wanted to keep the Western Allies out of the game for as long as possible). This worked for all of 2 turns before UK2 Britain basically rebuilt their entire fleet and Germany couldn’t keep up with the attrition while also making progress against a USSR that was playing more aggressively to exploit the fact that Germany wasn’t building many land units. I called the game as early as G3 because I realized that Axis had no hope of actually winning. Allies win.
Game #5: Germany plays defensively (building mostly INF/FTR + the occasional TANK. Whatever combination results in 10 units in Germany each turn). Italy also plays defensively, Japan focuses primarily on NOs (both collecting its own and denying US/UK theirs) + consolidating its navy. This game was much more even than the previous 4. Germany/Italy turtled for an extremely long time, which was made possible by Japan’s moves in the Pacific (which I outlined earlier in this thread) eliminating all of UK’s NOs and all of USA’s (except for the freebie they get for controlling mainland USA) by round 2. This, combined with Japan hurling its starting fleet (sans the Fighters, which went into Russia to try to help push down Moscow), slowed the Western Allies down enough that, by round 7, Germany was able to suicide its main stack onto Moscow to weaken the Russians to the point where, even after a build, Japan was able to take it. Unfortunately, UK/USA responded to this by going all in and doing a one-two punch to take Berlin. Germany did succeed at getting back into Berlin for one turn, but the damage was already done, and USA/UK just took it a second time with another one-two punch. Two rounds of pilfering Germany’s income made Japan’s seizure of Moscow insufficient to carry the game, so they conceded on USA 8. Allies win, but barely.
Game #6: Same strategy as before, but Japan builds ICs on the mainland instead of going 100% transport shuck. This mostly played out the same as game #5, but I was able to get Japan’s Air Stack into Europe around Round 6, preventing Germany/Italy from falling for long enough to seize Moscow with Japan on J8. Germany never got a chance to suicide its stack against Moscow though, as they had much worse dice luck on that front and never managed to hold even Karelia for more than a round or two. Still, with Moscow gone and with USA/UK not able to break Italy or Germany (they were trading France/NW Europe though), the Allies had to concede after J8, Axis win relatively easily, but not as easily as I thought they’d win in this scenario.
TL;DR in my next post.