Different flavours of KJF

@Fabius:

Hello everybody this is my first message, I’m an Italian player of A&A and I would like to know your impressions on this KJF strategy.

First Round:
UK: purchase 2 transport 1 Inf 1 Arm and attacks Norway with 2 Inf 1 Arm 1 Artillery (assuming Germany uses his Atlantic Submarine with the fighters to destroy the Brits Battelship in Med). Uk destroyer goes from India to S59 and destroy the Jap transport. Uk moves his South African Inf to Kenya (assuming Germany destroyed Brits in Angloegypt) and Persian Inf to India.
Uk also moves the Indian Fleet in S30 and also the Australian Fleet.
Uk also moves one armor from East Canada to Alaska, and one Inf from West Canada to Alaska.

What do you think?

I think I’m either going to take London or destroy your North Sea fleet on G2.

Also, an IC in Alaska doesn’t seem a good use of ipcs–-why not buy an extra AC with that cash or consider a Sink IC?  In the strat you describe Japan is going to get rich on mainland ICs which will allow them to buy air to resist the dual fleet threat.

@U-505:

@newpaintbrush:

@U-505:

Well, Switch, the reason the Commander wants to play Low Luck is that she wants a narrower baseline with which to judge the viability of the strategy. Low Luck gives her that. If the majority of the results fall within the limits LL provides or the Allies win decisively, then it becomes a viable strategy. If the Axis can win most of the games decisively in LL, then it requires favorable dice in ADS and should be abandoned. What’s the point of playing 10 games of ADS when you can play 5 games of LL and get the same general idea about the strategy?

You can hate LL for whatever reasons, but all you’re doing is limiting yourself. All LL does is eliminate wild dice swings. This game is primarily about outmanouvering your opponent and it is required just as much in LL as in ADS. ADS just provides more variability which is why I prefer it to LL, but I still enjoy my LL games just as much and if I lose, I will have a harder time complaining that I was screwed by the dice.

If you have the MOST COMMON RESULT happening 5% of the time, and ninety-five variants happening 1% of the time, then it logically follows that you should expect to see the MOST COMMON RESULT every time.

Never mind that something else happens 95% of the time.

All I’m saying is that you are limiting yourself. You don’t have to justify your dislike for LL to me.

My bad.  :wink:

I like Hawaii/Australia on Round 2
New Zealand/Madagascar on Round 3

I can go back to Hawaii if America’s a nuisance or I can pick up islanders on the way to Buryatia.

I think Japan must attack the US at Pearl.  It is far more dangerous to leave the US fleet in Pearl than the UK fleet in Sz 30.

Some players will sink both, but there are pros and cons for that on both sides.

If I’m Japan, I’ll usually leave that merged fleet and deal with it later if I have to with the full J Navy/airforce.  I could run into trouble if the Allies do go Pac strat, but I prefer to limit my J1 attacks and attack heavy (such as sending everything I can to Pearl and everything else to China).

@frimmel:

God d**n perhaps?

okay i gottch’ya. if your goin swear paintbrush do it right you F*******e(wroung way)  :-)

Nix has had some good success with his FIC open.

Removes a Japan FIG (making it as valuable a strike as Ukraine for Russia on R1), destroys land forces preventing any chance of India fallign on J1, no matter how much AF he brings (assuming TRN off Kwang is sunk by DST/AC combo), and also weakens the attack on China.

And goddess forbid the UK FIG lives and lands in China…  1 less FIG, 1-2 less INF for that attack by Japan… and against two 2’s and two 4’s…  Japan can win, but they will be THIN in Central Asia, non-existent in Soutern Asia, and possibly with Russia on their doorstep threatening Manch in northern Asia.  And still the US Pearl Counter, and some pesky UK ships around Australia to deal with…

And us old AD&D players who have more d6 than you can shake a stick at…

It has been 6 years since I last played D&D, and right now, within 30 seconds, I could lay my hands on enough D6 to designate a specific die for every single unit in battle… including each INF having its own die!  100th level fireballs :-P

1. I have tried it.
2. I usually try to have 6-8 Russian infantry defend Sinkiang. You need about that much and sometimes the Russian fighters to deter a full push from Japan if his goal is to knock it out.
3. I’ve done that a few times. It scares the crap out of newer players. However you have to understand that you’re letting the Kwangtung transport and the Solomon Islands sub to live.
4. My friends have done both. Personally I think it’s a mistake to gun the British fleet down in the first turn in that scenario. Letting Pearl Harbor survive is a big mistake as it allows the US to accumulate a significant naval force 1-2 turns faster than usual.
5. Well, what do you mean by work? In the short term doing all of those things (both ICs, combining British fleet, sending us fighters and russian infantry) will indubitably control Japanese expansion. But past that it’s all up to what the US does. The ICs alone won’t stop Japan for long; if you look at the math Japan can overwhelm India on turn 3 even after doing Pearl Harbor. Japan simply has too many fighters to stop early on if he is focused on his targets. If the US continues to gun after Japan then you will stop Japan from being strong permanently, but then Africa will fall to Germany quickly. You always also have to keep a very careful eye on the UK because a tricky Germany player will pop out 6 transports in one turn and try to overwhelm the UK since he’s been building troops in India and is down all those IPCs in Africa.
6. A tough question no doubt. Like I said, I think it’s asking for trouble if you let Germany take over Africa, which means it’s a good idea to have the US liberate it early on. However, if the US doesn’t follow up on those ICs, then Japan will overwhelm them if he’s good.

I’m not really an expert on this as I haven’t tested it extensively in a while (I tried KJF a few months ago but I didn’t know a few tactics I know now). I would say though that if the Japan player is excellent, then nothing short of all 3 powers going after him will hinder him permanently. I have personally broken free of the sinkiang/indian IC very quickly without US naval support bogging me down. Good Japanese players realize that it’s OK to empty the mainland territories to charge straight into China; although it lets Russia/UK take a territory, this lets you completely and utterly bone the Sinkiang IC turn two, and you can always easily regain the coastal territories using your fighters and battleship bombardments. Your strategy is very good against perhaps low-mid level Japanese players though, looking at that combined British fleet and all those ICs on the mainland it bound to panic him.

I have some additional tips for KJF:

1. Take a good look at where the Japanese player is placing his first turn transport buys. If he is silly enough to place them in the outer Japan seazone, then blow them out of the water with the Hawaaiin fighter + Washington Bomber or just one of them. Believe it or not, the bomber can reach that outer seazone and land in Buryatia; fly up to eastern canada, then to western canada, then to that seazone bordering the north of western canda, then I think from there it’s 2 spaces to that seazone then 1 space into Buryatia, making for 6 spaces. It’s an almost instant game win if you destroy the 3 transports he builds there, and is very clever the first time you see it, although probably past then it will never work. Also if China somehow survived then the fighter there is in a great position to strike at either seazones that the transports deploy in. It takes an observant and clever Japanese player to protect his transports carefully.

2. Somtimes you can panic the Japanese player by consolidating 6 infantry into Buryatia as well as sending 2 tanks in Moscow to the east 2 spaces. Against good Japanese players this probably won’t affect their strategy but against people who haven’t seen it, they will usually panic and not attack China first turn because they’ll look at Manchuria and panic.

3. You can consolidate the British fleet into sz30 as well as sz38. Sz30 is much more out of the way of the Japanese navy than sz38, though if your intent is lure them into attacking your fleet with a lot of units then this isn’t the way to go. Putting them in sz30 though really forces the Japanese to keep an eye on it since it’s in a position to invade some islands. Load full infantry into both transports when you converge them into sz30 will make the Japanese player sweat a bit. He’ll have to keep his bship/car in west indies or you’ll invade it, and he’s not in a good position to attack your fleet with just that because he’ll probably take at least 2 hits and lose a fighter or so. He may be tempted to strafe you with all those infantry aboard but thats’ pretty much what you want because your navy will make him pay for the strafe (1 car + 1 or 2 fighters if the anglo egypt one survived, 1 sub, 1 destroyer, 2 trans).

Also Britain can send their bomber to sinkiang on turn one. This puts an additional monkey wrench in Japanese logistics if they’re used to buying all transports turn one. Now they have to protect their transports wherever they mobilize them, which means buying a destroyer or something which they normally wouldn’t do.

Another alternate monkey wrench move is instead of consolidating the fleets, do this: send the destroyer, carrier, and transport to attack the Kwangtung transport. Send the fighter and sub to attack the solomon island sub. The fighter will land on the US carrier =) Usually you’ll end up destroying the enemy sub before it can submerge. Now you have presented the Japanese with some thorns. Pearl Harbor is a little harder to attack now since he lost a sub and now that there’s an additional fighter defending there. Also now there’s this quirky fleet sitting next to Kwangtung which is poised to strike as new naval units being built if it isn’t instantly targeted by the Indies fleet. Sometimes you can incur a fighter casualty with this fleet when Japan strikes it (2 hits total).

4. When your US fleet is gunning after Japan, I personally believe that the best tactical maneuver is not to charge straight west into the Japan seazone (2 turns), but to drop down to Solomon islands. This puts Japan in a bind, because from here you can attack his money islands (boreno, philiippines, west indies) as well as the Japan mainland. He is going to be forced to attack you there, giving you the defending advantage, or risk you grabbing his money islands because he can’t defend nearly all of them and then deploying an IC there, which totally throws things out of whack for him.

There are a number of Japanese strategies to help counter these tricky KJF strategies, but I don’t want to go into them right now because I’m lazy. Besides a few tricks the basic goal is to wait for Germany to overcome Africa, take some Russian territories, and then either crush Moscow then go to India or surprise attack Britain.