Back to the Future: Deadzoning Karelia

  • Moderator

    Just looking over the early setup and potential German moves, I think we could see a revival of a Classic PE defense from 2nd Edition.

    Anyone familar with playing 2nd Ed with 21-24 PE bids knows that sometimes it was necessary to evacuate Kar and try to invite the Germans in prematurely, I can potentially see this for the '41 setup.  You can’t defend everywhere, but sometimes the threat of an attack or counterattack is all you need.  The key is to delay the all out German advance giving your allies the time to get their trns in the water and infantry supply chain going.

    Russia can keep an early power base in Belo, while placing its 10 units in Cauc/Mos.  Germany is light on early inf so if they move into Kar with too much armor you can strafe them down with wise Russian purchases.

    From Belo, Cauc, Mos you can threaten a couple different key spots.  Germany should not be able to split its army that early in the game, so force them to choose to go after Kar or Cauc.
    From there you can shift defenses and hopefully delay the immediate blitzing by Ger.  By Rd 3 or 4 I’d expect you can get minor UK/US help where needed (probably north in the Nor, Fin, Kar region) and another turn or so after that they should be up to full speed.

    Obviously, still testing things out, but maybe a Russia 1 attack on Fin, stack in Belo leave 1 inf in Kar.  Strafe of BST optional but recommended.  On G2 they can’t go into Kar without exposing armor to a counterattack (in either Kar or BST) and any inf place in Ger or in Pol is still a couple moves away from Cauc.  Plenty of time to shift your Belo stack as needed.  Newly placed units in Mos can be added to Belo if trading inf is needed for Kar or Inf can immediately go to Cauc if Ger/Italy is threatening there.

    I’ve tried the Fin attack with a BST strafe in my game with KGB.  We’ll see how it goes.


  • I remember that trick, but as you know it was also a refuted line of play. I remember the Germans took it lite and brought that tank to EE and took back Ukraine and Caucasus.

    I think that’s impossible in 1941. The Soviets can build 6 tanks with 30 IPC, but Germany would have at least that many defending to make it a mutual death going slightly against the Soviets and they cant afford to trade a turns worth of builds.

    I think it may work in 1942, as long as the Soviets take the southern territories ( UKraine, Belo, East Ukraine), because they at least have air units and a lot more tanks.

    I remember the leave Karelia tactic in MB required a 3 tank, 3 Infantry buy with 24 IPC

Suggested Topics

  • 4
  • 8
  • 4
  • 13
  • 7
  • 11
  • 21
  • 11
Axis & Allies Boardgaming Custom Painted Miniatures

34

Online

17.0k

Users

39.3k

Topics

1.7m

Posts