Invasion of alaska on J1?

@Sherman

Just to nail this part down, I went ahead and pulled the exact stats for Egypt actually being captured by the Germans with an extra British infantry added in and its 35%:

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You have to convert one tank to a fighter and select “Retreat when only air left”. This will ensure the calculator leaves one of the tanks alive along with the bomber resulting in an Egypt capture.

And if it helps, I have lost as the Allies even after holding Egypt on G1 (I’ve also won games after losing it on G1 but in that case, I feel experience won the day). And after reading your second post, I will say that when I make balance recommendations in the videos, they are very conservative relative to what I feel is the true game state. In other words, I’d rather the game remain imbalanced than go too far with too much for the weaker side. I might also make that more clear in a future video. Anyway, I hope that helps try to convince your group to adopt that second infantry into either Yunnan or Egypt - or even both for a total of three… or an additional bid of some kind.

@Poptech said in A&A Anniversary 1941 Sea Lion Strategy:

I am aware of that and the Europe, Pacific and Global TripleA maps restrict that kind of movement.

No, also on those TripleA maps TripleA incorrectly allows Non Combat Moves during Combat Move Phase.

@Poptech said in A&A Anniversary 1941 Sea Lion Strategy:

I understand the idea behind restricting it but it is more for unit movement tracking in the board game.

One idea behind the rules only accepting combat moves during combat move phase is that some moves during Noncombat Move Phase are based on or enforced by results of the Conduct Combat Phase. You cannot know these results during Combat Move Phase.

For example:
As the (maybe unexpected) result of a combat a fighter needs a different than expected landing place on a carrier. Now in case you hadn’t moved a carrier in reach during Combat Move Phase (with a legal combat move) that carrier in the given situation must move during NCM to allow the fighter to land. If that carrier had been moved illegally during Combat Move Phase it would not be allowed to move again or would maybe be out of reach.

@Poptech said in A&A Anniversary 1941 Sea Lion Strategy:

When playing digitally it only makes it easier to forget to unload or reposition troops.

TripleA cleary indicates which units have not moved yet so usually you should not forget any movement action.

@domanmacgee said in Stopping the Allies?:

@thedesertfox Are you playing with NOs on or off? As @OLA mentioned, which side is favored in the 41 setup swings based on whether NOs are being used. Off = Allied-favored, On = Axis-favored. It boils down to the starting income gap being easier to mitigate when Axis have access to their NOs.

Not sure if German navy is the right way of going about things. In higher level games it’s usually Japan that ends up winning the game for the Axis while Germany/Italy hold the line.

I’ll add the following rule-of-thumb.

Assuming every other option is off,

Using Low Luck (a popular house rule) possibly balances the game when played with no options on or else gives an additional slight advantage to the Axis.

@argothair It depends on which battles failed.

Typically, if any battle is going to go sideways, it’s the SZ12 one (DD/CR off of Gibraltar). I don’t mind losing/drawing this one too much, as all does is gives UK an opportunity to either go all-in against the Italian fleet or consolidate their Atlantic Fleet (which Germany really has no means of stopping even if you kill everything).

In the extremely unlikely event that SZ2 or SZ6 (where the actual transports are) go badly, you’re probably in really horrible shape. Only real recourse at that point is to turtle up, by tons of INF, and pray for better luck on Japan’s side of the board.

They the key is having both sides of the map going at same time. This is no way any knock towards any guys games and such.
I know some have time limits to play a country but if you have battle boards on each end of map plus cut back on strategy talking when both players are discussing 1 country which is fine to a certain point then say Germany plays while Japan plays and other side is defending same time.

@xlome_00 Sea Lion is one of those attacks where the threat is mightier than the execution. If you buy a carrier for the Baltic Fleet on G1, that’s a reasonable purchase anyway to protect your supply lines to Norway/Finland/Leningrad/Baltics. If you move the German Med transport to the central Med, it is protected by the Italian fleet and can reinforce Libya, which is a reasonable move anyway. If you then bring the Italian fleet to take Gibraltar and retake Morocco, that helps score your NOs, so that’s a normal attack. So all of these preparatory moves can be done with minimal cost to the standard Axis war effort.

But then the American bomber cannot sink the German transport without landing in either Egypt (where it will die on a G2 Egypt attack) or Caucasus (where it spoils the Russian NO.)

If they leave your Med transport alive, you move it to Western Med on G2 where Italian fleet protects it again, build a second transport in Baltic on G2 plus an extra plane, and now you are threatening UK with 3 inf, 3 tank, 1 CA, 4 ftr, 1 bmr on a hypothetical G3 sea lion.

UK can of course defend against this, but they will have to build a fat infantry stack in London instead of factories, ships, or air power. This could cost them the Atlantic fleet or at least force them to retreat it back to Canada; if they built a factory in Africa / India, they might lose it because they cannot afford to build units there on a critical turn. Meanwhile those infantry in London will just sit there inefficiently for several turns because there are not enough transports to ship them anywhere, and not enough warships to protect the Atlantic fleet in a forward position.

Your second Baltic transport is reasonably useful for shipping inf/art to Leningrad, and the extra fighter can of course be used for trading on the eastern front, defending France, etc. as usual.

So you never actually attack London in an AA50 game – you just quietly threaten to attack it, thereby forcing the Allies to waste much more money on defense than you spent on creating the threat.

We also have a different House rule that has proven to be very interesting:

We use the Chinese Setup from 1942 but instead of Suiyuan having 2 Inf, we add an additional Inf in Yunnan (thous having 3 Inf 1 Fig)…

The Japanese player can still opt to got for it with 3 Inf 2 Fig, but it is an evenly and very costly battle.

Having more boots in China also makes the abundance of Japanese transports in 1941 less of a problem since the Japanese player has to send a bit more Infantry to China to counter them.

We found this setup to be way more interesting and also historically accurate because China was a pain in the ass for Japan and it shouldn’t be that easy for Japan to defeat them.

@U-505:

Second, the logical progression after attacking Phil is to go to Australia(J2) and then to India(J3) and then to Africa(J4). It’s hard for me to wrap my head around what happens if you don’t attack Phil on J1, but you still go for India and Phil on J2. Australia is still in UK hands at the end of J2 so in order to take it you’re either going backwards from India or if you push on to Africa from India then you’re looking at buying a lot more TP’s than just the 1 or 2 I usually buy with Japan because most of your initial TP’s will be too far away to come back and start landing units from Japan. And that seems costly considering you earned 7 IPC’s less than you would if you had taken Phil on J1.

If I don’t attack Philipines J1, I buy 2 tpts.  Those Tpts can take on Philipines J2, leaving all the other tpts freedom to do whatever they want.  By stationing in sz37, taking Burma, Japan will have 4 transports, loaded carrier, BB, CA in range of Australia J2 (Unless UK blocks).  Ground unit wise, at least 3 inf + whatever is left in Burma to australia J2.  The threat to hit India with the same units and 3 ftrs in FIC makes the UK units run for the hills, so you pretty much walk into India J2 AND take australia without being blocked from Australia by one silly UK DD (if you go to Philipines).

By being in SZ37, you threaten so many spots, the allies really can’t afford to try and hold anything very strongly and their best/safest course of action is to withdraw safely, most likely to persia.  Even there, JApan can hit with east indies and burma units + 2 ftrs or maybe another 2 ftrs if italy/germany take TRJ.

It’s not a pretty scenario for the allies.  Of course, the allies can get lucky and hurt Japan by doing well in Burma (3 inf, art vs UK inf), but the same can be said of the US inf hurting that same force J1.