In response to Japan putting “the freighteners” on the US….How does Japan distract the US in any way that doesn’t slow Japan down more IPC-wise than the US?
Posts made by chompers
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RE: Operation Barbarossa 3.0
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RE: Operation Barbarossa 3.0
That’s a plan predicated on Italy taking Africa and expanding its economy. They won’t if half their fleet is at the bottom of the Med. If Germany has to assist Italy in Africa, it’s weakening its push into Russia. If the Russian player organizes his defense around Bryansk and Belarus with R1 and R2 9 art builds complementing their already considerable number of inf, by G4 anything less than a really concerted German push is gonna stall a province or two in. If the German player continues to posses the advantage in numbers (only possible IMHO through its own inf/art buys) the Russian player is forced to fall back for a turn to allow extra reinforcements from Moscow, but by R6 or so the Russian stack is always bigger. You really only need to hold the line for the first 6-7 turns before America’s camped at Gibraltar with a considerable force of its own, forcing Germany to concentrate the vast majority of its spending on covering the ridiculous number of critical territories within striking range of the US fleet. At this point even a 20 IPC Russia (unlikely to fall even this far unless the Japs are pushing very hard) is probably spending more than Germany on the Russian front, allowing them to always possess the advantage in numbers.
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Sea Lion revisited
Any ideas on how the Axis can effectively exploit a g3 Sea Lion? My opponent has pulled it off 2 games in a row now and has lost both. The first time he did it slightly on the cheap because I was spending half my income in Africa and managed to take UK with a 6 transport purchase. It would have worked out pretty well as he managed to have a decent sized army left over since he didn’t have to devote 90% of his turn 2 purchase to transports, however he missed the fact that my Russian sub was within striking distance of his transport stack and lost them thereby losing his ability to reinforce or retake the island once the US showed up turn 5 to liberate UK. A US Norway factory followed shortly thereafter and things went rapidly downhill for the Axis.
The second game I’d learned my lesson and built 9 inf UK1 followed by 9inf 1 arm UK2 and Germany went in with 7 surviving planes plus his 10 transports. He came out of his with 3 arm and his air force surviving (GB AA guns are notoriously ineffective in our games) and this time had a large enough German fleet that I couldn’t sink his transports. The net result of all of this was the US had to wait till the German fleet retreated into the Baltic after the US showed up @ Gibraltar, then block the German fleet w/ a couple ships while the rest liberated the UK. He tried to leave his cruiser in sz 110 to stop me from bottling up his fleet but it was sunk by that Russian sub (my new MVP). This time since Germany had bought 9 transports G2 it was dangerously undermanned in the face of a large Russian stack sitting in eastern Poland (I starting massing on the front lines as soon as I saw his G1 carrier build) and a large US fleet w/ 7 loaded transports and a revived Britain in the Atlantic.
My thoughts
1. There’s no way Germany can hold onto UK past G6 tops if the US player anticipates the Sealion (and who won’t after a multi-transport build g2?). It’s worth noting both games the US was splitting its income between the two theaters (about 30% pacific/ 70% Atlantic) and Japan attacked J3.2. The 25-30 IPC’s plus 8 more per turn Germany gets from plundering UK comes nowhere near defraying the costs of taking the island in the face of UK1 and UK2 inf builds.
3. GB should still sink the ITL BB, CA, and TRN UK1 even if G1 purchases the CV +1 TRN and a ship. IMHO it’s better for UK to go ahead and effectively remove Italy from the game early knowing that with London falling they won’t be able to reinforce Africa for a couple turns, rather than going up against the German fleet in a battle that could very easily result in them losing all their starting ftrs. I even managed to do this while flying the Tac back to the UK turn 1, although admittedly the raid becomes much more dicey as a result. It’s worth noting that even with UK being dead for 2 turns the 2nd game they still drove Italy out of Africa with ease. A 15 IPC Italy is ripe for the American picking after they liberate UK.
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RE: Operation Barbarossa 3.0
That’s the problem. There’s literally no combination of units the German’s can come up with that’ll beat a Russian player churning out inf/art. There’s really no way of taking down Moscow before at least turn 10 once the Russian player realizes this. I honestly believe Germany going inf/art w/ a sub a turn is the only thing that gives them a fighting chance long-term.
This game is painfully allied-favored.
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RE: Moscow Crush
You might want to try just giving chase to the 18 inf with your land units in Manchuria/Korea backed up with enough planes to keep the russians running. If you push simultaneously through northern China you may be able to cut them off. I also like building an airbase in Suiyuyan on J3 so that from J4 onwards you can start strat bombing Moscow with your 4 (or 2 depending on setup, although I’ll normally have bought at least 1 more by now using Alpha setup if I’m trying this strategy).
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RE: Alpha better gameplay?
I prefer my games face to face. What’s wrong with a little theory-crafting, eh? :-P
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RE: Alpha better gameplay?
IMHO by the way, I enjoy the aesthetic of Alpha better as all those Jap planes looked a little ridiculous. Initial impressions of the game play were that it slows down Japan a tiny bit too much, but I’ll have to play a few more games before I can say that with some degree of certainty.
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RE: Alpha better gameplay?
Oh yeah, sorry I didn’t state that better. I meant US3 and 4 pressure. So you let the US move into SZ 6 and then hope to kill them with your returning airforce? They can do some serious harass if you let them get in that far.
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RE: Alpha better gameplay?
A smart US player will have more than 1 transport ready by US 3. So you block w/ the DD for a turn, Us fleet moves forward (it can use the aussie fighters in OOB to kill DD blocks too btw) , but the India crush requires your air force to be out of position for 2 turns. How do you hold the 2nd turn?
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RE: Alpha better gameplay?
Is the J1 attack/J3 India crush worthwhile in your opinions if it also results in the US killing Italy turn 4 or 5? Or if it decides to go mass @ Honolulu after your J1 how do you manage to hold it off if all your air force is in FIC getting ready?
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RE: Three rules questions…
3. If Paris is still Axis-controlled, the IPC’s go to the liberating power. If France has been liberated its territories are returned to French control.
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RE: Getting attacked inside the Denmark Straight from Norway
We get 8 hours off from the wifes/kids/responsibilities of the world and would like to crack a beer and see if we can usher in the 1000 year reich. Not see how many more planes we need to add to the German setup to make it fun.
QFT. I’m a temporarily unemployed college student who does have a good bit of free time to spare, hence the 20something games I’ve played so far. However even I have a difficult time justifying the amount of time it would take for my group to balance this game purely on our own, and I absolutely love AA. This is why I wish the community could move past denying the clearly unbalanced (i still hesitate to use broken, although I’m leaning in the direction) nature of the game and start working together to figure out what needs to be changed. The alpha setup just makes me want to facepalm having played it now.
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RE: Getting attacked inside the Denmark Straight from Norway
@ Maher
I agree. You can draw the conclusion based upon our game results that Frank and I are just terrible players too unskilled to play Axis effectively. You may even be right, I dunno. But even setting skill aside, I think it’s a bit ridiculous that the Allies are sitting on close to a 90% win ratio in our games. It’s to the point where I’m afraid to involve anyone but myself on the Axis side in games with over 2 players because I’m worried they’ll make that one early mistake that’ll cost the Axis the game. Your margin of error is razor-thin, and in a couple situations early on the dice by themselves can cost you the game straight-up. Not making any mistakes over the course of a 20+ hr game can be pretty taxing on even the best of players.
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RE: Getting attacked inside the Denmark Straight from Norway
@ calvin
I hear you on that, and for my Germany a sub a turn has pretty much become textbook. But are you holding out in Europe as Germany/Italy and waiting for Japan to do the dirty work with Russia? 30% of US spending in the Pacific plus some effective China/India/Australia play can make that take quite a while, longer than I think you can reasonably expect the Axis to hold on to all the VC’s in Europe. Not to mention the US can place all its first 3 turns of spending in the Pacific before building a naval base in the Carribean and zooming its Pacific fleet over to Gibraltar in 2 turns of movement, setting up for a turn 5 or 6 threat while slowing Japan’s early game even more as they can’t just ignore the US fleet sitting within striking distance of Japan.You strike me as one of the more skilled players on these forums. I’d love to hear some general strategies as to how you balance all these priorities as the Axis. I’m getting tired of investing 10-20 hrs per game to try and figure this stuff out by my lonesome.
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RE: Getting attacked inside the Denmark Straight from Norway
The key fact people are missing here is that as the Axis player you don’t have a clue where the US is going to go until 1 turn before they show up there. The US heads to Gibraltar. If you invest enough of your starting resources to create a scenario (one that won’t last beyond a couple of turns, mind you) where you can trade Norway with the US for a couple turns then the US just stomps Italy instead. You under-defend Norway then the US heads there. You (somehow) come up with the forces capable of doing both, you’re not putting any pressure on Russia and are giving them an opportunity to push deep into Europe, possibly even to Berlin. We’re at 20+ games now, 1 legit Axis win, 2 draws, 18+ allied wins. This is even with a gentleman’s agreement not to do the Taranto raid the last 5 games or so because it’s so ridiculously broken.
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Quick question
Hey guys, can Japan do Kamikaze attacks in Global or are they only in Pacific?
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RE: China how long does it stay around in your games?
It depends on how much priority the Japanese player gives to killing you off. My favorite move as China is to fall back and mass a stack of inf in the NW corner of your territory where I have it sit and wait until I can bring over a Russian AA gun from Stalingrad. Once the Japanese player moves towards India or Russia I begin the great Chinese counterattack. With the AA gun threatening any sort of plane-heavy Jap attack you can make some serious headway and I’ve gotten as far as taking Manchuria and a couple other Japanese territories before the end came. Of course, doing this several games has now given Japan more incentive to kill China off early and there has been games where China’s pretty much dead by turn 4.
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RE: USA Too many IPCs? Too much Power?
Maybe some sort of NO that gives Russia/UK an extra 5 IPC’s a turn while the US isn’t in the war to represent lend-lease, while the US pre-war eco is lowered to 40? Just throwing ideas around. I guess it would work better with the alpha changes as they make it harder for Japan to attack early anyway.
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RE: USA Too many IPCs? Too much Power?
I’d love to see the US IPC’s toned down a bit. The way the game is structured the Axis are totally at the mercy of the dice early on. In order to bridge the huge gap in IPC’s they need to make significant gains with minimal losses. Leaving a GB ship or two alive off the coast of Germany can put the Axis on the back foot right off the bat. Heavy G1 losses in France can make it next to impossible to press into Russia effectively. The fact that the Allies have the untouchable US IPC’s on their side means they can afford to take their lumps early on dice-wise and still recover pretty easily. The Axis player has to play nearly perfectly as well as avoid getting screwed by dice in order to pull off the win before the US reaches critical mass. Lowering the IPC’s the US collects before going to war would be a great way to make the game slightly more competitive, although I’m not quite sure how one does this without massively unbalancing the Pacific.