Our playgroup (JohnBarbarossa, Driel310 and Dizon) played 2 testgames with the known rules and setup over the course of the last two weeks and we like to share our experience here.
We used:
- Bluestroke’s map revision 9. We made a big printout of it which we laminated. Thanks to Bluestroke for his excellent work on this map.
- The units from Axis and Allies Revised
- The battleships from Axis and Allies 2nd edition as cruisers
- The Japanese and Chinese from Axis and Allies Pacific. We wanted to use the Japanese as Italians, but the colours worked better when we used the Japanese as Russians and the Russians as Italians.
- The Russians (red pieces) had no cruisers, which is off course no problem.
- Selfmade Italian ownership markers
- Supply markers from Battle of the Bulge as IC damage markers
First game
JohnBarbarossa: Germany/Italy
Driel310: Japan
Dizon: Allies
German build 10 infantry. Germany took egypt on G1 with good rolls (2 arm left). This is a mandatory battle in our opinion. Germany HAS to take out Egypt (at least kill all units). The Italians move after UK, this gives UK the possibility to retreat their forces there and save the fighter.
Bring 1 inf + 1 arm from France using your transport and your bomber (plus all forces from Libya). With the bomber this is a 80% battle. Your transport can only be attacked by the UK bmb, but it has to land in deadzone Transjordan, which will then be attacked and killed by the Italians. If the UK does this (they didn’t in our game) it is a bonus I think. The german transport has already done its most important duty. The rest of Africa should go to Italy anyway. If you go to Egypt with Germany, Japan should also take out all UK ships at India in J1.
We also decided to take out the DD in SZ 6 and attack the UK BB in SZ 2 with 2 subs and 1 ftr from Norway. The reason for this was that UK would then only have 1 transport left. Unfortunately this attack failed due to bad dice. Germany lost a fighter there and UK was able to land on France and in the process kill the second German fighter. Since Germany is so low on Infantry it is important to take out at least one UK transport, since France cannot be defended on UK1 against 2 transports.
On G3 Germany build an IC for France (you need it otherwise you are outproduced by Russia) together with an AA gun. For the remainder of the game the transport was used to conquer Africa together with the Italians. Germany build lots of Infantry and an occasional fighter and later on more armour.
Italy took out Transjordan on their first turn and received their 10 ipc bonuses every turn after that. They send most troops to Africa and aided Germany at the eastfront as they put pressure on Caucasus with their 2 trannies and 3 offshores. Their builds were mostly inf + arm. Later on when they received more money (the game was almost over) they bought a bmb due to their building limit of 6.
Japan took all of the Pacific in two turns. Their first build was 2 trn and 1 inf. We decided that pressure on India was the most important thing, and naval and land forces needed to be in position to take out India in turn two. Therefore attacks in China were minimal and we decided to let the Chinese fighter live. This turned out to be a good decision since that fighter could not do much harm. Japan is not a monster when unchecked, it is Godzilla! In later stages of the game, Japan cashed out 70+ a turn!
Allies did make some tactical mistakes. They decided to ignore the pacific. UK and USA both build a lot (more then needed) of ships in the Atlantic. UK started to land in Netherlands and bomb France with their offshores (which appeared to be not a good tactic). USA build bombers and started to bomb Germany. This hurt Germany a lot, but was certainly not a game breaker. Due to the second IC and Germany cashing out 30-50 Germany could hold out. To counter this strat Germany tried to develop Advanced Industrial Complex but got Warbonds instead (not bad either). Later in the game they tried again and got paratroopers (and took back Norway from the Russians). USA tried to develop heavy bombers during the course of the game but got Radar, Supersubs and Jet Fighters.
During the game the Russians single handed stopped Germany and even drove them back at one point (Germany needed to defend the beaches and hurted from the SBR’s) all the way to Rumania and Poland. Then the Allies realized that Japan was getting to big to stop and changed strategy. The bombing stopped and the allies started landing in Archangel. Russia had to fall back to send troops to the Japanse front. The Allies then sent all of their ships to SZ 4. This took a lot of pressure of Germany who could send a lot of defensive inf from France and Germany to the eastern front, and from that point started to push the Allies back. The Allies did not make any serious attempts to go to Africa. A mistake in our opinion. The allies conceded after 12 rounds with Moscow surrounded. During the course of the game there was a lot of investment in tech. USA got three techs, Germany got two and Japan got one (Longe range aircraft).
Second game
JohnBarbarossa: Allies
Driel310: Germany/Italy
Dizon: Japan
With the experience of the first game I decided that Japan cannot be ignored. I also observed that Russia can fight a long time before they need any help. With this information I decided to use the following strategy:
UK would go after Italy, and try to hold onto Africa.
Russia would fence off Germany alone (at least for the time being)
USA would go all out against Japan and therefore start a pacific war
Germany did the same moves as the previous game, this time they won SZ 2 but lost in Egypt. It was fairly easy for the UK to secure Africa after this. With Russia I made a big mistake on the first turn. After that I lost the initiative and was only reacting to the German moves and plugging the holes. My first turn build of 1 bmb, 1 ftr, 1 arm and 1 inf also might have been to aggresive. The Russian front did not fair well (dice did not help either) and was almost collapsing after three rounds. USA did a good job building up a substantial pacific fleet and 5 bmbs and conquered the south pacific. At that point both fleets were facing each other and the one could not attack the other. Since the Russian front was going very poorly and Japan (even if they lost some bonusses and IPC from the Islands) could buy some ships as defense and continue to ship troops to the mainland I decided to invest 20 ipc in tech with USA (despite of this, this was no techgame at all) and hoped for heavies, and I got them! I wiped out the entire japanse fleet. But heavies were not enough to turn the game. USA started to send bombers to Germany (and had 10 bombers on the board) but they came to late (when the bombers started to bomb Germany, AA guns took out 3 out of 3 - ouch). The Allies started frantically to ships troops to Europe through Scandinavia/Archangel but it was too late. Moscow fell in round 8/9.
Conclusions
The game looks pretty balanced so far. Allied play usually is more difficult so it is normal that the first games are won by the Axis. Even is the Allies did not play optimal in the first game. The game still lasted a lot of rounds. The NO’s are a great addition and forces you to play differently. But without them Axis are toast. It is not enough to go out full against Japan with USA so you need a different approach. Maybe next time we try an all traditional approach and build a transport fleet with both UK and USA, UK goes to Europe and USA goes to Africa. As usual Africa cannot be ignored.