The Brazilian IC has always fascinated me as an approach to (re)claim Africa - it allows the Allies to approach Sub-Saharan Africa from the sea like the Axis (Japan) can from the other side, and you don’t have to walk through the troublesome Alg-Lyb-Egy route (which takes too long and exposes your units to an Axis attack in Egypt if you don’t invest significant forces there). Furthermore, in a KGF is not as much at risk as a South African IC, to which Japan can pose a highly annoying threat by parking its fleet with 2+ transports in sz 34.
I’m not too interested in using it as part of a US Mediterranian approach - in those games, the US will probably be able to muscle the Germans out of Africa anyway and the German Sub-Saharan presence may be neutralized by moving 2 transports from sz 12 to the Congo seazone once. Rather, its possibilities of acting as a stand-alone unit to secure Africa for the Allies appeal to me. I’ve come up with 2 approaches.
1 - KJF
I feel that in a KJF, the Allies must find a solution to deal with the African problem. If Germany gets it they can cash in ~50 ipc per turn and the UK will be piss poor, which will make it very hard to preserve Russia long enough. If Germany cannot be kept out of Africa, KJF may only be viable if Japan gets extremely bad dice in the first turn.
If the UK counters Egypt (or Germany only takes Egypt with 1 unit), ship all EUS ground units, the bomber (which is usually not needed in the first few KJF turns anyway) and perhaps also the EUS fig to Brazil and set the UK up to wipe out the German Med Fleet on UK 2 (the AC to Kenyan seazone and 2 figs within 3 steps of sz 15/16). On US 2, you can ship the Brazilian forces to Congo to join up with the British SAF inf, a force the maximum 4 German ground units in Egypt will find hard to defeat, and even if they do you can reinforce Africa (from the Brazil IC), and they can’t. The downsides of course are that countering Egypt is not the best way to pressure Japan with the UK and that the extra cost of supplying the IC will slow down the US advance in the Pacific, making this more of a ‘Kill Everyone First’ :-D
2 - KGF
The setup is about the same as in the KJF case, only this time you don’t dump ships off the West Coast but set up a 3x3 shuck to Norway/Karelia. This would make it much easier to establish a stack in Karelia. Without US help, the UK often has to contend itself with some minor annoyances to Germany or dumping units in Norway, whereas an allied stack in Kar can largely or almost entirely free up Russia to focus on Japan (something they can do very effectively the way Japan’s three mini-fronts are set up). This advantage combined with the speed of the Norway route compared to the Mediterranian one has made me favour the Norway route in theory, but how do you reclaim Africa then? I know there are other ways, but this might be interesting as well.
What bothers me here is the possibility of Japan sneaking up on that IC and its lightly protected fleet (2 trn, DD). Would you as Japan swing your fleet (or part of it) around South America if you saw such an approach, or would you think it’s not worth it?
I’m curious to hear whether these ideas are actually viable or rather something that only sounds nice in theory :-P Feel free to shoot at will!