Hey everybody.  I just recently moved to Chicago and am looking for some people to play some A&A with.  I live in Lincoln Park and don’t own a car so I’m hoping to find people in a pretty close proximity to an El stop.

I’ve got AA50, Pacific and Europe 1940, 2nd edition, and D-Day.

Let me know if you’re interested!

Has anybody tried using a kill Australia first tactic in the Pacific with the Japanese?  I was just curious if this strategy has been used and if it was successful or not.

From my experience with this game it seems unlikely Russia can ever hold all of its original territories in the East.  If Russia leaves its whole stack of infantry in Amur then Japan will surely murder them with troops from Manchuria and Japan and their gigantic air force.  If Russia does the smart thing and fall back most of its troops to Buryatia then Japan will control Amur, Siberia, Sakha, and the Soviet Far East for the entire game.

Based on the fact that Japan can take Russian territories in the East at will, it seems unlikely Russia could ever get its NOs for holding all original territories and pushing into Germany, even if it retakes all Russian territories from the Germans in the Eastern front.  Has anybody gotten these NOs?

A strategy I’ve found that is really helpful against Russia is to slowly surround their capital.

You get a major IC in Romania G1 or G2 and, after you capture Leningrad as well, start pumping out waves of infantry and artillery followed by waves of tanks and mech infantry.  Keep a special focus on taking Stalingrad as soon as you can to capture another 7 IPCs a turn for yourself and a minor IC near the Russian capital.  You might also want to build another minor IC somewhere in Southwestern Russia like the Ukraine or Rostov.  Once you’ve accomplished that keep your forces poised to attack any move Russia makes outside of its capital.  This will isolate Russia and make it very difficult for them to make any kind of moves whatsoever.  Once you have enough men and tanks amassed a couple of spaces away from Russia move them all in to territories adjacent to Russia.  Keep your forces spread out enough that if Russia wanted to it could take its whole army and defeat one of your stacks but leave the capital open to counterattack from all the other stacks you have around it.

The whole point of this is to isolate Russia without having to necessarily take it.  If you have it totally surrounded then it will be eventually making 3 IPCs a turn.  If you can make it to this point that essentially means that Germany merely has to spend 3 IPCs a turn to keep Russia in check.  Germany can then put its near total focus on defending the Western front.  If you even just spend 10 IPCs a turn on Russia you can eventually take it.  Surrounding Russia makes that huge stack they have pretty meaningless and allows the Axis to go about their business without having to worry about the bear to the east.

Keep in mind this strategy only has a chance of working if Japan doesn’t declare war on the US until J3 and America isn’t going for a total 100% commitment to a KGF strategy.

I was curious if anybody has attempted to incorporate strat bombing of facilities as part of their strategy.  Especially naval and air bases.  I haven’t found any use for it yet and it seems like a waste of time and resources to ever attack them.  Am I wrong here?

If it’s a good quality case I’d probably get a G40 one.

Thanks Stoney.  That install file actually did fix a couple of big glitches with ABattlemap that I’ve had to deal with in the past.  Unfortunately, it still crashes when I try to open Funcioneta’s map. 

Every time I try to open the map ABattlemap crashes on me.  How do I get it to work?  Is there some newer version of ABattlemap that I need to be using?

Italy should be neutral until France falls, if they haven’t declared war by turn 3 then they must declare war against the allies, and no allies can attack Italy until it is at war.

This is just to fully explain people’s options in the game but the obvious thing for Italy to do is attack as soon as it is able.  Otherwise they’re only making 10 IPCs a turn and they need more income than that.  This rule could also be a bit of an answer to people’s complaint about the UK Atlantic fleet getting wiped out G1.  Since Germany has a strong incentive to bring Italy into the war ASAP it might want to commit more aircraft to the battle for Paris than it would otherwise.  This would leave more UK boats left alive in the Atlantic.

Plus the attack on the Italian fleet is not a real risk for the UK.  Even if it loses everything in the Med, it can rebuild it.  It has the income to do that at the beginning of the game.  Hell, even if they don’t have the income, the USA just has to commit a bit more resources to supplement the UK’s Atlantic fleet.  If the Italians lose half their fleet they will NEVER be able to rebuild it.  They need a strong initial fleet to capture Africa and get bonus objectives to make more income.  They need more income to rebuild a navy.  You see this vicious cycle.  And say what you want about the random chance of dice, but, statistically, the UK should make this move every game. They have a 95% chance of wiping out the Italian boats and only a 9% chance of having nothing left themselves.

The only way to counter this is for Germany to make a massive Sea Lion buy it’s first turn.  This is before it even knows what the UK is going to do.  If the UK moves it’s carrier, tac bomber, and destroyer to z110 it then renders Germany’s buy absolutely moot and a complete waste.  This will also waste an entire turn for Germany because it should have been making buys against the Soviet Union and now it needs to wait until it has sufficient forces to hit Russia.

So you are left with these two options as the Axis.  You either lose half the Italian navy and leave it crippled for the rest of the game or waste an insane amount of time and resources with Germany.  Given the fact that this game is about the Axis making large gains in the first few turns, it seems completely counter to the purpose and intent of the game overall.

The easiest way to fix all of this is to simply leave Italy neutral until its turn after the fall of France.  Bam!  Fixed.

I was getting ready to play g40 with my friend for the first time yesterday and I was explaining to him how, as the UK, he wanted to make the broken naval attack in the Mediterranean on the first turn.  Knowing more about World War II than me, he said that made no sense since Italy refused to join the axis until the Germans had conquered France.  Then a light bulb turned on above my head.  I thought up of an incredibly easy fix for this Italian fleet problem that totally conforms to the rules of the game and is historically accurate as well.

The only thing that needs to be changed is Italy’s political situation.  Instead of making their political situation the same as Germany’s you simply change it to what Mussolini’s agreement with Hitler was in real life.  Italy begins the game as a neutral power and may only declare war against the allies during its combat phase the turn after France has fallen to the Germans.  This completely fixes the fleet problem.  Since the UK’s turn precedes the Italian turn the UK will not be able to attack Italian units on their first turn.  Italy will be able to make its turn as normal and attack whatever it wants to, just as before.

There you go.  Can’t wait to see this in the official errata!