@innocentbystander:

I don’t know, I don’t think I would ever risk Taranto.  I didn’t mind the term “grow a pair” because it is the perfect phrase, I just don’t have a pair.  I have no balls for that raid.  If you win decisively, you gain a little bit, if you win “par” (you lose most but kill the battleship) your carrier is dead on Germany 2 and your planes (if Germany didn’t kill them with the carrier) are stranded in Africa or wherever and now you are chasing Italy.  If you roll bad, the game is…. over.
Cheers

Taranto isn’t about “winning” the battle. It’s about mutual destruction and playing the econ game. As the UK you go into that fight knowing that none of your naval units are coming back no matter how well you roll, but you do have a very good chance of saving the planes. It’s the fact that Italy only makes that 10 econ, there is no way for them to gain back what they have lost, especially that battleship. One of the biggest things (assuming you attack Italy’s boats at Malta, which you always should), is that you are leaving Italy with 1 transport instead of 3. Losing that mobility is what hurts Italy the most, because they are forced to buy another transport which is almost all of their buy that round. If you do not attack UK1, Italy will pull their transports into their navy and you lose that chance to sink their transport. I consider it a bonus if Italy scrambles since there is a good chance they lose all of their planes as well, another thing they cannot afford to buy back.

The amount of time it would take Italy to recover any sort of naval units is right around the time America can start send subs into the med.

I got my butt kicked as Japan the first few times I played, and it was horrible. If you take two new players of equal but very low skill just learning the game, the person playing America has a very decisive advantage over the person playing Japan. America has a lot of built in safety nets. You are the aggressor, you have a ton of money to throw at the problem, and you have very focused objectives such as “build a big ass army/navy and go stomp on something”. When you are just learning to play the game, that kind of macro-thinking can easily win and we as a group thought things like “how can you possibly beat America”

Learning to play Japan means learning tactics like moving Japan’s production out of Japan, always building the IJN (even if it’s just a submarine), investing in facilities early, keeping your fleet in counterattack range of vital targets at all times, maintaining the DEI, cutting off India/China without having to waste resources conquering them, how to utilize Japan’s massive air force effectively, and so on and so on.

Now when we play America and you realize all of the faults of America, it can feel hopeless going up against a Japan that’s making 70+ IPC, no Chinese left, and India making like 7 IPC a turn with a bombed out factory and no navy. Then it’s just you and tiny little Anzac against an opponent that can build defenses to anything you build two turns before you can even get it there and you have Britain and Russia begging you spend money you don’t have on the other side of the world.

I think it’s just the natural curve of the game.

@Deaths:

That’s just it, I did not fall for a 2 front war.
I wanted to crush France in 1 rd of die rolling, which I did accomplish, I only suffered 4 casualties.
I bought the BB rd 1 so Ge would have 2 just like UK.

……

The problem was US rushed Japan on rd 5  took Korea trashed IJN Fleet and its own but unloaded like 8 tranny in Korea. IJN could do nothing to Kick them off mainland therefore provided US with landing zone for US bombers.  Nxt turn US leveled IJN IC

Your first problem: The best way for Germany to have as many battleships as the UK is to blow up all of the UK’s battleships.

Secondly, no offense to whoever played Japan, but if Japan was routed by round 5 they made some very serious mistakes. The US can’t even buy enough boats to match the IJN and get them to Japan in that time unless your Japan player did not have a very solid strategy.

Japan has enough resources to make itself a monster. Even if the US attempts to dump all of their resources into the Pacific, Japan can easily go into a defensive and hold them off.

In my opinion Japan is the hardest country for any new player to play in Global because the entire balance of the war hinges on being able to both demand America’s full attention and then defend against it as well. One mistake with the IJN can easily mean losing the entire game.

The plane does have a legal landing spot: the carrier that it came from. Just because the carrier doesn’t survive doesn’t make it any less of a legal move.

@Spendo02:

Much of that assertion is based on play testing of the Allies moving to defend Hawaii in the first round.

Obviously that changes if you withdraw because the only trade would be the starting fleet off Hawaii, which easily translates to a strong consolidated navy off of Western US.

That is why I posed the question regarding what would be an Allied response to a J1 DOW that stages in SZ6 and paves the way to sack Honolulu on J2 as I was not sure if that would be an experienced US player’s response….

…My standard play has been to defend Hawaii at all costs which included Anzac’s involvement (to see what the board looks like) while purchasing US1 SS and Bombers.  I never considered the US option to give it up and consolidate - which appears to be a better and stronger play…

We have a few regular and experienced players and now that we have played Global enough times America’s response to Japan positioning it’s fleet in range of Hawaii is always to just run away and let them have it.

Bringing back the Pacific fleet is always the stronger move because if Japan keeps sending fleet to Hawaii then it’s going the wrong way. Not being in striking distance of DEI and India means that the UK will start slowly building a non-trivial fleet of ships and will be making 30+ IPCs.

Meanwhile America is out pretty much nothing but a few IPCs and can just casually build boats and watch. The second Japan leaves they just retake Hawaii with almost no effort.

I’ve always considered one of Japan’s strengths is having their defending fleet off the coast of China or the Carolines. Being 1-2 turns away from America means that you are always in a position to respond to the US’s naval buys because they can’t get them to the front lines as fast as you can just dump navy off of China or Japan.

By trying to defend at Hawaii you have to build first, because if you wait for the US to buy and try to respond, anything the US purchases can simply hit your Hawaii fleet while you’re trying to build out of Japan. This means that even though you’re “setting the pace” with your buys, the US can simply lay back and decide how much to just dump into naval builds / transport / Atlantic and calculate exactly how much they need to purchase to wreck your fleet. It also means your fleet is directly within range of all of America’s bomber buys and the US can hit the sea zone with any number of planes if they wanted to land in Midway, Wake, or Johnston.

I love the idea of taking Hawaii but doing it early is just strategic suicide for Japan as the US really has nothing to lose by dumping a ridiculous all Pacific naval on round 2 and 3. Japan, however, is trying to manage China, UK, ANZAC, and Russia on the other side of the ocean and can’t just dump 60 IPCs worth of boats down every turn.

@JamesAleman:

Once you back Russia into its capital, around turn 5 you will want to produce all mech infantry, this typically gives you the ability to seize Moscow turns 9-10. Remember to grab Volgorad and Caucasus while you wait for Moscow to fall. Germany’s income should be in the 60’s-80’s before you know it.

A friend and I have been running a “cooperative” strategy session using the “all bombers” strategy and the biggest problem is that because of the weak G1 naval purchase with no credible threat of Sealion the UK decided on a UK1 Iraq, pulling the India transport over instead of going for DEI with it. Turn two and three saw minor factories in Iraq and Persia. The extra Indians in Iraq thus went to Africa turn 2 and along with a couple of trucks they easily eradicated the Italians in Africa. Now Germany has to contend with a large number of UK tanks and trucks as well as planes all over southern Russia but thanks to the large amount of bombers, Russian is pretty much damage-capped on all their factories every round.

Italy got slammed hard by Taranto round 1 and despite Germany cleaning up the med with planes and reinforcing Tobruk as well as gifting Italy a few territories to keep them in the 20s all game, they are now facing naval eradication by the US/UK and are going into full-on turtle mode.

Japan is doing their thing, having completely eliminated China and despite a disastrous failed first attempt at the Philippines (second try was a charm, the first try was a very risky hit) they are trouncing the US navy, have two production facilities on mainland China, and although they haven’t taken India, it is certainly closed for business (I think after three rounds of saving they still just barely had enough money for a single purchase). Japan decided to start the Russia party early so they’ve eaten up a massive chunk of the northern Russian territories. Anzac is being a plucky thorn in Japan’s ass though, setting up Java with an airbase and four planes. Japan has been spread too thin to do anything about this but now that Japan is rising fast it is demanding immediate attention now.

Japanese reinforcements into Russia are going to contend with UK fast-movers with their huge assortment of planes. The game easily belongs to anyone at this time and it looks like the bloodbath between Germany+Italy+Japan and UK+Russia that will take place in the Russian heartland will probably decide the fate of the game.

I have actually found quite the opposite. The majority of hits are happening on ‘3’ in a lot of these fights.

Because of the slow movement of assaulting troops, the defender has plenty of time to build a large defensive stack, of which the aggressor will be sure to meet with a large amount as well.

The smaller skirmish fights are absolutely a total crapshoot most times but when you start to get megastacks of 50-70 infantry the battle results really start to gravitate toward the average results almost every time, with variations if about ±5 at most. Rolling 60 dice? You should expect 25-35 hits almost every time.

This is the part of the game where I think overarching strategy and planning are what are going to determine the outcome of the game. You know the enemy is going to inflict X amount of casualties, how to maneuver, prepare, and deal with it and the probable worst-case battle scenarios.

I mean if the other guy defends with 30 troops and gets 25 hits, that can and will happen if you play Axis & Allies enough, but it won’t happen often enough to influence the result of every game. If one aberrant fight decides the entire game for you then either A) Your strategy shouldn’t have hinged on the luck of the dice if one battle decided the fate of the world, B) You were in a position of desperation anyway and had to bet it all on black (you always bet on black, I’m told) or C) It just wasn’t meant to be that day (this is like failing to take France as Germany in Global 1940 that 1% of the time).

There is a reason people play low-luck games, but I feel like that certainly takes some of the mystery out of the game. Part of the “skill” in Axis & Allies isn’t how lucky you are at rolling dice, it’s how you cope with the bad luck when it happens.

Here are some considerations I will add to the list.

I think it would reasonable to add one submarine to Austria’s starting navy, representing the German submarines that were sent to AH by rail. Even if historically they were German-operated it fits the flow of the game better to just add them to AH’s units and is not a big stretch. This makes Austria’s starting navy very unattractive to hit early and allows their submarine to sneak out of Italy’s coastline (braving the minefield of course) and sail under Allied boats if France or Britain try to send unescorted transports into SZ16 (a common occurrence currently).

I would also like to see at least one Ottoman infantry unit added to Trans-Jordan and/or Syrian Desert. This makes the Russian Mesopotamia-slam combined with the UK Trans-Jordan/Arabia attack somewhat more survivable. As it is now there is almost no reason I can think of not to make those attacks, or at least not make the UK one.

It is true that the AH army is very large, but AH cannot afford to send a large chunk of that without risking letting Italy out of the box. We made that mistake on our first game. Italy doesn’t make a lot of money but they start with a good amount of units and can crank out a 5-chip per turn to drop on their stack unless you hit them hard and trap them early.

Italy being in Trieste and Tyrolia can end up being a game-ender.