brian brian
Posts: 3191
Joined: 11/16/2005 Status: offline
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this thread is silly. it doesn't matter who controls the NEI. The US can play the oil embargo if the NEI is a Vichy colony, if Amsterdam still holds the BEF+Royal Engineers backed by a half dozen battleships, if the Dutch gov't-in-exile is living in London (or Guiana or Batavia), if it is a Free French colony, if a Russia at war with Japan launched a communist coup in the minds of the other Allied players and is the controlling major power, or if it is still neutral, and I really doubt Harry would ever rule otherwise, nor add new Japan<>Vichy options to rule 17 or 13. the Trade Agreement rule is a rule with any exceptions spelled out in the rules. This is not some rules trick activated by not having the CW align the place. It is a strategy available to the USA in every single game of World in Flames; no rules clarification or rules mod required. one thing no one has mentioned is that you might, however, get the Germans to collapse Vichy before the US is in the war, and that is probably worth two more entry chits. but Germany might not do that either. another upside is you might somehow panic the Japanese player. if the USA wants to run up the US Entry level against Japan real fast (and that might take a while with 1940 chits) just to cut off Japan's oil for a year, Japan could respond once they see it coming by building their SYNTH plants perhaps a bit early, taking the Saudi oil, saving as much as they can, and then beating on the Chinese with leg units (perhaps just surrounding their cities) for a long time. meanwhile the European Axis would be cheering as they throttle the Russians or even the British (both likely ineligible for western aid) while the US struggles to build up the European entry level and tension required to join the war. (plus the CW could be down perhaps 15 BPs worth of very useful assets all through the early war and could not enter Vichy territory until war with Japan arrives at the Japanese player's choice). if the US goes with a normal set of entry options building up tension in both pools, by the time they can declare the oil embargo, it is just about time for Japan to declare war on them anyway, or risk a successful US declaration; normally Japan saves up some oil to cover these few turns. this is a standard calculus in any game of WiF and I don't see how a Vichy NEI changes it very much, nor do I think a pure-embargo entry strategy is very common either. In a Gibraltar campaign, Germany might prefer to collapse Vichy immediately regardless. During an oil embargo, Japan might be prepared to DoW one of the CW, Free France, or a neutral NEI anyway. if the Free French hold it (60% chance aside from Germany's decision on collapsing Vichy) they could hardly even fight back against the Japanese, not that the CW can do that much either, but they still have a lot more options on that than the Free French would. And you might have to make this align-the-Netherlands choice as early as the third impulse of the game, long before you can detect the German overall strategy.
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