brian brian
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Joined: 11/16/2005
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Moving to Pearl has it's intricacies I couldn't recall all of. You can't port-to-port until the after you play the option. But you can Return to Base immediately afterwards. Either way, depending on time of year, it might not be until two turns afterward that you can manipulate tension if you didn't have BBs at sea when you played it. You have to keep all that in mind as US Entry starts to move toward the 20s.
As for option picking strategy, this is such a key question that perhaps the AI could use it's own thread on it, separate from US Grand Strategy? I think there is one actually.
In this game, and the one RP was posting for us before this one, US Entry is in no way indicative of an average game of World in Flames. In the current game, this is for three reasons:
1 Pretty good luck for the Allies on the rolls to draw chits, hitting several 2 and 3 rolls.
2 Insanely non-typical luck for the Allies on the values of those chits, magnified by the new unlimited chit system. Recall that every "4" chit (of a total of 6, in a pool also pulled by the Germans and Russians though not until the end of the first turn) drawn in the cardboard game used to reduce the chances of drawing another one. The USA Entry pools holding four "4" chits along with a "5" chit in S/O 39.....I doubt that very many WiF players have EVER seen this.
3 The Axis play with little regard to USE consequences.
A lot of Axis players are scared to pick a France First because of the chance that bad weather rolls, which reinforce themselves, can shut it down quickly. A second reason is the big USE chits in the 1939 pool...which don't come out just because it starts to snow in northwest Europe. It is so easy and fun to ignore that fact in 1939. But you will regret every USE decision in a game that comes down to a struggle for the German factory cities in the spring of 1945, and in fact USE decisions can have a big impact on whether such a struggle ever happens.
In an average game, many players start the 3 chits in the Europe pool. The Japanese pool comes along more slowly and embargo choices are made during 1940. I do think it is best to play #13 Embargo Strategic Materials and #23 Freeze Japanese Assets sequentially, perhaps on the same turn if possible/desirable, all depending on tension needs. Playing 13 by itself doesn't gain enough. I would probably fail a morale check if I was the Axis and the US busted out #26 on the very first turn.
My preferred first choice for the USA is #15 Resources to Western Allies, to start being able to spend the excess US resources otherwise wasted. Since I always play with RaW Oil and Saved Oil options, every bit of savings helps out later in the game. After that all things depend. Gear-up is extremely desirable. So are the two lend to Russia options, #19 Resources and #30 Lend-Lease (BPs) I believe, in case a full-on 1941 Barbarossa is coming. I have really enjoyed the new Lend Lease optional rule that came out in the 2008 Annual and so #27 Lend-Lease to Western Allies is also a prime choice for me now, as the US can actually build planes for England (nice ranges on the P-40s and even the Brewster Buffalo, handy in the East Med) and have a nice set in the Reserve Pool for shipment to China and Russia once they enter the war, as well as handing out Convoy Points after #32, Refute Naval War Zones, but that idea won't work in MWiF, where only BPs can be sent out (I liked WiF5 even better, where you could ship an actual ARM unit to the USSR). These generate the required Tension in the Euro pool fairly easily; the Chinese or Embargo options can do the same in the Japanese pool depending on circumstances, but overall Fleet to Pearl is near the top of the list for the Japanese options. Bad luck on Tension rolls and chit picks can really hammer the US at times, and Fleet to Pearl can help avoid that frustrating problem.
On Siam, I have done the CW invasion in the past, just to mess with the Japanese, but over time I have decided as the Japanese not to get excited about it. It is another port on the South China Sea that has to be held, but there is no economic value to the place, and I think the new map will greatly discourage Japanese designs on Burma anyway, as the oil is even farther away than it used to be, while the total Japanese land force pool is the same size. So faced with the Burmese TERR menace, lol, I think I would let them risk the bad press in the USA and then just liberate the place later.
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