Hornblower
Posts: 1361
Joined: 9/10/2003 From: New York'er relocated to Chicago Status: offline
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Some threads have a life of there own, and this is one of those. Not as good as the Zero/F4F on in uv however. My 2 cents for what its worth. Is a safe bet that the general concusses of the forum is that historically Japan had almost no chance to defeat the Soviets/Russians. I don’t think I am off base when I say that. The IJA was a light infantry army plane and simple, better suited to jungle fighting then in the open. Light tanks, reliance on Motors over artillery, etc. They had courage beyond belief, but not the TOE to stand toe to toe with the Russians on a large scale, in the open where the Russians could bring there tanks and artillery into play. I’m not saying they couldn’t win a battle or two, but over the long haul the Russians would come out on top. Anyone here reasonably think that on the 2nd Sendi Division could stop a Russian Guard division, and if it was armored forget about it. Now let’s suppose what some are doing game wise happened 60 years ago. IJA goes after the Soviets, knocks them out for a bit- soviets wouldn’t have surrendered, they would wait till the Germans were a non-issue. Stalin, no lover of seeing his people live out a long life, would most certainly turn his attention on Japan when he could. But for the sake of argument let’s say that happens. Soviets retreat into the depths of Russia. IJA then swings down and gobbles up all of china- ok poof there gone. So its late 42 or early 43 and both are done. The IJA now rolls into India, because its freed up its two biggest armies, and kicks out the Brits.. Bye bye… So far so good right? Some gamers have managed to do this. Now while the vast bulk of your army is in the West who is keeping an eye on the Americans and Australians? What do you garrison Truk with? Guam? Rabaul? What means do you have to hold on the solomons? IJN has only so many troops. And you can’t send the IJA into battle with the Russians/Chinese/India without air cover. So the bulk of the IJAAF is with its troops in the west. And you have to ship supplies/ammo/etc to the IJA, that takes away shipping from the DEI to Japan route. So essentially you are leaving the IJN and the IJNAF the job of holding back the USN, USMC, USAAF, etc… Also, you have to leave a fairly large force for when the Russians come back, you have to garrison China, you’ll need to leave a decent sized army in India should Churchill want it back. And you now have this immense supply line you have to keep open to India. Japan couldn’t protect it shipping in the DEI, a 3000 mile long run to India would have made the sub skippers drool. You only have so many ships. And you’ve left your center open to an attack in the east. Honestly, what would be left to keep the American’s and Australians from going up the Solomons and NG passed Rabaul and threatens the SRA? Now game wise is a different story. A balance needs to be struck. The Japanese player should be able to try it, but not make it easy. Right now he can knock out the soviets and Chinese, and maybe even India and rack up a huge amount of points. He has put Japan in a poor position strategically (IMHO) and open to a counter attack by the US/OZ forces- BUT he has the points to pull off the auto-victory. So what I am trying to say is that the Japanese player should defiantly have the ability to try to do this, but it should in no way make it easy. -phewww long post. This should count as 3 or 4 posts…
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