MrPlow wrote:Great tips, but remember many of these ideas that work in the stock game break a few of the BJR houserules.
This is definitely true. It's too simple for the Axis to easily kill the British in the vanilla game. In the BJR-mod you have to outsmart and surprise your Allied opponent to succeed.
Sealion is still possible in the BJR-mod, but it will take more time and will certainly cost your entire navy. Even after taking Britain you still have to defend it and counter Allied attacks from Northern Ireland, Hebrides and later Scotland (when the Allies land here). So it will be hard to get enough power to be effective against the Russians in June 1941.
There are many mistakes the Allied player can do that will make Sealion easier. One mistake is to forget to plug the English Channel. The hex 2x south of the London port should be occupied by a British sub as soon as possible. It can only be attacked by one naval unit from the east. Since the sub is invisible and can't be bombarded while invisible (since it's not a port) it means it can only be detected by a naval unit. This naval unit will lose a lot of steps from the surprise attack (like 2-4 steps) and only inflict a few on the sub. Since it then occupies the only hex possible to attack the sub it means the Axis can't easily dispose the sub. You need tac bombers to do it.
Placing a sub here means the Axis can't send surface naval units e. g. to Cherbourg or Brest as a preparation for Sealion. It means the
units landing near Southampton will be unsupported and out of supply after they land.
The Axis can close the English Channel from the west with 3 subs or the English Channel from the east with 1 sub. Therefore you need to move your naval units to the Channel in time before the Axis can do it.
Another mistake the Allied player can do is to use the surface naval units as subhunters in 1939 and 1940 all the way to the fall of France. If the Axis player knows a big group of British ships have attacked a sub near Canada he also knows these ships won't protect against Sealion. This means it's absolutely imperative for the Allied player to keep his navy in English ports (to have better protection against bombers and subs) BEFORE the fall of France. It's better to let the convoys be unprotected for some months than risking Sealion.
I think it's a good idea to split the navy so maybe half of the navy can deal with the threat from the Channel and the other half can deal with the threat from the North Sea. Since eastern English Channel can be closed both by the Axis and the Allied player it means you have
to place your naval units in the area BEFORE France surrenders. Make sure you place your naval units within movement distance of
the choke point, but outside attack range of the German bombers.
This is pretty hard to do in the English Channel since you only have 1 port (Portsmouth) and all Axis air units can reach the Allied naval units. So you better be prepared for some naval losses here. It might be a good idea to place the naval units a bit to the west in the Channel so the Axis air units must be based between Brest and Cherbourg in order to reach the naval units. By doing so you make sure the air units can't reach invasion targets along the North Sea.
What you want to avoid at all cost is to be cut off from intercepting the Axis transports. So you better stay inside the Channel. It takes time to kill subs blocking the access and that's all the Axis player needs to secure Southampton and level 3 supply. If you lose Southampton then you will eventually lose London and all of England as well. You can only expect to destroy the invasion before the invaders get supply.
The British player must rail his garrisons to the areas near Southampton and London. If you can occupy all coastal hexes adjacent to the cities then the Axis units must land at least 2 hexes from the city and spend some time before they can even attack the city. That maybe buys enough time for the naval units to kill all Axis surface naval units so supply is lost before you lose a city.
I think Britain needs to have a reserve of land units outside Axis air range. The point is that garrisons alone can't destroy the German units that get ashore. If you place these reserves at the coast line you will only see the Axis player bombarding them to lower the efficiency so much so they can't be used for counter attacks. So it's better to keep them safe in the middle of Britain (outside spotting range as well) and rail them to the coast when you see signs of Sealion (like a German BB hitting your hidden sub in the choke point).
I don't like spending a lot of PP's on British land units early in 1940 only to see no Sealion at all. Then you can't afford the new DD's, labs and air units. So I think it's a good idea for the British player to SAVE his PP's for quite some time and see how it goes. If Sealion is about to happen then he quickly builds 3-4 corps units from his saved PP's. Then will arrive just in time to be used as a strategic reserve.
If you don't see Sealion is about to happen soon after the fall of France then you must not believe the danger is over and then spend the PP's on DD, labs, air units etc. The Germans can still surprise you and e. g. go after Norway first and then wait for new naval and air units before launching Sealion. It's actually not until november (when winter prevents amphibious landings) or you see the Axis airforce used against Yugoslavia or Greece you can be almost certain Sealion won't happen. Only THEN can you safely make the builds I described above.
Britain has some early critical choices. I'm thinking about WHERE to send the Canadian fighter, motorized corps and infantry corps. Egypt is desperately asking to get these units in order to fend off early attacks from the Axis in Libya, especially the DAK armor corps. In 1939 it will be easier to transport these units to Egypt because the German subs are too far away to intercept the transports. So it's tempting to send them to Egypt asap.
These units are also crucial to stopping the Sealion. With these units intact in England it will be much harder for the Axis to succeed with Sealion. But what do you do if the Axis player ignores Sealion and blitzes into Greece in the summer of 1940 and then attacks Egypt with full power (using Crete as an airbase to support the attacks). Then you don't have time to reinforce Egypt with these units.
This means the British player must take a risk in 1939 about where to send the reinforcements. One way could be to send the air unit to Britain and the land units to Egypt because you can always quickly build extra land units in Britain from saved PP's. The fighter can't be built so fast so it must be there before Sealion to affect the outcome of the invasion.
It's quite expensive to land the units in Britain and embark them again for Egypt if Sealion didn't happen (8 PP's per transport) so it's also possible to send the transports from Canada to Britain and place them in different ports in Britain without disembarking them. Then they can remain on the transport until you know if Sealion will happen or not. If not then you send them to Egypt without paying the embarkation cost again.
So it's definitely not easy for the British in 1939-1940. You will be alone for most of 1940 and half of 1941 and that means that you lose either Britain or Egypt if you make a mistake regarding your reinforcements. You have to avoid heavy losses at all cost because if you do so then you will be inviting the Germans to take one of both of these targets. Therefore it might be a bad idea to reinforce France too much. If your fighter gets mauled by the Luftwaffe it might be better to rebase it to Scotland and repair it for a possible Sealion. You simply have to have a big PP reserve by the time France surrenders so you can respond to Axis aggression against Britain.
Be prepared to sacrifice most of your navy to save Britain. Remember that the Axis navy and subs will also be destroyed in the process so you don't really need a large navy to protect against subs. Your convoys will all hit home until the Germans can rebuild a new sub force. You can build a new navy with these PP's. Also remember that if you lose Britain then the convoys will go to Halifax instead of Glasgow. It will be much easier to protect these convoys and you can build more units for a future liberation of Britain.
The biggest problem with losing Britain is NOT the PP loss. Most of the PP's come from convoys, Canadian production etc. London is often bombarded by the Germans to 0 production anyway. The Germans gain PP's from Britain, but they spend so many PP's on garrisoning Britain that it takes many turns until the conquest of Britain becomes a profit. No the biggest problem with losing Britain is that you lose all the airbases. That means you can't bombard the German industry at all. That is really devastating for the Allies because the Germans can then focus even harder on Russia. This means the first Allied invasion after USA joins the Allies should be Scotland and not Algeria. The Americans can send bombers and fighters to Iceland, northern Ireland and Hebrides to support the landing.
The British should also strike directly against Tobruk with all they got if the Germans land in Britain. The reason is that the Axis won't have airpower to stop you in the Med if they want to win in England. This is the window of opportunity you need to neutralize them there. The only dangerous unit is the DAK and it can only attack one unit per turn. Focus on killing it asap and then the Italians will fall like flies.
Launching a Sealion is definitely fun for the Axis player, but I think it's very risky with the BJR-mod. I think it will eventually produce worse results against an experienced Allied player than ignoring Sealion and going for a strong Barbarossa instead. Against a less experienced player I think Sealion is very good, mostly for psychological reasons. It's a big blow to the Allies to lose London and you need to have strong nerves to fight effectively for turn after turn after such a shock. You need to think far ahead as the Alllied player knowing that the "reward" from being heroic in Sealion will come in Russia 12-18 months later. I believe the Germans will win or lose the war in Russia. All they do to make Barbarossa less effective will just make it easier for the Allies to win.
Sealion can be especially deadly if the British lose their navy. The Germans can build a medium-large sized sub fleet and completely cut off merchant shipping to Canada until the Americans enter the war. It's hard for the British to do much of anything when they're getting only about 10 PP a turn, if that. The Middle East can be a cakewalk of the Brits don't have any resources to repair units.