January 1st, 1942
Our game is still going strong, and I wanted to provide an overview of where things stand. I won't be posting daily updates until things start heating up, and right now there just aren't many engagements.
China
Most of my troops have successfully fallen back to Wooded Rough terrain north of the rail line, which I will not try to defend. While I'm giving up a lot of VP by letting Jacks take these cities uncontested, my supply lines are now much shorter and I feel much better about preventing a Japanese breakthrough in this theater. Jacks is clearing some of my trapped forces out of the south, but Wuchow and Kwangchowan still stand.
DEI
I've managed to evacuate most of my forces on Malaya to Singapore, which has been sucking supplies from the rest of my bases since the first, when I turned stockpiling on. Forts are at four here and I've built the airfield to 9, which will make Singapore a tough nut for Jacks to crack. Along the Northwest coast of Borneo I've used my flying boats to pick up the base forces to the east. The Jessleton force will be next.
The rest of the DEI are untouched for now. I've set up two possible lines of evacuation to get troops out when the time comes, and I have transport ships in place, but the expected assault hasn't come. For now my engineers continue to build fortifications and the Dutch airforce continues to train.
Soviet Union
You may be wondering why Jacks hasn't been more aggressive in the DEI - I think it's because he diverted forces north. Jacks took Petropavlovsk, gaining a significant source of oil very close to the Home Islands. It was a bloody landing, with what looked like poor prep and without significant air and naval bombardment beforehand to damage the CD guns, but the result was never in doubt. The mighty Petropavlovsk naval fortress is defeated, and Jacks just gained a very valuable hex. I am re-routing significant sub forces here to try and interdict his tanker operations.
The southern Soviet Union is untouched, but Jacks has successfully maneuvered a very large troops concentration - what looks to be 28 units, 200,000+ troops according to my recon - past my defenses in this very porous front and cut my rail line. Short term, this isn't an issue, but long term it could cause the southern Soviet Union to rot on the vine. I have a significant armored force moving into the hex next turn, where I hope to dislodge Jacks before he has a chance to build forts.
Philippines
Manilla, Clark field and Bataan still stand. I'm using Catalinas to pick up isolated base forces on the southern islands and bring them to Luzon where they can aid in the defense of these three key hexes rather than rotting on the vine.
I've had great success with my S-boats in interdicting Jack's shipping in the straight between Batan Island and Formosa. He now has a lot of ASW concentrated here, but the deep water has kept my subs undamaged so far.
Burma
Jacks has two forces here that are beginning to move, but things have been exceptionally quiet here so far, which has allowed me to ensure that my air assets at Rangoon are in top shape for the coming battles. It looks like the larger of the two forces wil try and bypass Moulmein and head straight for Pegu, which makes sense as Pegu is more open terrain compared to Moulmein. My recon planes are keeping an eye out here, and when Jacks gets too close I'll pull my forces out of Moulmein so that they don't get cut off.
The War at Sea
I've taken significant losses, especially at Pearl. I also wasn't able to get my cruisers out of the Philippines, which hurt.
The good news is that since the first few turns, I've lost relatively little. I also have managed to evacuate a lot of my more valuable shipping from the Philippines via a torturous route that took it dangerously close the the Japanese Home Islands and then east through open ocean north of Marcus Island before finally dipping south toward Pearl. I also evacuated a lot of Soviet shipping to Seattle via Dutch Harbor. The Soviet xAKs and xAPs will do me a lot more good shipping from the West Coast then they will sitting in port within range of Japanese bombers.
Japanese ship losses are light - don't believe any of the cruiser kills or the CVE, the point totals tell me that those kills aren't real - but I have managed to inflict a little damage via my subs and some surface raiding with destroyers.
The War in the Air
I've taken moderate losses in the air, but spread out among many air-frames. I have pushed my B-17s a little too hard, and I'll need to take it easy with them for the next month while I recover those pools.
Meanwhile, I imagine that Jacks losses are cutting heavily into his Oscar, Zero, Sally and Betty pools.
The reason for this mismatch in losses is that Jacks has really failed to use Zero sweeps. I think he may have been discouraged by poor results against the Soviet bi-planes at Vladivostok, but I know from experience that the Japanese player can really put a hurting on allied planes and pilots with high-altitude Zero sweeps, even in Focus Pacific. Meanwhile, I have been sweeping very aggressively, causing this disparity in aircraft losses.
