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In the campaigns I played Axis did win more often that the Allies. And I saw at least 3 campaigns where USSR was defeated, two of them in 1941 it took 2 turns the USSR was smashed beyond redemption. Another one where USSR faced a 41 Barbarossa but gave up in July/August 1942 his front did collapsed everywhere.

Most often, a player doing USSR the first time will stuff the border and be massacred on the first impulses, like I did the first time.

ORIGINAL: micheljq

In the campaigns I played Axis did win more often that the Allies. And I saw at least 3 campaigns where USSR was defeated, two of them in 1941 it took 2 turns the USSR was smashed beyond redemption. Another one where USSR faced a 41 Barbarossa but gave up in July/August 1942 his front did collapsed everywhere.

Most often, a player doing USSR the first time will stuff the border and be massacred on the first impulses, like I did the first time.

What I like most about WIF is that the outcome depends more on the skill of the players than which country they control or the die rolls.

ORIGINAL: iamspamus
I haven't played in a while, but I always found that France was more of a b!+ch to take out than the historical timeline.
For the question of historical timeline, I'd say that it diverges from historical with the first dice thrown. The beauty of the system is that though it divergest, players must generally play with historical constraints. Enjoy.

I quickly learned that in WiF, France is not the easy knock off that it is made to be in other strategic wargames for play balance. If you want France to fall in June of 1940 after an October '39 fall of Poland, it's going to take work and planning. It was disquieting to me the first couple of games to accept the amount of German forces lost to achieve this time table. Of course if you've never played WiF, the first few games are the most likely to result in unusual endings. If you're the Axis do not let France survive, she may not have the biggest force pool but she's way too close to Axis factories -- I'm not quite sure I'd trade a conquered Britian for an unconquered France at US entry; well yeah I would but I'd be worried. Again though all this is a big plus for WiF, there is no reason to believe that an unmolested WWII France could not have developed into a very serious threat to Germany.

Great answers members appreciate it. The only board game I ever played was Advanced 3rd Reich, played a lot of computer games, mostly beer and pretzel games like the Strategic Command Series. Always the same when you play as the Axis, Poland falls no later than Oct. 1939, Denmark in Nov. or Dec. 1939 depending on the weather, the low countries and France are defeated by July , Aug, maybe Sept. 1940 again depending on the weather, Greece and Yugoslavia by early 1941, this is against the AI not a human. Russia must be attacked by June at the latest for any chance of taking them out early, normally Russia falls by middle to late 1943 depending on the weather. After that you go after the British Isles even with the American build up there. Taking them and the allies is no major task with the German power that has been built up. Its always the same game after game, I am sure if it were a capable human opponet that time table would have some holes in it. What I like about the explanations here is that anything could happen because of the dice roll and probably does. It sounds like from what I read in these posts is that a very competent experience player playing an inexperienced but reasonably sound strategy game player, the inexperienced player has a possible chance of winning with some luck and the dice roll. Maybe?

Willy

If the inexperienced player is the axis - perhaps. Like most games, inexperience hurts most on defense and since the allies defend for the first half of the game, an inexperienced palyer will be too far behind the 8-ball to make a comeback, IMO.

OTOH, you learn more from a thorough a$$-kicking then from a walk-over.

The one thing in my mind that destinguish WIF from most other games is the production system. This system makes it impossible to go after an invasion of UK and still be able to have the forces to invade the USSR with any real chance of succes.
Even planning for a straigth forward land war, takes carefull planning of production because of the gearing limits.
 
This is allso what makes countries like Japan so dificult to learn for newcomers. You tend to get too focused on short time goals (China for Japan) and end up not having the forces in plaze for the real show.

ORIGINAL: praem

This is allso what makes countries like Japan so dificult to learn for newcomers. You tend to get too focused on short time goals (China for Japan) and end up not having the forces in plaze for the real show.

What is the real show? I never played Japan. Any advice for first nippon timers?

The real show is the war against the US & the campaign in the Asia-Pacific theatre (e.g. India, Australia, Indian/Pacific Ocean).

For some initial advice, I suggest checking out the Japan AI thread, since a lot of discussion has gone into trying to get good play out of the Japanese AI. Presumably, at least some of that discussion could be good for humans too.

Edit: The thread is at http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=987325