Got this game on a whim. It is actually pretty fun and even somewhat realistic. There are of course lots of sites that cover it and the strategies. The 2004 version as http://www.morrisongames.com/ explains had lots of rules changes. The main thing though is to figure out what strategies work.
There are lots of strategies that don’t make much sense in the real world, but work for this game for instance, “German”:http://www.morrisongames.com/germany_strategy_for_axis_&_allies_3rd_edition.htm is heavily weighted to getting the first run right. The main thing suggested is to invest heavily in rocket and bombers in the first game because rockets let you take lots of points. Also to attack the African areas quite a bit and to blitz against Russia to slow them down so here’s a good summary:
# Get rockets. Basically in this game, rockets take away money from everyone and Germany is surrounded so it can hit both the UK and Russia. Use three rolls to get a 50% chance you’ll get them.
# Get heavy bombers. They recommend not playing with heavy bombers because they really unbalance the game. They take twice the IPCs for every roll of the dice so once you get them, you can essentially win. This is because if you attack with just tanks, you might take the equivalent of 15 IPCs (three tank divisions), but a heavy bombers take way more than that.
# Hold Western Europe. that is France mainly by building lots of infantry that you send east to hold against Russia
# Get Africa. It has 11 IPCs (very unbalanced really) so you have to hold onto the German fleet there. You really want to take Egypt in turn one and then transport troops there from Italy.
# Lots of fighters. You want them because they have good enough range to defend against Russia and UK.
# Fight in Russia. Don’t expect to win here, just grind on Russia so it doesn’t attack Japan.
Most interesting thing is the recommendation to disallow technology improvements at all since they unbalance the game so much.
Finally there are many House Rules as in http://www.wargamer.com/axisandallies/original/houserules/house_rules.html that make the game more realistic. The most well developed at the “MIT”:http://www.wargamer.com/axisandallies/original/houserules/house_rules_mit.html
Axis and Allies MIT House Rules and also a “simulator”:http://www.jason.bilbrey.com/aasim/ that lets you play online even.
