Here are a few tips acquired through long playing experience with Totaler Krieg!.
One thing becomes clear after repeated playing: there is plenty of subtlety built into the
game. The rules are not remarkable for what they explicitly allow and restrict, but rather
what they implicitly permit. There's a lot you can do that is not expressly stated
in the rules, especially through cunning card play.
A quick study of the Combat Results Table (CRT) reveals that it is divided into three parts (by odds columns), and each part can be used to your advantage.
The third furthest to the right are your high-odds attacks (4-1 and higher). These will inflict appreciable enemy losses and can net you several hexes of exploitation if you're attacking with armor during non-mud turns (which you should be at these odds!) Naturally, you'll only get these odds against select hexes, usually when you have an advantage in combat shifts, but there is always the chance of attrition to the attacker's forces -- which means armor when it is involved in the attack!
The middle third of the CRT includes the 3-2, 2-1, and 3-1 odds columns. These are what we call the bump-and-grind odds. If you're looking to jostle the pieces around in an effort to gain a key hex (a city or other defensive position, perhaps) while keeping losses to a minimum, then these are the odds for the job. Many of the battles in North Africa are fought at these odds, as are many of the sideshow actions (i.e., attacks against the Coup corps, partisans, and small amphibious landings). The danger for the attacker here is the risk of an Ar1 result when even a small retreat could be a disaster.
The left third of the CRT are the low odds attacks, including 1-3, 1-2, and 1-1. These are the attacks you use when you want to "soak off" against a hex containing an enemy headquarters (so that it cannot add its factors and shift to another, more important battle this Combat Segment), or when you want to disengage your forces from the line prior to your Reserve Movement Phase. This disengagement trick can, on occasion, be extremely useful for exploiting (or plugging) embarrassing holes in the front line created during the Combat Segments, and is a tool a good player has in his toolbox.
The key to unlocking the CRT are the combat shifts. A 4-1 attack with two shifts in the attacker's favor puts the battle up at the maximum odds column (9-1+), not 6-1. Similarly, a hex that gets a lot of defensive shifts will be tough to take and require an extraordinary effort on the attacker's part. Picture Leningrad, for example, containing a Fortress unit and backed up by an HQ unit across the lake - there’s a tough nut to crack!
Air and naval Support units an example of implicit permission. You can do more amazing tricks with a few available Support units than with a marked deck of cards.
Consider naval blockades. If you've got Support units controlling a Naval Zone, the other players can't trace supply or naval movement through it. Once the Germans overrun France, one of their Support units in the North Atlantic can temporarily cripple the Western Allies' big time by cutting off the British from their southern theaters. Even more devastating, all American and Western Allied units will be out of supply when the Axis blockade the North Atlantic!
Conversely, the Mediterranean is an Axis weak link, and a couple of Allied Air Support markers there can burst Axis dreams in Africa faster than Rommel coming down with sever nasal diphtheria. If the British can weasel air superiority over the North Sea for even one turn during a German invasion of England, Axis hopes there will take a big nose dive. Naval blockades are a powerful weapon.
Another trick is the "Oh, no you don't!" ploy. This means placing an Air Support unit in an enemy capital or Strategic Hex as you approach it so that: 1) the enemy cannot retreat additional forces into that hex, 2) cannot organize (i.e., combine/build up) the forces already there, and 3) cannot add reinforcements or replacements to that hex while the Air Support marker exists there. This same tactic of flying over an important city can be used by the Axis to suppress Malta or Gibraltar after one of them falls (thus making the Western Med a temporary Axis lake), torture units defending Tobruk, and even keep enemy units out of friendly hexes when ground forces just can't cover it. For example, you're retreating across North Africa and know you’re going to get popped pretty hard next turn. If you can fling an Air Support unit between your retreating forces and the enemy's advancing army, you just might be able to escape and live to fight another day.
For good, old fashioned, gimme-the-shifts-and-let-me-bludgeon-this-hex potential, again, Air Support units are the answer. By triangulating them around the land hex you want to clobber, you can get three Air Support units adjacent to it and, thus, muster three shifts against it. As the Axis, you'll want to keep this in mind when considering how to get Gibraltar, Malta, Leningrad, or Sevastopol. As the Western Allies, this is one of the tools that Montgomery used to turn PanzerArmee Afrika into rubble at El Alamein and assured the Allied landings in Normandy. Multiple Air Support shifts - if you got 'em, flaunt 'em.
Finally, remember that Air Support units (and paratroops in Air Drop mode) are units. They can be placed in hexes where enemy ZOCs are cutting your supply lines to reopen them, hold the door open for a more rapid exploitation advance after combat, or (for Air Drop units) control an empty port so you can sail right into it.
Three key minors that stayed neutral during WW2 are the focal point of considerable nervous energy. Spain, Sweden, and Turkey all occupy important strategic positions that contain, border, and otherwise threaten, a plethora of objectives. While highly unlikely that Sweden will get involved in the war short of an Axis invasion or Treaty attempt, Spain and Turkey are a different matter.
Both of these countries can be wooed into the Axis camp via a Treaty card, but only if they have a neighbor (Vichy France, Bulgaria, or Greece, most likely) who is an Axis minor ally. Thus, it takes string of diplomatic successes for the Axis to win these countries over. While the Axis can pick up Spain in lieu of Italy after France falls, the gamble that they'll be able to pick up Italy later via a treaty card can be a very dicey proposition (forgive the pun). One Diplomatic Incident can ruin Germany's whole day when Italy is the Treaty subject at hand ("You mean all I get is #*@%ing Free Passage?!").
As for Turkey, its strategic position between Russia and the Middle East is vital. The "easy way" for the Axis to get Turkey is to take Moscow, issue their Soviet Ultimatum, and make their die roll. If the Soviets collapse, Turkey is the best free ally bordering the Soviet Union, hands down. At that point, there will be an Armistice between the Axis and Soviets, few Russians to worry about, and Turkey with an Axis welcoming mat out - more than enough to make the Western Allies shudder at their prospects for the next year (i.e., until the Russians have built up enough forces to get back into the war).
Invading Turkey and trying to get it the hard way can be quite a nightmare for any side. With its cities as far apart as they are, it can take a long time to conquer given any enemy intervention there. An invader will, as likely as not, wind up with naught but a Turkish Ulcer. And just wait until you try a campaign out in Eastern Turkey where ZOCs don't cross the myriad mountain hexsides! Units will be moving adjacent to each other during their retreats and Reserve Movement Phases in such a way as to blow your mind. And if you haven't seen Partisans do their work in Turkey or watched supply lines being cut to ribbons down that narrow road, you simply haven't lived.
And with Turkey comes and entire Middle East campaign that is such an interesting experience they even made a Tournament Scenario about it (Case Bruder). A handful of units can prove decisive in the Middle East region of the map, but getting forces to that far-off corner will require some long term planning and commitment.
The above title is a deliberate misnomer. No invasion is a walkover when the enemy is about. Sealion has been discussed already, so let's look at an Axis invasion of Malta or an Allied invasion from Tunis to Sicily. In these cases, a single beachhead marker is all that it takes to get the ball rolling and there is no doubt the invader can muster a fair amount of strength for the crossing.
But consider all that can go wrong. First, the attacker's Support units have probably been countered by the defense with all they've got in light of the imminent invasion, so the attacker's Support unit advantage will be whittled down some. Next, one of the attacker's Support units must be used to create the beachhead. So, how many does that leave for combat shifts and maintaining that beachhead next turn (just in case)? Probably not many. Next, the defender is probably holed up in a city that is the prime objective of the invasion, and the attacker is coming after it across an all-sea hexside. We're talking three terrain shifts for the defender right there! Finally, if the delay die rolls don't shake out well for the invader, he can find the enemy seizing control of the sea zone in question and blockading the attacker's efforts. Ack!
Just keep in mind that there are no "walkover" invasions. You should strain every nerve and call upon all of your energy to make them work, but there's no guarantee that the gods will permit it.
The reach of your forces in a land campaign is directly related to the number of armor steps you have to spend there. Armor allows full exploitation of breakthroughs (and gets shifts during a Blitz Combat Segment), but armor always takes the first step loss in every attack, making its attrition rate potentially very high. Wisdom, therefore, is to make sure that every attack that contains your armor units will be worth losing an armor step for. Never be reduced to saying after an unlucky die roll, "Tanks for nothing!"
How long you can sustain a general advance, too, depends on how many armor steps you can expend. As the Germans learned from their high armor attrition rate after Barbarossa, invading Russia rapidly becomes a tankless job. It's not surprising, therefore, that Germany will often have only four or fewer armor steps on the map after a hard drive into the Soviet Union. That's just the price of a broad, rapid advance.
While armor is the measure of your ability to advance, infantry is the measure of your ability to hold ground. When the French are losing four or five steps per Combat Segment, the Germans will be in Paris ere long. If the Russians can bleed away enough German infantry steps (Soviet Winter blitzes are great for this, as the Germans won't be doing any blitzing back in the snow and the Germans’ advantage in Air Support units is largely negated by the weather), the Wehrmacht will be falling back to defensive position after defensive position to preserve whatever steps it has left.
And when HQs bleed and need replacing and replenishing, it is the infantry step that is called upon to do the job. HQs give your line defensive backbone. It is only when they are not present or overwhelmed and destroyed where decisive breakthroughs can occur. Infantry: that’s the key to defense.
While many games of Totaler Krieg!'s ilk may have prepared you for dealing with Nazi-Soviet Pact restrictions, few have dealt the other side of that same coin, Appeasement. Because one Allied faction or the other is likely to remain unable to deal with the German menace if the Axis (almost literally) play their cards right, players must adopt a new mindset. You must be mentally prepared for an ahistorical early German war in Russia where the Axis can let Appeasement Policy restrictions cover their rear while they focus their energy on the Soviets.
As if this weren't enough, a sister situation can arise from any number of events, in the guise of the Truce Markers. Their placement after an Allied faction’s collapse, a German Military Takeover, someone's Separate Peace effort, etc., can put an interesting spin on things. Suddenly, all's quiet on one front. The truce bearing Allied faction can lick its wounds for a time and build up renewed strength. Meanwhile, the Axis can redeploy forces to deal with the remaining, recalcitrant Allied faction. If the Axis can succeed with a Napoleonic strategy of using the central position to defeat separated enemies in detail, hold on to your Reichmarks....
Finally, ending a truce is like telling a joke - timing is everything. When you to pick up a Negotiation Marker and put it back in the box, it will be at the end of your turn. Thus, the other player will get the first opportunity to attack, and it's likely to be punch delivered by a built up force and aimed squarely between your eyes. Ouch! Therefore, plan to remove a Negotiation Marker in such a way that the opponent's first shot at you will be during a mud turn (or, at the very least, a snow turn). This should help soften their initial blow.