Pulling off a master Con...voy

New players can be exposed to convoys as early as Fall 1901, when England has a crack at Belgium or decides to take a more proactive stance in Scandinavia. Or Italy to Tunis. For many, convoys represent more of a hindrance than a help in this early stage, taking two units to move an army where it needs to go. Sure, it sounds impressive that you can move an army from Saint Petersburg to Syria but when are you actually going to do it?

The use of a convoy as a deceptive measure that most players will either use or at least read about is The Lepanto, with Italians convoying an army across the Med to zip into Turkey's rear. The threat of Sealion is probably one that is obvious to new players as well.

There are a few convoy routes though that while perhaps less impressive than a successful Lepanto, are strong tactical decisions if the player is in a position to use them, and a beginner player should be aware of them: either to invade or to repel. These convoys have some or all of the following benefits:

1. Few units required to do them, often units controlled by a single player
2. Advance strategic interests directly in one's natural 'space' of the board
3. Players, even those knowing to look for them, can overlook them in a busy or congested board or stressful situation
4. Getting units into the requisite positions can be done reasonably and without broadcasting your intentions.

Kiel to Livonia

This one is relatively easy to set up for the German player, unless he's facing immense pressure in the Atlantic. From the very first turn of the game, The German player is likely to have a fleet in Denmark, and getting a fleet into the Baltic is a natural consequence of fighting a war over Sweden or a belligerent Russia. An army can be in Kiel on any turn the German player has the center open and gets a build.

Technically, this convoy can come from Denmark or Berlin as well, but an army Berlin sets alarm bells off in Moscow anyway so tends to telegraph intentions more often, and an army in Denmark is usually holding off a hostile unit in Sweden or North, so this move tends to come from Kiel.

The final bonus for it is that it's so easy to overlook the Kiel Canal, that almost everyone naturally associates Kiel as an Atlantic province most of the time. If you're playing on a table-top board, protip: Always place your fleets on the Helgoland coast. Even against significantly experienced players this move can come as an awful surprise. As a final final bonus if you've got a DMZ with Russia in Pru/Sil, then this can just come completely out of left field. It just feels like a blitz, rather than plodding towards Warsaw by means of Prussia and Silesia. Russia often has a unit in Warsaw (often looking covetously at Galicia), but it's not nearly so often the Russian player can afford to keep a unit in Livonia.

And Livonia is devastating. It borders three Russian home centers. If you have a friendly unit in Norway or Silesia or Galicia... well, you get the point.

Black Sea Taxi Service

I prefer this from the Turkey position but it has it's selling points for Russia as well. But basically as Turkey, if I get a fleet in the Black it never leaves.

The benefits of controlling the Black for conquering Sevastopol is obvious to a new player and well written about elsewhere, so we won't concern ourselves with it here. What's important is what comes after Sev falls.

Turkish armies are notoriously slow to reach the front lines. Without a convoy over the Black Sea, a newly raised army in Constantinople must move to Bulgaria in the spring and then Rumania in the fall. Then in the fall it can move into Galacia and onto the front lines of a succeeding-but-still-ongoing campaign against Austria.

But with a convoy you shave of a turn, a full 33% of transit time. But it's more than that. Perhaps you need two armies, or you want to portray yourself as nonthreatening to Austria right as the campaign is kicking off. An army raised in Ankara has it's transit time cut in half to get to Galicia. You can even get Armenia to Galicia in two turns, incredible.

The benefits also translate going from Turkey to Sev. Ankara to Armenia to Sev is cut in half, which can make a huge difference when you're trying to pump armies up to Moscow and Ukraine and beyond.

As I said, the benefits can also be prescribed to a Russia sitting in Black as a route between their conquered Anatolia provinces and Russia proper. And a fleet sitting in Black is a great defensive position to protect your southern possessions. But as most newly raised Russian units are heading east not south, and the convoy through Black generally doesn't play a large role when Turkey is contesting the invasion, the benefits definitely are weighted to the Turkish player, even if Russia (and Austria) should be aware of it.

Spain to Tuscany and Albania to Apulia

These two go together as they're performing the same purpose: invading mainland Italy when the land route is blocked, as it often is. Main culprits are a growing France or Turkey, but it's certainly possible England could be coming down on you, or an extremely ambitious Austria or Russia from the east. It is of course possible for Italy to use these convoys in reverse, and if the opportunity presents itself Italy definitely should. Spain is a supply center in and of itself, borders Portugal and Marseille (thus can 'open the door' for Piedmont to move in), and perhaps even more importantly borders Gascony, which is the Livonia of France. Albania is a little less devastating, not being a dot itself and 'only' touching one home center, but Serbia and Greece are nothing to sneer at.

Point being, forced to turtle back to its 'starting four', Italian players may overlook the two less 'critical' territories of Tuscany and Apulia, and you should punish them for it if they do. Sometimes even if they see it, there just aren't enough units to cover them: often the unit in the picture above isn't in Rome but in Venice, but either way the Italian player often lacks the ability to bounce its own units to protect Apulia especially. The geography of Italy in game terms means that Fleets on one side of the boot are nearly useless at defending the far side of it.

In my experience, the Apulia convoy tends to happen when there's not much you can do about it. But the Tuscany convoy can be particularly satisfying because more often than not you can force the Italian to focus on the obvious threat - Marseille to Piedmont - and convoy over right as he's congratulating himself for slamming the door shut just in time.

So there you have it. Four convoy routes that lack flash but have definite potential for massive success, as well as what you the potential victim should be on the lookout for. Good luck!