Have any of you gotten much out of Malta? The island played a relatively important role during the war, but that is never reflected in any game I’ve played.
The German player usually tend to invade Malta early, with minimal forces to take out the British fighter there. If he succeeds, he moves the troops to the African mainland afterwards. If he fails, usually the British player will land the fighter in North Africa in his turn.
After this, nothing happens on Malta.
Has anyone else managed to get Malta more into the game?
Malta suffers the same problem as some of the Pacific Islands - there needs to be an IPC value put on it to make it worth fighting for. Malta was historically used to hinder Axis supply to Africa. Since supply is not modeled in this game, Malta is kind of irrelevant.
It usually just ends up an emergency place to land a stray aircraft in my experience.
Malta symbolizing that threat it used to be in the beginning of WW II, so also in that Game ,too.
If you as an Axis Player don’t take out that Fighter then that THREAT will still occur during the Africa camgain with an more experienced Allies Player by harrasing your Ship movments.
Or giving you a hard time making progress in Africa if you try to move forward towards Russia via Iran etc to collect extra IPC money.
For example:
Your Turn - You leave the Aircraft alone.
Allies Turn - It will be first used against your Transport and maybe sinks it and land safley.
Your Turn- You may Purchase another Tranny to deploy more units in Africa via SoIt.
Allies Turn - Allied Player trys to destroy the Tranny as well.
Result: two wasted Turns minus the IPC you could spend on something else.
Good deal for Allied Player, Bad deal for you. :-D
You get the hang of it!
crete also has this problem. Germany invaded it for a reason but A&A speaking I have no idea why.
Malta and Crete are not totally irrelevant, and neither are Sardinia/Sicily.
IPC value on them would not help much. Okinawa and Formosa have IPC value and that doesn’t have much of any effect.
It depends on your opponent and game situation. These islands can all be HUGE.
BTW Malta is 6 spaces from Russia, which has come into play at times for me. Bomber can reach Moscow in one move from Malta
Sardinia/Sicily can be important - Allied aircraft staging from there can attack Rome and get back, without an airbase, and can’t be invaded by Euro armies overland…. Also potential landing places. You don’t have to actually land on an island for it to be useful - they can make attack moves with aircraft legal.
No, Malta doesn’t reflect its historical significance most times, but this is true of many other places as well, and the opposite is also true.
It usually just ends up an emergency place to land a stray aircraft in my experience.
A lot of times that lil island has saved my bacon.
