Yes but fot warship lovers it’s a must!
You both got a point.
Playing short games like AA42, stick to the expensive ships.
For long games like AA40 Global, with twice as many seazones, you can have cheap ships if your playgroup are warship lovers, and you all enjoy naval battles, and dont mind rolling the extra dice
Sea units seem totally useless, noone is ever buying CCs or BBs, scarcely a sub is ever bought, only a few DDs are bought early on the game, so I would like to suggest some revising that would actually put sea units in the game.
- Offshore bombardement: CCs and BBs AND DDs to be always able to perform OB, regardless of an amphibious assault (or the number of units assaulting). This will give a “stand-alone” attack quality to those sea units. Plus, in case of a Amphibious Assault, units killed by OB do not participate in defence, which will give a “co-op” attack quality to them as well.
- Two-hit to kill: Besides the BB, the CC should also be a 2-hit to kill unit, but it will be repaired at the begining of the player turn (unlike the BB).
- Sub fodder: Defending players can CHOOSE if they want to take their subs as casualties to attacking airplanes regardless whether an attacking DD is present. Subs still cannot attack air, and still cannot submerge if an enemy DD is present.This rule will allow fleets to aquire a counter-airforce fodder unit, since the DDs are too expensive and otherwise useless to be counter-air fodder.
- Airplanes defending SZ: All land-based airplanes can defend their adjacent SZ, the defending player choosing which planes defend where after Combat Move phase. This way defending fleets can take a defence bonus while building-up close to their bases.
I think we would see a lot more ships like this, from both Allies and the Axis (except from Russia of course).
Since this is house rules and I’m cool w/ cheaper ships but some of the things I’d consider here
Ships bombarding either….
1. Defending units get to return fire against attacking land units. Ships would “honestly” never destroy an entire army in a country, no way. It’s just not realistic
2. I let my defending artillery counter fire against enemy naval units or defend against the enemy landing units…(defender chooses)
I’m not a fan of Subs not getting to defending against A/C… They had AA guns mounted on them for that purpose…I let them take 1 shot before submerging on a dice roll of “1” (this makes them not complete cannon fodder against A/C)
I’d also have my cruisers and carriers roll on a damage chart to see if they can take a second hit or not (like u suggest) After taking a hit they roll a dice to see if they are still alive or sunk.
Roll 1-2: propulsion damage…can only move 1 space per turn
Roll 3-4: sunk
Roll 5-6: main gun damage, can only attack/defend on a dice roll of “1” (for carriers it is deck damage, can’t land/launch A/C)
Then must return to a friendly Factory adjacent space to be repaired for damage to be removed.
I do like the cheaper ship idea though…
One thing to consider with the “cheaper naval” model… cheap transports will allow countries to move twice the number of land units for the same price. You may want to leave transport cost the same or reduce to 6 or so.
cheap transports will allow countries to move twice the number of land units for the same price.
On the other hand, with other naval units cheaper, it will be twice as easy to block them.
Our last game we played with slightly cheaper shipping, it was interesting in how it changed the game play for certain nations. It’s not as ‘balanced’ over all as you think, it offers more for your buck when you are buying joint force land/sea or sea/air but definitely was over all a more enjoyable playstyle for all involved.
What pricing structure did you use?
You know who I think would benefit the most from making naval pieces cheaper? ANZAC
Yeah, Japan and USA could both buy a lot more ships, but they would also just be slugging it out with each other so no real change there.
Same thing really between UK and Germany/Italy. Germany would still have to invest more in land units to fight Russia so even at a cheaper price, they couldn’t afford to put too many ships in the water. It would be easier for Italy to put more ships in the Med, but it might also be easier for UK to send more ships to the Med also.
ANZAC, however, might be a real secret weapon for the Allies. ANZAC’s main contribution isn’t really making land units to take over Jap territory, but making warships to harass Japan’s efforts in the SE Pacific and help support the USN’s efforts. Usually, ANZAC makes so little they can only get one or two ships per turn so they can’t provide a strong enough force to really hamper Japan, unless Japan’s navy is just spread too thin. With these radically cheaper prices though, ANZAC could really build a powerful little navy. With Japan busy duking it out with the USN in major fleet actions up north, the ANZAC navy could be big enough to sweep through all the island areas (DEI, Philippines, etc.) and eliminate any Jap naval presence there. If Japan has already taken some or all of those islands, ANZAC could convoy raid them like crazy and basically nullify any income from those islands, which could give the USN the upper hand when replacing losses in the great battles further north. Eventually, Japan’s navy will be smashed and they won’t be getting enough income to properly replace their losses, even at the cheaper prices. Meanwhile, the USN will have a huge, steadily growing fleet which will base itself in SZ 6 to convoy raid Japan itself. Then the US takes Iwo Jima, bases some bombers there and SBRs Japan into the stone age. Ahh, I love it when a plan comes together.
Sub cost 3 IPC
Destroyer cost 4 IPC
Cruiser cost 6 IPC
Carrier cost 7 IPC
Battleship cost 10 IPCWell is realy cheap….
By the way, Carriers are normally 16 IPCs so in this list they should be 8 IPCs.
So what you’re saying knp is that we might all want to just go back to alpha 1 and use this price structure? Alpha 1 is where the Japanese had too many fighters and tacs right? Might help rebalance the Pacific a bit and be loads of fun in the water. With your ANZAC idea, I guess Mac A will return!
It was the OOB setup where Japan had such a huge airforce. The first Alpha is where Larry more or less corrected that. I think he took about 7 planes from Japan, but the Allies also lost 6 or 7 planes although that was spread out between India, USA and ANZAC.
I may try the OOB setup then with the cheap naval units.
Can someone who’s tried this please give me the pricing structure? Razor, did you try yours or is it a suggestion to try?
What pricing structure did you use?
we used:
sub: 5 (actually saw subs throughtout the game)
transport: 6 (didn’t want over cheap land transports)
destroyer: 6 ( saw a lot of transport/destroyer double builds, real convoys started existing instead of lone transports)
cruiser: 8 (anzac used this A LOT to their advantage, their small stacks of cruisers didn’t fair well vs the carrier/battleships of japan, but they did their job real well… kept em busy and worried)
Aircraft Carrier: 12 (saw a italian carrier come out, usually didn’t see that in our games)
battleships: 15 (didn’t see too many of them until america mass produced a few to counter the japanese navy.)
all in all it was a lot more diverse navy game, we also play with canada and finland in our g40 games, mostly finland is conquered by russia most of the game, but canada barely squeeks out enough money to build a fleet with this pricing in destroyers and transports over time.
and like others said, this change effected anzac and even india and italy the most. It allowed them to build a boat where they normally couldn’t (india/italy) and let anzac do its job against the japanese’s expansions.
And where is the escort carrier. The escort and the heavy cruiser?
I also had merchant marine and german raiders in my game….german player love that boat!
