a few subs and AIR POWER will make mince meat of a battleship fleet in seconds. Whilst giving you the maximum effectiveness on both land and sea, and the longer reaching arm.
The burden of defence will rest on your enemy. NOT you. The battleship’s weakness is it’s range.
Battleships are sitting ducks without the proper # of supporting units to take the hits for it so the BB can be around long enough to get those hits you need it to roll.
The whole reason people buy battleships is to take the hits. 60 IPC to get 3 fours fighting for you is a losing strategy.
Battleships are good for STRAFING attacks, an Axis and Allies naval tactic, not used often enough.
While I agree that Strafing attacks are not used often enough, it does require a willing enemy. You really only should get one strafing attack. Your enemy moves to within 3 spaces, can’t strafe yet, next round 2 spaces with a blocking destroyer between or next door. The enemy fleet should never be there if it can’t take a strafe then attack. This alone probably delays the attacker 1+ rounds, in of itself perhaps enough to justify a heavy investment in battleships. However, during the BB buildup, unless that strafe tactic is working for you round after round the CV+Ftr builds might be better.
Gotta love all the scenarios where this works better than that except for this!
Less talk
More gaming
:-D
Hey guys, what exactly is a strafing attack? Many thanks.
Hey guys, what exactly is a strafing attack? Many thanks.
From what I understand, it’s basically you having a fleet in home waters with a functional naval base and the enemy moves his fleet one space from you. You take your fleet and hit his fleet for just one quick round of combat, then retreat to the safety of your naval base and scramble fighters. With any luck, you will cause more damage to his fleet than to yours, plus his fleet is far away from a naval base so his capital ships can’t be repaired as easily, while yours can. Hopefully, most of the hits you suffer will be the 1st hit on your battleships which can be repaired at your naval base. Even if all you do is cause the first hit on his battleships, it’s harder for him to get repaired as his naval base is far away.
I think this only usually happens in cases where you might throw out a blocker for the enemy fleet to deal with before they can attack your main fleet. For Example: the US Navy coming from the base in Hawaii to attack the Japanese Navy in SZ 6. If Japan throws a destroyer out to SZ 16, the US fleet will have to stop to deal with that first and be stuck in SZ 16, allowing the Japanese fleet to “strafe” it. I can’t really think of any other place that might work.
Strafing is anytime you attack but don’t intend to roll more than 1 or maybe 2 rounds of dice. The intention is not to win the territory but to cause damage to the opposing side without losing your own valuable units. In a naval strafe you might inflict losses on the other side but you absorb any hits with battleships or carriers. Strafing is tricky when there are only a few units on either side so naval strafing is a rare phenomenon probably best left to the experts. It could work well if you can retreat next to an airbase for protection while your damaged capital ships are still vulnerable, and a naval base to repair them at the start of your next turn. J6 would be a good example.
Another time to strafe is when you are attacking from two or more territories and you want to retreat all the attacking forces to one of them. For example on G1 some people will attack Yugoslavia from Southern Germany and Romania for 1 round of dice and then retreat everything to Romania, effectively moving the Southern Germany infantry units 2 territories. Sometimes you might even go so far as to attack with 1 less unit than the defender has to make absolutely sure that you don’t get “lucky” and actually take the territory when all you really want is the mobility. It can be a very useful tactic when playing Russia.
I would say you can have as many rounds of dice throwing as needed, just so long as you don’t conquer the square. It can be the only way to hold on to Moscow sometimes, to straffe that major German stack that just moved next to moscow.
It can be the only way to hold on to Moscow sometimes, to straffe that major German stack that just moved next to moscow.
Always fun, that one. You lose 10 Infantry, replace it with 10. They lose 9 infantry. Whoops, theres a nice swing in odds.
and sometimes you can use it to get your men from South Ukraine or wherever back to Moscow in a pinch
Typically you can use strafes in situations where you face a coordinated attack from several locations.
You are able to obliterate a medium opposing stack, whilst maintaing the position you want, and preventing your opponent from succeeding in his plan.
Alot of people don’t account for the fact that you might attack them, only to retreat.
The strafe is also an excellent tool to use, when you plan on building into your force anyways, and even more so, when after the said attack, many of your units previously tipped, will be healed by your next turn.
Suddenly your opponent went from having a superior navy on his turn, to having a damaged, and inferior navy, out of position, facing off against a superior strike force.
By the old rules, when battleships healed at the end of a combat round, this was particularily devestating. Â If you managed to muster 4 to 6 battleships, and you found ways to hold on to the initiative, you were practically invincible.
Gargantua is right–in 1942 BB’s were THE unit–not only for strafing but for general attacks.
Regarding strafing, I know I don’t take it into account enough. It can be useful in certain situations.
lets say you’ve destroyed the German navy
you want to add defense to your fleet
but buying a destroyer is useless because the anti sub ability does nothing for you
buying a BB is not good because you don’t want to spend 20 or more on a giant unit, you only want a little bit more protection. (does anyone actually BBs anymore btw? i’ve never seen a purchase except by new players)
so you buy a cruiser, since you get a little more defense against air attacks, and you get that free bombardment
I do this with the atlantic fleets for UK and USA all the time, and I expect this to be no different whether AA50 or Global or Europe
I would never price them at 10 as that is way too cheap, and giving +1 move is too big of an advantage.
A mass of cheaper units should always beat a mass of more expensive units, and I’ve held this as a A&A principal, so Destroyers should always be the “better” buy compared with cruisers, and cruisers should be roughly equal to BBs.
I will always still buy them at 12, and I think the perfect price would be 11.5, so I am ok with 11 or 12.
Well said, although someone will come out and say that you’re better off buying carriers and fighters in your situation, even factoring in AA. But they fail to recognize the value of bombardment because it doesn’t risk planes at all. Fighters aren’t much good if you don’t have the targets (if the targets are all huge stacks that will pulverize anything you attack with)
I use cruisers; for me it’s a nice supremacy unit, least of all to support bombardment.
Sure - you can always put up theorycrafted scenarios where in each individual situation the cruiser will be ‘voted off the island’. (Oh, but if you attack with 20 destroyers it’ll be better to have ….)
But combine all the hypothetical scenarios and you have a versatile unit in the cruiser with both decent offence, defence and the bombardment ability.
As with everything, it’s a matter of situation, but cruisers are always a mainstay in any navy I build in in AA. The number of them changes, but I have cruisers.
I would say that putting cruisers in EVERY navy is a bit of a stretch…
Maybe he means every big/main navy!
I’m always defending cruisers at 12 in these discussions, but I rarely buy them.
You want to talk about over-priced? How about battleships in classic?
Cruisers are best on bombardment, and worst off in sea combat. Dont build them unless they will bombard every turn…
If your going to buy a destroyer as UK, you might considder using 4 IPC to get a bombard every turn and 1 extra in defence. In long term (3-4 rounds) this could pay off.
