@Baron:
With this alternate Convoy Raid, do you have to control somehow the SZ (such as SZ50) to forbid the enemy (Japan) such 3 IPCs income?
It is an interesting question.
One potentially viable approach is to say that a naval unit does not need to occupy the sea zone (on the opponent’s turn, during their collect income phase) but simply to “attack” the convoy on their own turn. What form that attack takes is I suppose a different issue. You could make it a roll, or it could just be automatic.
I know in some of the older convoy systems, it was not necessary to control the sea zone, but simply to pass through it during your conduct combat phase, and this was enough to disrupt the flow of income. So for example, a sub could pass through an enemy Convoy in a sea zone, and be said to have “raided” that zone. This would give ships the ability to behave similar to the way tanks do on land, when they blitz across unoccupied enemy territory. Or…
I imagine it like this, if one of your own convoy zones is undefended, and an enemy naval unit enters it during their combat move (either passing through, or ending their move here) then your IPC chips beneath the Convoy Roundel would be removed. Now, when your turn arrives, on your collect income there will no chips/IPCs to collect for that zone. At the end of a players turn, after collect income, the convoy chips are replaced automatically.This last could be an extension of the “place units” phase, so you place all units and then finally re-place all convoy chips.
For simplicity I had suggested before to use 3 ipcs per Convoy Roundel. It could be 5, just as easily or any number, but I like 3 ipcs for the infantry comparison and because 1942.2 includes Green Chips.
:-D
The easiest approach would be to say that, “raiding” into or across a sea zone removes all 3 ipcs at once automatically = 1 green chip removed from beneath the control marker.
I guess with these chips, you could go on top of the roundel instead of beneath it, since the 1942.2 chips are smaller than the old ones. Either way works. Basically using a chip rather than a transport scultp, since the latter are more limited and often needed by the Allies. This also prevents unit confusion, since chips are always either beneath or on top of the flag roundel.
Another approach would be to say each ship raiding across a Convoy zone disrupts at 1:1 per ship. Here you could use 3 gray chips, and players would have an incentive to “wolf-pack” so they could remove all 3 chips in one pass. This idea gives a bit more variety to the Convoy concept since you could conceivably disrupt 1, 2, or 3 of the ipcs per convoy.
Based on the earlier example with Japan, I have been thinking about how this might look in the Atlantic for 1942.2. One thing I think you need to decide when working up a new HR of this sort, is how much of the game you want to change. I think its good to pick a focus, because if you change too much at once, then the rule can become a bit unmanageable. So for example, if we added an entirely new convoy/income mechanic, then I think it makes a lot of sense to try and leave the rest of the game more or less unchanged, so you can really see whether the rule is fun for gamplay, or balanced in isolation. That means that if I was going to play with a new HR convoy rule in 1942.2 it would be helpful to preserve the OOB unit set up. This creates an interesting challenge for the location of Convoys, because it would be best if the set up didn’t include “contested convoys” e.g. a convoy of one nation, occupied by enemy starting units. This would create more confusion than its worth in my view. So for example, the more I think about it, the more sz 9 seems like a poor location for an Allied Convoy, because German subs start out there! Brings up an immediate dilemma if you put a convoy Roundel there, because the question then arises, “is it already being raided by the starting German u-boats?”
I suppose you could start the game with no convoy IPCs chips loaded under the Flag Roundels
Instead the chips could be loaded during a players first “place units phase.” In that case you could support a British convoy in sz 9, without having to address the question of whether German starting subs there are already raiding it. This would entail no adjustment to starting income, since convoys wouldn’t come into effect until the end of the players first turn, so it doesn’t effect the first round unit set up or battle requirements. That might be ideal.
I think you can avoid the specific question of sz 9 German subs though, while still preserving the essential flavor of the Convoy routes, if you approach the Atlantic a bit like I suggested for Japan. The convoys stand in for all “adjacent sea zones,” which allows you to cover more of the broader convoy region, albeit abstractly. So the convoy activity in sz 9, could be handled via sz 2, or sz 12, which are conveniently NOT occupied by German warships at the outset.
;)
Or if you did want to have Convoy Roundels, loaded with chips from the outset, then this a way to introduce a bonus to starting income, alternative to the bid, while also not busting the first round combats. If done, we could try to balance it against the current need for an Allied bid!
:evil:
Here’s an idea for how they might look in 1942.2…
And here’s another historical map ripped from google. It shows the broad strokes for the Battle of the Atlantic with major shipping lanes around 1941, so basically the situation as it might be conceived right before the 1942 game kicks off…
Just like with the Japan convoy example on the previous page, I think it would be nice to create a fairly even distribution of convoys for this extra Atlantic income, but one that it is possible for both sides to contest, at least for a time. So just like sz 50 could cover most of the south Pacific convoys, sz 12 could represent the American contributions to Africa, while also encompassing Brazil or the West Indies. Sz 2 could represent Allied convoys bound for England from the Americas, sz 3 would do the same but bound for Russia. Sz 13 could do double duty on both the Med and the South Atlantic/Africa covering most of the British Empire for this side of the globe etc. Germany has 3 convoys here, just like Japan on the Pacific side, but they can be contested after time. What do you guys think?

