Dumb sub question….

Thank you all for the replies! I was the USSR and France in an Allied Victory. The Axis player waited to attack all of the major powers until round three and by that time we were too built up for him to push very far into one area.

My mistake was not sending my two move units to Romania the previous turn as Germany. I just played out turn 9 and US was able to stack Northern Italy. Italy is out of the game now, but on the other side of the board Japan is making 105, and he is bombing Russia with 5 bombers every turn. He has more than UK in the south and he can now start landing in Africa taking the money away from Russia and UK. I do agree that US is going to eventually take Germany, but could he do it before Moscow falls? Probably :/

@SunTzu7:

Just wanted to check a sub rule. If a sub goes up against other non transport, non destroyer type ships (in this instance a damaged carrier and cruiser), can the sub keep doing a surprise attack till the opposition are destroyed without them firing back? That’s how my friend read the rules.

Like Brado explained, yes the sub gets a “surprise strike” each round.  But the defending carrier and cruiser do fire back every round provided it was not sunk by the sub surprise strike.

So in your example, if the sub hit, the defender would choose a casualty.  Whatever he chooses will not roll (will not fire back) but the other unit will fire back.
Subs get surprise strikes at the beginning of every single round of combat (the first round AFTER the last enemy destroyer is sunk), even when they are on defense.

If you read through Step 2 under General combat (Submarine Surprise Strike or Submerge), the rule book tells exactly how to handle sub combat and makes it very clear that surprise strike happens every round, and also how to handle surprise strike casualties.
One such sentence:
“As long as there are attacking and/or defending submarines and no opposing destroyers, this step is repeated during each round of combat.”

Another option, besides the CV buy, is to invest in bombers.

Do a strat. bomb on London G1 (with 2 bombers), and do another one with 2 + 2 on G2 (with a G1 buy of 2 bombers and whatever else your heart desires for 6 IPCs).

In my opinion, it’s the better option because once you’re through taking London, extra bombers are far more useful against the USSR than a carrier.

Okay, thanks. I’ll let that bastard know he was right.

Ok.
Thank you for quick and clear answer (as you always do) and thanks Geist for helping.

You are right.  You cannot have fully loaded transports.  However, you can have 5 or 6 transports sitting on the coast with all the troops and tanks and artillery and mech inf just waiting.  It makes the Germans keep an eye on the US and slam everything into USSR or UK.  It is a great deterrent.

It seems with 6 subs on the board, you could keep 2 off Canada and 4 off London. That means you would subtract 11 IPCs from the UK until the US entered the war, if UK does not build a DD in Canada.

You could keep London at around 18 IPCs until the US enters the war. However, I don’t think Germany can spare the money on sea units, since I believe they need to help Japan gather victory cities or face a long term loss of game. I also suspect that the US will have 2-3 DDs in their war fleet able to clear two of the convoy zones for UK.

Personally I would make air units over sea units, as you can then threaten fleets and land units especially if you need a quick extra “push” against Moscow early on.

You would discourage a navy build by UK until the US could arrive on scene.

In some Europe games, I did produce a couple of subs early on, but not in any global games. I found their life span to be brief unless they hid behind Denmark.