Do transports have a combat block?

I’ve seen it happen multiple times in SZ6 around Japan, where a massive US-fleet first sends precisely those units ( sub+air+tt ) in an amphibious assault because they can’t be targetted by kamikaze. After the amphibious assault, the rest of the fleet moves in during noncombat.

Better to prepare for a counter attack where you won’t have to deal with fighters in the battle and coastal bombardments. So no defending the atlantic wall in this version of the game.

I think this take is mostly accurate but sometimes Allies have so many transports and (UK) fighters that they might be able to hold Normandy (especially in cases when the bulk of the Luftwaffe is far away).  In cases like that, it might behoove Germany/Italy (let’s say they are defending Germany, West Germany, and France from a big Allied fleet) to move the France stack to Normandy.  If the USA force is relatively small and the UK force is not enough to take Normandy, a 1-2 attack would be costly and risky.  Landing in Holland instead is not always an option, since it’s adjacent to Normandy and W Germany and within tank/mech range of Germany).

In circumstances like that I’ve had success stacking Normandy with a combined German/Italian stack.

Glossary to help making the rulebook easier to read:

A round is “each nations has their turn to play”
A turn is “This nations has its turn to play”.

So, the UK player moving all its pieces is “a turn”.

Thx guys. Problem solved.  :-D

@Imperious:

I got about 3 of those. I really prefer dice tray. Towers suck because you got a small space to see the dice and if you roll alot of dice, it takes more time to count hits.

The tray is much better because everyone can see the results from the table and usually people like to count hits by sweeping those dice to the side of the tray. The tower really has no such space.

I agree 100% I got a beautiful wooden dice tower from FMG (yes they have them), however, when the dice roll out some dice kick back under the drop shoot making them difficult to read. I brought this up to them last year and I believe someone at IWNGU (I will never grow up) was working on a design that releases the dice higher so when the dice kick back, there is a bank that the dice will bounce off of.

@knp7765:

I have another transport question regarding the “defenseless transports” rule and transports in an attack status:
I know that if transports are defending, once any other warships are sunk and there are attackers left, ALL transports are immediately destroyed.
However, if transports are part of an attack, they are not considered defenseless because they can retreat. So if you have some transports with two warships, let’s say cruisers, and the defender gets 2 hits, then the two cruisers are sunk and the transports can then retreat. However, if the defender were to get 3 or more hits, then some of those transports would also be hit and sunk with the remaining transports being able to retreat.  Is this correct?

Specific example: Germany attacks Volgograd with 1 cruiser and 1 transport. Russia scrambles 2 fighters to SZ 115. Both fighters score hits. So in this case, both the German cruiser AND the German transport are sunk, right? It wouldn’t be sink the cruiser and the transport retreats. The 2nd Russian fighter hit would be applied to the transport since the 1st Russian fighter hit sank the cruiser.
That’s the way we played it and I’m pretty sure I’m right. Any defending hits in excess of attacking warships can be applied to attacking transports.

That’s my understanding as well.

IMO, if transports or any other ship enters SZ with enemy sub, sub should always have the opyion of suprize attack shot. Thats the way i play it.

Using Destroyers to block combat movement is a cheap and easy way to protect vital areas for a turn.