@GeneralHandGrenade:
I don’t think it’s a game breaker at all. It’s not nearly as silly as Japan being able to park their entire navy in Pearl Harbour before being at war with the US and the Americans can do nothing but treat them to a free piece of pizza.
Parking the IJN there is not very strategically smart though. USA can put 5 planes on Hawaii plus a bomber and also land reinforcements. It fully commits you to hitting Pearl harbour. I suppose some extra TTs for Japan and you can probably take it down but at what opportunity cost? You cannot retreat except perhaps to Marshall Islands. In over 100 games played, I haven’t seen that for ages, if I’ve ever seen it.
It also would never have happened in the actual war because USA would have been on their guard more about an attack, so I guess you could argue that it should be banned from a historical accuracy point of view.
Whereas the ANZAC DOW loophole is pretty maddening. And yes, I still regard it as a loophole which Japan has to consider. It goes against the entire idea of the exception allowing loading a TT after a DOW. I do agree that it isn’t a game breaker though. It isn’t as bad as the Strategic Bombing rules, for example!