Battle of Britain G1 Bombing build strategies

It was an interesting suggestion on the previous page, what to do if Allies just decide not to run Taranto. Games where Italy doesn’t get raided out of existence are usually interesting. In that case you could still put your bombers to good use as Germany.

The point is that the bombers give you options. The pair of them hits at a 4 and can move 7 spaces out the airbase, and bombs at +2. I don’t know what else you can really get in the first round on purchase, for the same cost, that gives you anywhere near as much room to react or innovate based on what the Allies do.

They can crush fleets, they can bomb, they can still project force onto the UK (whether or not Sea Lion is the plan) or into the Med (regardless of what the British do there). And if you double down right at the outset, you can double the Luftwaffe’s bomber armada.

And you know all those bomber pilots were probably secretly trained in Russia, and primed for rapid promotion while Germany rearmed on the sly! So when you do end up with that DoW on the Soviets, they’ll know right where to head, with a quickness!
:-D

It’s worth pointing out that the bomber buy doesn’t require that you use them to bomb, or sea lion, or an exact play by play, it just gives you the option. In my experience people often like to use them out of the W. Germany AB to hit med ships, but it does leave the battle of Britain option open if UK makes a mistake.

Another somewhat similar buy, instead of 2 bombers and a sub, you can get…

1 bomber 1 fighter 1 destroyer.

The play is almost exactly the same as the one with the 2 bomber buy. Place both air in W. Germany and the ship in 112. This doesn’t give you quite the same reach with your air, but the destroyer can neutralize the all subs purchase by UK at London, and it gives some cover to the cruiser in case the strafe in 111 fails. The destroyer also allows you to sub hunt in the Baltic if desired.  The fighter can still reach Taranto on G2, can scramble in 112, and improves a Tac to hit at 4 if clearing the med. With 3 bombers you still have strong bombing options with your Luftwaffe, now at 50/50 survival on London with a decent shot to knock the factory if you wanted to go that route. Also Germany is often a bit short on fighters in the second round, so an extra Bf 109 can be nice to have at the ready.

An additional fighter in W. Germany still gets an extra pip on the Taranto counter attack (by boosting a Tac to hit at 4 when paired) so in that respect it is almost as good as a second bomber. It’s reach is more limited, but it can defend at 4 when it lands, and can scramble. It might allow an additional fighter onto Holland on G1, to protect the Tac which must land there. Fighters from Holland can still reach the Italian coastline and land in S. Italy, so that fighter can still work med coverage.  Of course without a 4th bomber the sz 92 stack becomes harder to deal with, but hey, at least then you dont have to tango at Taranto, and you can still bomb UK or set up on Russia with all 3 Bombers, and your fighters.
:-D

ps. I suppose its also worth pointing out that you could still buy a strategic bomber and carrier deck and pocket the 2 left over for next time  :-D

Sure the carrier ties you down a bit, but it also saves the Bismark, and even if you never buy another ship, you can still sail into the Baltic out of harms way and just keep it for projection on Norway or Novgorod. 16 ipcs invested up front to hold onto to the battleship and protect the Kriegsmarine from Allied air assault. The bomber still gets you the range on Taranto, though in this case you are down 1 fighter on the counter attack, perhaps more if the German tac doesn’t survive the assault on sz 110. Still its not a bad investment, and can be paired with a bomber on the G1 buy.

All the other bomber buys I can think of would just be a variation on 1 bomber with 18 left over to spend on some ground.

But almost all bomber buys that bring the Luftwaffe up to 3 bombers or more seem pretty potent to me. The unit is a wrecking machine, and the Luftwaffe is deadly out of the AB in West Germany.

I think the decision when to use your bombers in a raid, whether against UK or Russia, is always going to come down to what your gut tells you in the moment. Its nice to have the 3rd bomber though, right out the gate, just to keep that option going.

Bomber buys, how do you like to set them up? And what as Allies do you do to counter them?

I agree, if you play with the same group of people regularly, it can sometimes be worth doing a G2 sea lion set up, just to keep your opponents on their toes. Or similarly you can do a G2 Barbarossa invasion. Even if the play isn’t always optimal, it prevents the enemy from ever being able to totally pin down your strategic habits. So maybe sometimes you buy a carrier, or sometimes you buy some armor or mech to hammer the east, just to keep them on edge at all times, and never quite sure what play you’ll adopt.

I’d say I buy a carrier maybe one game out every four, just to be unpredictable. Though the goal here is almost always simply to keep a fleet alive in the Baltic and use it against the Russians, rather than pressuring the UK. Adopting this posture, you get a little more power projected out of W. Germany, onto places like Norway, Baltic, Novgorod etc, and you force the UK to at least play safe. You figure, in order to keep your Baltic fleet safe and effective, you are looking at a total investment of around 30-40 ipcs on the water. This usually means 1 carrier, 1 destroyer (to protect the CV from subs) and then 1 or 2 more transports, just to keep the amphibious pressure on with your fleet. Basically you need a few transports, just to project enough force to justify the initial naval investment. If you do a move like this every once in a while, it prevents the Allies from reading you as player.

But I buy a bomber almost every game, like 9 times out of 10 now. Usually a bomber in combination with some other units, or a double bomber sometimes if I feel agressive, but a bomber either way, I keep coming back to it. Its just really hard not to exploit that combat movement advantage on G2. The big purchase comes on G2 anyway, as everyone knows, once you have the french purse. Its fairly easy to reserve your ground purchase until G2, and spend G1 focusing on units that keep the Allies guessing. “Where are they going to go? What are they going to do?” The bomber at 7 means they can go all over the place and do all sorts of things, so I feel like it is a strong buy from the perspective of obfuscation and misdirection and not quite revealing your full war plan until the G2 purchase is placed.

The only other buy I sometimes like to throw into the mix, is just the full slam on Russia, you know something that puts the Soviets on notice, like an all artillery or mech purchase. But its nice to have the 3rd bomber to coordinate with these too. So I just see the bomber as the standard.

The bomber can do about half a dozen things, whereas a carrier plus total naval build ties you down. I think the Luftwaffe wins out over the Kriegsmarine on average for me, even if you still want to drop the Graf Zeppelin, its possible to do that in later rounds. But a bomber can bomb in addition to whatever else it might do, it has that sneaky option to slam allied production on a gamble if the player so desires. When the force is strong with you, anyway, and you want to roll the dice. Which is something you don’t get for investing at sea or on the ground.

There is that old game play strategy that the player who manages to get the edge in the air early on, is the player who usually comes out on top, and bombers are the backbone of the air force, since they have the reach.

Airforce shifting is at the heart of the game. If you let the Allies shift all their air uncontested, and ever manage to shift your Axis air in response, you end up losing.  In the older games the trick was generally to shift Japanese air to Europe as quickly as possible, in G40 perhaps the reverse is the case, and its Germany that needs to get to the middle of the board early on. Either way a bomber is the only unit that can get from W. Germany 7 spaces out, that you can buy in the first round.

I think its a winner :-D