Taranto Fail… What next in the Med?

@GeneralHandGrenade

To keep the discussion alive, i´ve been making some strategy videos.

Here´s one for the UK:

https://youtu.be/Z4vqnXhq4pU?si=YvdnR9tssBjlS1kE

I feel like the “3rd” option is stacking UK navy in 92 and building an air base in Gibraltar UK1.  Same risk of Sea Lion as building the IC in Egypt UK1 tho.  This requires “breaking out” by attacking the Italian Destroyer in 96 with air power (bomber from London and Fighter from Malta).  I would also recommend an attack on Ethiopia via India support combined with the Tac and TT with 2 units from egypt, then consolidating Alex/Egypt forces in Egypt.  If, for whatever reason, UK navy in 110 was avoided, send them to 92 as well.

Just another option to consider with lots of “ifs”.  Germany’s opening move should dictate your options rather than have a hard and fast “this is what the UK MUST DO”.

True, I did not mean to say that one bad-luck battle increases your odds of a future good-luck battle. What I meant is that Global 1940 is a much bigger game than, say, Revised. Global has more units involved and more battles that matter. The effect of having more units and more battles is to soften the effect of any one unit missing or of any one battle going poorly. In other words, as you broaden your sample size, you get closer to achieving average results in the aggregate.

@Arthur-Bomber-Harris the retreat is only for one turn. By stacking and blocking Alexandria you can comeback UK2 and even make an airbase there.
It´s a withdrawal UK1 to attack on UK2.

@variance:

UK may strafe Northern Italy with 6 planes and land all remaining plus Gibraltar fighter in Paris.

Sorry guys for being out of commission all summer.

Welcome back my friend!

The strength of the Taranto attack as Britain is that you have to basically bring as many planes to the fight as Italy has eligible to scramble in order to ensure “mutual destruction” odds.

Assuming you always destroy the Italian transport off of Malta, you will leave Italy with only a handful of boats and one lone transport. With only one transport it is very unlikely that Italy can effectively take Greece and Gibraltar on the first turn, meaning that you can deny them a valuable objective early on. Sending one transport either way means it will take at least another two turns to get to the other side. (The solution to this for the Axis is Germany taking Gibraltar for Italy).

With only one transport, Italy cannot effectively threaten Egypt, which gives Britain much-needed time to fortify it with troops from either India or S. Africa.

Even though the UK’s navy in the med faces almost assured destruction (if the Italian counterattack doesn’t finish it off somehow, German planes will), you are banking on the fact that you make almost triple Italy’s economy. Italy’s paltry 10 IPCs mean that rebuilding transports will take a huge portion of their income. Until Italy achieves it’s NO’s, building anything larger than destroyers and submarines will be impossible without saving up IPCs for 1-2 turns.

The other advantage of this strategy is that by destroying most of Italy’s navy early the US does not have to build as large a navy in the Atlantic, which is a massive benefit given the task of facing Japan in the Pacific.

The other popular UK opener is to pull your navy back into SZ81 and possibly join with the India navy (that might be running away from Japan) and build up a force too great for even Italy’s combined navy to defend against. Then the US and UK both hit the med on turn 4 in a 1-2 punch.

@deadbunny:

the USA can build a massive fleet and either take Rome or move into Africa(I have seen both done in a single turn).

Do you mean building the fleet and taking Rome and Africa in the same turn? I must be misunderstanding this post.

Well, if I had written it, I think I would have been referring to SZ 92 which is where the US may want to be at the end of turn 4. It can dump troops into both Italy and Egypt. Maybe as a turn to take away victory cities? Otherwise, I’d just go straight for Italy and reinforce it next turn.

Get more Axis ships into the open waters of the Atlantic to at least stall the Americans.  Tighten the noose on England and hope that Japan is threatening the USA enough that they can’t afford tons of units for the Europe half.  Italy has always been the weak point to the Axis, hence why we took them out first in the real war.