Taranto Fail… What next in the Med?

I pretty much always leave the Med to Italy. Even if Germany takes S. France, it usually only uses the IC there for making infantry to protect the Atlantic coast, or maybe a couple of subs to help Italy clear out the Med right at first.
Maybe one of those German infantry will go down, catch a ride on an Italian transport and land in Egypt for that German NO there, but this only happens if Italy is doing very well down there and that usually only happens if the Germans are successful at Sealion so UK is pretty much out of the European theater. Also, the US is usually busy in the Pacific and not doing much in the Atlantic.
So, the Germans getting the “Land Unit in Egypt” NO is fairly rare.
So in our games, Germany has little to no involvement in the Med.  They are either busy attacking England or going after Russia. Either of those takes too much financial commitment.

One thing worth mentioning here is that Africa is essentially a trap for the Axis.   Whether the Italian fleet survives or not, it is very hard to make much of an income difference or gain any NOs before America enters the war and takes it back, or without compromising some other more critical front. Â

Italy only risks 2 IPCs by losing Africa.   In our Game 92 on Saturday, I had the entire Italian navy survive because my opponent did exactly what you suggested, and attacked Tobruk rather than Taranto.   The counter is quite favorable to the Italians, to send in their entire fleet on the attack and clear the med for your NO.   Even with the gigantic navy, I was still boxed in as I couldn’t control either Gibraltar or Egypt in the long term though I took both of them once.   Â

Buying more ships is a trap, and you can’t really hold Gibraltar.   I spent all my $$ on strategic bombers and mechs to help Germany on the eastern front and using Italy to protect the Atlantic Wall or help leapfrog Germany in the East is stronger than trying to take the Maghreb or the Levant.  If you keep any transports, the most effective thing to do with those is threaten/cover/block/rush out of Gibraltar but its going to be hard…

One of my buddies said that far from wanting to reinforce the Italian stack on Tobruk, he wanted to evacuate it from Africa.  Its ineffective and trapped on a good day and easy to annihilate on a bad one.

Pack the UK with Inf, move the Indian fleet towards the Med and start being very aggressive with the Soviet Union.

It does appear more and more now that the British curiser in sz91 will survive to UK1, so the question becomes, if it is going to be there on UK1 how do you use it? Or more specifically how does it help the British naval position in the eastern Med?

@MarkVIIIMarc:

Taranto steals a hit and a tac that defends at 3 from defense of London.  That Sealion thing is the biggest problem England has.

Also that destroyer has been used to block and attack the Denmark Straight in different games in my basement.

Really I sort of like the Taranto raid.  London just has to be made too expensive to take though so I usually don’t do it.

Anyway, I love it when my America takes Minor Complex having Rome while Italian Units are busy chasing the French around Central Africa

Problem is that G4 Sealion is unstoppable.

if concerned about dice cheating, insist on using a dice tower :roll:

I ahve drawn some of the same conclusions and so what I have been trying is push with Italy and push hard to take the Middleeast. If you can get a factory in Iraq and then a factory in Persia you can push out from their. I put almost nothing into my transport fleet which was hardly added to after Taranto happened (Germany went for a G1 Romanian Major which to be honest has proven extremely useful!) The Brits managed to retake Egypt but Italy is still at roughly 25 IPC and has for more forces between Iraq and Persia. Britain is going to need to back up soon or risk losing their forces in Egypt. The other Italian option is push further into Russia. The almost continually have Caucus and are threatening Volgogrod heavily. Germany has the Russians runnings scared from the massive force they moved in with the factory in Romania and has both an army group north and south which outnumbers the Russians allowing the Italians to get away with a little more. For Italy I chose to build up the air force rather than navy and the navy I do have is subs which are blocking Britain’s money in Egypt and also poised with two bombers to push off a Gibraltar or Morocco landing force. I have four subs and two bombers that can hit the Atlantic side of Gibraltar. Germany also has 2 bombers and 5 subs that can hit that same SZ keeping the Allies from landing in North Africa, they are instead landing in French West Africa and bring in reinforcements that way.