The MAIN reason to do the taranto raid is to neuter italy. Yes, the UK med fleet is valuable, but pulling it out of the med is often a poor choice. You might be able to keep egypt but italy has an easy job closing the Suez, trans Jordan or egypt. The med fleet then sits in the red Sea/Indian sea doing next to nothing
Secondly and more importantly the taranto raid prevents in most cases 1 or 2 Italian objectives such as north Africa and roman empire. If you play it right egypt, gib and North Africa is safe, without taranto it is more often not.
If you can merge med and 110 fleet with air base at Gibraltar it is a different story.
Key point: prevent Italian objectives and taranto does this
Okay! Here is the dark skies break down, rounds to buy bombers are round 1 (bomb London and sea lion or sink UK in med then blast UK in Egypt for Italy walk in. Next bomber buy round (you should get mech armor rounds 2-5) is rounds 4 -7(depending on when you are attacking Russia because you buying it the round before you all in to Max the odds out).
There you go that is the strat. Also bomb the Russians if you are not blasting Egypt. Easy.
There is the Japan all in strategy. This involves taking UK Pacific then sending everything middle East while bombing the Russians and suiciding all planes on UK in the middle East… Basically you auto win Europe by vc count, this is a hyper cheese strat.
The hyper cheese strategy works because china can’t leave China and Siberia is too far to make it to Russia before the G6 all in you dead gg GTFO . Yep.
thanks for the responses. I had a couple of follow up questions.
On Taranto, how much does the move by Germany to drop a fighter in for the scramble affect the attack. Without the fighter, it is pretty good odds (86% according to triple A’s calculator) but with it, it is 52%. it just seems to me that in the latter case, there is a lot to lose (that is hard for the UK to replace) for a 50% chance of seriously hurting Italy. Almost half the time, Italy can still do what you were trying to prevent and now you have lost your fleet (and possibly all your air units) to counter it later.
If one doesn’t do that, are their other options that people use? Is moving the fleet to Gibraltar (leaving a destroyer back as a blocker) an option? You mentioned this is worth it if you can get the 110 fleet to join. Can it be worth it without? The Germans could hit it (if the Italians gave them a place to land in Algeria) but hurting the German air force and pulling them out of Europe for a turn in round 2 might make that worth it. Maybe? Is Red Sea always a bad move? I take your point that Italy can grab Trans-Jordan and block them but that can be taken back.
On Dark Skies,
A bomber buy on turns 4-7 makes a lot more sense to me as that can support the tanks and mechs bought earlier on the push to Moscow and support counter attacks on US/UK landings. But the way I had read about it is that it was a strategy where bombers were the primary buy from round 1 (the posts I had read identified a flexibility to buy other units as needed but would aim for 2-4 bombers a turn). Am I off on that or does dark skies also include that approach as well? And if it does, what is the status of it as a strategy?
Thanks again on the responses.
The MAIN reason to do the taranto raid is to neuter italy. Yes, the UK med fleet is valuable, but pulling it out of the med is often a poor choice. You might be able to keep egypt but italy has an easy job closing the Suez, trans Jordan or egypt. The med fleet then sits in the red Sea/Indian sea doing next to nothing
Secondly and more importantly the taranto raid prevents in most cases 1 or 2 Italian objectives such as north Africa and roman empire. If you play it right egypt, gib and North Africa is safe, without taranto it is more often not.
If you can merge med and 110 fleet with air base at Gibraltar it is a different story.
Key point: prevent Italian objectives and taranto does this
Highlighted sentence is my experience in quite a number of face to face games.
Taranto is optimal by far in my experience. In a raid I did today, I left the CV and Malta fighter out but brought in 2 from London. A major gamble! Killed the BB but left a TT in SZ97. There is still a major chance of losing Egypt in that game although I think I will be able to retake it. I digress. I don’t know how you (OP) got to 50%? Even if you only bring one fighter (plus the bomber) from London, should be about 80% with the scramble, which is unlikely. Gibraltar fighter normally helps in SZ96, with the SZ91 cruiser.
I’ve combined in the med off Gibraltar a few times with a destroyer blocker and I liked it. I didn’t buy a airbase there either. If you keep North Africa the Germans can’t hit you with their airforce.
Farmboy: you can bring in fighters from London or Scotland to the taranto raid to give you better odds. This means you can reach with 3 fighters (f.eks 2 from London and the Malta fighter) 1 tac, 1 bomber, carrier, destroyer and cruiser. In this case you are over 90%, even with 3 fighters scrambling. Good luck!
As the bovine said, get one or two bombers on G1 and then more on G4-7. The fast movers that you have on G2-3 can force Russia to retreat back to Moscow. There is little chance to take Moscow unless he makes a mistake so head down to the oil fields. You should be making 70+ per round and Moscow can’t step out of their Capitol. Likely you are binning them to minimize infantry production. A few fast movers head off to Siberia by G7.
Meanwhile the Allies need a big fleet to safeguard transports. That limits the invasion force. If you transport 2 ground units to Scandinavia, it will be hard or impossible for them to invade. If you build 3 ground units a round in France, Western Europe will be more costly to invade. Eventually the Allies will get a beachhead, but around that time Moscow will fall or Japan will be out of control. Obviously dice can mess up this plan, but I have rarely lost in a no-bid game. The ability to simultaneously threaten:
Allows you to pick the time to strike weak stacks with a bit of support from cannon fodder. I would say that Axis has an 85% chance of winning a no bid game against an equal opponent with this plan.
"Dark Skies’ is for losers… real NERDS. A bunch of bombers just can’t walk into Moscow. You got to roll in there with tanks!
Build a couple loaded carriers and those bombers will turn into hapless baby sparrows… you can stomp on their beaks and turn them into dust! CRUSH THEM! INTO DUST! :x
To wit:
I didn’t think the of the fighters coming from UK (in my limited experience so far, they get used for scramble, defense of UK, and supporting the destroyer in taking out subs or the German battleship. So I’ve only simulated the combat with the UK bomber, the Egypt fleet and the Malta fighter. That obviously makes a difference and makes it much safer. I’d guess with 80% (1 UK fighter) to 95% 2 (UK fighter) odds, most Italy players aren’t going to try to scramble either. The British will lose the carrier and the two fighters after from a German counter but that will take some of the German air out of the game too.
thanks all for taking the time to walk me through this.
I didn’t think the of the fighters coming from UK (in my limited experience so far, they get used for scramble, defense of UK, and supporting the destroyer in taking out subs or the German battleship. So I’ve only simulated the combat with the UK bomber, the Egypt fleet and the Malta fighter. That obviously makes a difference and makes it much safer. I’d guess with 80% (1 UK fighter) to 95% 2 (UK fighter) odds, most Italy players aren’t going to try to scramble either. The British will lose the carrier and the two fighters after from a German counter but that will take some of the German air out of the game too.
thanks all for taking the time to walk me through this.
If the Germans make smart attacks turn 1 on the RN it doesn’t make sense to scramble. Now if they get cute and try to do too much then a scramble may be worth it.
@IKE:
I didn’t think the of the fighters coming from UK (in my limited experience so far, they get used for scramble, defense of UK, and supporting the destroyer in taking out subs or the German battleship. So I’ve only simulated the combat with the UK bomber, the Egypt fleet and the Malta fighter. That obviously makes a difference and makes it much safer. I’d guess with 80% (1 UK fighter) to 95% 2 (UK fighter) odds, most Italy players aren’t going to try to scramble either. The British will lose the carrier and the two fighters after from a German counter but that will take some of the German air out of the game too.
thanks all for taking the time to walk me through this.
If the Germans make smart attacks turn 1 on the RN it doesn’t make sense to scramble. Now if they get cute and try to do too much then a scramble may be worth it.
Yeah. I wouldn’t use them for a scramble in turn 1 (depending as you say, on the German attacks) but in turn 2.
I have only had a chance to play this a couple of times (and a couple of more times playing around in triplea), but so far I’ve used the fighters to hit surviving subs and/or the battleship near UK in turn 1 and (assuming no sea lion) I have tried to put 3 allied fighters in UK and 3 in Scotland (this means building 1 and moving the Gibraltar fighter up) so that I can rebuild a UK fleet in 109. I figured the German air force could still probably take it out but if they are going barbarossa it was worth it to pull the German airforce West and to take out half of it on turn 2.
