Can you scramble from an airbase if there are only friendly transports in adjacent SZ?

@nzcamel

Rulebook (Europe 1940.2, page 13) has it:

"However, units can’t end their movement in friendly spaces during the Combat Move phase except in four instances.
…

Sea units that will be participating in an amphibious assault
from a friendly sea zone, as well as sea and/or air units that
may be needed to support it in the case that defending air
units are scrambled (see “Scramble,” page 16).

"

@nzcamel said in Protecting the transports with aircraft, in an amphibious landing, from scrambles.:

@aequitas-et-veritas they aren’t being sent to join a certain combat. They are staying with the fleet (with no enemy ships present) not fighting in the landing battle. Are you sure they are allowed to move in the combat step?

… same rulebook, page 32:

“Carrier aircraft move independently of the carrier on their own turn. They move along with the carrier on its turn if they belong to different powers. On the air units’ turn, they launch before the carrier moves, even if they are not leaving the sea zone themselves.”

So in case the attacking power brings its fighters to the sea zone in question (with the fleet or not) during combat move phase they will fight against possibly scrambling units.

Only fighters belonging to friendly powers remain as cargo on the carrier.

Triple A illustrates the transport issue pretty well by having you ‘roll’ for a hit on even an unprotected transport.

Or… it helps to remember a scenario where a larger naval battle is going on and the defenders have 2 or more transports. If the attackers hit enough to kill all defenders and have +1 hit it gets assigned to a transport even if the defenders return enough hits to kill all the attackers so an attacker might kill some but not all transports.

Thanks buddy, my transports will noncom with impunity from now on!

@taamvan:

The carrier “swap” would only work if the carriers started in SZ 38, the other distances are too far to “shuttle bomb” (my name for that swap).  Unless you have the air base, or more carriers.

So J1 you move your carriers to 36, J2 to 38/41 to block 37 getting blocked :) Both of those SZs support a swap on J3.

@taamvan:

With no mobile units to start, how could UK take Yunnan?  It just cant get there until later in the game to threaten it.

So if UK moves its initial units to Berma on UK1, and then Japan is taking Yunnan on J1 and retaking it on J2, those Berma units would be easily enough to take Yunnan on UK2, right?

@taamvan:

The J2 is what is stopped by the blocker.  On J2, Japan can move to SZ 39 at peace, so it just ignores the blockers.  Then you’d use the UK/ANZAC trick, we hope.  J3 is impossible to stop, but it just wont work because there is no landing place (Burma, Ceylon) for the bulk of the fighters.

J3 is impossible to stop if you do this, but the 3 TTs you build on J1 will be at your SZ36 Naval Base on J2, and rely on SZ37 being open to participate.  And if UK is at peace UK2, there’s nothing stopping him from moving a DD to SZ37.  Isn’t the point of the initial transports that you’re hitting Calcutta with 12 land units instead of 6 in front of all of that air power?  Seems like a much more IPC-favorable battle.

@taamvan:

The best move is to get 6 men into Burma, in a way that UK wont attack (because he is afraid of defending short), then get 6 MORE men the next round, so you double the transports ability too.  This only works 1 time because of the limited number of ground troops the Japanese have in that area to start, unless you slow down the whole plan in general to a J3.

I didn’t quite understand the part about doubling the transport ability, but I think you’re referring to using the initial TTs to take Burma J2, right?  That move puts pressure on Calcutta while making sure you keep the Yunnan landing zone.  How can those TTs be reused though, I only see the 2 units in Siam that can get in position for that?

Awesome.  Thanks for the quick reply.

The Allies have to control Turkey at the beginning of the Russian turn for Russia to move ships through the Straits.

Also, according to the rule book: “If a canal or narrow strait is controlled by a power not on your side, but with which you are not yet at war, you must ask permission to use it, which may be denied.”
So in a very theoretical situation, Germany could capture Turkey before being at war with Russia, and allow Russian ships to pass through the Straights. But I don’t think that ever happens.

If we’re talking about just one ship in a sea zone carrying just one or two units, there’s not much potential for confusion.  If we’re dealing with a situation in which a large number of transports in a single sea zone are carrying a large number of units, the simplest solution would be to keep all the transported units physically off the board and to represent their presence on the board via one or more markers.  This is basically the principle of the task force markers that were used in the original A&A Pacific game.

There would be two basic approaches.  If you consider the transported units to be a single group, all you need to do is plunk the sculpts into a pile off the board and to put a small marker – anything would do – next to the group of ships transporting them.  If, on the other hand, you want to track in detail which-unit-is-aboard-what-ship (so you can figure out what troops and equipment get lost when ship X gets topedoed, for instance), then you’d need to put a little numbered (or lettered) marker next to (or under) each ship, and a corresponding marker off the board next to each unit or pair of units being transported.  Scrabble tiles could be pressed into service in that role, as one possible quick-and-dirty solution.  For a more elegant, you could use HBG’s cardboard naval task force markers, of which it has a wide selection.

In any case, this would fix the transportation problem without having to replace the ships themselves (or until replacement ships become available, if you want to look at it that way).

@jeffdestroyer:

thanks,  I did not put the air base/naval/factories up yet

yeah, that’s weird. The capital actually has a minor factory! It’s like ANZAC not having a naval base on NSW