Who is attacker and defender in Sea Battles?

@greyleaf3

Don’t confuse yourself by introducing the term “retreat” to the situation you describe.
The decision to retreat occurs during conduct combat phase (Step 6 of the General Combat Sequence).

Your scenario is at the beginning of the Combat Move Phase - and the “Sea Units Starting in Hostile Sea Zones”-rules (rulebook page 12) apply. So this is about combat movement, not about retreating.

And in this phase sea units can move their full range.

The enemy destroyer of course has no effect on the submarine’s movement here - as the submarine is already there - and does not enter or move through a hostile seazone containing an enemy destroyer.

100 dice!! I think you may have reached overkill levels of dice-throwing already :) Here’s my suggested breakdown:

20 “ones” 40 “twos” 30 “threes” 10 “fours”

This would represent a perfectly-matched battle with a unit count of 40-50 and the following composition on each side:

20 inf/art in any combination 15 tnk/ftr 5 bmr

I think that breakdown would cover 95% of your battles, with a possibility that you have to throw some infantry dice twice (or throw a few of them into a “2x” or “3x” tray).

Here is the end of our series breaking down the rules for Sea Combat. Part 5 brings the series together to discuss Amphibious Assaults. Enjoy!

Let us know if you have any questions or comments! Next up, Air Combat!

https://youtu.be/t0gULH9QyJM

@Mrmann

yep it’s sunk or “you sunk my battleship” heh heh

welcome to the boards

One sub point that Argo didn’t mention is that if you commit the transports to the attack, and the naval battle fails, that the whole surviving group retreats together, with the land units stuck on the transports until the next turn.  This makes them very vulnerable to being destroyed, which makes this type of combined sea/amphibious attack high stakes.

This is also why you have to commit to the battles at the same time; not only does it keep the flow of play clean but it also forces you to analyze all the risks you are taking at the same time.  Reshuffling your unit allocations in other planned battles after the first combats are seen is also a no-no, though in a friendly game it is ok to make some revisions.

Still, since you can choose the order you fight battles in, this can be helpful.  You can see the outcome of 1-2 big battles, and then know whether the smaller battles are worth fighting to the bitter end, whether its more important to take the territory vs just clear it.  You do have to fight at least 1 round of combat for every declared battle, my point is that gaining certain information as to the outcome of one important battle can be instructive of the need to fight other battles to their bitter conclusion or withdraw early.

We fight in this order, not sure if its required in all versions by the letter of the rules, but it can make the game have a cleaner flow…

Declare all combats, unit buy is sealed and cannot be changed after we begin to do;

strategic bombings in any order then sea combats without land element in any order sea combats with a landing in any order land combats in any order don’t do any noncoms zero zilch none until now because it keeps the separation of turns and moved units cleaner I realize its tempting…

lots of teams only have 1-2 combats to declare per turn so focusing on doing all your combats first (and ignoring units that will noncom) is also an easy way to keep your mind focused on one task at a time;  things that fight get committed first and everything else can be contemplated at length after combats are resolved.

Excellent!

Thanks for the quick reply wittmann.

Played AA Classic many years ago and just picked up AA 1942.2.

This Forum will prove to be extremely helpful.

Don’t think of loading/unloading transports as using the units’ movement point, think of it as part of the transport’s special ability to carry units. A transport may load units up to its capacity, so long as those units have not moved yet during the turn, and may unload any amount of cargo (none, one unit, or both) once per turn (so no split unloading). However, units that have been unloaded are not able to move for the rest of the turn, and you may not load or move a transport after unloading.

@MistuhJay:

@UrJohn:

It depends on your strategy.

–CV, AP & 3 INF

why would you need a third CV when you start with two already?

I don’t think you’d need a 3rd CV on J1. By the time its J1, you may be down to 1 CV. If the UK attacks your SZ 37 fleet and wins soundly, then Japan starts off on the defensive. You may want a 2nd CV.

If you don’t buy any navy/air force on J1, then the US can take the initiative in the Pacific. You will be hard pressed to do everything the IJN needs to do: protect Philippines, Borneo, East Indies, Japan, Kwangtung and Manchuria; chase off or destroy the USN; crush India; and pick up Australia, New Zealand and/or Africa.