@barnee Thank you very much Barnee. This is the first time this situation has come up, so we wanted to do it right.
Scramble defense
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Need a clarification on defending rules.
SZ 112 contains 2 German subs and West Germany has 3 fighters. If UK combat moves combat ships into SZ 112 along with transports to amphibious assault West Germany, Germany can scramble the three fighters.
My question is, do the German subs participate in the battle or just the 3 German fighters vs the UK forces?
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The German scramble would force a naval battle preventing UK from ignoring the Subs, so yes, they would participate.
Edit
or they could submerge if no UK DDs but that wouldn’t make sense to scramble then :)I guess if you wanted to block a bombard it might
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@barnee Wait, I thought you couldn’t scramble into a SZ that there isn’t combat occuring in? Am I misreading the initial prompt? The power conducting the amphibious assault can choose to ignore the SS so then the fighters do not have a combat to scramble into.
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@bakerbei You can scramble to defend against an amphibious assault per p. 16
They can also be scrambled to resist amphibious
assaults from adjacent sea zones, whether or not the
territory being assaulted is the territory containing the
air base. They may defend against the enemy ships
conducting the amphibious assault even if friendly ships
are not present. -
@nishav Agreed. But what I find interesting, is that if the assault goes down, the ftrs can scramble, but can the attacker choose to ignore the subs? i.e., they will only have a naval battle against the ftrs, and assuming they win, then the assault occurs. All the while, the subs are impotent to stop anything.
Or because there is a naval battle, does the defender get the option for the subs get to engage, which might change the attackers strategy since there are a few extra hits to account for?
Obviously, if there is no DD in the attackers forces, the sub can just submerge, but I believe the important part of this question is to know if the subs get to fight.
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@surfer @nishav The attacker’s choice to ignore the enemy submarines is a movement decision made during Combat Move phase. The attackers chooses to ignore the enemy subs then to move into that seazone for an amphibious assault with the intent to prevent from a sea battle, as enemy submarines alone do not make a seazone hostile.
However the attacker has to take into account the defender’s option to scramble: As @barnee already said scrambling creates a sea battle and of course the defender’s subs can participate here.
The attacker can never choose to exclude enemy units from defending in a battle.
Rulebook Pacific 1940.2, page 18:
If sea combat occurs, all attacking and defending sea and air
units present must participate in the battle. (Even if the attacker
chose to ignore defending subs and/or transports, they will still
be involved in the battle if the defender scrambles air units and
forces a sea battle.)
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