British Fighters

Ah right of course, I really should not post so close to waking up!  So it was as I suspected, a defending plane may use a SINGLE movement to find a place to land, so no land in an adjcent SZ would be legal.  Thanks.

No.  Subs only fire in the Opening Fire step, which happens in each combat round.

@Corbeau:

@timerover51:

Your shore bombardment idea has been picked up in the Anniversary Edition rules, evidently.

Ya, i saw that, that’s great news :)
I can only wish i was the one to propose it to the game designer but it really is a coincidence. That was a house rule we used way back then. Still great to see he thought of it too. :)

I like the also th idea of BB acting as artillery support. Good thinking there too. I would not allow it for planes too, i find them already too flexible as a unit acting both in land and sea. I’d rather have them seperated in 2 classes, Land based fighters and CV based fighters. They already have the different molds for some nations, german stuka and Bf-109 for exemple. anyways, that’s another discussion.

For the BB acting like an AA, that’s exactly what i meant. Would give a reason to have one in a fleet.

You need to remember that roughly 2/3 of a carrier’s aircraft were attack planes, dive bombers and torpedo bombers, that would be used in support of ground troops.  This is the basis for the flexibility in fighters in A&A.  If you had a dedicated attack plane, like the Stuka, you could reduce the fighter’s role by a little bit, but by the end of the war, the US Navy’s Corsair fighter was carrying a bombload heavier than that of the Stuka, and delivering it with comparable accuracy.

As for BB getting an AA roll, that makes a fair amount of sense, and is pretty historically accurate.  Quite simply, BBs normally acted as a magnet for air attacks, even if a carrier was around.  The US South Dakato shot down 26 Japanese aircraft while escorting the carrier US Enterprise at the Battle off Santa Cruz in October of 1942, while Adm. Raymond Spruance deployed his battleline in advance of his carriers at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June of 1944 to deliberately absorb Japanese carrier plane attacks.  However, the US did have the best naval AA fire control systems of the entire war, so what holds true for the US does not hold true for everyone else.  The Bismarck had major problems with defending against a limited number of British Swordfish, while the Italian BBs had similar problems.  The British were so-so, and the Japanese were close to hopeless until late in the war.  You could make it a National Advantage for the US, but I suspect that would not be acceptable to a majority of Axis players.  Making it universal is a bit of a stretch.  It would be up to you.

@Craig:

@Krieghund:

That’s interesting, Craig, but I don’t know that using the Gleemax on-line game’s behavior as an argument in a rules discussion is really valid at this time (even if it does support our position!).  There are a few things that it does that are not exactly “according to Hoyle” right now.  Hopefully, the bugs will be fixed soon.

You are right that there are still many bugs in the game, but I don’t think that this topic is one of them.

I agree that the on-line game is doing this particular thing correctly.  My point was that if you use the on-line game to support a rules argument, you set a precedent for others to do the same.  In future arguments, the on-line game may be incorrect in the way it handles the particular rule in question.

For example, the on-line game was allowing land units on transports to be taken as casualties in naval battles.  (This may be fixed by now, but I don’t know for sure.)  Do you really want someone arguing that this is legal because the on-line game allows it?

@Krieghund:

I thought I saw a thread somewhere (BGG?) where the designer of the computer game talked about working with Larry on this project, so I think that this was taken care from the right source. :wink: :-D

Actually, they said that they worked with Wizards of the Coast.  Larry wasn’t mentioned by name.  I’ve already pointed out a couple of problems in their “official” rules interpretations in that thread, one of which directly contradicts the FAQ.  If they’re all that “official”, why are they posted on BGG instead of the Avalon Hill site?

Thanks guys, found it in the LHTR with your help!

@axis_roll:

@Jennifer:

No, but I can force you to choose between not attacking at all and negating your entire airforce as an offensive weapon against my navy, or trading to my benefit.  And I don’t even have to invest a lot into offensively useless units.  16 IPC is about all I need to get a Carrier, the rest I need anyway.  Meanwhile, you now have 6 fighters, 1 bomber vs 2 fighters, 1 AC, 1 Surface Ship from Game Start and multiple transports.

Sure, I’ll lose some transports, but I’ll take out your airforce.  Or, you let me land uncontested. :P

And that, in a nutshell, is what I mean when I say that navy is better against airforce then airforce is against navy.

AMEN!

tell it like it is brudda!

(shrugs) it’s all about the game!  don’t hate the playa!

@Jennifer:

I agree.  If I plan to hide like a school girl cowering from an overly menacing mcdonald’s double cheeseburger with my fleet . . .

Traumatic personal experience?

Oh well, if you ended up looking like that in a bikini, I’m not complainin.

@Jennifer:

Coulda sworn I amended that in later posts to not have a british invasion of North Africa on UK1 and a joining of the US/UK fleets in Sea Zone 8 instead.  If not, I meant too.  (Perhaps the filter kicked it out because of a perceived bad word?)

Anyway, a UK build of 3 fighters with a consolidation of US and UK fleets in Sea Zone 8 cripple Germany’s ability to do anything more then take some more of Africa and hope to hold out against Russia.  On UK 3 you should be able to sink the Baltic Fleet and make life safe for Transports throughout the Atlantic Ocean.  (5 Fighters, 1 Bomber, 1 Battleship, 2 Transports should take out 2 submarines, 1 destroyer, 1 transport, 1 carrier and 2 fighters.)

Oh, OK then.  Well, if you united at London, then German invasion of London is out.

For the rest - not . . . quite.  Because once an Axis player sees that the Allies have massed air, and have any kind of serious navy near the Baltic fleet, you have a couple options.

1.  If there is NOT a serious navy near the Baltic fleet (say it’s just a lone battleship and 2 transports), you just send the German air force to kill everything.  Lose a fighter or two.  It hurts, but you can rebuild a fighter or two that turn.

2.  If there IS a serious navy near the Baltic fleet (US/UK fleet), you can attack with German air and the Baltic fleet as fodder.  The massed air is usually on London, where it can’t help defend.  You take a huge chunk out of the Allied combined fleet, and usually lose maybe one or two fighters, if there wasn’t an Allied AC there.  If there WAS an Allied AC there, you could then think about building more navy (probably not recommended in most games anyways, but ACs aren’t all that great on attack, so at least the Allies spent 32 IPC on 2 units with  a combined attack value of 2).

But even after 2., there is usually some Allied fleet wandering around the Pacific that’s enough to deter attacks from the German air force.  So the transports are safe anyways; it’s just that the Allies lost a bit more navy.