Guadalcanal FAQ

@DonDebelak said in Axis and Allies Guadalcanal a flawed game.:

Re: Combat in GuadalcanIal?

I find Axis and Allies Guadalcanal a very flawed game. In a battle where planes attach ships, in the air combat the phase, which you have to do even though no planes for the enemy are present, the planes can’t kill a ship, - not on the battle box -but the ships can kill the plane. So ships get two chances to kill the planes and planes only get one chance to kill. That is unfair.

This is incorrect. First the sea units fire at the air units, and then the air units fire at the sea units. The sea units do not get 2 chances to hit the air units.

In a land battle where only planes are attacking, there could be ships on the zone next to the island, but they can’t kill anybody because the battle box only has land units listed.

True, sea units cannot hit air units attacking on land.

Ant the planes can kill land units without land units being able to fight back.

This is not entirely true. While antiaircraft guns are the only land units that can fire at air units, they do so before the air units can attack. This makes it unwise to leave your land units within range of enemy air attack without the protection of antiaircraft guns and/or air units.

I’m not playing this game again.

That is, of course, your choice to make, but you probably owe it to yourself to read the rules again and correct your errors in execution before writing this game off.

I hope this helps.

You should add sea planes to the game without using figs and tacs. But then as the war went on the normal planes can find the ships. For tac bombers if sea planes and or ( fig, tacs ) find ships and or subs, they get a first strike shot for first round only. Attacker picks the target.
So tacs FS hit surface subs @3 and ships @3. If the tac misses the sub, then it can dive now. If tac misses and sub dives then any destroyer in same sea zone gets a depth charge drop @2. On 2nd round or later all tacs attack and defend @2 since they dropped there payload.

I’ve been using this tac, sub and DD thing for years.

@the_good_captain – Thanks for the help!

Haaahaha! I feel your pain, FMG. The second I bought Guadalcanal, I was so psyched to make my opponent’s IPC’s deteriorate via bombing raids, and swarm em with fighters. And then I opened up the box and went “WTF!?”.

I, too, am a bit unappealed by the rules. What we did was put a certain amount of chips on each island, gave it an IPC value, and put a production factory on our “base islands”. This made for an exciting naval minimap. I haven’t gotten to play a lot of navy-heavy games, usually my 1942 games just end up with British bombardment and amphibious assault on Berlin, and the US navy buildup with the subsequent bulldozing of the Japanese.

So, theres my suggestion for you, FMG. I look forward to your custom A&A molds. I’m DEFINITELY buying an italy set once I get my paycheck, and of course, once it’s released =D

Ok thats what I was starting to think.  Thanks.

The US has to take Santa Isabel, Malatia and evict the remaining Japanese from Guadalcanal on turn one. They have to get even on reinforcement points.

I think the Japanese are better off on turn 1 being in a position to contest New Georgia if necessary, they can get enough together to make it unattractive to the US, but moving the supplies back to build an additional airfield on the island they start with an airfield on. (Map is fuzzy in my head for some reason today.)

The game is short and both sides must move fast but at the same time remember they can’t win it on turn one. IMO.

I’d be happy to assist in the creation of a module for this game.  In particular, if someone creates the images I could easily and quickly combine them into a module for any of these kinds of games.  (Plus, that way they look just how you all want them to)!  If there is interest, just PM me.

Mot

Battle of the Bulge included units from the UK but it it only a two player game.