Shore Bombardment

The entire philosophy of offshore bombardment was revisited and revised in AA50. The philosophy of shore bombardment in Revised was that ships literally fired at targets on the shore before the amphibious troops hit the beach. This is really a little too tactical for a game on a global strategic level. It simply doesn’t work on a global scale, where all of France is one game space. It implies that naval gunfire can wipe out entire divisions, even troops in Paris, before the troops wade ashore in Normandy. The new philosophy is that the casualties of offshore bombardment are only a part of the casualties inflicted by a campaign that begins with an amphibious assault. This is what led to the rules changes.

The changes from Revised are:

• Casualties of offshore bombardment can now return fire.

• Air units can now be hit.

• The number of bombarding ships is limited to the number of units assaulting amphibiously.

All of these changes reflect the new philosophy, in that the offshore bombardment supports the land troops in clearing the defenders rather than eliminating the huge number of troops that a single infantry figure represents before they can defend themselves. This was the same philosophy employed in Classic, and it makes more sense in a game on the scale of global A&A.