Wow. Good question. Committing forces to move during noncombat, and that movement depends on combat movement resolving in your favor.
My friends and I discussed this and decided that we would allow a fighter kamikaze attack in this situation, because it is not INTENDED as a kamikaze attack. So you could commit the fighters in the hopes that the canal came back into your control.
I too miss the old Styrofoam trays. I hadn’t had a copy for years and got one last year. Also, I agree, what the heck with Britain’s color? And there aren’t white chips, there are grey chips? huh? I liked not having to tear everything off a tree (and I don’t have to sand the bottom of the carriers so they’ll sit level enough for fighters to actually stay on them!). I also like the fact that all the pieces are personalized for each country (although it cuts out our old tech upgrade of heavy fighters - the US now uses that piece as a standard piece).
And yes, I run out of chips. Badly. We use the aircraft movement marker’s (WTF? As if we couldn’t count) and MOST of the marshalling markers (at the most we are using 2 or 3 per game), turned upside down as ‘white chips’. Also control markers turned upside down, if we have spares.
The sneak attack rules we have always played with are this:
The sub can declare it’s target
A hit of 2 is an automatic sink except against a battleship, where it damagers it to the point that it does not participate in the first round.
A hit of 1 sinks everything, including a battleship. A hit of 1 will also hit a carrier before the fighters launch and the fighters go down with the ship. We made that ‘1’ real important. We usually don’t risk it, but you’d be surprised the number of times it’s worked and changed the whole war.
Actually had a pretty good game the other night, had to quit early, we were playing for 11 though.
LA - Japan
D.C. - US
London - Germany
Calcutta - UK
Berlin - Germany
Paris - US
Rome - UK
Moscow - Germany
Leningrad - Germany
Manila - UK
Shanghai - UK
Tokyo - Japan
LA and London had just been taken this turn. We allow all 5 players to use a dual-impulse phase like from WAW, and Germany and Japan used theirs at the same time and just barely managed to take them. I was playing the US and Russia. We haven’t, as of yet, successfully held Russia, none of us. It just seems to be cursed ground. I have seen some of the unluckiest die rolls for the Russian player defending against Germany. I’ve seen the Caucasus fall without the defenders land a single hit. Same with Archangel. We think our board may be cursed. The next game we’ve agreed that Russia is going to be a co-op player, with ALL of us working for a Russia strategy, using what has kinda worked for each of us in the past. Any suggestions?