North American Axis Strategy - Kill US First - Legal Or Not?

[MarshmallowofWar]

Just chiming in here cause I found an extra penny!

First, I think the move is perfectly legal.

If the US player has to sacrifice a cruiser and abandon Hawaii to stop it it’s a perfectly acceptable trade for the advantages that Japan has just handed China, ANZAC and the UK. ANZAC of course has to be carfeful to keep building up defenses until the UK has retaken Hong Kong (losing in four turns would be embarassing as heck) but beyond that Japan has spent so much on resources and positioned all its eggs in the “kill the US basket”. Even if Japan wanted to counter UK and ANZAC advances, it can’t do so effectively for about five turns and by that time Japan’s income will be toast. All the US has to do is not lose Eastern US – everything else can be recovered.

BTW GHG, I love those preposterous rules additions that you’re proposing – I find them quite entertaining to visuallize. The flying ANZAC tanks was my favorite.

Marsh

[zooooma]

@Ichabod:

No one has argued or made a point of even why the rule was even written in the first place SINCE it actually doesn’t stop Japan and block them like the way that the US is restricted in the Atlantic.

It’s does facilitate blocking Japan.  As long as the IJN has to pass through another sea zone before they get to SZ 10, America can block them.  Without this rule, Japan could park loaded ships in SZ 9 or 12 and USA could not block the amphibious assault.

This actually has been mentioned:

@zooooma:

@Karl7:

Japan moves to Hawaii, the US pulls back to the WUS, and puts 2 dd blockers out to stop attack.  USA build troops in EUS to counter Germany advance.

This.  The rule does not keep Japan out of striking range (like some people think it ought to), but it does ensure intervening sea zones that USA can block. Essentially it allows America to thwart a landing - but not if they just sit in Hawaii.

@zooooma:

@Ichabod:

A rule was written which expressed a PURPOSE of restricting the Japanese from being too close.

What’s “too close”?  Japan can attack USA from SZ 26, but only if the American player chooses to let themselves be attacked (by not blocking the intervening sea zones).

@zooooma:

@Ichabod:

So we have rule intended to keep the Japanese fleet back, but not really keep them back?

Apparently, we have a rule intended not to prevent the Japanese from “sneaking up” on the US, but to give the US enough of a buffer to intercept the invasion.

The rule doesn’t “keep the Japanese fleet back”.  But it ables America to do just that.

[GeneralHandGrenade]

Marsh. I have hover tanks from the Fortress America game all ready to be painted up so I don’t have to spend the extra money on new pieces.

It’s not the fact that they are too close that I find offensive, it’s sharing the same sz as the American fleet while the US can’t even stop in a sz containing an unoccupied Japanese territory. That’s queerer than a six dollar bill. Seriously, are the Americans scared of Japanese people or are they waiting for the rest of the world to share bullet technology with them? Couldn’t they at least be able to chuck rocks or flick cigarette butts at them?

[MarshmallowofWar]

I think you have to keep in mind that the US did not want to go to war. So yes, I think the presence of the Japanese navy off Hawaii would have elicited some concerns, but that the US would not have made the first overt hostile action.

Also, keep in mind that the US did something similar between 1907 and 1909 by sailing the Great White Fleet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_White_Fleet) around the world.

Finally, keep in mind that the United States and most other nations at that time did not consider aircraft carriers to be combat vessels – they were primarily thought of as scouts to locate the enemy so that the battleships could go in for the kill.

Marsh

[Frederick II]

WOW! I can’t believe I have been playing this rule wrong!

However, on a historical point of view I agree with Ichabod here why the move shouldn’t be legal. Does it make sense why Japan can put a fleet of aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, subs and transports filled with tens maybe hundreds of thousands of troops, to park right next to a naval base of a country (including part of the country’s fleet) that is the cause of why Japan is running out of oil and that naval base is right in range of the country’s mainland?! Do you think the English would let the Spanish armada park in a English port even though they were at the verge of war (not saying US and Japan was)? You guys can use wikipedia all you want to prove why it this is historically legal. I’m not trying to prove that it isn’t a legal move in the game, because the person who created the rule says it is legal.

Game wise, I fine with it. I mean Ichabod says he didn’t approach the situation correctly and Karl7 proves that the chances of this strategy (kill US first) working is little to none. However, I’m glad this is rule was clarified.

[Wolfshanze]

@GeneralHandGrenade:

ROBOTS!!
Yeah, France could have robots. They attack at 5 and defend at 5. Movement 2. The only way you can kill them is with a Japanese Kamikaze at 1. Replace all of the French infantry in the starting setup with robots.

I’m disappointed in you GHG… if you’re going to give France Robots that attack at 5 and defend at 5, then you should give Japan Godzilla that attacks at 6 and defends at 6, with 6 hit points, duh…

[Wolfshanze]

@Marshmallow:

Also, keep in mind that the US did something similar between 1907 and 1909 by sailing the Great White Fleet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_White_Fleet) around the world.

Well, the topic of this thread is basically Japan pre-positioning a full-on invasion fleet loaded with troops on transports ready to nail another nation with a quick invasion.

The sailing of the pre-dreadnought US Fleet around the world into ports
#1: wasn’t an invasion fleet full of troop transports
#2: they were pre-dreadnoughts in the dreadnought age… hardly cutting edge… the HMS Dreadnought was already in service and all the European nations were hurridly building massive dreadnoughts that completely outclassed the Great White Fleet.

I really fail to see how the sailing of the Great White Fleet has anything to do with this topic… its like telling us to look at the monkey.

[Kreuzfeld]

If everyone wants to be strictly historical, then it should be allowed. You guys don’t realize how massive the pacific really is, and how big those zeasones are. Distance from california to hawaii is more than the distance between lisbon and moscow. The distance between hawaii and wake is the same distance as california to hawaii. The combined distance there is over 8000 KM. that is 1/5th of the circimreference of the earth. California to wake is simliar to New york to kiev. There is no historic sense to denying the japanese fleet to pass that area. In fact, most of the area you are talking about is high seas. US would have no legal jurisdiction to do any thing, and would not do anything about it.

So if you are to make it to scale,  it should be 10 seazones between us and hawaii.  The seazone of hawaii is probably bigger than all of western europe combined.  There is no way US would enforce against a fleet that was 500 miles away.  And, it is very unhistoric that US would block the japanese fleet from traveling between hawaii and califorina.

The distances are so huge, that the US would not know the japanese where even there. And that can be confirmed in history.

[aequitas-et-veritas]

@ShadowHAwk:

I agree and your forgetting a small detail.

How will you find a fleet in such a vast area to begin with.
Sure you can have a will and the power to enforce this but you cannot attack something you cannot find.

With Math and eliminating certain critereas.

Everything a man creates can be destroyed!
Everything a man hides can be found!

[CWO Marc]

@ShadowHAwk:

Lol nice in theory, now try finding a moving fleet in such a large area within a specific timeframe and you will fail plain and simple.

During the coral sea battle the fleets where only 400km apart and could not locate eachother. Now imagine fleets being 2000km apart with the average range of scout planes of 500km and well you are not going to find said fleet ever.

With regard to Pearl Harbor, the critical factor regarding the incoming attack wasn’t the Japanese carrier task force, it was the Japanese aircraft that they had launched against Hawaii (360 overall, with about half in the first wave)…and they were picked up by American radar as they approached.  This early warning was fumbled for various reasons (fundamentally, because the American military had never established a rigourous system of accounting for the traffic in the airspace over Hawaii, something that could have been done fairly easily with the proper initiative and some modest staff resources), but if it hadn’t been fumbled it might have given the Americans some time to start going on the alert before the bombs started falling.  And if so many of the American military planes at Hawaii hadn’t been demolished during the attack, this could have created an opportunity for the Americans to hit back: tracking the Japanese planes by radar on their way back to their carrriers would have told the Americans on what bearing the Japanese task force was relative to Hawaii (although not at what range…but even then, they could have estimated a probable maximum from what they knew about the range of the Japanese planes on a two-way trip, or even from what they knew about the range of the US Navy’s own planes, which was probably roughly similar).

[General 6 Stars]

Sea Planes please !  :wink:

[CWO Marc]

@SS:

Sea Planes please !  :wink:

I’m not quite sure I understand.  If you mean “naval aviation”, as opposed to what was then called the US Army Air Corps, I did refer to the US Navy’s own planes at one point.  If you’re referring to seaplanes like the PBY Catalina, they would have been handy to scout out the location of the Japanese fleet, though of course vulnerable to attack by the fleet’s combat air patrol.

[GeneralHandGrenade]

I realize how big the Pacific is and how large the sea zones are. I’m not navigating the high seas I’m playing Axis and Allies. If I’m the American player and you are the Japanese player and you move your fleet to Hawaii I can see that perfectly. Chances are that I’m not going to buy your excuse that you had way too much ham and you’re just stopping into Honolulu to pick up some pineapple on your way to China with fully loaded transports. There’s no way that you can spin this to make it acceptable. It’s a goofy rule plain and simple. Larry crapped the bed on this one.

[General 6 Stars]

@CWO:

@SS:

Sea Planes please !  :wink:

I’m not quite sure I understand.  If you mean “naval aviation”, as opposed to what was then called the US Army Air Corps, I did refer to the US Navy’s own planes at one point.  If you’re referring to seaplanes like the PBY Catalina, they would have been handy to scout out the location of the Japanese fleet, though of course vulnerable to attack by the fleet’s combat air patrol.

Yes finding the Japanese fleet’s.

[zooooma]

@GeneralHandGrenade:

If I’m the American player and you are the Japanese player and you move your fleet to Hawaii I can see that perfectly.

You continue to ignore the fact the SZ 26 =/= Hawaii!
Maybe if you had focused on debating your point instead of ridiculing and insulting people who disagree with you you’d be a better listener?

That sea zone is more than 25% as wide as the entire distance between USA and Japan.  That makes it about 1500 miles across.  Loaded transports 750 West of Hawaii are sufficiently hostile enough for a US DOW.

Basically you’ve invented an interpretation of the board where SZ 26 encompasses just PH, and now are are complaining that your (unfounded) interpretation makes one of the rules look bad.

[Kreuzfeld]

Haha, GHG.

If I am playing axis and allies, and I am us, I will see that japan is going to declear war on me, so I declear on turn 1 with the US. I am also going to upgrade my factories and collect my NOs, because larry didn’t make the rules in the way I want to play.

^^ this is exactly how you come accross.

[zooooma]

@Kreuzfeld:

Haha, GHG.

Yeah, that was quite the pivot.  All along it’s been about what the actual US would have done in 1940.

That argument falls apart, so the goal posts get moved and we should actually look at SZ 26 from the perspective of an A&A player instead of its historic context.

Yeah, in A&A the American player knows that Japan is their enemy and is eager to get involved in the war.  That’s exactly why we have restrictive political rules.

[taamvan]

Apparently, the correct answer has to come from so many voices and directions before you listen that you just couldn’t resolve a rules argument in real time (without quitting the game in disgust).

Shoot the messenger, discuss history, dissemble, it doesn’t matter.

I don’t read the rules that carefully, either.  I’d already played 4 versions of the game before I bought Global, so it was easy to extrapolate from there, but not the details.

This caused plenty of slop and corrections, and many of them came from my partner, who I “taught” to play the game.  More came from playing other strong players and champions at conventions and on the forums.    None of that makes me sad or hurt, because everyone makes mistakes.

Now, when I make a mistake and put pieces in the wrong place, or mis-see what’s going on,  or misunderstand the rules (now rare, because of the forum discussions, but it happens.) most of the time,

I don’t ask for a pass or take-backs, I just let them destroy me, even if it costs me the game.  I’d rather admit I made a mistake, and know that I cost myself a significant advantage … and that it happens to everyone.

[GeneralHandGrenade]

Wise words, Taamvan.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re the Americans, the Japanese, or the top hat from a game of Monopoly, this rule still doesn’t make any sense. Keep trying to spin it all you want, I still won’t believe in nonsense. I will play by the rules even if they should have been thought out a little better than this one was.

Let’s hope the Chinese Navy doesn’t show up on America’s doorstep some day with a BS excuse.

[Wolfshanze]

@GeneralHandGrenade:

Let’s hope the Chinese Navy doesn’t show up on America’s doorstep some day with a BS excuse.

The Chinese Navy isn’t really that big… but I guess by Canadian standards, it is…