@Panther said in A&A Global 1940: Amphibious Assaults, Bridging, and Sea Zones that Start the Turn with Hostile Ships:
@jchamlin Welcome to the forum :slightly_smiling_face:
Thank you for the welcome, and for the reply.
No. “Bridging” simply illustrates the fact that a transport can “move” carrying units without leaving a seazone (think of it as sailing from coast to coast within the same seazone). In general loading can only happen during Combat Move Phase (load in order to unload into a hostile territory) or during Noncombat Move Phase (load in order to unload into a friendly territory).
Well, the rules explicitly say that the bridging is moving units where the transport does not move. So, the transport either moves, or it does not. In the bridging case, the transport’s movement is used up (so it will be unable to move if used to bridge), but the transport itself is not considered as having moved.
Loading during Combat Move Phase in your scenario is not possible in SZ 110, as a transport cannot load in a hostile seazone.
The transport needs to be loaded during Combat Move Phase, what is not allowed in this case.
Also loading never takes place during Conduct Combat Phase. You can’t load any involved transport, you can’t add any Combat Movement once Combat has started.
I’m not sure I agree. The Conduct Combat Phase has the disclaimer right at the beginning of the section: “A number of units have special rules that modify or overwrite the combat rules in this section. See “Unit Profiles,” page 27 for combat rules associated with each type of unit.”. And it so happens that the rules for transport bridging are in the unit profiles section.
If the German destroyer prevents the amphibious assault, then it seems silly that all Germany has to do is spend a few IPCs each turn to buy and place a single blocker to keep the entirety of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines at bay.
That is a common strategy, however easy to deal with.
Are you sure this is what Larry Harris intended: that a single cheap surface warship is able to prevent an entire power’s navy and land forces from invading? I mean, there’s both a problem with the spirit of the intention (which seems plain wrong), and also, I’m also bringing up something in my post here which seems to cast doubt on also the letter of the intention.
So in your scenarios eliminate enemy units and load your transports during Noncombat Move Phase. So unloading into enemy territories is delayed by one turn.
It would appear that this is not possible either. If the transports stay to fight (i.e. option 1) with the intention of picking up units during the non-combat phase, then that’s not possible either. According to the rules all units present in the sea zone must participate in the combat action (you can’t have some hang-back and not participate). Since the transports participated in the combat action, they now can no longer participate in the non-combat action (which would be loading the units from islands). So, it appears the one destroyer built by Italy prevents those units from ever being picked up, unless the transports retreat from the sea zone in turn one during their combat move to escape, and then the following turn non-combat to move in, pick up, and either stay loaded or move back out and drop off outside of SZ 95. And then three turns from then they would be able to move back in and participate in an amphibious assault. That seems pretty absurd to me that a single destroyer built on each of two turns can delay the amphibious assault for three turns.
The rules don’t state (or I can’t find it) when bridging for an amphibious assault as to when the transports need to be loaded. …
Remember that the action behind loading a transport (regardless if and where the transport moves to) is moving other units onto it. That is bound to the movement phases and clearly explained in the rules.
It is not clearly explained in the rules. If it were, I wouldn’t be here asking about it. The fact that transports can offload during the combat phase, means that some combat movement happens during the Conduct Combat Phase. The fact that bridging is a special type of transport movement called out in the unit profiles section with its own text completely separate from the other transport rules means it has a purpose for being there. The Conduct Combat Phase rules clearly say that rules in the unit profiles section have overrides to those rules from the Conduct Combat Phase. Therefore, it is in fact not clear at all if the rules for bridging units across a friendly (which could also mean a recently cleared sea zone) are meant to be able to happen during an amphibious assault.
How do we know which rules in the unit profiles section are meant to override the rules of the Conduct Combat Phase, and which rules are not? In this case, it sure seems that the whole reason for the rule on bridging to exist is to call out the special bridging ability of transports and make sure that players are aware of that ability. It seems to me it is likely so that people were aware that it could be used to both load and unload units in the same sea zone as an exception to the rule where transports would normally just be unloading during combat. In Axis & Allies Classic (Second Edition) transports could move empty/partially empty into a hostile sea zone (with escort ships) and then if the sea zone was cleared, they could use their remaining capacity to bridge units into the amphibious assault.
Thanks again for the communication. I’m not a rules lawyer, but this one really has me stumped. If Larry really meant the rules to work this way, then it sure seems wrong (sorry Larry, I mean you no offense if you stumble across this at some point). No way would the small fleet represented by a single German destroyer, freshly built and just rolling out of the shipyards, single-handedly prevent the entire British Navy from picking up troops from the UK, or from landing in Normandy (nor would a single Italian destroyer freshly built and rolling out of the shipyard in Italy prevent the entire US Atlantic Navy and Marines from picking up in Sicily and landing in Italy).
-J.C.