First I want to say that I’m a greenhorn when it comes to forums so I don’t know if I should be responding as a new topic. Anyway, Trisdin & Upsidedown Turtle I have read both your house rules and I like them, as for playtesting right now I am trying to get my house rules organized, coherent & playtested, however I like both your ideas and if you don’t mind will probably try using some. Couple of comments, first Nukes are cool but Turtle you are right about implementing them in the game. The way I see it Nukes is basically a game over thing, if you water down nukes what’s the point of even trying to get them. I tend to avoid having nukes in my games. But if you’re striving for the historical feel gotta have nukes.
As for destroyers doing shore bombardment, I agree with Turtle, why not? During D-Day there was an American destroyer that came in very close to shore to provide desperately needed fire support at Omaha Beach. HOWEVER, in my games I don’t allow DD shore bombard simply because I want a little extra incentive to buy battleships & cruisers.
Now for A&A miniatures, its alright but I hate the random crap, I want to buy what I want & in quantities I want. But I have been buying them. The other drawback I feel is that the miniature game is extremely dice heavy, this just isn’t the thread for me to get into game mechanics. What is really cool is the A&A War at Sea miniature game that lets you fight fleet battles. If you are thinking about miniature wargaming check into Flames of War.
Finally the reason for me posting all this as a new topic is because I have been wondering about players performing SBRs during their games. I’ve have come across many, many house rules concerning escort/interceptor fighters for SBRs and use it in my house rules. My question is, do you see more or less SBRs conducted during games when using escort/interceptor rules. My experience has been SBRs are drastically reduced. It seems in our games SBRs are resorted to when a player is desperate to slow down the enemy and attempts to do this buy going after income. The only other time I use it is when I’m attempting to try and knock out the Lutfwaffe. My opponent caught onto this right away so he wouldn’t challenge me in the air until the SBRs got to painful. However, due to some bad dice rolls on my part & unbelievable good rolls on his part I suffered heavy casualties, oh the growing pains of the 8th US AirForce. In short, are there more or less SBRs in your games? Just wondering, sorry if this was too long :|
generalky, Welcome!
In answer to your question, in most of my FTF (face-to-face) games, we don’t use SBRs that much, but in my PBF (play-by-forum) games it’s been about 50/50.
I just played my first game using my house rules on the weekend and there were 4 strategic bombings in a day long game. few in contrast but very entertaining, in one of those bombings the defender choose not to intercept as the odds were against him however, he thought about it for awhile due to the fact that interceptors get the @4 for defence and the escorts get the @3. Someone complained that each attacking bomber gets an @1 during the dogfight and before they bomb but my argument was that most bombers in the war had tail gunners and mounted side guns. Germany used a strategic bombing raid once and even though he lost his bomber due to an antiaircraft gun, he was able to wipe out 3 British fighters which as everyone knows are very difficult to destroy during the game. The best thing you could do for house rules during a SBR is to give each surviving bomber 2 dice and apply the best result from the two, if I didn’t have this rule it wouldn’t have been worth it to bomb (a player during a bombing run rolled a 1 and a 5 for his surviving bomber, so it was worth it to that player because he had two chances to get a favorable roll). Overall, I wish there were more raids however, the runs that did happen were well ballanced I’m not sure if I would change anything but I’m thinking about it. As for the 2 dice per surviving bomber, that was not my idea and I forget who the member was who posted it.
Hello Bardoly & Trisdin
I like your idea about bombers rolling an extra dice & picking the better of the two, the same concept is in LHTR for heavy bomber tech & I use it in my house rules for heavy bomber tech. You’re suggesting it for regular bombers which would work. Would heavy bombers roll three dice & pick best one of the three?
I would just like to see more SBRs, heck I’m guilty of not doing many SBRs. Some kind of incentive or reward for conducting certain amount of SBRs. Maybe a 1 ipc bounty paid to the player for every enemy fighter shot down during an SBR (just throwing out ideas no matter how dumb). Or possibly 1 ipc paid to a player for every SBR the player performs during the player’s turn. Reducing the enemie’s production isn’t always enough incentive.
In my house rules, heavy bombers add and apply both results rolled on two dice.
I like your idea about rewarding multiple bombings.
How about this: Once a nation succesfully bombs another nation 3 times, that nation now rolls 3 dice p/bomber to pick the best result when bombing that same nation. Heavy bombers would than apply 2 best results from the 3 dice rolled.
Do your heavy bombers add both dice just on SBRs? I like your line of thought probably better then an ipc bonus to the nation conducting SBRs.
Here is another idea: For every consecutive SBR after the first a player adds +1 to the die result. The consecutive SBRs must be against the same nation. For example, if UK bombs Germany 3 turns in a row on the 4th turn if the UK player bombs Germany again the UK would add +3 to the die result. 1st = 0, 2nd = +1, 3rd = +2, 4th = +3, etc. I think there would have to be a cap on the bonus, say +4 or +5. The bonus would be applied to the total die result of the bombers performing the SBR, not the die result for each bomber. If a nation would choose during its turn not to sustain its bombing campaign then the bonus would reset to zero and the nation would have to start over.
I really like you’re +1 P/Bombing Raid Idea… I’m going to put it in my rules, that should increase bombing for sure. maybe you could call it a “navigation experience bonus” or “sustained target bonus”.
Let me know how it turns out, I’ll give it a try in my house rules. Sadly, it will be awhile before I get any games in, gotta work outta town for 6 weeks :-( But need the money to support my Axis & Allies habit :-D
I have changed my Strategic Bombing rule.
A bomber bombing a factory for the first time recieves 1xd6 to damage enemy industrial complexes however, on a second raid when the same nation attacks the same enemy factory, all surviving bombers use 2xd6 and may choose the highest result rolled to inflict damage. During a third raid from the same nation against the same enemy factory, surviving bombers roll 3xd6 each and may choose the highest result rolled to inflict damage. Bombers receive 4xd6 each for the forth raid and 5xd6 each for the fifth (5 dice is the maximum each bomber may roll).
Each bomber may only apply 1 dice result to damage factories.
Each surviving bombers dice must be rolled separate from other surviving bombers dice.
