If you are doing a land Bombardment attack moving into a SZ that only has friendly Battleships and Cruisers stationed, and it all matches out equaly to support the land units on the transporters you’re bringing in, is the friendly ships envolved in the Bombardment too in your turn?
No. The only ships that may bombard are your own.
k, thanks for the answer!
Regarding the rules for bombardment, in most or all of the later versions, I think as far back as the Revised version, it states that any casualties resulting from the bombardment are moved behind the casualty strip and can counterattack the attacking land forces before being removed. However, in the original version of A&A, bombardment casualties were removed immediately, getting no counter attack. I personally think that this is the correct way to deal with bombardment casualties. My thinking on this is such: The naval bombardment happens before your troops are even on the shore. Therefore, any units hit by the bombardment are destroyed BEFORE there are any of your troops to shoot at. Thus, once your troops to come ashore, there is simply one less unit for them to fight. It just seems unrealistic to me that, for example, a Japanese infantry unit that has been hit by a battleship or cruiser bombardment will stay alive long enough for your US troops to reach the shore and shoot at them after he’s been blasted to bits.
Does anyone else use the original bombardment rules?
I think the original rules are way more realistic, and I do agree with you.
However, the only reason I can think of why they might have changed the rule is because there was too much island blitzing going on. Like, people would just take in two battleships and get enough hits so they can just land their guys and the defender can’t do anything about it. And they can do that all the way across the Pacific, or wherever else. There was very little risk to the attacker in these engagements. Yeah, it is a little unfair to the defender, but I don’t know…
The new rule at least makes amphibious assaults a little more risky and it adds a strategic importance to keeping every land unit you can.
I am out, as yet, on whic one I prefer. There are pros and cons about both. But I definitely agree that the old rule is more realistic.
I think the original rules are way more realistic, and I do agree with you.
However, the only reason I can think of why they might have changed the rule is because there was too much island blitzing going on. Like, people would just take in two battleships and get enough hits so they can just land their guys and the defender can’t do anything about it. And they can do that all the way across the Pacific, or wherever else. There was very little risk to the attacker in these engagements. Yeah, it is a little unfair to the defender, but I don’t know…
The new rule at least makes amphibious assaults a little more risky and it adds a strategic importance to keeping every land unit you can.
I am out, as yet, on whic one I prefer. There are pros and cons about both. But I definitely agree that the old rule is more realistic.
Actually, they changed that because bombardment wasn’t that effective in the war(see Iwo Jima and Okinawa). It also prevents divisions in Paris from being hit by bombardment
The old bombardment rule also at one time allowed you to bombard with as many ships as you want, and only one inf goes in. It was horrible for game play, when you could reduce the enemy stack of inf w/one unit plus a bunch of BB’s (and DD’s in some cases? don’t remember), but that’s beside the point. It was fixed so you had to match ground units to ships.
I think that the casualties got to return fire in AA50 when they added the cruiser. I think I saw a post a while back by Yope (play tester for AA50). Bombardment got to be to powerful now that you also get to roll for cruisers at 3 or less. The easiest fix was to have the causalities return fire. Otherwise I think they would have had to come up with some kind of amphib def. This in some ways is like a blockhouse rule I guess.
Actually, they changed that because bombardment wasn’t that effective in the war(see Iwo Jima and Okinawa). It also prevents divisions in Paris from being hit by bombardment
I see. And this makes a lot of sense too. That makes my mind up. I am totally for the new rule.
Regarding the rules for bombardment, in most or all of the later versions, I think as far back as the Revised version, it states that any casualties resulting from the bombardment are moved behind the casualty strip and can counterattack the attacking land forces before being removed. However, in the original version of A&A, bombardment casualties were removed immediately, getting no counter attack.
Actually, casualties of bombardment did return fire in Classic. In fact, Revised is the only version in which they don’t fire back, and it was done there more for clean game mechanics (Opening Fire step) than for philosophical reasons.
The decision was made in the Anniversary Edition to return to the Classic rule partially for the reasons that Calvinhobbesliker and Wild Bill mentioned. In addition to those reasons, the idea of ships literally firing at targets on the shore before the amphibious troops hit the beach is really a little too tactical for a game on a global strategic level. It implies that naval gunfire can wipe out entire divisions before the troops wade ashore. The original philosophy was that the casualties of offshore bombardment are only a part of the casualties inflicted by a campaign that begins with an amphibious assault.
having 4 or 5 BB’s and 1 inf attack would wear down defenders to nothing a couple of rounds under revised for very little cost.
having 4 or 5 BB’s and 1 inf attack would wear down defenders to nothing a couple of rounds under revised for very little cost.
Yeah, there was this guy who build 20 BB’s as the US and reduced Japan to its island. Moscow fell, and German tanks rushed into india, but US landed with like 1 inf and 1 tank and the bombardments killed them all, which ended the game
Well, interesting, I think the rule with sticking with the original attacking power of 3 with cruisers and 4 with Battleships is good, AA50 changed where I think it was 4 for Battleships but 2 for destroyers, where attack was a 3 in non Bombardemant attacks for Destroyers.
If the land units could fire back I think it would be pointless in having a bombardment attack.
Okay, I get what you all are saying. I sometimes forget the strategic nature of this game. Also, I realize the idea of “island blitzing” isn’t totally fair either. Usually what I would do is if an island or shore territory was guarded with a large force, the bombardment casualties would be immediately removed but if it was only guarded by a single unit, then the casualty would get a counter-fire at the landing forces.
I totally agree with limiting the bombarding ships to equal with the number of land units attacking. I’ve never faced the idea of having more bombardment ships than attacking land units but I can see where that would be totally unfair.
Regarding the rules for bombardment, in most or all of the later versions, I think as far back as the Revised version, it states that any casualties resulting from the bombardment are moved behind the casualty strip and can counterattack the attacking land forces before being removed. However, in the original version of A&A, bombardment casualties were removed immediately, getting no counter attack.
Actually, casualties of bombardment did return fire in Classic. In fact, Revised is the only version in which they don’t fire back, and it was done there more for clean game mechanics (Opening Fire step) than for philosophical reasons.
The decision was made in the Anniversary Edition to return to the Classic rule partially for the reasons that Calvinhobbesliker and Wild Bill mentioned. In addition to those reasons, the idea of ships literally firing at targets on the shore before the amphibious troops hit the beach is really a little too tactical for a game on a global strategic level. It implies that naval gunfire can wipe out entire divisions before the troops wade ashore. The original philosophy was that the casualties of offshore bombardment are only a part of the casualties inflicted by a campaign that begins with an amphibious assault.
Actually in the first MB ed of Classic, they did not return fire, but they did in the second. Not returning fire was a bad idea. It opened a whole slew of sleaze moves and quite frankly it was not realistic. The game is corps level or so. A corps does not get wiped out by shore bombardment unless it clings to the beach fighting. This brings back bad memories of AAR in the pre release days when this change (and the sub/destroyer change) were first announced and the series took its first step back. Thankfully AA42 swept AAR under the rug fairly quickly.
Actually in the first MB ed of Classic, they did not return fire, but they did in the second.
Sorry, but they did return fire in the First Edition rules. Not that it matters much, as I doubt anyone out there is still using them.
Really?? Scratches head Nova edition maybe?? That or a memory failure on my part. I know the MB 2nd ed rules mention in the list of changes that the amphibious assault rules had changed but that could have been a different aspect of them.
@Yoper:
We brought back return fire because of the increase in lob shot power that came about by the introduction of cruisers in AA50.
But we also saw there needed to be another modification to amphibs. That is where the matching land unit to lob shot came in.
My group pushed for these changes since the Revised rules would have made amphibs (with the added lob shot power) a better attack than a regular land battle. The attacker gets the lob shots added to their normal attack numbers and some of the defenders would have been removed before they even get to fire.
Plus, one of the players in my group is nicknamed “Mr. Loophole” because he always works all the rules to the max. He is the type that loves to amphib with a ton of lob shots and one infantry unit so as to kill a crap load of defenders at the cost of one guy. That would have been exaggerated in AA50 if we didn’t find a way to change it.
Thanks for sharing that. Your comments about the ease of amphibious assaults compared to land battles in AAR games are very true. The original AAP with marines also comes to mind. US amphibious assaults were just devastating, and given their wealth in that game, the US never built standard infantry.
I remember swapping a few emails with Rob Daviau after AAE about the idea of no more ships supporting than units landed. He had told me it was close to making it into AAE but was decided against (I don’t recall why). The reduced shore bombardment of destroyers was used instead for the 2nd ed rules. But yeah, the land one inf with 6 lob shots is exactly the type of sleaze tactic I didn’t like (no offense to “Mr. Loophole”, who actually sounds like an ideal playtester to help find and close these type of things).
Really?? Scratches head Nova edition maybe??
Nope.
I know the MB 2nd ed rules mention in the list of changes that the amphibious assault rules had changed but that could have been a different aspect of them.
The amphibious assault rules were rewritten for the 2nd Edition, but very little was actually changed. The biggest thing, as I recall, was that in the 1st Edition transports didn’t participate in the sea battle, and only entered the sea zone if it was won.
Really?? Scratches head Nova edition maybe??
Nope.
Well then…I’m off to edit Wikipedia. :-D
