This specific post can be useful when planning this instructional session on Submarines interaction:
@Black_Elk:
Tranports and Submarines:
Run away! Dive! Dive!
These units are complicated, but there’s just no escaping the depth charge or the torpedo. We have to discuss these units, before I can really explain how the full Air vs Naval dynamic works. For me to get an angle on it, kind of requires a brief digression into the history of Axis and Allies…
So earlier I suggest that in 1942.2 destroyers were like “the infantry of the sea” and that the larger warships were like “tanks of the sea.” A similar analogy using transports and subs was described to me when I first learned how to play Classic in the early 90s. I still think its a fruitful analogy for Classic, and still has applications for the narrow discussion of naval fodder, because in each A&A game there is going to be one primary “fodder” unit on the water, but its not a perfect analogy anymore! In Classic and Revised A&A, subs and transports had traditionally been naval fodder units. In Classic and Revised the primary naval “fodder” role was played by transports and, in those games, the analogy to “infantry of the sea” worked pretty well, because transports attacked at 0, and defended at 1, with 1 hitpoint. Basically they had a strong defensive role, and a very weak offensive one (only as fodder). The Classic submarine on the other hand, was almost exactly like a “sea tank” it hit at 2, defended at 2, with 1 hitpoint. So when describing the game we’d say things like, “transports are infantry/subs are tanks”, and everyone understood what we meant. But the 50th Anniversary Axis and Allies game basically turned the whole naval Transport/Sub fodder aspect of the game on its head! This game created a bunch of new rules for transports and submarines to prevent that exact phenomenon of transports and subs being used as fodder, just to undermine my old “go-to” Classic analogy of “just like infantry/tanks, but on the water” hehe. Now we need to update the analogy for a new A&A era!
The major difference between 1942.2 and earlier A&A games is that now, Transports have no defense! and no hit point value! and Submarines are considerably weaker! Most importantly of all, both these units no longer create a “hostile” sea zone. In other words they can’t block enemy warships anymore. An attacking warship can choose to ignore submarines, if the subs are alone. A single attacking unit can now destroy an infinite number of transports, if the transports are alone! Attacking units (especially aircraft) can’t hit submarines unless they bring a destroyer with them. If you have noo destroyer with your naval attack force, then the subs get to choose whether to fight or dive. If you have no accompanying destroyer then your attacking aircraft can’t interact with subs at all!
Its hard to overstate how much this has altered the Naval situation and the Naval vs Air dynamic since Classic/Revised. The old naval strategies of Classic are defunct, and strategy guides based on that game no longer apply. We need new strategy guides, to describe the new naval situation!
For anyone coming back to A&A from those older games, this is the single biggest change that you have to get your head around. In TripleA these new transport and sub rules are known as World War II “v3” or later. Every game to come out afterwards uses the same basic abilities and cost structure for transports and subs. Lets try to puzzle it all out…
In 1942.2 Transports are frequently described as “defenseless” meaning that they have essentially no role to play during the combat phase. They have no attack or defense value, and no hitpoints!
Subs are now the cheapest naval unit at 6 ipcs (the same cost as the 1942.2 tank), but their attack value and defense value are uneven a bit like infantry att 1/def 2, except here and the att/def advantage of the unit is reversed. It’s like the mirro image of the infantry unit, reflecting the exact opposite attack/defense role, and this unit is on the water instead of the land. The current 1942.2 Sub unit is basically very strong on attack, and very weak on defense for the cost…
Submarines:
Attacks at 2
Defends at 1
Costs 6 ipcs
But subs are weird! First off all, Subs cannot hit aircraft. Ever!
Beyond this, subs have 3 unique abilities that no other unit does:
A. They have a surprise strike “opening shot” ability vs ships.
B. They have the ability to “dive” prior to naval combat. And finally,
C. They can only be hit by aircraft if an enemy destroyer is present.
A single enemy destroyer can negate all the special abilities for all the subs in a sea zone, with the destroyer’s ASW (anti-sub-warfare) for as long as that destroyer stays alive in combat. If no destroyer is present, then subs behave in very different ways than all other naval units.
If these rules are starting to sound complex, it’s because they are! And a lot of players who’ve been gaming with A&A for a while, will readily admit, that this is one of the toughest things about the game to explain to new people. The submarine, and its interaction with other units, introduces a lot of nuance and “exceptions to the general rules” that force you to pause and go through a lot tedium at the outset.
There is no way of getting around this stuff, as I stated up at the top there, because so many first round combats involve Subs! If you don’t describe this stuff before you actually begin playing, you run the risk of really confusing your new player once those combat situations arise. On the other hand, if you do describe this stuff beforehand, you also run the risk of overwhelming the new player, by stating a bunch of complex rules up-front, without a context or solid examples. This is where the battle board comes in.
I’d suggest slating a good 10 to 15 minutes of battle board practice just with submarines in mixed forces, trying to show all the possible combat situations that Subs might find themselves in. You do this before you try to play things out in the actual game, so that you don’t have to face that awkward waffling situation, where your new player turns to you and says… “Hey! I didn’t know that subs could do that!” or “Hey! How was I supposed to know that subs couldn’t do that!?” etc. Better by far, to just get all this complex stuff out of the way on the battle board, where you can create different scenarios, and build out test cases. Set up a bunch of these sub combats, just ship on ship first, to try and show how the opening Submarine’s opening shot works both on attack and defense. Once the player starts to get a handle on opening shots, then slowly bring the aircraft and destroyers into it.
And when you get to the air, here’s one that you should definitely highlight: The Sub vs the fully loaded, but “naked” carrier…
1 sub vs 1 carrier and 2 fighters defending = 60% odds to the attacker! WTF? But it’s true.
Because no destroyer is present, the sub is immune from the defensive fighter hits. So basically the Sub hitting at 2 vs a carrier deck defending at 1. If the Sub sinks the carrier deck, and there is no friendly island within the sz, or no friendly territory adjacent to the sz for the defending fighters to land, they will crash into the sea! Think about that for a second… A single sub at a cost of 6 ipcs, could readily sink 34 ipcs of enemy TUV under these conditions! If the defender wasn’t careful and left his loaded carrier deck in open water, unescorted by a destroyer, a lone sub could just wreck it!
**After you do the “naked” carrier example, then show them…
6 subs vs 1 carrier and 2 fighters + 1 destroyer. (that’s 36 TUV vs 42)**
The idea in this example, is to show how the destroyer negates the opening shot of subs, but only for as long that destroyer stays alive during the combat. So its very possible that during the second round of the combat phase, you end up with a situation similar to the naked Carrier one. Remember, subs cannot hit aircraft, and aircraft can only hit subs when a destroyer is present (for each round of the combat phase.) This is the point you want to hammer home, by “showing” it and playing it out with dice (which is exciting for the new player!), rather than “explaining it” in words (which is usually boring and a more confusing for the new player!)
**Keeping with the “Subs can’t hit Air” theme, here’s another battle board situation to set up:
2 fighters vs 1 sub and 1 transport.**
In this “combat”, there is no interaction between the fighters and the sub, the transport is automatically destroyed!
**2 fighters vs 1 sub and 1 transport + 1 destroyer
Again, there is no interaction between the air and the sub, if the fighters can kill the destroyer then the transport is automatically sunk, but the submarine will still be alive!**
It might seem like a major time sink, going through a bunch of sub and transport situations on the battle board, but trust me, its not. Your new player isn’t going to “get” all this stuff until they see it in operation, and you don’t want the first round combats to be your test cases. It takes too long to set up the map, and reset it, if you’re trying to use the first round combats as guinea pigs (and the first round combats don’t always the essential concepts as clearly as we might like) The new player, unable to track all of the possible situations in their head, will just start looking to you for guidance. They are looking to you to be the Game Master, and quickly resolve rules questions about all these complex Sub/Destroyers/Air interactions. The battle boards gives you an opportunity to refresh everyone’s memory, and try to show most of the weird stuff at least one time, before you actually play the game.
After the battle board, take it back to the Map! Here we try to show some of the situations that arise, because Subs or Transports cannot create a hostile sea zone by themselves. Show how subs/transports cannot block, and how this can be used to either initiate or prevent certain combats or movements. Again its much better to show this stuff, than it is to try and explain in words because words are tricky (as I’m sure this article will sometimes demonstrate!) But a solid visual and a little practice will help the ideas to stand out.
Try to touch on the stuff that might seem less intuitive. Show some situations where subs are alone defending a sz. Be sure to show how a “naked” or unescorted transport cannot move into a sz controlled by an enemy sub for the purposes of launching an amphibious combat, but how that same transport could move into a sz controlled by an enemy sub on non combat, for the purposes of unloading units into a friendly territory. Get all this stuff out of the way, beforehand, on the battle-board and using test examples on the map. This will save you a lot of headaches and frustration later on.
If your new player gets confused at some point, during the actual game, you can then say: “Yeah. Remember how it happened on the battle board? With ‘such and such’ before, when I showed you…” :-D
Instead of saying at that point: “Oh yeah, I forgot to mention all this super complicated stuff about subs and transports. So let me backtrack now and confuse the hell out of you, with extra rules…”
What I’ve been trying to do here, is strike a balance between explaining the actual stuff to the readers here, and telling you guys the ways I think its helpful to explain it your new players. There’s a distinction in that, if you’re the one with the game, you’re expected to have read the rulebook, and serve as the Game Master, for your group. The manual, tripleA, these forums etc can all help you to understand how the rules look, but its up to us to find ways to translate those rules into gameplay realities, examples, and basic “strategic advice” to offer the new player. We don’t want to tell them what to do, because that’s like taking over the whole process, you might as well be playing a solitaire at that point. The whole novelty of it comes from the surprise and the random variability of the human element. So that’s why I let to set up battle examples on the fly, for like a good hour, before you do the full game set up. It gives you a chance to run through it, and keep your player enthusiastic and rolling, instead of weighed down by onerous rules and bunch of reading and slow set up time. Start with the battle board. If you can get up to Submarines, and still keep them excited, then you’re doing fantastic.
Now this whole time I’ve been saying things like, first this, and then we’ll talk about Air in more detail later. Clearly its impossible to fully suspend a discussion of Air, when you’re going through the battleboard examples you’re showing their attack and defense values, how they relate to carriers or subs etc. But the reason I think its cool to hold off on the full Air discussion until the end, is for the impact and the drama! Aces High!
Aircraft, Fighters and Bombers naturally lend themselves to a discussion of the broader A&A elements, like Movement across the map, using aircraft for mass defense, or mass attack, how SBR works, can-opening and a lot of other fun, but somewhat higher order concepts.
Once you’ve given a half hour or 45 minutes to ground and naval on the battle board, I like to pause the action, and pick up a Fighter and a Bomber, hold them up high for everyone to see, and then say something like, “now lets really talk about aircraft” :-D
Just like airpower changed the whole nature of Warfare during WWII, understanding airpower in A&A will take your gameplay to the next level! Fighters and Bombers, your knights of the sky! Like jousting lances and clashing swords, are the key to winning this game. Every Nation has a starting air force, and aircraft are involved in all aspects of the broader strategy for both sides, Axis and Allies. You can’t play any Nation effectively, until you’ve mastered the use of your starting fighters and bombers, knowing how to coordinate them with your teammates, and then knowing how when/how to build more. They are key, and the sculpts look pretty damn cool too, so I like to hold them up, and let them hang there for little bit, to heighten the suspense! heheh
Catch you guys in a few!
