Island Fighter Scramble Range

The confusion seems to be in you’re holding back naval ships for naval bombardment. The advantage about scrambling planes is that it forces the attacker to commit all their naval ships regardless if they want to or not. That’s why it is sometimes wise to scramble in a losing battle if the enemy is relying on bombardment for victory. The easiest situation would be when Japan invades the Philippine islands. If Japan was so aggressive that all they brought was two infantry with two cruisers as example. I would scramble the fighter in that situation because while I will lose the sea battle, if you choose to invade the island after the battle, you’re doing it without naval support which gives my defending infantry a better chance at winning.

@Luxor:

Can scrambled planes choose not to return to the territory they scrambled from? (Assuming there’s place for them on friendly carriers in the seazone they scrambled to)

No, as long as the territory they have scrambled from has not been taken by the enemy, the planes have to return there:

@rulebook:

After all combat is completed, each surviving scrambled air unit must return to the territory from which it was scrambled. If
the enemy has captured that territory, the unit can move 1 space to land in a friendly territory or on a friendly aircraft carrier.
If no such landing space is available, the unit is lost. Surviving scrambled air units land during that turn’s Noncombat Move
phase, before the attacker makes any movements.

@barney:

“Bids and Scramble”
sounds like a good name for a board game   :lol:

IDK “Chutes and Ladders” just came to mind lol

The Subverted Escape courtesy of Gargantua;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCQ3xxlcQzE&feature=youtu.be

If the Germans have a fleet, they can attack up north from SZ 112 (threatening Karelia, Novo, Arch, Nemestia), there has to be a specific LZ for the fighters to cross which you can threaten or deny as long as you have attacked them on G2 or G1.    Fighters crossing the med have a slow time of it.    Maybe some help can come in the form of making it more inconvenient for the UK fighters to get into Russia in the first place?

I also dislike blowing the Russian NO by having allies hanging out in Russia before its abs necessary, but that could be pretty early in the game.

“Sea Lion”  if the USSR has a fleet and Novogrod, they can keep this threat alive for a long time.  No matter what I want to do with UK, I usually end up buying 6+1 and bringing as many Canadians across as I can.  If I lose any significant ## of fighters, UK has to continue to worry that Germany can bring wave after wave of attackers, which keeps me conservative.  This is why the Gibraltar air base or crossing to Russia early would be difficult;  I don’t have enough fighters to protect UK and project threat.  Once they cross to Russia, they cant cross back…

“Get Cairo”  That sounds awesome but with a UK bid of 10, its not going to happen.  If Germany and Italy build/rebuild navy and try to control the Med, that’s a subtle win for the Allies.  Navy is resource intensive and takes away the armor punch described by the other posters.  Without an added commit, I just don’t see how the Axis can take Egypt at all, there are just too many UK pieces around there.  Germany can fly or bring ships down there but its a 1 way trip, into a dead end trap, and its away from the critical path (Russia)

“Tan Skies”  you are on the right track;  if UK has 6+ fighters it is kicking butt, if not, it feels cornered and powerless.  The key for the axis is to do the strongest opener that doesn’t invite any scrambles, then the UK navy is dead and Germany has most of its air left.  The UK also doesn’t need to lose any (many) fighters during its opener, other stuff can take the casualties.  Its especially good if the airforce from Taranto lives to fight another day (by avoiding the Italian counterstrike, we hope 1 sb 1 French inf 1 tac 1 fighter on Syria?)

@diabo:

some transports which he unloads in germany. except one guy going to poland.

One guy, i.e. Infantry?
You know a transport merely can disembark units to one territory per turn, which ends its turn immediately. So you can’t take a transport, ship one unit to Germany via SZ113 and sail on to SZ114 to put an infantry to poland.
You can’t even put one to Western Germany and one to Germany in the same turn from the same transport…
Just a reminder ;-)

The rule that you quoted deals with airbases that border more than one sea zone, not sea zones that border more than one airbase.  The point of it is that an airbase in a territory that borders more than one sea zone may still only scramble three planes, not three planes into each sea zone that it borders.

It’s flexible.  You want to protect Wake and Guam enough that Japan has no realistic chance at taking them. Even falling back to Wake if needed.  If you start this out on J1 because Japan allows it and then they turn and go 100% against you, then yea, you probably would need to buy a destroyer and all aircraft for their scramble ability.  If they ignore you for a time and go to India, then you could do it for less.  Basically, I see them spending 38-41 ipc/round in the Pacific on the cheap side.  Some rounds they may spend more if the player sees it fit to do so.  The good thing about this is that once the war bonus kicks in, it may give you a chance to split your income almost 50/50 so that you aren’t totally ignoring either theater.