Sea Lion

@PrivateerPuffin said in Rules question about Fighters in Sea battles:

1st question: Does the word may in excerpt #2 allow for fighters to be presumed as casualties?

No, but it allows for carriers to be.

2nd question: Does excerpt #3 mean that there can never be more fighters in a battle than you have spots on carriers (if there are no other islands or territories to land in).

Yes.

An example if my question is nonsensical.
Japan took Midway, Alaska, and Western Canada last turn. On the US turn. 4 US fighters from two carriers in SZ 56 used 2 movement to attack a fleet in SZ 64. 1 fighter from Western US then uses 3 of its movement to also attack the fleet. The Japan player says that isn’t allowed because the 4 fighters will need the carriers to land. The US player disagrees and says that they could take a fighter as a casualty, allowing for there to be an open spot on the carrier which the fighter from Western US can land on.

The Japan player is correct.

During combat movement, you must be able to demonstrate possible safe landing zones for all attacking fighters. Once the combat starts, you may take carriers as casualties so that these safe landing zones are not maintained, usually in order to maximize the effectiveness of the attacking force. Once combat is over, all fighters that can still be landed must be (attacker’s choice of exactly which fighters, if there is a choice), and any that cannot are lost.

Thanks P@nther it does help. And Krieghund, I totally misread that part of the book…looking at it now it’s plain as day! I feel like that’s not how it worked (for land or sea) way back in Classic, but maybe I’ve just been playing wrong all these years. I guess I just figured if a unit wanted to live in a territory, it had to risk for it. Thanks again!

Thank you panther, its all cleared up now.

Thanks everyone for the advice. I took everyone’s advice into consideration and sortve blended it together to pull off a successful sea lion on turn 4 of my last game. FYI, Argothair’s second link gave me an idea of putting a carrier in SZ 5. Except I kept it there with two fighters. Turn two built two transports. By the non-combat/ place new units phase of turn 3, the carrier and cruiser protecting the transports had turned Karelia’s IC into a 8 unit IC. Turn 4 London fell, turn 5 Moscow did as well due to some extremely unlucky Russian dice rolling the entire night.

But the dice keep it fresh. Every game is different. New challenges. The need to recover from different setbacks. I think the random element adds a lot to this game.

On the other hand it is all about probability. If it wasn’t we would not need strategy. Strategy is what I love about this game. My weakness is that I can lose focus when I start to add up big stacks of unit numbers and values.

A perfect mix of strategy and chance.

It’s not exactly related to any strafe, but a move I sometimes enjoy is to hit sz61 and sink the destroyer there, then send your Aussie sub to sz37 and dive immediately (no combat). This can be annoying for Japan, especially if you put your bomber in range, and kept your fighters at the ready for a UK2 attack.

It’s not as painful as trying to kill a Japanese carrier in the first round, and it gives you some naval flexibility against the IJN in the second round, without requiring you to risk the destruction your own navy in the process. If no good attacks vs Japan present themselves, then your sub can bounce towards Suez and just hang out there until more British aircraft arrive to make it effective.
;)

If the Japanese destroyer in sz61 is sunk on UK1, there is no way for Japan to attack this sub, so it’s safe camped out in sz37 by the Japanese battleship/carrier group (going anywhere the Japanese can go) at least until J2, when it can either attack a target of opportunity or withdraw towards Africa.

I’m very wary of an opening move that leaves the second Japanese transport alive, because it allows Japan to bring their ground units into the fray much sooner. Not attacking sz61 would seem to be a requirement of the sz37 attack, whether you’re going all out or just trying some kind of strafe move. A British bid can change my outlook, another sub or destroyer or fighter bid to UK can make the sz37 trade much better, but OOB it still seems real dicey to me.

Probably best to stick  to ground units. Germany can hit you hard, then Japan comes at you from behind too.

Yep, that’s why both destroyers have to be sunk. If the transports in sz 11 survive its ok, the attack on London is still a go, but in sz 10 you really need to kill the destroyer and the transport (so UK can’t bring the Canadian tank to defend the capital.)

It’s a pretty tall order.

The alternative to all this, is what you might call the “Late game” Sea Lion. Where you try to slowly build up a surface fleet without drawing too much attention, and then drop a bunch of transports all at once, to exploit a weakly defended London. But there is no real consistent strategy for how that can be accomplished, since so much will have changed by the time you get into later rounds.