G40 Delta 1st Edition

Aint those the Box-arts on some plastic models ?  :-D

@Young:

…or this?

Go with your second one. That is correct.

The first was a Yorktown class carrier… probably the Hornet.

So two dice per infantry defending against amphibious assaults on European territories.  Is that every round?  Seems a bit overpowered considering the resistance that can be put up.  What about first round only - to signify that they are firing at units of men in, and currently leaving, landing craft.  After that, it’s closer to a traditional battle so they go back to standard rules?

Just a suggestion.  Keep in mind, 36 defending infantry now have the withering fire of 72 defending infantry…that’s a bloody awful lot of transports going to be needed to overwhelm that defending force.

Japan I-400s should act as normal subs during the defense, so their fighter loaded on them will act as cargo /like any other/. The way it is now, you can buy two subs for 12 IPCs carrying (did I spell it right ?) 2 planes with attack value of 4, defense value of 2 and and you need two hits to kill em both, not talking about they roll 4 dice during convoy disrupt.
CV costs 2 IPCs more, doesn’t roll any dice during C. Disrupt, has 4 less attack power. The only things that CV is better in are that they can repair one damadge and they can carry one Tac. And last but not least, you need a destroyerto attack subs if you don’t want them to simply submerge.

@mattsk:

Japan I-400s should act as normal subs during the defense, so their fighter loaded on them will act as cargo /like any other/. The way it is now, you can buy two subs for 12 IPCs carrying (did I spell it right ?) 2 planes with attack value of 4, defense value of 2 and and you need two hits to kill em both, not talking about they roll 4 dice during convoy disrupt.
CV costs 2 IPCs more, doesn’t roll any dice during C. Disrupt, has 4 less attack power. The only things that CV is better in are that they can repair one damadge and they can carry one Tac. And last but not least, you need a destroyerto attack subs if you don’t want them to simply submerge.

You don’t necessarily need 2 hits. If you attack the I-400 sub with one of your subs and score a hit, his sub will die and the plane will have to find a landing place or it will also die.

@Young:

For now, it’s 2 dice every combat round for each infantry unit defending in a German occupied territory being attacked by an amphibious assault. This sounds powerful, however, The Germans would have to use a lot of resources to defend 4 or 5 territories, and the Allies always control the option of landing on the least defended, or a completely undefended coastal territory avoiding the advantage all together.

Another idea for the Allies is if the Axis makes the mistake of allowing Italy to put up the defense. Since this advantage is for Germany, Italian infantry will still only roll 1 die. In some games, since Germany needs all they can in attacking Russia, they will let Italy produce infantry and stack them on the French coasts. Thus Germany will end up nullifying their own advantage.
Plus, if Germany does stack up the coastal territories with a lot of infantry to take advantage of this advantage, then that means they are spending less in Russia. So the German advantage could end up being a round-a-bout advantage for the Allies.

@knp7765:

Another idea for the Allies is if the Axis makes the mistake of allowing Italy to put up the defense. Since this advantage is for Germany, Italian infantry will still only roll 1 die. In some games, since Germany needs all they can in attacking Russia, they will let Italy produce infantry and stack them on the French coasts. Thus Germany will end up nullifying their own advantage.

Plus, if Germany does stack up the coastal territories with a lot of infantry to take advantage of this advantage, then that means they are spending less in Russia. So the German advantage could end up being a round-a-bout advantage for the Allies.

Both of these are general assumptions which may not be correct. Not that it is unheard of, but in my experience Italy rarely has enough resources to buy enough units to be the sole defender of France. Yes there may be a limited number of Italian units there, but as a definitive strategy, Italy funneling much of their resources in that direction is not a profitable venture for the Axis. It allows Britain to keep Africa relatively uncontested.

Secondly, Germany may “stack up” in coastal territories without impacting their fight against the USSR significantly. A couple infantry per turn for Western Europe defense is a pretty normal buy in my experience.

The simple fact is that in any situation this still means two dice per one German infantry in coastal territories. Any Italian infantry defending in the territories will absorb hits and allow the German ones to stick around longer and keep firing with two dice. I am inclined to agree with Jennifer that this seems a bit too powerful, though I am willing to wait and see what the playtests show.

Maybe another solution (if you don’t like the first round of combat only idea) is to have the Germans roll 2 dice every turn, but they act like heavy bombers in that you may choose the best result. That way German infantry will not be able to utterly obliterate any attacking force. That method would necessitate each German infantry rolling separately (not in all in one large roll) so as to keep accurate track of the choice between the dice.

@Young:

Your research is good enough for me Hoffman,… Super Fortresses it is.

I was out of town and very busy for the past several days, so I’m now catching up with the board’s discussions since last Thursday.  I like the cards that YG has been making – they add a nice extra dimensions to his various Delta rules.  I recall from his video about his customized table that his earlier cards were laminated in plastic, which has the advantage of protecting the cards, making them easier to handle and giving them a professional appearnace, so I assume that’s the eventual plan for these new ones too.

On the Fortresses issue, I can’t remember the full details of my earlier posts on this subject – but as I recall, I’d said that “Boeing Fortresses” sounded like an attempt to straddle both the European bombing campaign (which made heavy use of the B-17) and the bombing campaign agaisnt Japan (which revolved around the B-29). And to echo the points made by LHoffman, I seem to recall pointing out that the Flying Fortress and the Superfortress were very different birds.  The B-17 was a good bomber with (by the standards of its contemporaries) a large defensive armament, but it was quite conventional in its design.  The B-29, by contrast, was a state-of-the art aircraft with advanced capabilities that put it in a different league from any other operational WWII bomber; I think each one cost as much to manufacture as a US Navy destroyer.  My feeling was that the phrase “Boeing Fortresses” lacked focus, or at least wasn’t clear about what it was trying to express.  So the new title “Super Fortresses” works much better in my opinion.

@Young:

R7 - Germany

7A - Coastal Defense
During each combat round in which at least 1 German unit is defending a German controlled territory from an amphibious assault (Europe territories only), the defender rolls first in the combat sequence, and the attacker second (casualties inflicted by defending units are immediately removed before the attacker rolls).

Wow… this rule seems nuts! Pardon my candor.

The Allies will be annihilated! No chance for them.

@Young:

Thanks CWO Marc and LHoffman for the guided help in modifying the advantage title, of course it will be up to the American player to alter history and use super fortresses in the European theater if they desire. I found an even better image to use on the card, here it is…

Nice picture.  Regarding the use of the B-29 on the European half of the game board, I don’t see it as being problematic.  It’s true that the B-29 wasn’t used historically in the European theatre during WWII, but that was simply because its capabilities (notably its very long range) were much more advantageous to use in the Pacific than in Europe.  There were no technical reasons why it couldn’t have been used in Europe.  Indeed, if the war in Europe had dragged on to the point where the A-bomb had become available in time and a nuclear strike on Berlin had been judged the best way to end the war quickly, the B-29 would have been a better delivery platform than the B-17.  On payload considerations alone, the B-29 would be the leading candidate.  The Little Boy uranium bomb weighed 9,700 lb and the Fat Man plutonium bomb weighed 10,300 lb.  Both numbers are above the standard bomb-load figures for the B-17 (4,500 to 8,000 lb, depending on mission range), but well below the figures for the B-29 (whose standard load of 20,000 lb was more than the B-17 could carry in overload condition, 17,600 lb).  The Lancaster could have handled a nuke (its normal load was 14,000 lb, and it could even carry the 22,000 Grand Slam bomb), but the Americans would undoubtedly have wanted to use an American bomber for such a mission.

@LHoffman:

Wow… this rule seems nuts!

That’s a quote from General Anthony McAuliffe, isn’t it?  :-)

@Young:

The Allies will only be annihilated if they play into it, let us remember that the Allies have 1st say as to where they land if at all, and obviously they will choose the least defended shore, or attack France via Gibraltar or Spain.

I’m wondering about this.  The house rule seems to make it prohibitively costly for the Allies to conduct an amphibious landing on a German-held territory, and your argument above states that the Allies can avoid falling into this trap by either not landing at all, or by landing on the least defended shore, or by attacking France via Gibraltar or Spain.  I recognize that A&A is just a game, and that it’s not meant to be a play-by-play recreation of WWII, but here are what I think are some potential problems.

Germany was never in a position to have massively tough coastal defences along the entire stretch of coastline that it controlled after occupying western Europe.  In his book The Longest Day, Cornelius Ryan wrote this about Hitler’s vow to create an impregnable Atlantic Wall: “It was a wild, impossible boast. Discounting the indentations, this coastline running from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Bay of Biscay in the south stretched almost three thousand miles.”  At best, Germany could make some limited portions of the coast too costly to attack: the Channel ports (which were indeed heavily fortified, a lesson that was driven home at Dieppe and that led the Allies to pick the open beaches of Normandy for the 1944 landings) and the Pas de Calais region.  But every German-controlled territory in Europe?  I think not.  Even the game board’s so-called “Normandy / Bordeaux” region is too large, since it encompasses France’s entire Atlantic seaboard.

Thie leave the Allied players with the following options once we exclude all German-controlled territories.

• The Allies can land on a territory they already control.  Easy, but it puts them at too much distance from the German forces they want to fight, which means they have to waste time getting there after landing.

• The Allies can land on Italian-controlled territories.  Historically accurate – the Anglo-Americans did precisely that in 1943 when they invaded Italy – but once again it’s a slow way of getting to the German forces (as the Allies in Italy found out in 1943…and 1944…and 1945.)

• The Allies can land in a neutral country (for instance Spain, as you mentioned).  Under the game rules, that will cause all the neutrals to declare war on the Allies.  I’m not sure the cost-benefit ratio would be worth it.

So I guess what I’m wondering is whether this rule is basically intended to dissuade the Allies from making an amphibious landing in France, either on its Atlantic coast or on its Mediterranean coast.  In WWII, the Allies not only had the capability to conduct either of those operations, they actually conducted both, successfully, just six weeks apart.