Question about map accuracy

@Panther
Thanks!

@Panther

Thanks for the reply.

Thanks again to @Krieghund too. :)

https://avalonhill.wizards.com/rules

Note there are rules AND errata. And yes, the rulebook is poorly written.

Yes. Russia can attack West Russia using forces from Russia, Karelia, and Caucasus. Further, units from one territory may attack multiple territories. E.g. Russia may attack West Russia AND Caucasus on its first turn, using its tank from Russia to hit Ukraine, and its other units from Russia to hit West Russia.

No and yes. The question implies attackers come from a single territory / sea zone. The actual rule is land or sea units retreat to an eligible adjacent territory / sea zone that one of the attackers came from. Also the question implies an attacker decides to withdraw “because the combat isn’t going well” but attacking with intent to retreat is commonly done to preserve units against an opponent counter.

Suppose Germany controlled West Russia but had no German units there, that Germany had a stack of units on Ukraine, USSR had a stack of infantry on Caucasus. USSR tanks on Russia could blitz through West Russia to hit Ukraine along with the Caucasus infantry, then USSR forces could all withdraw to West Russia OR all withdraw to Caucasus. They must all withdraw to a single territory.

Sometimes retreat is not possible e.g. if sea units all start in a contested sea zone and don’t move (sometimes they can’t) out then in again. Then there’s no adjacent sea zone that any sea unit came from, so there’s no eligible retreat zone.

Loading onto a transport does not “consume the unit’s non-combat move for the turn”. That is not how it works at all. A transport can load a unit AND unload it the same turn. Reference page 31 of the rulebook.

Reference page 15 of the rulebook. You cannot retreat seaborne units. You can retreat other units. Yes, you can declare a retreat; in that case the seaborne units fight on.

Yes, infinite defending transports are automatically destroyed by a single attacking unit.

No, flying across a sea zone with a named island doesn’t count as 2 movements at all. Taking off from an aircraft carrier . . . . look. An island is a territory, a sea zone is a sea zone. If a fighter starts on an island, it’s on the territory; if the fighter wants to move from the island into the sea zone around the island that requires 1 movement.

If a fighter starts on a carrier, it’s on the sea zone; moving to an ADJACENT sea zone requires 1 movement.

If a fighter is flying across a sea zone with an island, it uses 1 movement to move into the sea zone, and another movement to fly into the next sea zone, the same as any sea zone without an island. If a fighter’s not landing or taking off from an island, the island does nothing.

Already answered

You can get units of opposing powers in a single sea zone when a power builds sea/air units in a sea zone that already has enemy units in it. Sea units may ignore enemy submarines / transports (with some limitations, like if unloading their own transports). Your question is “these are the only instances when they can exist in the same sea zone” - was that a reference to a retreat (which could also happen) or what was it? Literally don’t understand.

There’s an OPTIONAL RULE that allows fighters to defend against industrial bombing, I think. I don’t use it so I forget. AAA does nothing against industrial bombing. Industrial COMPLEXES have built-in antiaircraft defenses; those are the only thing that defend against industrial bombing.

I suppose you’re trying to use some optional rule with the 4 or lower thing, but I’m just going to ignore that. If bomber survives - NOT THE ANTIAIRCRAFT ARTILLERY BECAUSE THOSE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT - but the industrial complex’s antiaircraft fire - then it rolls a dice, and whatever the result is is recorded as damage against that industrial complex, up to twice the value of the territory the IC is on. So if you bomb Karelia and roll a 6 for damage, you can only apply 4 damage as Karelia’s worth 2, and double 2 is 4. Excess damage is lost.

Each damage on an IC prevents it from mobilizing a unit on that territory. So if you have a Karelia IC with 4 damage on it, you can’t mobilize anything there; same if it has 3 damage or 2 damage. If you had 1 damage on, you could mobilize 1 unit there.

No. If there’s a battle in the sea zone, there’s no bombardment, period. Doesn’t matter if enemy transports were there and you wanted to destroy them with a fighter, if there’s any battle in the sea zone, no bombardment, period.

I know the rulebook is poorly written, but try going through it a few times.

I personally find AAA provides the kind of psychological threat, making the opponent think twice before flying a bunches of fighters and bombers in a battle, as sometimes losing a fighter and 2 in the long run becomes critical, particularly for Axis.

And so the initial AAA is very important as you might not buy another one for a while.

Hello, Baron Munchhausen. Nice to hear from you!

You raise many interesting points, and I’ll try to respond to two of them. First, can a Southern Pacific strategy work for Japan even without assigning thematically ridiculous IPC values to tiny island chains? I think so. I agree that it would be off-putting to play a game where, e.g., the Solomon Islands plus the Caroline Islands were treated as more economically valuable than France. There are limits to how much you can edit the map without breaking the suspension of disbelief and ruining the theme.

That said, I don’t think the 1942.2 map would take all that much tweaking. On the 1942.2 board, players will occasionally send a transport to take Australia even though it’s not worth much, and there’s little or nothing to use as an encore. If you valued Australia at 4 IPCs, New Zealand at 2 IPCs, the Solomons and Carolines at 1 IPC each, and Hawaii at 2 IPCs, that’s 10 IPCs right there. It’s not hard to find another 8 IPCs in South America: 2 IPCs in Chile/Peru/Bolivia, 2 IPCs in Argentina, 3 IPCs in Brazil, and 1 IPC in Colombia/Venezuela. All together you’ve got 18 IPCs, which I think is very respectable.

You could compare that total to a Western Pacific strategy (India, Persia, Burma, Italian East Africa, Egypt, Transjordan, Kazakh, Yunnan, and Szechuan add up to only 13 IPCs) or to a Northern Asia strategy (Soviet Far East, Buryatia, Sinkiang, etc. all the way west to Archangelsk, Vologda, and Novosibirsk is worth about 13 IPCs). Either strategy plus Moscow is still only 21 IPCs. So the Southern Pacific strategy doesn’t strike me as hopelessly inefficient from an economic point of view.

Second, is a Southern Pacific campaign inherently too slow to be fun? I’ll readily admit that it’s less direct; if you head off toward southern Argentina, you are obviously not heading for the global epicenter of military power. You can’t force a British surrender by crushing Buenos Aires; that’s just not how that works. On the other hand, if the Axis controlled the entire southern hemisphere, with a sphere of influence stretching from Tokyo through Singapore, Basra, Addis Ababa, Capetown, Buenos Aires, and Sydney, isn’t that a kind of win for the Axis? I understand there used to be an “economic win condition” for the Axis where they could win by controlling 100 IPCs or so worth of territory, and although the victory city mechanic has never been well-executed, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be improved to the point where people actually prefer using a victory city win condition.

I think the whole “race to the capital” mechanic is unrealistic and less-than-fun anyway; if you sack one capital without wrecking the empire it rules, the people who live in the capital will just relocate the capital and keep ruling their empire. You’ll get some bragging rights and a few million barrels of oil, but nobody surrenders an intact superpower just because you squeeze into their capital – look at Napoleon in Moscow, or Robert Ross in Washington, or for that matter the British in World War II, who laid down supplies and trained secret army units in Worcester to protect Parliament, the royal family, and the BBC, with plans to continue retreating to Liverpool and then Canada if necessary.

So, yeah, if Japan just blitzes straight for San Francisco, then that’s foolish and the Axis will lose. Similarly, if the designers allow you to drive tanks straight over the Himalayas with no movement penalty, and you pass up that opportunity, then that’s foolish, and you deserve to lose. But if the designers tweak the map so that the trackless Himalayan Mountains and barren Gobi Desert and frozen Siberian tundra are harder to cross than the balmy, oil-rich South Pacific ocean – and if the Axis seize that opportunity to invade South America – then I think you’d get a really interesting game, where the players had to make gut-wrenching choices about what resources to invest in what theaters.

I am just curious about the balance….in previous thread I saw a few discussion saying it favors Axis but there are also folks saying the game is balanced without bids… Are any change on the opinion since then?  It seems to me Axis is strong at the beginning (it always is ;-)) but I haven’t play enough to come into any conclusion.

Thank you for the quick response!!

@Sean.C:

@adaptation:

I don’t know why people say Pearl Harbor cannot be done anymore - don’t forget that the Japanese sub is now absolutely untouchable with the new rules and can always go for Pearl Harbor. You can get 3 fighters(9), 1 bomber(4), 1 cruiser(3), 1 sub(2) and 1 AC(1) (grand total of 19) VS sub(1),destroyer(2),AC(2),fighter(4) (Grand total of 9).

Over 95% chance of victory with average IPC losses around 16-18 depending on if you chose to lose a bomber or fighter after your sub.

Then you end up defending with 2 fighters ( 8 ), 1 cruiser (3), and 1 AC (2) (grand total of 13) VS 2 fighters (6), 1 bomber (4), 1 destroyer (2), and 1 battleship (4) (grand total of 16).

Over 95% chance of losing your Japanese fleet with an average IPC loss around 18-20 for America depending on if they chose to kill a fighter or bomber after their destroyer.

Plus US player submerges the sub right at the beginning of the J1 attack, allowing it to participate on the counter on US2…

Then you have to consider that UK1 has almost a 70% chance of wiping out the other half of your japanese fleet

You’re goal here is India, not America.  The only reason people did it before was it was a slam dunk with no losses most of the time with units you didn’t need for India anyhow.  It’s a completely different story now.  Now your looking at the annihilation of a majority of your fleet that you actually need to help take India.

Yup, if the UK attacked SZ37 then Japan has to wipe out any remaining UK fleet from that attack and get the UK transports as quickly as possible. Attacking the US fleet almost removes Japan from the Pacific after US1.