Seazone question

I believe Kamikaze can only be launched against “attacking” ships, and as a non-combat movement is not an attack, I think the carriers are safe from such attack.

Dont have my rule book to hand but if you bring the carriers in with the amphib assault then that is a combat move into the sea zone so nutty pilots may fly at you!

If you dont bring the carriers then can the kamikaze cannot hit transports.  So why not move the carriers in on non-combat!

Sweet move.  I would call this a nice loophole in the rules.

@LincolnHawk:

… In last game I brought the carriers and opponent rolled 3  kamikaze on each carrier causing me to lose some planes.

There is no Kamikaze defense during Noncombat Movement Phase. So if that occurred during NCM, it was against the rules.

@LincolnHawk:

I guess I am asking if you can “reinforce” a seazone during non combat phase after you cleared it in combat phase.

Yes, you can, LincolnHawk, provided that the ships have not moved during the combat move phase or participated in a combat before.

@WoodyWanKenobi:

I would call this a nice loophole in the rules.

Actually no loophole, but clearly written in the rules.
Japan has to take this situation into account.

It certainly isn’t useless, because it forces your opponent to consider what could happen when you use them, which leads him to leave his carriers behind, which during sea battles, are awesome for soaking up free hits.  Its also “piling on” since japan doesn’t usually need the kami to defend the homeland (it can do it fine the conventional sea/land way up until the climatic battle) but it still gets it.

I personally think this rule is not right. Kamikaze should be able to target transports as well as surface warships.  During the war, I realize that the Kamikaze focused exclusively on warships, especially carriers.  In fact, it’s the same reason their submarine force did not have a good success rate because they wouldn’t attack merchant, supply or troop ships but concentrated on trying to hit warships.
However, if Plan Downfall, the invasion of Japan, had occurred, the leaders of the Kamikaze planned to attack the troop carrying ships in order to cause as many Allied casualties as possible.
For this reason, and the fact that the territory of Japan is the capital of Japan, I believe Kamikaze should be allowed to target transports.  Perhaps just for sea zone 6.
I also just don’t like the idea of an invasion force made up of only the transports with no warships.  Of course, I guess it could be argued that it is up to the Japanese player to keep fighters on Japan and keep the airbase in good repair and/or keep a few warships in that sea zone.  But, as most of you know, once the Imperial Navy has been wiped out, it is kind of easy for the US player to bomb both the airbase and factory on Japan into non-existence and use subs to convoy raid Japan’s money away.

I see your point knp but I don’t think that it’s all that unfair. You don’t have the choice of sending suicide planes out of London, Washington, Calcutta, Sydney, Berlin, or Rome to kill loaded transports when their capitals are under attack. I think that the axis have a big enough advantage in this game as it is so preventing them from taking down a transport, tank, and infantry in one shot ( as opposed to 2 shots against a capital ship) does not seem like such a bad idea.

Agree with GHG, the limitation there is because you spend so many resources and so much time building up as the USA, it just wouldn’t seem fair that you could just pick off his invasion force, which in some situations, the USA player can not replace for 2 turns or possibly, ever.      Of course, its still pretty much impossible to invade japan proper unless you are demolishing him economically and even then, it takes quite a bit of time to get the forces over there–however, japan is not the only place he can kami --how is it fair to let him kami a transport that’s coming into iwo jima to set up a US strongpoint there?

The true limitation of the kamikaze is that there are really only 4 units that can be hit by it; dd ca cv bb    (no subs, transports, or planes, so its a long list), and 2 of those things aren’t sunk by just 1 hit.

Carriers are the most vulnerable, but they don’t even have to come along, they can wait in the wings and all they bring to the battle is soak hits.

Plenty of times when the allies attack SZ 6 they do it with like 2-3 naval units and 10+ planes, so the kami isn’t effective alone in stopping him.

The reason to keep it around in Japan’s pocket is that it ruins his support shots, iirc

Its a fun flavorful rule but its just piling on because Japan doesn’t really need it in order to survive or thrive, and usually when you try to depend on it it fails miserably in a gigantic blaze of glory.  I say try n dump it (we do in G42 G41 at times)!