Clarification on AA gun

Yeah it’s separate for fighters and bombers  :lol:

Separately?

I thought you rolled 1 die for each aircraft, in this case 6 dice.  If 2 hits are delivered, the defender gets to choose what gets shot down.

Text from Revised rule book page 25…

“Antiaircraft guns can shoot down attacking air units.  Whenever an air unit enters a territory containing an enemy antiaircraft gun, the antiaircraft gun fires during the opening fire step of th combat.  Roll one die for each attacking air unit (but ony one antiaircraft gun in a territory can fire, even if they are controlled by different powers).  For every roll of a 1, one attacking air unit is destroyed.”

This tells me there is no distinction between fighters and bombers since they are all attacking air units.  Roll six dice, defender chooses casualties.

I don’t know about where it is in the rules, but…

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/faqs/axisrevised

"Is anti-aircraft fire targeted against specific aircraft?

Yes. In practice, you can roll a handful of dice against all enemy fighters, then roll another handful against all enemy bombers. The reason for this rule is so that bombers will be forced to take hits from AA guns."

well thats not how I play :lol:.  I actually find AA guns to be a waste anyway, since they dont seem to hit all that often or change the outcome of the battle all that much.  I mean you have a one in six chance of actually hiting anything with them.  Does anybody even by those things?

Try this for anyone who plays the board game…

AA guns can be casualties, fire at up to 6 planes, are stackable. More interesting, more buyable, more realistic.

You can play with the numbers- only fires at 3 planes (or whatever), defends on a 2 (like an Artillery) if no planes present, etc.

When I wrote to Larry Harris about this he didn’t answer me… I’m not quite sure why it was insulting, I just thought (as do those I game with FTF) that it made AA more fun. I guess he’s touchy about it or something.

I am just of the opinion that they should go away.  They don’t make that much sense and they never change the outcome of the war.  The only person I have ever seen buy them was a noob and he only did it once.

I don’t see too many people buying them, but they are a very useful piece to have. Lets take the caucus for example, and you have 4 inf, 2 fighters there. Germany is going to attack with 4 inf, 4 fighters. With your aagun there, germany’s chances are at 72% or so, but they will likely not have any inf left to take. Without the aagun there is a shift to 90%, and they probably will take with infantry.

I think you underrate aaguns. In the course of a game I’d say that each aagun is likely to take out at least one air piece, maybe more. Considering that you get a lot of them for free, I wouldn’t complain.

As far as getting alot for free, that depends on who you play.  Japan gets one and you can’t do much with it.  Who wants to waist space on a trans?  Same goes for England.  Germany is the only power that gets “alot for free”.  I just don’t think they are all that usefull, but I’ll admit that when you boil it down to the numbers (takes alot of the fun out of the game to analize it that much IMO) they do seem to make a diffrence.

Well, there are 5 in play in europe/russia, which is plenty. The axis and allies each get “a lot” when combined. If you are seriously complaining about over-analyzing, why are you on a forum discussing all the nuances of play?  :|

Oh, you got me there. :lol:

Realy its just that I don’t like it when the game is reduced to a big math equation.  Drives me up the flippen’ wall.  I love this game and I want to see it imporved, and I think revised does that, but to make it a big math problem takes away from  the game rather than adding to it.  I could be wrong, but ultamately even though I like to win, I don’t want to have to carry a calculatior to figure out if a given attack will result in victory.  I like to just try it and if it doesen’t work, well, it’s only a game.  I do think about strat and I don’t just play radomly, but nothing makes me happier than an opponet who does the unexpected.

Yes,

it seems the AA rule is in effect according to the errata.  I don’t very much like that rule where the bombers are attacked separately, but ok.

The AA guns can be a brutal deciding factor in combat for the simple reason any aircraft hit is removed from combat prior to attacking.  This can be huge.

And yes, I have rolled 4-1’s (out of 4 dice).  If you play enough you see things like this happen and it makes you think before attacking zones with AA.  Firing your AA guns is an opportunity for the defender to change the course of the game.

i like aa guns tri, they add that element of uncertainty to air raids.  if you canned them  i would think you would have to scrap sbr’s as well.  the more variance you remove from the game the more predictable (boring) it becomes.  some guys become known as easy tagets to bomb and some become the city you do not mess with (“snake eyes AGAIN, that is just wrong”) i have seen the aa completely change games and seen it be a complete non-factor which imho i think is cool.

we , by the way, don’t specify the aa target so in a large battle the fighters get hit and on sbr why are you taking fighters? the escort rule?

hey what is LHTR?  i always thought only bombers could go on sbr .  so if figs & bombers are attacking land you roll all dice attacker choses casualites. but if you send bombers on and SBR and figs to land you roll seperatly.

For those who say that AA just needs to go away…

I blame my near total lack of success wtih AA fire in large part for my recent loss.  2 hits over 11 TURNS of play…  It left my opponent with 11 FIGs and a bomber on turn 11.

That is just insane for such a long game.

Aa is important, and essential.  And using it well can (in a normal dice game) make ALL the difference between winning and losing.

You never need to roll one die at a time, of course. You just lose the planes in the order of how far they moved, since except for that distinction, they’re identical.

This brings up another question:

So I guess we aren’t technically rolling for each plane individually, because with this method you are choosing which fighters die. For instance if there are 2 fighters with different movement points, and the enemy rolls 2 die and gets 1 hit, should you be able to choose that the fighter with less movement points dies? Or should you technically be rolling invidiaully for each fighter since they have different movement points?

roll all planes attacking land at the same time. attacker choses casualties.  roll all bombers only on SBR seperate.  hits will be bombers.  switch is also right AA can change a game,  they are very important.

You can do that mojo if you want to be ignoring the errata which clearly specifies that it is not the case, which is of course fine as that is common in this game.

To trihero’s question -

_Is anti-aircraft fire targeted against specific aircraft?

Yes. In practice, you can roll a handful of dice against all enemy fighters, then roll another handful against all enemy bombers. The reason for this rule is so that bombers will be forced to take hits from AA guns._

I would say that it clearly states that you can pick whichever fighter you wish. Again from http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/faqs/axisrevised - which you can count as a reliable source or not.