Free French Blue Fighter Aircraft

Well on the board you generaly move stuff 1 at the time.
So the wording is a bit weird but what they try to say is that you only have to move the carrier if not moving it would cause planes to have no landing zone.

So its not earlier as in an earliers phase but earlier as in earlier in the NCB phase.

The game is already weird in that imo all movement should be simultanious. You cant start moving later and still expect to arive at the same time.
If you first await a combat resolution and then move your going to be later then if you are moving immediately.

Glossary to help making the rulebook easier to read:

A round is “each nations has their turn to play”
A turn is “This nations has its turn to play”.

So, the UK player moving all its pieces is “a turn”.

@SubmersedElk:

There’s simply no way the Axis make any headway into Africa unless the Allies screw up bigtime. It’s the easiest place on the whole map for Allies to dominate. If you’re finding you can make successful invasions of Africa as Italy, you need to find better opponents if you want a challenging game.

I very well might be doing something wrong, so forgive me, but I don’t quite see it as you’ve described it, elk.

UK has two choices on UK1. Go super strong defense on London, or not. That, for me, always determines how the Mediterranean is going to end up. To be clear, the Axis never decides how Sea Lion or how fights in the med are going to go, the Allies do. The Axis’s job on the first two rounds of the game is simple: pick the weak point(s). The Allies are the ones to decide what those points are. The fickle b����-goddess of dice takes it from there.

There are a whole god damn slew of if/else if/else etc situations that follow, but I’ll try to simplify, leaving out entirely (non-standard) weird things Russia/US can do to make this wonky:

G1: “Standard”: smash against UK navy, take france, yugo gets strafed or whatever, + some kind of buy that can legitimately threaten sea lion,

UK1a: inf + fighter, or something similarly all-defensive.

UK1b: factory on Egypt
UK1c: taking Iraq (with help of UK Pac) (with the intention of a mIC on UK2 being placed there)
UK1d: something else heavy med, such as 2+ planes form London headed to the Med.

note: b, c, and d are not mutually exclusive

I1: Okay, then it comes around to Italy. If I see UK1a, which is “safe”, then I prep for an I2 hit on Cairo, usually, but not always.

G2: if UK1a: you could (and I often do) put lots of planes into Alexandria, prep for a Cairo hit, while usually sinking whatever allied boats are still around in the med.
G2: if UK1!a: sea lion is a very real option

UK2a: Oh ����, Egypt looks bad, do we try to save it or not? (UK’s option c resolves much of this)
UK2!a: Oh ����, London looks kinda bad, how do we fix this. (UK’s option c resolves much of this)

UK2?: Do we retreat from Cairo into trans jordan (perhaps toward our Iraq mIC) or to sundan (toward our south african mIC)? Or do we try to hold it?

I2a: potentially slam into Cairo with your 1x transport, planes, and your Alexandria/sub-saharan africa forces

G3a/I3a: Finish off what’s left of the UK in Egypt.
G3!a/I3!a: Sea lion? Abandon Africa as you might normally? Just crush Russia like a “normal” game?

edit-
The user Cow popularized this strategy. A slight bit more can be found at: http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=30167.0

Okay, with the above in mind, and I hope it’s at least somewhat clear, what are you left with? Italy is now sometimes in the fight in the Med, totally, even if it’s with remnant forces. They start the game with enough units to do this even if they are dumping their first two turns of income into mechs/tanks against Russia, mind you.

Italy’s taking of Egypt might demand a bit of attention from America (yay for Japan!) to put some pressure on the med, and at the very least, entirely flubs up UK Atlantic. With only very modest luck, there’re less UK fighters in Moscow, or less mechanized infantry coming up through the Caucasus, or less whatever UK involvement there might otherwise be. There’s also a bit of a speed bump, however large or small, when it comes for UK/US threatening a kill-italy-first (KIF). Much of this depends on 1: execution, 2: sacrifices the Allies choose make from other options, and 3: a bit (but not a lot) of luck of course.

So, elk, what I’m trying to posit here is that the Axis can still make useful headway into Africa, if not only just the very north tip of it (which is the most pivotal point), even if the Allies don’t “screw up”, depending on some conditions and playstyles.

This game suffers from some lack of viable options at times, but the African/Med theater is not absolutely one of them.

Final note: I never play with bids (I prefer a static per-turn bonus to the US). With bids, and where they almost always (arguably very rightfully) usually go, Africa is basically always a statistical dead end for the Axis.

Yeah, I have to admit that I have done that in the case of existing carriers. I say I will move the carrier to a certain spot so planes involved in a battle close by can land. Then the planes get killed (which I figured they would) so I leave my carrier where it is or move it to a “better” place.

Another thing you could do for the Chinese fighter if you would prefer it to be the same color as the Chinese troops is get one from Historical Board Gaming. They have these Allied Supplement sets in several different colors. One of them is called Celery Green which is the same color as the British pieces in old copies of Revised. This color is very close to the same color as the Chinese infantry pieces. The Allied supplement sets include P-40 fighter planes. You don’t even have to get the entire set because HBG sells these pieces individually. You can pick up 2 or 3 P-40s and there you go! Your very own Chinese fighter unit.
As for Artillery, HBG also has these Neutral sets in several colors and one of them is a yellow-green color. That color is a little brighter than the Chinese infantry, but it works okay with them and certainly is different from the US artillery. The Neutral sets have an artillery piece called a “75 Veld” which I think is Polish or Belgian but works fine for Chinese since they mostly had older stuff anyway.

I take S France on G1, risking taking higher losses in the battle for France, then never make any German Navy in the Med as Uk is always just too strong and I fear losing the new units.
Without an Air Base any German builds seem doomed, but I cannot afford to blow 15IPCs making one when the ultimate objective is Russia.
UK well played is the death knell for Italy.

I think the only time anything can retreat separately is with an amphibious invasion.

If you only have attacking subs and planes, the subs could submerge (assuming no enemy destroyer) but the planes would have to wait one round before retreating.

@Krieghund:

Yes.

Oh that is SOOO sweet! Wish I had known that previously.  I had not attacked a French Destroyer for fear of losing the non-Aggression NO for letting FIC be free (figured it was all or nothing.)  Ah well, my fault for not checking first!