Why is Taranto raid so popular?

It sounds like you only have the fighters engaging in combat. My understanding is that all air units (incl. the bombers get to roll):

The attacking bombers and fighter escorts and the defending fighter interceptors will be the only units participating in this special combat. The combat lasts for only one round. All of the air units have attack and defense values of 1

I hope this helps.

One thing worth mentioning here is that Africa is essentially a trap for the Axis.   Whether the Italian fleet survives or not, it is very hard to make much of an income difference or gain any NOs before America enters the war and takes it back, or without compromising some other more critical front. Â

Italy only risks 2 IPCs by losing Africa.   In our Game 92 on Saturday, I had the entire Italian navy survive because my opponent did exactly what you suggested, and attacked Tobruk rather than Taranto.   The counter is quite favorable to the Italians, to send in their entire fleet on the attack and clear the med for your NO.   Even with the gigantic navy, I was still boxed in as I couldn’t control either Gibraltar or Egypt in the long term though I took both of them once.   Â

Buying more ships is a trap, and you can’t really hold Gibraltar.   I spent all my $$ on strategic bombers and mechs to help Germany on the eastern front and using Italy to protect the Atlantic Wall or help leapfrog Germany in the East is stronger than trying to take the Maghreb or the Levant.  If you keep any transports, the most effective thing to do with those is threaten/cover/block/rush out of Gibraltar but its going to be hard…

One of my buddies said that far from wanting to reinforce the Italian stack on Tobruk, he wanted to evacuate it from Africa.  Its ineffective and trapped on a good day and easy to annihilate on a bad one.

@Arthur-Bomber-Harris the retreat is only for one turn. By stacking and blocking Alexandria you can comeback UK2 and even make an airbase there.
It´s a withdrawal UK1 to attack on UK2.

The strength of the Taranto attack as Britain is that you have to basically bring as many planes to the fight as Italy has eligible to scramble in order to ensure “mutual destruction” odds.

Assuming you always destroy the Italian transport off of Malta, you will leave Italy with only a handful of boats and one lone transport. With only one transport it is very unlikely that Italy can effectively take Greece and Gibraltar on the first turn, meaning that you can deny them a valuable objective early on. Sending one transport either way means it will take at least another two turns to get to the other side. (The solution to this for the Axis is Germany taking Gibraltar for Italy).

With only one transport, Italy cannot effectively threaten Egypt, which gives Britain much-needed time to fortify it with troops from either India or S. Africa.

Even though the UK’s navy in the med faces almost assured destruction (if the Italian counterattack doesn’t finish it off somehow, German planes will), you are banking on the fact that you make almost triple Italy’s economy. Italy’s paltry 10 IPCs mean that rebuilding transports will take a huge portion of their income. Until Italy achieves it’s NO’s, building anything larger than destroyers and submarines will be impossible without saving up IPCs for 1-2 turns.

The other advantage of this strategy is that by destroying most of Italy’s navy early the US does not have to build as large a navy in the Atlantic, which is a massive benefit given the task of facing Japan in the Pacific.

The other popular UK opener is to pull your navy back into SZ81 and possibly join with the India navy (that might be running away from Japan) and build up a force too great for even Italy’s combined navy to defend against. Then the US and UK both hit the med on turn 4 in a 1-2 punch.

With the new setup, Italy can only do what the UK allows them to do, and with the pressure off sealion, it’s put squarely on Italy with the threat of an IC in Egypt UK1. Italy should have been given a tac bomber in northern Italy IMO.

I’m not so sure about the new convoy raiding rules.  It was kind of nice to have a set amount, something you could count on each round as long as your submarines or warships survived to attack the convoys.  However, the new system does present the possibility of getting much more damage per ship (6 per sub and 3 per warship) plus it lets carrier planes get involved too.  I will be interested to try them out in my next game and see how they work.

idk…… you usually need those planes to fight russia, and like you said, britan wont be doing many landings anyway…

I think there is a general dogfight and then surviving bombers and tac split up to attack their intended targets. Thus, it would be 2 ftrs, 4 tac, 2 bmrs vs 3 ftrs for 1 round.