Artillery to defend at 3?

@zombiemaster22 If you just Google advanced axis and allies rules. You can find a million sets of house rules that allow retreating. And from personal experience it doesn’t change strategy all that much, it just means that you get to call your friends horrible monsters for allowing their units to die when they easily could have lived.

thanks for responding…

Look at it from a theoretical perspective and it’s quite simple.  All those “conventional 150mm howitzers” you’re building for 4 IPCs don’t have the range to retailate against weaponry of cruiser caliber or above.  So they’ll sit there on the coast under bombardment and like it!

If you don’t like it, then your answer is to create a house rule for a coastal defense / bunker fortification that can be built :)

I have been fooling around with a rather simple fortification/blockhaus rule:

limit one per territory
10 IPCs

When attacked via land or by amphibious assault , rolls ONE retaliatory bombardment die at 4 or less.
Roll is made after any incoming bombardment fire from attacking vessels and you take an applicable hits.  Any casualty you inflict is immediately selected and removed from the board by the attacker. The blockhaus DOESN’T roll a defense die in combat from then on.

Additionally, any hits you take during the rest of the battl against infantry or artillery in that territory are negated by saving throw if you roll a 6.

If the territory is captured, the fortification/blockhaus is removed from play.

I agree 100% art needs a boost defensively to keep its place in the game, especially with the new units introduced.

“defender fight to death” makes better sense in hex level variants
where turns represent a shorter period

in this case only one cycle of combat occurs
neither side retreats

simply one move phase, one fight phase per turn

I agree, defender should be able to retreat, but in this way the retreat option, instead of be a desperate decision to save the army, becomes an opportunity for the defender that can attract the attacker in a trap. This could be a good tactic, in North Africa Rommel was a master of this, but A&A is more strategic than tactic. So, i think, this opportunity could be “limited”.

My idea for this is: defender can declare retreat after at least one cycle of combat. If defender declare retreat, attacker only roll for another cycle of combat and the defender remove all casualties immediately and then the combat is over, defender can’t roll for her/his units (they’re retreting). The attacker wins the combat and the defender have to move all her/his units in the SAME space. No units rest “behind”. This rule also can be applied to naval combats, because ships usually make smoke clouds to hide their retreat.

Defending submarines have still the advantage of fire back and submerge. If an enemy destroyer is there, sub’s can now retreat instead of submerging.

I like this rule!!! ;)

EDIT: i forgot… AntiAircraft and (of course) Industrial Complexes CAN’T retreat.

Ok that explaination makes more sence. Can you reword it in such a manner that it captures both the examples and the language of your description?

@Loki:

I heard someone mention the idea sometime of allowing tanks to take their second move after combat if they had one left. That might be interesting because in essence it would allow tanks to strafe like fighters can do. Maybe it would suck, I don’t know.

Its fun playing like this, definetely makes Germany better, but also helps the Soviets repel the Japs and Nazis after they move into one of their territories and it keeps Tanks with a def of 2, which means the enemy will probably use their fighters to bomb them when the bulk of your infantry is in the next territory blocking the enemy from hitting your tanks. I dont see tanks as a 3/3 unless they’re the heavier versions that appeared towards the end of the war (tigers/IS-2’s etc…)