Transport question

@RiceAndChine:

Wouldn’t then tanks be the ultimate choice vs. infantry, because of their range?

Tanks are important, but as the others have said you need plenty of infantry to absorb any losses.

What an IPM approach allows you to do is take territories without a battle.  You leverage your shear numbers (both attack threat potential and defensive numbers) and force your opponent back.  You only need enough offense to prevent your opponent from doing the same to you and in the case of Germany after round 1 you’ll have 4-5 ftrs, 1 bom, and a half dozen tanks or so.  You don’t need any more offense.  You need fodder!
So with IPM you want to start getting as many units on the board as possible and start shifting the deadzones out (moving them closer to Russia).
First you stack EE, then you look to move that stack to Bel.  From here Russia has a choice, defend Kar or flee to Wrus.  They will likely eventually move back to Wrus since that is far more important and the Bel stack can threaten Wrus directly as well.  So now you’ve gained Kar and have successfully deadzoned it since any units that land there can be hit by your EE or Bel stacks.  Wrus is usually a tough nut to crack so your next target is either the shift of your EE stack to Kar or the movement of the Bel stack to Ukr, EE stack to Bel, Ger stack to EE.  Here you threaten Cauc and Wrus.  Again Russia must choose which to defend and thus you’ll gain another deadzone and find you next target (either Cauc or Wrus).

B/c of your tanks movement you can station them in France (for defense) with the least amount of infantry possible to deter attack.  Then as you move your infantry from Ger to EE to Bel to Ukr in 3 turns you can get your armor there in two.  1 turn to EE, 1 turn to ukr (or wrus).  Although you may need to keep them in EE for protection and to help deter an assault on Fra.  As you move your armor out of Fra, you may need to shift more ftrs there for defense.  But their movement still allows trading on the Eastern front.  Typically 2 ftrs in fra, 2 in EE would allow swapping of postions during each attack phase depending on where you need your strong defenders.

On the flip side Russia will be trying to push its way to Bel which will hold Germany progress at EE and then you just wait for the UK/US numbers to add up and push to EE.  The Russian stacks will then go from Cauc/Mos to Wrus to Bel.  So your armor should be stationed in Wrus.  Not only to threaten Germany from advancing but can also reach the backside of Russia to protect against Japan.

The bottom line is it is cheaper to defend, 3 ipcs get you a defensive roll of 2.  In order to “kill” that unit the other side must spend more than 3 ipcs.  Larger scale battles put the ratio at 3:4 or 5 in terms of what the attacker needs to spend.  So it is just cheaper and easier to move defensive stacks forcing your opponent to spend more to try and kill you.  The simple way to look at it is to kill an inf you’d need at least 1 rt to attack.  Even 2 inf plus planes costs 6 ipc.  :wink:

Welcome, General_Ram!

1. Yes, assuming that the sea zones the transport loads in and has to pass through on its way to offload are friendly and the sea zone in which it offloads is either friendly or is made friendly through sea combat.

2. Yes.  You may fight as many battles as you wish on your turn.  However, all combat moves must be completed before any combat begins, and each unit may fight in only one battle (although air units may be fired upon by multiple AA guns along their route, and units on transports may be indirectly involved in a sea battle before offloading for an amphibious assault).

@Corbeau:

@timerover51:

Your shore bombardment idea has been picked up in the Anniversary Edition rules, evidently.

Ya, i saw that, that’s great news :)
I can only wish i was the one to propose it to the game designer but it really is a coincidence. That was a house rule we used way back then. Still great to see he thought of it too. :)

I like the also th idea of BB acting as artillery support. Good thinking there too. I would not allow it for planes too, i find them already too flexible as a unit acting both in land and sea. I’d rather have them seperated in 2 classes, Land based fighters and CV based fighters. They already have the different molds for some nations, german stuka and Bf-109 for exemple. anyways, that’s another discussion.

For the BB acting like an AA, that’s exactly what i meant. Would give a reason to have one in a fleet.

You need to remember that roughly 2/3 of a carrier’s aircraft were attack planes, dive bombers and torpedo bombers, that would be used in support of ground troops.  This is the basis for the flexibility in fighters in A&A.  If you had a dedicated attack plane, like the Stuka, you could reduce the fighter’s role by a little bit, but by the end of the war, the US Navy’s Corsair fighter was carrying a bombload heavier than that of the Stuka, and delivering it with comparable accuracy.

As for BB getting an AA roll, that makes a fair amount of sense, and is pretty historically accurate.  Quite simply, BBs normally acted as a magnet for air attacks, even if a carrier was around.  The US South Dakato shot down 26 Japanese aircraft while escorting the carrier US Enterprise at the Battle off Santa Cruz in October of 1942, while Adm. Raymond Spruance deployed his battleline in advance of his carriers at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June of 1944 to deliberately absorb Japanese carrier plane attacks.  However, the US did have the best naval AA fire control systems of the entire war, so what holds true for the US does not hold true for everyone else.  The Bismarck had major problems with defending against a limited number of British Swordfish, while the Italian BBs had similar problems.  The British were so-so, and the Japanese were close to hopeless until late in the war.  You could make it a National Advantage for the US, but I suspect that would not be acceptable to a majority of Axis players.  Making it universal is a bit of a stretch.  It would be up to you.

@TimTheEnchanter:

@LT04:

How you ever lost Moscow and still ended up wining as the Allies?

It was pretty dicey (no pun intended) for a while but in this game the Axis conceded shortly after securing moscow:  http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=11554
(Of course, it helped that Berlin had fallen just before Moscow)

That’s true, if Berlin falls within two rounds of Moscow falling, the allies will almost certainly win. (Kind of depends on how many Japanese forces are left after Russia falls.)

Craig’s clarification is one that is often overlooked, even in games on this site.

The important things that I want to emphasize about TRN’s…

1.  They can carry UP TO 1 INF and any 1 other land unit.  But they can carry only 1 unit of any land type (this comes up often from new folks thinking they HAVE to have an INF and something else in order to use a TRN).
2.  Once a TRN offloads it is DONE for the turn.
3.  Forget the term “bridge”.  It is just a regular load and offload, with a movement of zero spaces for the TRN.

Yes.

An amphibious invasion only requires the sea zone it is being launched from to be cleared of enemy units.

If the Brits leave the English Channel empty, Operation Sealion is one step closer to success.  It does not matter if every other sea zone on the map has enough allied ships to fill the ocean, all that matters is the English Channel has no defending units.

For this discussion, submerged submarines do not count as opposing units.  Fighters do, even if their CV is sunk.

Nor does it count as a move to “take off” from a carrier to the occupied sea zone.  If the ftr is on a carrier, it can move 3 spaces maximum from the carrier, if it intends to land on the same carrier.  The carrier must then move 2 spaces toward the ftr in the non-combat move, while the ftr returns 1 space to land.  (It’s a lot easier to understand looking at the board.)