Japanese first attacks

You’re right that this rule is ambigious in this rule book. But to me the intention of the game makers is very clear. That shows not from this rule book, but from all rule books after this version. For example in the rule book from 1943 2nd, They state specifically that all strategic bombing raids take place first. This resolves any argument about who pays the IPC’s to the bank, the attacker or the defender! Since they solved this in the next rule book, i think it is quite obvious what they intended and tried to correct.

Island hopping is great, but its not critical.  Sometimes just having a presense in the region will do just great.  This is how I build my fleets…… My flagships are my carriers.  They are great for defense and their fighters can support amphibious assaults.  I will have no less than 2.  I then will support my fleet with destroyers.  I try to build 2 for every carrier.  If you build destroyers and in order to get more bang for your buck, get combined bombardment.  This will increase your amphibious firepower drastically.  Basically you’ll be able to do the job of a battleship at half the cost and twice the firepower.  Then build the rest of your force out of transports and a couple of submarines.  If you use this fleet right, you will have everyship being productive on every aspect, offense, defense, and logistics.  Your maximizing your money and strength.  Lets take a fleet of 2 AC’s, 6 destoyers, 2 subs, 4 troopships with 2 tanks, 2 artillary, and 4 infantry.  You attack the phillipines with an amphibious assault.  the 6 destroyers should pretty much wipe out all opposition.  But if not, you have 4 fighters and all the ground units to clean up.  Battle should be over without losing anything.  Your fighters land for fleet defense.  Basically you have a fleet that can hit hard on land and sea.  Your enemy will think twice before hitting you.

My style is more ‘tight’ than ‘wild’, but I’ve done:
R1: 1art 4tnk (all in Moscow and Caucasus empty, if Ukraine doesn’t fall to keep Caucasus defensible)
G1: 4inf 7art, also 8inf 4art and the usual 9inf 2art 1tnk

Guess more frequent ‘reactive’ buys don’t count, like:
UK1: 5inf 3tnk (when a large landing threatens)
UK1: 3ftr +US1: 2bmb 4inf (when Germans fleet comes out)
J1: 2 factories (when scattered UK ships are hard to beat fast)

BTW, I missed it before in your last uber post, Bunnies, thanks for the props on the excitement on KJF, and recognizing I have some experience to draw on when I talk.

If Germany forsakes taking Africa because of the complex in S. Africa,then the complex has paid for itself.  If Germany bleeds out trying to keep a foothold on Africa then the complex pays for itself in reduced German presence.

However, the interesting thing really isn’t Germany, it’s what that complex can do to Japan. wink

another way of doing this is to allocated an attacker chosen hit from any artillery or fighters rolling a one, and allowing tank hits to go against enemy armor or artillery first.

This is balanced and its been tested in my own games, but its an old idea since the 80’s.

Bombers cant do this because they are carpet bombers, while the other units are designed for targeted attacks.

You can have a sub do this on ones too as well as the battleship.

At least it would be easy to remember.

@U-505:

I would have to say that you should be careful about advancing heavy Russian forces too far into Europe. Drawing Russian ground units away from Russia is a trap I frequently like to set with Germany. It gets really had to resist trading a bunch of advanced territories with Germany because the prospect of Russia making 30+ IPC’s a turn puts dollar signs in the Russian player’s eyes. With the Axis outnumbering Russia by 5 to 1 with air units, trading a lot of territories and ground units with Russia almost always favors the Axis, even if the unit trade is 1 for 1. No matter how much Russia makes, Japan always outproduces them by up to twice as many units and that point will get hammered home when a large number of Russian forces are aimed at Germany and their reinforcements going west dry up instantly because they are desperately trying to hold back the flood of Japanese units coming at them. Japan has a tendence to look benign one turn and the next turn be all over the map, in force, and Russia can quickly get into trouble by being too aggressive toward Germany. Especially if the eastern defensive structure is poorly maintained.

I completely agree.  I’ve used this “rope-a-dope” tactic a few times.  retreat with germany, attack with japan, and then usually around round 3-4 i counter attack with germany and squeeze russia out and hope that germany conquers russia so i can get the IPC’s.  I say thi cause usually the Allies have taken western Europe with this strategy at some point and I have to retake it.

I just looked at the Harris rules, and it does say that the land units cannot retreat into a country that only a plane came from.  However, it also says that the planes can retreat, and all land units stay.  To this point, my group has used the avalon hill game rules to the word, just so we don’t have people constantly wanting to change the rules.  The rules affect everyone equally, so who really cares what they are.  However, if the larry harris rules are more specific about the ambigueities of the game rules, then maybe we’ll have to switch.

@Silstar:

The sneak attack rules we have always played with are this:

The sub can declare it’s target

A hit of 2 is an automatic sink except against a battleship, where it damagers it to the point that it does not participate in the first round.

A hit of 1 sinks everything, including a battleship. A hit of 1 will also hit a carrier before the fighters launch and the fighters go down with the ship. We made that ‘1’ real important. We usually don’t risk it, but you’d be surprised the number of times it’s worked and changed the whole war.

Two things…

One… too powerful for subs.

Two… House Rules section for further discussion.