Counter attacks, move out of combat, attack airfields - clarify

@Krieghund Thank you

It’s a free shot, just as ships bombarding islands are free shots.  Artillery can only be hit during the Attack Land Units step.

I think the rules are pretty clear that you can only attack enemy airfields.  See page 16.

You played it correctly.

A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that if someone comes up with a successful “extreme” strategy, there’s usually an extreme counter-strategy for it.

I copy that.
And believe me, I felt quite uncomfortable to write one of my first posts at this group with some sort of “unbeatable strategy”. I’ve seen so many group newbies here doing that, and routinely got their posts pick to pieces … ;)

Of these, bombing an airfield on Choiseul or New Georgia sounds pretty attractive.  It seems the Japanese will be hard pressed to defend both.  Have all these strategies survived your playtesting?

Yes and no. Japan new units and repairing supply tokens are store temporarily at Choiseul. Japan can have one ore two aa gun at Choiseul and always can move fighters after the bombers, so that any bombing raids are hard, because with the ootb rules any hits from air combat are removed before naval/ground combat (the new rule variant with the airplane only air combat I haven’t try so far, maybe it helps).

If the Japanese are buying this many supply tokens, the US should have some benefit elsewhere.

Challenging, as the US player has to run with the Japanese airfield builds to hold step with victory points. Later the Japanese have many units at New Georgia which means the US pays a high price before amphibic assault while the artilley are firing at incoming ships.
Maybe the US can build only two airfields at Guadalcanal and bring more ground units. Maybe not. Maybe it will rain … :)

Understand me right: I’m not want to say that the US player has no chance. I’m not want to say that I have seen all possible moves and counters in the game. I’m not want to say that I have found an “unbeatable strategy”. But at my games it was a very, very difficult task to counter that japanese tactic.

@Shakespeare:

Timerover

You seem to have so much knowledge about the Guadacanal campaign, having visited there and all that:

Did any carriers go up and down the slot or manuever thru the islands or did they only stand off from afar and send their planes from the periphery/safe positions?

Were any carriers lost in the actual Guadacanal campaign?

How would you house rule that?

Increase the fighters range?

Carriers did not operate in the slot, there were two carrier battles in the guadalcanal campaign,

Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz Islands

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Eastern_Solomons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EasternSolomonsChart.jpg

At Eastern Solomons the IJN Carrier Ryūjō was sunk and the USN Enterprise damaged.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Santa_Cruz_Islands

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SantaCruzChart2.jpg

At Santa Cruz the USN Hornet was sunk and the USN Enterprise was damaged. The IJN Shōkaku was damaged.

Also the USS Wasp was torpedoed and sunk by the IJN Sub I-19

From Wikipedia;

**On Tuesday, 15 September, those two carriers and North Carolina—with 10 other warships—were escorting the transports carrying the 7th Marine Regiment to Guadalcanal as reinforcements. Wasp had drawn the job of ready-duty carrier and was operating some 150 miles (240 km) southeast of San Cristobal Island. Her gasoline system was in use, as planes were being refueled and rearmed for antisubmarine patrol missions; and Wasp had been at general quarters from an hour before sunrise until the time when the morning search returned to the ship at 10:00. Thereafter, the ship was in condition 2, with the air department at flight quarters. There was no contact with the Japanese during the day, with the exception of a Japanese four-engined flying boat downed by a Wasp Wildcat at 12:15.

About 14:20, the carrier turned into the wind to launch eight fighters and 18 SBD-3s and to recover eight F4F-3s and three SBDs that had been airborne since before noon. The ship rapidly completed the recovery of the 11 planes, she then turned easily to starboard, the ship heeling slightly as the course change was made. The air department at flight quarters, as they had done in earlier operations, worked coolly at refueling and respotting the ship’s planes for the afternoon mission. Suddenly, at 2:44, a lookout called out, “three torpedoes … three points forward of the starboard beam!”

A spread of six Type 95 torpedoes were fired at the Wasp at about 14:44 from the tubes of the B1 Type Japanese submarine I-19. Wasp put over her rudder hard-a-starboard, but it was too late. Three torpedoes smashed home in quick succession about 14:45. In an odd occurrence, one torpedo actually broached, left the water, and struck the ship slightly above the waterline. All hit in the vicinity of gasoline tanks and magazines. Two of the spread of torpedoes passed ahead of Wasp and were observed passing astern of Helena before O’Brien was hit by one at 14:51 while maneuvering to avoid the other. The sixth torpedo passed either astern or under Wasp, narrowly missed Lansdowne in Wasp’s screen about 14:48, was seen by Mustin in North Carolina’s screen about 1450, and struck North Carolina about 14:52.[2]**

All the rest of the naval battles in the area were mostly surface ship engagements, some Battleships early on but mostly Cruisers and Destroyers and the Japanese won many of these fights.

additional note.  Here’s an example to print out.  This helped me alot.

Example: I have 2 destroyers and a cruiser in the space, and you are rolling 6 dice.

Slot         1         2         3         4                   5             6
Type  Destroyer Cruiser Battleship Aircraft Carrier Transport Submarine
Result Hit Roll  1    Hit Roll 2    Miss Roll 5 Miss Roll 3         Hit Roll 1 Hit Roll 2

* The first hit destroys a Destroyer because it’s a hit with a result of 1.
    * The second hit will damage the cruiser because it’s a hit with a roll of 2.
    * The next two shots miss.
    * The hit of 1 on the transport will go back to the start of the line and destroy another destroyer, since I have no transports in the space.
    * The hit of 2 on the sub will also go back to the start of the line, but there are no more destroyers left to kill (both have already been counted as destroyed from the 1’s). This will put a second damage on the Cruiser, destroying it.

Obviously destroyers, fighters, and infantry are “cannon fodder”.  The only way to get a sure hit is to get one on that spot of the ship such as a “Roll of 1” in the 5 location if there was an aircraft carrier.  During the war, there were no countermeasures for ships, smaller ones including PT boats would get in the way of the torpedo instead of the larger ship and take the hit.

I thought there might have been a kamikaze in this one, but Japan didn’t start doing that until later in the war.  Your choice for another house rule Token, but balance it out with something on the allied side.

Me too.  We were using one supply token for every ship sent and only sending them during the resupply phase.  We were spending huge amounts of money getting ships onto the board.  No wonder our game was dragging on way past turn five.