Rookie Questions

@PacificFleetCaptain009:

Just opened up and played my AAG game today. It took far too long to figure out how to even start this game. I have a few questions I’d appreciate help on.

#1  I was playing as the japs and I only had one supply token on Rabul to start with. That meant I could only move one ship out of my homebase the first full go around? I assumed reinforcement points werent given at the start of the game, so that meant only 1 ship could come out.

#1 No this is not what the supply tokens are for. All ships can move each round during their movement phase. Supply tokens are used in the repair stage to fix broken ships or in the deploy stage to move a ship off the base card early and before its actual movement stage and into the battle zone. Supply tokens are also used to construct airfields.

#2 I chose 1 of my two carriers to come out first. When I got to the move aircraft stage I assumed my two bombers could take off from Rabul. (No airfield in sight on Rabul) I also assumed the two fighters sitting on my remaining carrier could take off from homebase too. So the carrier who got to come out, its fighters were able to move one zone further than the two fighters who flew off the deck from the carrier still at home base. This game isnt too clear how to start IMO.

#2 Correct on aircraft ranges, the base card is 2 zones, a sea one and a land one, flying off Rabaul counts as one, flying on to the main board is two.

I see where someone helped me see how the hits were assigned. Basically, if you have just one dice, and its a hit, say a roll of 1, its going to hit something, any ship out there as long as there is something to hit. Because you just keep going down the line, wrapping back around if necessary till that hit lands on someone, right?   YES a hit is a hit on something, keep wraping till you find a unit that you do have on the board

#3 I had two fighters and two bombers in a zone I could attack. I chose to have my two fighters engage the American fighters in the zone, I used 4 dice and scored a hit, killing 1 of 3 planes in the zone. I decided my bombers were going to strike the carrier. So I did a separate roll for them. I realize now, with the Reference sheet in my hand, I shouldnt have been able to attack the ship until the 2nd step in Phase 2. So really, the American AA should have had a chance to take out my bombers before I fired. My first role all 4 dice missed, then the Americans shot down both my fighters and bombers in the Attack air Units phase.

#3 the airphase attack includes ships AA fire. So all the fighters, bombers and ships with AA capability fire at the attacking planes then surviving planes get to attack the ships. The bombers take part in the air battle and are not seperate. Its quite a gauntlet planes have to fly through and you will find aircraft get destroyed a great deal in this game

I will have more questions later I know, but help me with these first. This game is awesome. I knew I’d love this series, never played an A&A game before tonight. I love playing Battleship. Im also a talented Risk player, but as I figured, I’ve found my new favorite game. The reviews said AAG was much more fair than AAP, despite the huge naval board that was tempting me to buy AAP first. Like I see others doing, Im goingto take AAG rules and use them for AAP when I buy it. My dream is to one day create an ultimate A&A game that uses a huge board for land and sea. Id like to find a way so that there is an Admiral commanding the fleet, and a General commanding the troops for the same country. Where the Admirals fight against other admirals, and generals against generals, and both take turns at the same time, both commanders of each country relying on what the other commander is doing because the troops need naval support and air support. Actually, really 3 guys per country, Navy, Air Force, Army. If your Navy, you only control ship movement, Air Force, only planes, etc. I also envision having zoomed in zones where the game had an upper playing surface deck supported by columns. So on the lower main board you drove the ships toward Guadalcanal, then when you wanted to enter the zone, you placed your ships on the upper deck to play in the zoomed in map of Guadalcanal. Also, a zoomed in upper deck to represent Omaha Beach, etc. I think I may need to use Miniature figs to get the game to the scale I want. I know, for a guy that just played his first A&A game, I dream big, but I never could leave well enough alone. I see all the complaints you all post on the other A&A games and Id love to have one big board and rules set to fix them all.

All I can tell you is A&A is my favorite game series, started plaing back in the mid 80’s and currently have all the boardgames.

#1  I was playing as the japs and I only had one supply token on Rabul to start with. That meant I could only move one ship out of my homebase the first full go around? I assumed reinforcement points werent given at the start of the game, so that meant only 1 ship could come out.

The supplies serve 4 purposes.

1)Build airfields. If you have 3 supplies on the island and an open airfield slot you may build an airfield in the appropriate phase.

2)Repair airfields. 2 supplies at the damaged airfield will repair it.

3)Repair ships in the damaged zone on your base. 1 supply at your base will move a damaged ship from the damaged zone to your base card sea zone.

4)Rapidly deploy ships from your base to the board. For an expenditure of supplies at your base you can move ships at your base to a corresponding zone (indicated by the supply silhouettes) on your side of the board.
Supplies are not required to move or battle – that is Battle of the Bulge.

#2 I chose 1 of my two carriers to come out first. When I got to the move aircraft stage I assumed my two bombers could take off from Rabul. (No airfield in sight on Rabul) I also assumed the two fighters sitting on my remaining carrier could take off from homebase too. So the carrier who got to come out, its fighters were able to move one zone further than the two fighters who flew off the deck from the carrier still at home base. This game isnt too clear how to start IMO.

Crossing from the base island to the base sea zone is one move. The base sea zone to the board is one move. Your fighters move with the AC during the AC move segment. They are cargo on the ship. During the move fighters phase the fighters may then move their full move to find a combat.

#3 I had two fighters and two bombers in a zone I could attack. I chose to have my two fighters engage the American fighters in the zone, I used 4 dice and scored a hit, killing 1 of 3 planes in the zone. I decided my bombers were going to strike the carrier. So I did a separate roll for them. I realize now, with the Reference sheet in my hand, I shouldnt have been able to attack the ship until the 2nd step in Phase 2. So really, the American AA should have had a chance to take out my bombers before I fired. My first role all 4 dice missed, then the Americans shot down both my fighters and bombers in the Attack air Units phase.

I’m not certain but it seems you might be confused on the combat. During each combat phase each unit with an attack value matching the phase adds its attack dice to the combat. Battleships contribute dice in each phase for instance. AA only contributes in the air attack phase. The combat box gets to decide what gets shot.

The only ‘choices’ you make are whether Bombers attack airfields or troops on an island they are over. Ships with a land attack have to choose which island if they are adjacent to more than one and they too choose between airfields and troops on the island they choose.  I’m not certain if only Battleships can attack airfields or if both cruisers and battleships have the choice to attack airfields.

@PacificFleetCaptain009:

#1  I was playing as the japs and I only had one supply token on Rabul to start with. That meant I could only move one ship out of my homebase the first full go around? I assumed reinforcement points werent given at the start of the game, so that meant only 1 ship could come out.

You don’t need to use supply tokens to move or deploy ships normally.  Ships are normally deployed on your Base Card, then they move (for free) on to the board in one of the two arrow-marked sea zones using the Movement phase.  You can, however, use supply tokens to speed deployment.  In this case, the ship is placed directly onto the board in the sea zone corresponding to the number of supply tokens spent, then it moves normally from there.

@PacificFleetCaptain009:

#2 I chose 1 of my two carriers to come out first. When I got to the move aircraft stage I assumed my two bombers could take off from Rabul. (No airfield in sight on Rabul) I also assumed the two fighters sitting on my remaining carrier could take off from homebase too. So the carrier who got to come out, its fighters were able to move one zone further than the two fighters who flew off the deck from the carrier still at home base. This game isnt too clear how to start IMO.

An airfield simply indicates that two air units may land on an island.  The Base Cards don’t have airfields, since they can support an unlimited number of air units.  Units may come and go from the Base Card as though it were a normal space on the board otherwise.  Just remember to count the Base Card sea zone as a space when moving air units.

@PacificFleetCaptain009:

I see where someone helped me see how the hits were assigned. Basically, if you have just one dice, and its a hit, say a roll of 1, its going to hit something, any ship out there as long as there is something to hit. Because you just keep going down the line, wrapping back around if necessary till that hit lands on someone, right?

Not exactly.  If the unit that you hit with your roll doesn’t exist, you don’t keep reading down the chart from there - you start back at the beginning and go until you reach something that’s there.

@PacificFleetCaptain009:

#3 I had two fighters and two bombers in a zone I could attack. I chose to have my two fighters engage the American fighters in the zone, I used 4 dice and scored a hit, killing 1 of 3 planes in the zone. I decided my bombers were going to strike the carrier. So I did a separate roll for them. I realize now, with the Reference sheet in my hand, I shouldnt have been able to attack the ship until the 2nd step in Phase 2. So really, the American AA should have had a chance to take out my bombers before I fired. My first role all 4 dice missed, then the Americans shot down both my fighters and bombers in the Attack air Units phase.

You don’t have to choose which planes will attack in which step.  Units that have multiple combat values, such as planes, attack once in each combat step.  In your example, in the Attack Air Units step all three of your planes would attack the American fighters, while the American fighters and any American ships in the sea zone with air attack values would attack your planes.  If any of your planes survived the phase, they would then attack the fleet in the Attack Sea Units step.

@PacificFleetCaptain009:

I will have more questions later I know, but help me with these first.

For more information (including important errata), check out the official FAQ.  This may help with some of your questions.

Hi,
Played the game once and got a few questions.

1.Can you attack/enter your enemy’s base and/ or the seazone surrounding it,and if so what happens then?
2.What is the exact procedure of allocating hits.
  For example : a BBship gets damaged and later in the same turn gets damaged again?
                          Is it destroyed then?Or is it placed immediately in the’damage zone”at your base?
Thanks
Bob

@bob:

1.Can you attack/enter your enemy’s base and/ or the seazone surrounding it,and if so what happens then?

You can. And a normal battle happens.
It can be a funny thing if the other player don’t expect any attack there and you can get a big part of his unescorted tranny fleet with some FIGs. :-)

2. What is the exact procedure of allocating hits.
For example : a BBship gets damaged and later in the same turn gets damaged again? Is it destroyed then?Or is it placed immediately in the’damage zone”at your base?

If the second hit is a “1”, then the BB is sunk. If the second hit is a “2”, then the BB is damaged and return to the damage zone on base card.

Hi,
And if this happens :

BB ship hit : first hit does not count(heavy armor)
BB ship hit with a 2 : damaged
Later in the same turn : BB ship hit.(1or2)

Is the BBship still in the seazone when it takes the 3rd hit,or is it considered being already in “the damage zone”

Thanks
Bob

@bob:

BB ship hit : first hit does not count(heavy armor)
BB ship hit with a 2 : damaged
Later in the same turn : BB ship hit.(1or2)

Is the BBship still in the seazone when it takes the 3rd hit,or is it considered being already in “the damage zone”

If there is no other ship in the sea zone wich could buffer the hit, then a second hit (or in case of BB a third) always sunk a ship in any cases (nonetheless it’s a “1” or a “2”).

I think there is an example of such a situation in the rule book where a ship is hit with a second “2”, if I remember right it was the seond sea battle example. I will take a look in my rule book this evening.

Hope that helps …

[edit]
Perhaps you should also take a look at  http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=11029.0, where Krieghund clarifies a similar question.
[/edit]

The important thing to remember is that damage is resolved at the end of each attack.  Normally a ship can only be subjected to more than one attack in a turn when it’s attacked by subs, although certain optional rules also allow for it.  Any ships that are only damaged at the end of an attack are moved to the damaged area of the Base Card at that point.  In order to be destroyed, a resilient ship must either be hit with a 1 or take two hits in the same attack.  It’s also important to note that hits are applied to undamaged ships before damaged ones, so if there are two destroyers in a fleet and the attacker rolls two destroyer hits on 2s, both destroyers are damaged rather than one being destroyed.

Battleships are a special case because of their Heavy Armor ability.  Note that Heavy Armor allows a battleship to ignore one hit per turn, not per attack.  This is important because a submarine hit can negate a battleship’s armor, then a subsequent hit in the Attack Sea Units step can damage or destroy the battleship.

Here are some examples involving battleships:

1. A battleship is attacked by two subs, both of which hit.  The first hit negates the armor.  If the second hit is a 1, the battleship is destroyed.  If the second hit is a 2, the battleship is damaged and is moved to the Base Card, since the attack is over.

2. A battleship is attacked by a sub, which hits.  The hit negates the armor.  If the battleship is attacked again in the same turn during the Attack Sea Units step, it will be treated in the same way as any other ship, since it’s armor is used up for the turn.  So, if it takes one hit with a 2 in the Attack Sea Units step, it will be damaged, and if it takes one hit with a 1 or two hits of any type it will be destroyed.

I hope this clears things up!

@Krieghund:

I hope this clears things up!

Yes, it do!
A crystal clear and brilliant explanation, as every time …
:-)

Thanks for your help, as well, Croggyl!