Indeed, some UK navy will be left on the board, but how will it reinforce the Sovs? As long as Denmark is Axis, the Baltic is a German lake. Also, as Cal said, if you choose to attack USSR on G1, you should by all means kill the Soviet navy.

Dang it, I’ll read more closely in the future. Thanks guys.

I had actually been considering doing just that in my next game. Not so much for getting factories in Ukraine…something that as far as I can see couldn’t be accomplished until G3 at the earliest and thus you only get one or at most two builds out of them, but for putting pressure on Russia before they can consolidate their stacks.

A factory in Romania along with capturing East Poland and Bessarabia on G1 and shifting the two inf/art stacks in Germany east brings possible enormous pressure on Russia and might put them on their heels and never let them regain their balance. The downside is that some planes are needed to take France on G1 so you will leave the UK with some fleet, but I don’t see how that is a problem for Germany. Build enough units to hold (or possibly retake if UK is aggressive) Denmark and I fail to see how the UK can bring sufficient force to bear before Germany has a secure hold of most objectives in Russia.

Thanks, Cal. I just read p. 14 that explicitly agrees with you [egg on face].

Why, then, in your opinion does the manual state on p. 28 “In the case of a defending carrier, don’t move it behind the casualty strip unless it takes a second hit.” (emphasis mine)? This was what confused me during a game yesterday.

Another carrier question. The way I read the rules, it seems that carriers can’t absorb hits when they are part of an attacking force. Is this correct?

Calvin-Thanks for the quick response. I don’t see the reason why air units can’t fly over the Sahara or the Himalayas (they certainly did!) but it’s good to have a (semi  :wink:) official answer.

As for the split, I feel you made my point. The Axis tried to close Suez to prevent UK ships from reaching the Med because they were bringing valuable supplies (ie IPCs) from India, Burma, and Borneo that the UK used to build tanks, ships, and aircraft in the European theater. I still argue this is neither historical nor simple.

You did give the answer I expected in terms of a gameplay reason for dividing resources in that this way the UK can’t spend all of its money in one theater (even though that’s exactly what it did, historically - well 90%, anyway). Having not played the game yet, I intend to follow rules exactly but it seems to me this is ripe for a houserule. The game could get much more interesting if the Allies are given more degrees of freedom in choosing between a KGF/KJF strategy. That being said, the forums seem to indicate that the game is already a bit unbalanced toward the Allies so such a change could push things too far in the Allies favor.

<whew!>OK, just read through all 35 pages in anticipation of my first game tomorrow and have a couple questions. Hopefully, I didn’t miss answers to them in my scan.

1. Other than an oblique reference by gamerman01, I can’t find anything that explicitly states whether air units find ‘impassable’ terrain (eg Sahara, Pripet marshes) impassable. It seems to me they should be able to ignore the impassibility, but gamerman’s post indicates otherwise.

2. Is there a gameplay reason for splitting the UK in half? There is obviously no historical reason…otherwise, why did Axis try to close the Suez? (to stop UK from building up the Indian Army?!?) I’m just curious about this as it seems to add unnecessary complication to the game and, as one of you aptly put it a few pages ago, A&A usually errs on the side of simplicity over historical accuracy. Here we could be more historically accurate AND simpler.</whew!>