Amphibious Assault Clarification

  • 2023 '22 '21 '20 '19 '18 '17

    So, maybe a dumb question, but this came up last weekend and I’ve never considered this before.

    My brother attacked one of my islands, I had two infantry defending, he attacked with one infantry (all he had close enough), and planes from aircraft carriers.

    I scored a hit. Because he wanted to take the island badly enough, he decided he wanted to take one of his planes as a casualty instead of his lone infantry.

    I guess my question has a couple parts.

    1. Is that even possible? I couldn’t find somewhere that said he was required necessarily to take land units as casualties first. There’s the rule where amphibiously assaulting units need to be taken as casualties in a battle first before non-amphibiously assaulting units, but I don’t read that to really apply to this situation with planes.

    2. Because he decided to take planes as a casualty, does the double-casualty rule come into effect here? We decided in game that no, it wouldn’t, and only had him lose one plane, and not two. That seemed unfair, though is also I suppose his prerogative.

    Let me know if you have thoughts on this. I was really puzzled by this one, and didn’t really have an answer at all here!

    Thanks,

    Chris

  • '18 '17 '16

    It looks like you played it right. It doesn’t say that you have to choose land units over aircraft first, only that you must choose amphibiously assaulting units before land combat forces. The only unit that suffers double casualties is non-marine infantry class units. That is the only example in the game where there are double casualties so you would never lose 2 aircraft on one hit for any reason.

  • 2023 '22 '21 '20 '19 '18 '17

    Thanks again GHG! Yeah, I was thinking that was right too. It was just shocking because I had never really considered the option of choosing a plane over an infantry.

    I’d snuck in and took an undefended Hawaii, so he wanted it back asap, but hadn’t been building land forces in the Western USA yet, so only had one infantry as an option.

    Glad to hear you affirm my thoughts there!


  • @generalhandgrenade In the V3 rules it states the following: (pg41) “On the first round of Amphibious assault only aircraft and infantry class LAND units may attack. The land units suffer double casualties unless they are Marines.”

    So based on the example given. Playing V3 rules the LAND units would have been required to take the first loss not the planes.

    I also have a follow-up question to Amphibious landings… Example: Japan is invading a coastal province in China. From land, they are attacking with 1 artillery and 2 infantry and from the sea they are amphibiously landing 1 marine and 1 infantry. The Chinese have 3 infantry.

    Since it’s a combined operation. ( and perhaps I am overthinking this ) Is there an order of attack that must occur or do they happen concurrently? So, per the example, if the Japanese attack and get 1 hit with the land infantry/supported by the artillery and no hits from the sea landing the enemy would take 1 loss. The defenders roll and get 2 hits. How do you decide on which of the Japanese infantry take the hit? I guess you could assign 1 hit to the Marine that landed and 1 hit to the land forces. You couldn’t assign the loss to the infantry unit landing with the Marines because it would only count as a HALF of a loss? (correct?) Since the defender gets to CHOOSE which units he loses as part of that round of combat.

    How has anyone else handled joint land/sea invasions and order of combat and loss??


  • @vondox said in Amphibious Assault Clarification:

    Playing V3 rules the LAND units would have been required to take the first loss not the planes.

    I don’t think that what the rules say, its seems to me that you can either choose to take double casualties on the land units or take a hit on the plane. While certainly you would always wish to do the former, but there may be situations when the latter is more important.

    Example:

    If two defending hits are scored, and since the amphibious units must be assigned hits, you take 1 hit on the marine and 1 hit on the infantry; the hit on the infantry would normally be doubled, but only on amphibious units, so it doesn’t roll over to your other force.

    Also in your example the artillery would still get first strike.


  • @vondox just that the amphibious assaulting units have to be chosen first if there are casualties there’s an actual example of this somewhere in the rule book I’m pretty sure


  • @linkler And amphibious units are ( per the rules ) Fighters and infantry ( marines or regular infantry )… AND only infantry can participate in the first round of assaults and at least 1 infantry has to survive in order to bring on any further assault waves…

    So if you can’t afford to take losses in your assaulting infantry then bring along a lot of fighters I guess.

    Thanks, makes more sense now.


  • @vondox For the record also, my original post was based on V2 rules, since V3 wasn’t out yet haha. While I don’t think the rule changed much, I did want to point that out.

    But I agree with the other two still, the V3 rules don’t specify that you can’t take a fighter as a casualty first, only that the amphibiously assaulting ground units take double casualties! So yeah, maybe bringing a lot of fighters isn’t such a bad thing haha.


  • @chris_henry According to the rules on pg# 41 ( we had this scenario pop up on us this weekend during play ) it states: “If units from ADJACENT land zones are attacking at the SAME time as amphibiously assaulting units, amphibiously assaulting units must be chosen as casualties first.”

    So, in our real life example we had an attack that had both types of attack. The attacker had to take 1 hit. He had 1 marine and 1 infantry. The player wanted to take the loss against the infantry but felt he had to only take the loss of the ONE infantry since he didn’t have another infantry to take the loss. We told him that he could take the marine as the loss and still be in compliance since a marine does NOT take double damage on amphibious landings. It was the only logical way to handle the loss and that it still met the rules. If he had taken 2 hits then one hit could be absorbed by the Marine but the other hit would go against the infantry and it would die thus spoiling the invasion landing. Now, here is the sticky part!!! If the amphibious landing fails and it’s a joint attack the rules read as follows: “The units attacking from adjacent land zones are able to retreat.” So we understand that to mean that if the amphibious landing fails then the land invasion HAS to retreat as well. Is that how everyone else handles that???

  • 2023 '22 '21 '20 '19 '18 '17

    @vondox So, what was coming from where? The infantry was amphibiously assaulting, and the marine attacking from the ground? Or the other way around?

    I guess either way it doesn’t make a difference, it would be the same outcome. If you only had one unit amphibiously assaulting, there’s only one to be taken as a casualty! You wouldn’t apply one hit to the amphibiously assaulting infantry, and then apply another to the marine since “double casualties” are in play. That just means you wiped out the amphibiously assaulting force.

    As to the other half of your question, I think you’re reading it wrong! It says the adjacent units are able to retreat, it doesn’t say they have to! That’s just like any normal combat though, attacking units can always retreat if they want to in a ground attack. So even though the amphibiously assaulting unit died, you can still chose to continue your assault with the ground forces if you so chose!

    Does that clear it up at all?


  • @vondox are able to retreat is not the same wording as MUST retreat …


  • It’s a bit gamey, but when Japan is taking out coastal Chinese territories, we will always put one Infantry on a boat and amphibiously assault just so we can also get the single Bombardment roll. Even if the Infantry is originating from the same territory as the land force invading. And only one Infantry so we never suffer double-casualties. I think this is allowed?


  • @ghetty Absolutely.


  • @ghetty
    A bombardment is at most a single shot at 4 or less… that’s not gamey lol and it is allowed yea, why wouldn’t it be?


  • @bretters I don’t know. I guess it’s just funny if the Infantry originates from the same zone as the rest of his comrades. You put him on a boat and immediately have him get off the boat so another boat can take a pot shot.

    But now that I think about it, it’s probably more along the lines of the main invading force is taking a land route while this Infantry is either trying to flank or create a diversion from another point of attack. You are correct - not gamey.


  • @ghetty
    Also don’t forget the turn is 6 whole months . It’s not unrealistic.

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