Marines (to avoid highjacking air transport thread)


  • moralecheck,

    Hmm.  Points taken about overpowered marines.  Although, historically there is precedent for making amphibious landings when walking in would have been possible.  Anzio was a good idea, and would have worked well if it hadn’t been executed in such an overly cautious manner.  The Korean War landing at Inchon sort of fits the description of using amphibious attacks to threaten an enemy’s flank or rear.

    I’m starting to like your idea of keeping attack, defense, and movement the same as regular infantry, but allowing 3 marines per transport.  Of course, there would be no benefit if the number of marines available was not evenly divisible by 3.  Maybe modify this to say you can always load a marine as a 3rd unit onto an otherwise full transport?

  • '12

    How about 3 marines or 2 marines and 1 of any other unit? Allowing a free marine on every transport seems a bit sneaky.

    I’m also trying to think of a reason for them to not work well in the ETO, but am drawing a blank so far.  (trying to keep it historical).


  • @moralecheck:

    I’m also trying to think of a reason for them to not work well in the ETO, but am drawing a blank so far.Â

    Me too.  I’m not aware of any Marine units fighting in the ETO, but there’s no inherent reason they could not have done so.  My guess is that Marine units were used exclusively in the Pacific because amphibious landings were needed so often there, while they were a rarity in Europe.  Apart from the major ones in North Africa, Sicily, mainland Italy, and France (Overlord and Anvil/Dragoon), plus the special case of Dieppe, I can’t recall any other large-scale Allied amphibious landings in the ETO.  With so many objectives in the Pacific needing to be taken from the sea, a type of operation which is a USMC specialty, there was more than enough work for them to do in that part of the world.

  • Customizer

    The reason the U.S. Marines were mostly limited to the Pacific was because of the U.S. Army’s prohibiting them from being in the E.T.O.

    After the Marines landslide public relations bombshell victory at “Belleau Wood” during WW1 the U.S. Army basically said “NEVER AGAIN!” Basically, the senior services’ predudices.

    But remember, this is a GAME we’re playing, and anything is possible(sort of).

    “Tall Paul”


  • LOL.  Yeah, let’s pretend interservice rivalry doesn’t exist.  (Disclaimer:  I’m in the Georgia Army National Guard.  But we have a lot of ex-Marines.  Yeah.  I know.  There’s no such thing as and **EX-**Marine.)  Anyway, the point of war games is that you can second-guess the historical decisions because you think you can do better.  But I digress.  In my mind the term “marines” includes rangers, commandoes, and army infantry specifically trained to make amphibious landings.


  • Based on my experience, designated marines should cost 4 IPC ( these are elite shock troops) and become 2-2-1-4 as long as they are being used for sea invasions.

    If they are not used in that manner , they automatically become 1-2-1-4 units.


  • moralecheck,

    “How about 3 marines or 2 marines and 1 of any other unit? Allowing a free marine on every transport seems a bit sneaky.”

    Well, my sense of aesthetics wants to allow the marines to always use their special ability, even when there’s only one of them.  Besides, if you think about all the combinations that are possible on a single transport, it wouldn’t make any difference to the combat effectiveness.  If you have 3 units on a transport, one has to be a marine, and one of the other two has to be either a marine or an infantry, which both have the same attack and defense.

    Imperious Leader,

    Yeah, that was one of my original ideas.  moralecheck explained that his experience has been that it makes them overpowered.  I’m not sure it would be, but his idea of allowing marines to “overload” a transport struck me as interesting.  It would give marines a unique ability.

  • '12

    Ok, totally new idea.  Forget the capacity thing…marines count as a regular inf.

    Instead, we raise their attack to a 2 (cannot increase with art, so pair them with something else on the barge) when attacking in amphibious assault BUT it must be against an island.

    Marines get a special bonus and there is no real use for them outside of the pacific.  Admittedly this means the only powers who would buy them are ANZAC, India, Japan and USA but that strikes me as fine (unless island hopping in the Med. Sea  is popular in some groups :-D).  We don’t want to make sea lion or d-day too easy.

    Thoughts?


  • @moralecheck:

    Marines get a special bonus and there is no real use for them outside of the pacific.  Admittedly this means the only powers who would buy them are ANZAC, India, Japan and USA but that strikes me as fine (unless island hopping in the Med. Sea  is popular in some groups […] Thoughts?

    I agree that one of the fun aspects of wargames is to explore alternatives (large or small) to what actually happened historically, but one factor you might want to consider is whether, historically, particular countries actually had Marines or not. That could determine whether a particular country in the game would be allowed to buy Marine units.  Historically, the USA had them (the USMC), and Britain had them (the Royal Marines).  I can’t recall if Australia or New Zealand had them – that would be something for you to check.  I think possibly France had them (“fusilliers marins”), but again I’m not sure.

    The tricky one to handle is Japan.  In his book “Victory at Sea: World War II in the Pacific”, James Dunnigan devotes a section to the Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces (SNLF), in which he basically argues that they were simply sailors who fought on shore with Army weapons, not true Marines.  I won’t run though all his arguments (he presents several), but the critical one from a wargaming point of view (because it affects combat bonuses) is that the SNLF were considered by the Japanese themselves to be less capable fighting forces than the regular Imperial Japanese Army, and that they did not have any special expertise in amphibious assaults.  The USMC, by contrast, is highly skilled in (and has a lot of specialized equipment for) amphibious landings, and is regarded as an elite force which is often given very tough assignments (which it usually carries out successfully).  So giving US Marines an amphibious landing bonus would indeed reflect their capabilities in that area; giving one to the SNLF, however, would be more debatable.

  • Customizer

    Perhaps the SNLF weren’t that big a deal in the real war, but I don’t see why we couldn’t make them that way for the purposes of our game.  There are a lot of things in Axis & Allies that we kind of take a “creative license” with that were if not impossible, then probably very unlikely in the real war.  So, why couldn’t we just say that the SNLF was a bunch of elite bad-asses like the US Marines were and thus grant them the same powers and abilities as the Marine units of other nations.  This way Japan will also get some type of Marine unit and they will have their own name rather than just being called “Japanese Marines”.
    Personally, I think it’s pretty cool that each country’s elite troops have different names (USA = Marines, Germany = SS, Russia = Guards, UK = Commandos, etc.)

  • '12

    I’m fine with limiting who can build them. Although the game does allow some ahistorical builds as it is, Japanese mech inf come to mind.

    I agree that USA and UK are the best choices to have marines.  I think Japan should have them out of gameplay fairness.  If the USA is gonna use these units for easier island hopping when they are the richest power in the game, Japan needs to at least be given the same chance.  In the case of ANZAC,  they are a very unexciting power to control.  If everyone but them in the pacific gets marines, they are even more likely to miss out on the game (which is fine in a 2 player game, but not so fun if ANZAC has its own player).  Would limiting them to those four powers make sense?  I can’t really see HBG cranking out Russian marine figs anyway.  :-D


  • @knp7765:

    Personally, I think it’s pretty cool that each country’s elite troops have different names (USA = Marines, Germany = SS, Russia = Guards, UK = Commandos, etc.)

    The different names reflect the fact that the forces you mention had different roles and origins, and in many ways weren’t equivalent.  The US Marines and the Royal Marines both originated in the days of sailing ships when those navies, in addition to having sailors who manned a ship’s guns, needed sailors who were trained for infantry-type combat – for example for boarding operations.  The Commandos originated, I think, with Mountbatten’s Combined Operations Directorate and were intended to conduct hit-and-run raids in occupied Europe.  I don’t know enough about the Guards to know why the Russians used that name.  The SS – specifically the Waffen SS – were a military extension of the Nazi Party’s secret police force; in many ways, the Waffen SS were a private army under the control of the Nazi Party, operating parallel to the regular (Wehrmacht) German Army.  I doubt the US Marine Corps would approve of being viewed as an equivalent “elite” to the Waffen SS, whose training included a substantial dose of indoctrination in Nazi ideology.

    Almashir mentioned the US Army Rangers, which illustrates the point that some countries had several types of elite units.  The British SAS (which originated in WWII) are another example.  I think the French, German and Italian armies all had some  mountain troop units which were considered elite forces.  Paratroopers are also often put into that category.

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