• @Der:

    It seems like shooting fish in a barrel if there is no risk at all in dropping an A-bomb.

    Here’s one possible way of introducing some risk.  The B-29s which carried the Hiroshima and Nagsaki A-bombs flew as a group with (I think) a couple of other B-29s during their attack runs; I can’t recall the exact number, but there was at least one accompanying bomber carrying scientists and recording instruments to monitor the blasts.  So assume for the purposes of your house rules that the atomic bomb run is being conducted by three planes, one of those planes being the actual bomb carrier.  That gives one-in-three odds of the right plane being hit by Japanese defenders.  Multiply that figure by two to reflect Japan’s limited (but not nonexistent) ability to bring down B-29s at high altitude, and you get a house rule which might say: when conducting an A-bomb attack against Japan, roll one 6-sided die to determine the success of Japanese AAA fire and/or fighter defense against the bomber group; 1 = the bomb carrier is shot down; 2 to 6 = the bomb carrier successfully reaches its target.

    The odds could be the same when attacking Germany.  Germany had better fighter defense than Japan, but because of the shorter flight distances from the UK the American planes would, as a counterbalancing factor, have been given substantial fighter escort.

  • '17 '16 '15 '14 '12

    Who says you need to deliver it by plane?  You should be able to exterminate all troops in a territory and inflict max damage on all facilities with your Nuclear Weapon by putting either a bomber over the territory OR a ship in the sea zone adjacent to it and then pressing the bid red button to detonate the device.  Of course, you lose your ship but that’s OK.  Millions will DIE!!!  A sub or transport could get past the kamikazes and then BOOM


  • But what about the question? Should a bomber carrying an A-bomb have to endure AA fire and interceptors or not?[/i
    No….


  • @variance:

    Who says you need to deliver it by plane?

    I think that AA weapons developments should stick within the parameters of their historical counterparts in WWII - otherwise you are inventing a different game. Things like putting a nuke on a rocket or firing a nuke from a sub did not happen during WWII, so they should be left for another game IMO.


  • @Young:

    my idea of effect was to zero the value of the territory for the rest of the game, put all facilities at max damage, and freeze all units on that territory for one complete game round (that’s to assume your rule is for Axis & Allies editions).

    That looks crazy overpowered. Each of the bombs dropped on Japan only destroyed one city. This rule would destroy all of Japan with one bomb!


  • I changed my answer back to no. If  the axis or  the allies are losing then it might help get them back in game with a A-bomb without the chance of shooting down. Were the 2 nuke attacks by US planes ever shot at in WW2?


  • @SS:

    I changed my answer back to no. If  the axis or  the allies are losing then it might help get them back in game with a A-bomb without the chance of shooting down. Were the 2 nuke attacks by US planes ever shot at in WW2?

    No - but Japan was severely weakened by that time, and their tech was outdated. I’m not sure a country like the USA could be nuked without any resistance.


  • @Der:

    @SS:

    I changed my answer back to no. If  the axis or  the allies are losing then it might help get them back in game with a A-bomb without the chance of shooting down. Were the 2 nuke attacks by US planes ever shot at in WW2?

    No - but Japan was severely weakened by that time, and their tech was outdated. I’m not sure a country like the USA could be nuked without any resistance.

    Not to mention that the 2 nuke planes were not part of a huge bomber formation and the US did regular fly overs into Japanese air space that Japan had given up trying to stop. so when the 2 nuke planes showed up on radar they weren’t given a 2nd thought.

  • Liaison TripleA '11 '10

    It’s also important to note that it’s not “just” the B-29 bomber that could have delivered a theoretical nuke.

    I’m sure if the Russians or Germans had managed to get a nuke together, they would have used whatever bomber they had that was appropriate.  Not every plausible bomber option had a cieling of 31,000 feet.

    I bet a B-25 Mitchell, or a father of the night could have delivered fatboy too.

    If you deny aa-fire/interceptors against the nuke bomber, you might aswell deny aa-fire against all bombers.  As in Axis and Allies the piece doesn’t change.

    Nukes should also be able to move 1 space on land.  I’m sure if the Germans or Russians had one, they may have moved/used it in place, were things going wrong.

  • '17 '16 '15 '14 '12

    No?  How do they work then?

  • '12

    Plus….the bombs are much less effective when not detonated as an air burst.  Putting it on a ship would result in about 1/2 to 2/3 the effect.

  • Sponsor

    Is the idea here to have multiple Abombs per game? If that’s the case than I agree that my ideas are to overpowering.

  • '17 '16 '15 '14 '12

    Hmmm OK so in axis & allies when you attack with 1 tank its not really 1 tank; it is something like an armoured brigade or a division, and a turn represents something like 3 or 4 months.  A bomber doing an SBR isn’t 1 plane dropping a few bombs on Berlin one evening; it’s hundreds of planes bombing all the cities in Germany for 3 or 4 months.  So if you do your A-bomb for a turn I would think of it as nuking a whole bunch of stuff (industrial centers, airbases, naval bases, military units) over a 3 or 4 month period with hundreds of planes (or ships) dropping as many A-bombs as are necessary to eradicate the enemy’s capacity to make war (or to breathe).  That is what the Americans started doing at Hiroshima and Nagasaki before the Japanese surrendered.  Sure they only had a grand total of 3 A-bombs in the arsenal at the time and they used 1 for the alamogordo test, but they had lots more in the pipeline.  If Japan didn’t surrender Curtis LeMay would have nuked every last inch of Japan, which more like what I think we are talking about here.  They were already pretty good at firebombing those same cities with conventional bombs.  Genocidal extermination is the goal of Total War.

  • Liaison TripleA '11 '10

    In Axis and Allies Doesn’t 1 aircraft carrier or 1 battleship represent just that though?

    With the exception that perhaps the screening vessels are included with the “battle group” piece?

    IPC’s are supposed to represent man-hours.  The cost prohibition of a single nuke therefore is represented accordingly.  Else the cost of multiple nukes would be hundreds of IPC’s.

  • '17 '16 '15 '14 '12

    How much does your A-bomb cost?


  • @variance:

    How much does your A-bomb cost?

    I’ve got 15 IPCs on it now but 20 IPCs could be better. The high price would assure that a huge amount would not be built. Also, keep in mind that this weapon disappears off the board when used, so you lose IPCs every time you use it, unlike heavy bombers, which can be reused over and over. Players will also likely use it on areas where the enemy has high concentrations of units that will be killed, so that they lose more IPCS than it cost you to drop it - this would limit its use also.

  • '17 '16 '15 '14 '12

    Oh OK.  I thought it would be a more expensive item and would need to get the tech for it first (more expense).  If its a more accessible item then the yield should be less.

    “Total War” is a term that refers more to what went on between Germany and Russia, or maybe between Japan and China.  The Holocaust was a good example of it.  (By the way, you people should know that about two thirds of the stuff I post on here are jokes).

  • Customizer

    I think a simpler option (and I think this has been proposed before) is to make it like a super-heavy SBR, where it does, say, 4 or 5 D6 of damage to facilities and gets 1 or 2 D6 of hits against ground units.

    So if there are 4 inf, 2 tanks, 3 fighters in a zone, and the attacker rolls a 5, he would have to allocate 5 hits (remove 4 inf and 1 tank).

    This method avoids the ZOMG NUKE ERRRTHING mentality of destroying all units and facilities in a tt.

  • '17 '16 '15 '14 '12

    My understanding of that term comes from a book called “War” by Gwynne Dyer that I read something like 20 years ago.  It was a TV series too I think.  In that context it referred to complete mobilization of all resources for war, so that defeating the enemy meant obliterating all of the enemy’s resources.  That’s a phenomenon that emerged in the early 20th century once humanity actually developed the technology to potentially kill off whole races or nationalities of people, with no boundaries between civilian and military targets.  In the case of the Holocaust, Hitler waged war against a people who didn’t even have a state of their own or any military at all; nevertheless they were targeted for extermination in his racial war.  Stalin did stuff like that too, like instigating the famine in Ukraine.  British and American “strategic” bombing of civilians is consistent with that line of thinking.  Anyway, I’m not a military person.

    Anyway, if you’re going to have nuclear weapons in the game you really do need to drop the pretense of them being some kind of surgical tool.  The A-bomb is an indiscriminate terror weapon that murders massive numbers of innocent civilians with really very little military usefulness beyond that threat.  A house rule for nukes should be couched in terms of genocide, which is their only real purpose.

    Hey, y’know what would be fun?  An anti-dark matter H bomb technology that is so powerful that it blows up the entire WORLD!  Everybody dies but the first one to deploy it wins, sort of.

  • '17 '16 '15 '14 '12

    Hitler and Stalin did it on a much larger scale, but murder is murder.  It’s OK if I don’t understand it.

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