London Calling….....

Interesting and I’ll definitely try it out at some point in time.  However, the UK doesn’t really need to spend IPC’s in Africa for several turns if it blasts the Italian fleet (something it should do if you’re not threatening a Sea lion) and moves some or all of its Pacific fighters over and it seems like the success of this strategy is mostly predicated on them churning out units in South Africa.

Is it plausible for Britain to effectively ignore, or provide token support (1-2 inf per turn) for their factory in Africa, and instead spend their money on ships in the near England sea zones?

Not that ships will help alleviate any of the Blitz, but it can at least be preparitory for a strike somewhere in Europe. I do not know how many ships your strategy will leave UK with after turn 1, but if I were the UK facing your German strategy, I would move what ships I have to a safe location (Either north of England or to Canada), and then begin building my fleet. I mean… who says I have to repair the factory in England? If I didn’t want to do that, it frees up my money to buy ships in Canada and land units in South Africa. If you aren’t planning for a Sealion, then by all means, bomb my factories into oblivion; you won’t be taking money away and it won’t really be hurting me. I have to wait to do a lot until America is in the war anyway. As long as Germany can’t take England, the situation is managable. I would prepare a strike with the Americans and wait it out until they are in the war. Or even make preemptive strikes somewhere in Scandinavia or landings in Africa. I don’t know.

Like I said, I haven’t played a global game yet, so I don’t know the dynamics. But would anyone think this is at least a plausible counter strategy? Or am I missing something from lack of experience?

Sorry, good thoughts, but I’ll never try.

Do you play with low-luck-rule?

One round of bad dices and for example 2 Ftrs and 2 Bmbrs are gone while damaging UK facilities a minimum.

I need the planes everywhere, but not for bombing missions.

I could imagine bombing runs vs. UK if russia is defeated.

@LHoffman:

Is it plausible for Britain to effectively ignore, or provide token support (1-2 inf per turn) for their factory in Africa, and instead spend their money on ships in the near England sea zones?

Not that ships will help alleviate any of the Blitz, but it can at least be preparitory for a strike somewhere in Europe. I do not know how many ships your strategy will leave UK with after turn 1, but if I were the UK facing your German strategy, I would move what ships I have to a safe location (Either north of England or to Canada), and then begin building my fleet. I mean… who says I have to repair the factory in England? If I didn’t want to do that, it frees up my money to buy ships in Canada and land units in South Africa. If you aren’t planning for a Sealion, then by all means, bomb my factories into oblivion; you won’t be taking money away and it won’t really be hurting me. I have to wait to do a lot until America is in the war anyway. As long as Germany can’t take England, the situation is managable. I would prepare a strike with the Americans and wait it out until they are in the war. Or even make preemptive strikes somewhere in Scandinavia or landings in Africa. I don’t know.

Like I said, I haven’t played a global game yet, so I don’t know the dynamics. But would anyone think this is at least a plausible counter strategy? Or am I missing something from lack of experience?

And how about this? …

The only problem I see with your thinking, is that I do not see the UK building at London in a normal game much anyway.  Until the US is in the war the sea around London is too dangerous, south africa, possibly a persian IC, and canada are just fine.  The race doesn’t begin until the US and Russia are in the war anyway.  All UK needs to do is survive and hold on to the middle of the board as long as possible, the economic difference will do the rest.

@bugoo:

The only problem I see with your thinking, is that I do not see the UK building at London in a normal game much anyway.  Until the US is in the war the sea around London is too dangerous, south africa, possibly a persian IC, and canada are just fine.  The race doesn’t begin until the US and Russia are in the war anyway.  All UK needs to do is survive and hold on to the middle of the board as long as possible, the economic difference will do the rest.

That is much of my point: unless a Sealion is legitimately threatened, the UK need not build in England at the beginning of the game. It is too dangerous for British ships by themselves. Stick it out in Canada and wait for the US to get in on the action. So pulling a blitz on London becomes fairly pointless. Germany can’t play that game if the UK player won’t play along.

“Bombing still gets a good rate of return for Germany, dont give me that childisih sh*t that a bomber does 3.5 a run, and losing a fighter escort is like losing your first born child.”

I am not above strategic bombing.  Just let me know what part of the math I have wrong.

I believe:
A bomber survives an AA attack of 1 five out of six times.  
The average roll or a D6 is 3.5 (1,2,3,4,5,&6 are the possible outcomes.  Each is as likely as another.  Figuring out the odds of any number coming up in craps which uses two die is more interesting)

Over six turns the bomber does an average of 5 x 3.5 damage.  That is 17.5 IPCs of damage for a 12 IPC loss.

Throw in “X” number of fighters in defense and the math changes.  A fighter rolling at 2 gets a kill 1/3 of the time.  If you have 2 escort fighters for every 1 defending fighter that evens out.

Germany IS in a position to do damage to the UK.  Strategic bombing with the damage it causes is really interesting because repairing the damage can be put off.  The damage also caps at 20 (my rule book is away from me so let me know if I’m wrong!) so using more than 3 bombers changes the math since some of the permutations that cause more than 20 damage get discounted.  That formula I need to look up.

Gimme 3 bombers sitting idly and no fighter defense or 2 to 1 escort odds and either Russia or the UK is likely to get bombed by me though!

I am not against bombing if you have extra planes who aren’t doing anything better at the time. But a dedicated bombing campaign seems less than useful if the enemy doesn’t care anyway. And once the rules changed from direct IPC loss in AA Revised to factory damage in AA50 … well… strategic bombing loses some of it’s effectiveness. I think this new way is better (that the player must pay to repair), but it is worse for the attacker because the person being bombed doesn’t necessarily have to spend all their money on repairing the factory, whereas before they’d lose the money right away, whether they wanted to or not.

This might be a viable and useful option, to pull a blitz on London… but first I want someone to refute my counter-strategy to it. Then I might be more convinced.

Seems like UK can ignore bombing and not launch interceptors.

If I was going to bomb UK, I would just rather conduct air attacks on London land and air units, thereby actually killing units and forcing at least a small buy there as Germany starts the game with 1 transport.

Each bomber or fighter kills 3 IPC’s when it kills an infantry, or 10 IPC’s when it kills a fighter. On G1 you can kill 3 fighters and 2 infantry for a cost of 3-4 air units. The UK fleet is meaningless without land units to take German soil. If you build a tac bomber and fighter (1 IPC cheaper) a turn, you will still clear 9 infantry (27 IPCs) for like 5 air units (unless you can build enough air to end it one round in which your losses would be 3 units-30 IPCs). I would rather throw air units away killing units then damaging a facility that may not be repaired.

I’m not saying I would do any of this, but this is the technique I would prefer over bombing.