Newbie question about combat rolls

Suppose you attack with two infantry and four tanks against a territory defended by two infantry and a fighter.

The infantry each have an attack value of 1; the tanks each have an attack value of 3.

You roll two die for the attacking infantry; one dice for each attacking infantry.  You can roll them together because if either dice comes up with a value of “1”, that die counts as a hit.  So suppose you roll two die for the attacking infantry and get a “2” and a “3”, then you get no hits.  Suppose you get a “1” and a “4”, then you get one hit.  Suppose you get a “1” and a “1”, you get two hits.

You roll the four die for the attacking tanks; one dice for each attacking tank.  You can roll them together because if any of the dice comes up with a value of “3” or less, that die counts as a hit.  Suppose you get a “2”, a “3”, a “5”, and a “6” when rolling the tank attack dice.  You get two hits with the tanks.  If you got “4”, “4”, “5”, and “6”, you would get no hits with the tanks.

You roll the infantry and the tanks separately because if you rolled them together, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish between which dice were used for infantry attacks and which dice were used for tank attacks.  Suppose you rolled all six dice together, and picked one of the dice that had a result of “2”.  Would it be a hit (if it were a tank dice) or a miss (if it were an infantry dice)?  No way to tell.  So that’s why you roll attackers with different attack values separately.

Infantry can attack a fighter.  Because Axis and Allies is a board game, certain compromises were made for playability purposes.  If you had to, you could think of it like this - the attacking ground forces claim all the air stripes in a territory, and the defending air have no place left to land.  Maybe the defending air used up most of their fuel in the fight, and didn’t have time to fully gas up before having to lift off to help defend the territory.  Or whatever, you know.

@rduffy01:

Continuing with this scenario, do the attacking infantry units then attack the fighter unit?  Infantry attacking fighter aircraft?  Makes no sense to me unless they catch the fighters on the ground.  I can see the fighters attacking the infantry, but the other way around?  Thanks in advance for any help with these questions.

I think the dice question was answered as well as possible (from the view of someone who already understands at least.  heh).

This one though … about the infantry attacking fighters;

Realize that an “Infantry” unit does not represent one sole infantryman.  It represents an entire division of infantry.  A division of infantry would have multiple weapons and pieces of equipment at their disposal.  Just as one “Fighter” unit represents an entire squadron of fighters (and you could rationalize that it also represents all supporting personnel and facilities … thus if you take out the support personnel and facilities, those fighters in the air defending have nowhere to go).

But yes, as mentioned it can be done largely because it’s a board game and some concessions must be made for balance and playability.  Start throwing in too many variables and you get bogged down in the details of the game instead of the fun of the gameplay!

Something to remember about infantry units in 1941, they were able to shoot down aircraft. So with this in mind it is possible to shoot down enemy aircraft. I don’t agree with them being able to shoot down bombers, but some realism is lost to “game” play. Of course as players, you all can agree to modify your own rules so long as all agree.