Gas Attacks

Hey Ichabod

We’re gonna play with the AAA guns starting on setup will be A D  white AAA guns so we know there attacking and defending AAA guns against planes only. If you leave the territory with a factory in it you will need to buy a grey one or white AAA gun to protect factory. If you leave territory from a factory you must declare if it’s a A D white aaa gun or just a defending grey aaa gun. Once u leave factory u can’t change aaa gun to attacking too. I will use a (off topic) 3rd aaa gun for Rockets Tech.

Will see if Germany has any kind of advantage.

@CWO:

I’m not sure I understand the concept of a Pearl Harbor attack involving no Japanese ships, since the whole operation revolved around the use of a Japanese carrier strike force to bring the attacking aircraft into range of Pearl Harbor.  Japanese aircraft in 1941 didn’t have the range to fly all the way to Hawaii from Japan and all the way back again.  The closest that Japan ever came to doing anything like that were one or two very small bombing raids carried out against Hawaii by (if I recall correctly) a couple of flying boats from Kwajalein Atoll.  These flying boats – Emilys, I think – were big and slow and clumsy, could hardly have done much damage, and would have had to fly unescorted since no Japanese fighters had the equivalent range.

As for the Doolittle Raid, it was carried out by B-25 Mitchell medium bombers, not by tactical bombers.  The rule section about these normally land-based planes being carrier-launched is correct (they used special training and techniques to launch from a flight deck), but the rule would have to be more precise than just saying that “The US player can launch 2 TB from 1 carrier” because it doesn’t restrict the location of the carrier and it doesn’t specify that the planes have to fly a one-way mission.  In the actual raid, Hornet had to get close enough for the planes to launch, hit their targets and continue to China.  The planes didn’t have the range to return to the carriers, and in any case could never have made a carrier landing; the techniques they used to launch from a carrier couldn’t work in reverse to land on one.

Also, the pearl harbor attack included Jaanese subs. It wasn’t a pure air attack.

As the Baron points out, modeling air superiority contests in a relatively simple wargame like A&A is quite a challenge! I think there are actually several different phenomena that go by the name of ‘air superiority’ that a good house rule would pay attention to. One is that if your air force is totally unopposed, your ground units will have advantages in terms of recon, surprise, flexibility, etc. because your planes can survey the lay of the land and strike quickly at the point of maximum impact. Another is that airplanes tend to kill each other first, before killing ground units. A third factor is that when fighters intercept bombers, the bombers tend to be less effective – it’s not just that the bombers get killed accomplishing their missions; it’s also that the bombers fly at higher altitudes, fly at faster speeds, and fly on more evasive flight paths to try to minimize their risk of getting shot down. Even when the bombers survive, they do less damage if they’re being harassed by fighters.

Here’s my take on a set of rules that could capture all of those dynamics:

After all attacks are declared, the defender may scramble up to 3 fighters from anywhere on the board, plus up to 2 more fighters from each airbase. Scrambled fighters can move to an adjacent territory or sea zone to participate in a battle there, and then (if they survive) automatically return from whence they came. The same fighter cannot participate in more than one battle per turn.

Attacking and defending fighters roll their dice separately from other units. When fighters score a hit, that hit must be assigned to a plane if possible. The victim can choose which plane is killed. Even though fighter casualties are assigned separately, they are resolved at the same instant as other casualties. For example, suppose a German force of 4 inf, 1 tnk, 1 fighter, and 2 bombers attacks a French garrison of 3 inf, 1 art, 2 fighters. The Germans score a hit with their fighter, and 3 hits with their remaining forces. The French score one hit with their fighter, and 2 hits with their remaining forces. The Germans would have to lose 1 plane and 2 units of their choice – they would probably choose to lose 2 inf, 1 ftr, leaving them with 2 inf, 1 tnk, and 2 bombers. The French would have to lose 1 plane and 3 units of their choice – they would probably choose to lose 3 inf, 1 ftr, leaving them with 1 art, 1 ftr.

If at any point you have at least one plane in a territory, and your opponent has no planes or AAA guns left alive in that territory, then your infantry and mech. infantry in that territory get +1 to their dice rolls. This is cumulative with the artillery bonus. For example, if you have 2 inf, 1 mech. inf, 3 art, and 2 bombers attacking in a territory, and your opponent is defending with only 3 inf, 1 tnk, then your infantry would score hits on rolls of “3” or less – 1 for their basic offense, +1 for the artillery, +1 for the air superiority. Defending infantry can also benefit from air superiority if the defender has air superiority. For example, if your force of 4 inf, 1 fighter, 1 bomber is being attacked by 3 inf, 3 tnk, then your infantry will hit on rolls of “3” or less – 2 for their basic defense, +1 for the air superiority.

Before each combat starts, match each fighter in the combat with one enemy bomber. At the end of the first round of combat, remove that bomber from combat. It no longer rolls dice to try to score hits, and it can no longer be taken as a casualty. This represents bomber pilots’ efforts to avoid interceptors by flying high, flying fast, and then going home. The bomber can be returned to a friendly territory as normal during the non-combat move. If, in any given territory, you have more bombers than your enemy has fighters, your ‘excess’ bombers participate in the entire combat as normal.

To help adjust for the increased mobility of fighters and for their ability to preferentially target (expensive) planes, the combat value of a fighter is reduced to a “2” on offense and a “3” on defense.

@toblerone77:

One of the biggest problems I have with later iterations of the game is that it seems that the US/UK D-Day scenario is unlikely. The mechanics in this game would allow for some type of “Event/Attack” achieved through meeting objectives or game time to give a special advantage.

Yes, me too got the impression of close cooperation between the Western Allies during the D-day landings and battle of Normandy. This is true to the English language part of the world like USA, Britain, Canada and ANZAC forces, but also French and Polish forces did sail on British ships and got close air support from US aircrafts. If matched with an A&A game it looks like this turn was an All Allied move and attack together turn.

But, if you want to change the game turn system and gather all the western Allies, like USA, UK, ANZAC and France, into one player with separate economies, but let them move and attack as one, not for one special turn only, but during the whole game from turn 1 to the end, then we must either change the combat mechanic or the Western Allies will not benefit from the can opener tactic. Of course we could let Germany and Italy be one player with separate economies too, but that would not be true if we claim a link to the real war, since Germany and Italy never cooperated in the real war. Even the joint amphibious assault on Crete could not be claimed to be a joint operation, since the Italian infantry come in Italian ships that were sunk before the reached the island, while the German paratroopers jumped from German aircrafts.

The allied D-day was different from Crete, since US, Canadian, French and Polish infantry sailed on British ships and got shore bombard support from British ships, while British and Canadian paratroopers jumped from US aircrafts, and all nations got close ground support from US aircrafts. Now that was a true joined operation.

I figure that a better game would have this turn sequence.
1. Euro Axis Germany and Italy
2. Commie world Russia and China
3. Japan
4. Western Allies US, UK, ANZAC, France

The different allies that share turn, have separate economies but move and attack together.
Allies from different Turns can share seazones but not share territories. UK units can liberate Russian territories, but never non-combat move into them. Same with Japan and Euro-Axis.

It could be like this, if not for all the Purist¨s

@AlphaKappa:

As the title says, one of my friends who I play Global 1940 with gets frustrated when his perfectly-orchestrated strategy falls apart due to bad luck (and to be fair, he can often be a pretty unlucky roller).

If his strategy is so perfectly orchestrated. why can’t he win with poor dice rolls?.. I mean it’s not like he’s only rolling 5’s and 6’s. I’ve been playing A&A since 93, and I can tell you that dice rolling is about attitude. In the past, I would throw my dice across the room and curse with an unsportsmanlike temper… needless to say, my attitude about luck has matured with an enlightened perspective. I now see bad luck as a challenge rather than a handicap.

Strategic Bombing Raid. I am also wondering about what happens if your attacked buy multiple borders. Some with the borders some without. So with my first question I was wondering if the amount or borders affects the damage cap.

Well most of us use SBR, but anyway…

ON the borders, You see the fortification costs +2 for each border so it does not matter because the fortification is no longer placed on the border, its just in the territory like any other unit.

This is why i changed the rule because it because too difficult to sort out.

If you must use the old rule, what we did was roll out all the non protected borders first, then defender rolls, then protected borders roll. The defenders hits are allocated to the protected border first, then assign all hits in typical manner.

This extra step was not a ‘clean’ solution so we scrapped it and we also modeled the concept that some areas should cost less than 8 IPC ( islands)

These are all concepts used in ZENO Games World at War AA expansions from the 1990s. Cool stuff. German double impulse attack G1. Jap double impulse suprize attack anytime it wants once during game. can you say Pearl Harbor anyone. Oh yea, Soviets pay Germany 5 IPCs per turn for not attacking them for like the first 4 turns. Like these rules ALOT!

We play that version for years and I liked a lot but now it’s time for change but with the double impulse, player lost a lot of time to play and time is our worst ennemy!
For the next game,we’re gonna use a different rule for the bliztkrieg and the sneak attack!

I think it would make things too easy for the allies. Question, though: Britain calls an allied attack on Finland, they and the Russians move in, would those Russians get to non-combat back to Karelia on t2?