Question regarding Lend lease act

@RiceAndChine:

Wouldn’t then tanks be the ultimate choice vs. infantry, because of their range?

Tanks are important, but as the others have said you need plenty of infantry to absorb any losses.

What an IPM approach allows you to do is take territories without a battle.  You leverage your shear numbers (both attack threat potential and defensive numbers) and force your opponent back.  You only need enough offense to prevent your opponent from doing the same to you and in the case of Germany after round 1 you’ll have 4-5 ftrs, 1 bom, and a half dozen tanks or so.  You don’t need any more offense.  You need fodder!
So with IPM you want to start getting as many units on the board as possible and start shifting the deadzones out (moving them closer to Russia).
First you stack EE, then you look to move that stack to Bel.  From here Russia has a choice, defend Kar or flee to Wrus.  They will likely eventually move back to Wrus since that is far more important and the Bel stack can threaten Wrus directly as well.  So now you’ve gained Kar and have successfully deadzoned it since any units that land there can be hit by your EE or Bel stacks.  Wrus is usually a tough nut to crack so your next target is either the shift of your EE stack to Kar or the movement of the Bel stack to Ukr, EE stack to Bel, Ger stack to EE.  Here you threaten Cauc and Wrus.  Again Russia must choose which to defend and thus you’ll gain another deadzone and find you next target (either Cauc or Wrus).

B/c of your tanks movement you can station them in France (for defense) with the least amount of infantry possible to deter attack.  Then as you move your infantry from Ger to EE to Bel to Ukr in 3 turns you can get your armor there in two.  1 turn to EE, 1 turn to ukr (or wrus).  Although you may need to keep them in EE for protection and to help deter an assault on Fra.  As you move your armor out of Fra, you may need to shift more ftrs there for defense.  But their movement still allows trading on the Eastern front.  Typically 2 ftrs in fra, 2 in EE would allow swapping of postions during each attack phase depending on where you need your strong defenders.

On the flip side Russia will be trying to push its way to Bel which will hold Germany progress at EE and then you just wait for the UK/US numbers to add up and push to EE.  The Russian stacks will then go from Cauc/Mos to Wrus to Bel.  So your armor should be stationed in Wrus.  Not only to threaten Germany from advancing but can also reach the backside of Russia to protect against Japan.

The bottom line is it is cheaper to defend, 3 ipcs get you a defensive roll of 2.  In order to “kill” that unit the other side must spend more than 3 ipcs.  Larger scale battles put the ratio at 3:4 or 5 in terms of what the attacker needs to spend.  So it is just cheaper and easier to move defensive stacks forcing your opponent to spend more to try and kill you.  The simple way to look at it is to kill an inf you’d need at least 1 rt to attack.  Even 2 inf plus planes costs 6 ipc.  :wink:

A)  As for the submarines, part 1 applies.  Let the submarines die so your surface ship gets more shots at the British air force (which I view as their navy, given that they are an island.)

B)  Given the location of Western Europe, leaving the fighters there makes the best sense.  They prevent the British from landing (and the Americans in round 2+) while still being used to pound the Russians.  Again, part 1 applies until Japan is in position to take over, then Part 2.  4 Ground units should be fine round 1, but review the board each round and up the defense as needed.

C) In general, keep parts 1 and 2 in your mind and act accordingly to the position on the board.  If you need to pull of Russia and start turtling in round 5, do it.  If you dont need to until round 7, then dont.  But certain things always apply:

1)  never let the Allies have Western Europe.
2)  Never let the Allies get Southern Europe
3)  Is self explanatory, derive from 1 and 2.
4)  Geramny’s goal is to inflict damage, Japan’s goal is to take Russia.  Not a hard and fast rule, but a good guideline.
5)  If you go navy with Germany, you will have to keep building up to keep it.  Personally, I dont recommend it unless you are strong with Japan.
6)  Tanks are good defenders.  I like stacks of 5 or 6 infantry and a tank in forward areas against the Russians.  It’s big enough that Russia has to invest heavily in winning, but small enough that Germany can recover the losses. (It’s economics, like the cold war.  Spend them into submission!)

You don’t have to take the fighter first.  It’s perfectly legal to take the carrier and leave the fighter stranded.  In order for the fighter’s move to not be a suicide mission, the only requirement is that it have a possible place to land (assuming the defender never hits).  Once the battle actually starts, it’s up to the owning player which casualties are taken.

The rules dealing with suicide missions address movement only.  There is nothing in the rules that indicates that casualties must be taken in a certain order to preserve fighters’ landing spaces.

A friend of mine and I are arguing over the interpretation of the attack/defend rules of basic combat. In the instructions it says to roll for all units with the same attack or defend value at the same time. Does this mean if I have 10 infantry units I roll one die for all ten or do I roll for each unit individually (10 Die)?

My thought was that if you roll one die for multiple units with low attack value (infantry), it keeps their offensive value low (making battle more realistic), but rewards large numbers of infantry units by awarding many hits on a successful attack/defend roll.
It seems a bit weird that a few infantry troops could very easily take out an equal number of  tanks.

Lemme know your thoughts. Official rules first, but favorite house rules welcome.

Etiquette for optional rules vary from group to group, but the rulebook says that they may be used “if all players agree”.

Just to be clear, this is only an optional rule in Classic.  In Revised, it’s a standard rule.

My apologies.  I meant offense.

Never try to write in a forum and write software at the same time.

Where’s the unguarded territory if he blocked off the Baltic? What if there are no troops or very little troops in W. Europe? You may be infinitley efficient when you can bombard a territory, but when the territory doesn’t have many or any troops to bombard, or you are blocked, you are many turns behind in amassing the necessary troops to attack.

Sankt has the rules correct.

As for house rules, all bets are off on those (which is why discussion of them is reserved for the House Rules forum)