Scramble into Sea Zone with two different countries' ships


  • hey, hoping I could get some help with a rule…

    America has a bunch of ships in SZ112, the British (on their turn) do an amphibious assault out of SZ112 into Western Germany, Germany has fighters they can choose to scramble…

    if Germany scrambles, can the American ships still take hits to protect the transports/British ships? the American ships just wouldn’t be allowed to fire at the Germans, right? otherwise, if the German scramble only had to kill the British ships, would the British transports really be sunk despite literally being surrounded by Allied surface warships, that would seem silly…

    anybody know how this is supposed to work? thanks


  • The scramble will only fight the UK ships.

    This is kind of important to avoid a USSR exploit.

    Imagine USSR putting 1 inf on a TT and getting it to the med. If USSR are able to land on sicily and sardinia, they will collet 3 ipc from each. However, a scamble of a single plane prevents this from happening (Italy can scramble against this from northern italy). If this wasn’t the case, you would see USSR on a british TT attacking there every single game.


  • @Talleyrand19:

    hey, hoping I could get some help with a rule…

    America has a bunch of ships in SZ112, the British (on their turn) do an amphibious assault out of SZ112 into Western Germany, Germany has fighters they can choose to scramble…

    if Germany scrambles, can the American ships still take hits to protect the transports/British ships? the American ships just wouldn’t be allowed to fire at the Germans, right? otherwise, if the German scramble only had to kill the British ships, would the British transports really be sunk despite literally being surrounded by Allied surface warships, that would seem silly…

    anybody know how this is supposed to work? thanks

    Allied nations never attack together:

    @rulebook:

    Multinational Forces
    Units on the same side can share a territory
    or sea zone, constituting a multinational
    force. Such forces can defend together,
    but they can’t attack together. (This doesn’t
    mean powers can share income: only the
    power that controls a territory collects
    income for that territory.)
    A multinational force can’t attack the same
    space together, because each power moves
    and attacks with its own units only on its own
    turn. Any units in a sea zone in which a battle
    occurs that belong to an ally of the attacker
    (other than cargo on an attacker’s ship) can’t
    participate in the battle in any way. Such
    units can’t be taken as losses in the sea
    combat and have no effect on defending
    submarines.

    HTH :-)


  • so, if ussr tries to attack from a UK ship, the Italian fighter will scramble. On the battleboard there will only be the italian fighter, so the battle is won by italy and the troops cant do the ampibious assault.  However, there will be no losses :D


  • @Kreuzfeld:

    so, if ussr tries to attack from a UK ship, the Italian fighter will scramble. On the battleboard there will only be the italian fighter, so the battle is won by italy and the troops cant do the ampibious assault.  However, there will be no losses :D

    Correct, except there is no sea battle. By the way this example is noted in the official FAQ:

    @FAQ:

    Q. Say the United Kingdom launches an amphibious assault from a US transport without any
    supporting UK sea or air units in the sea zone, and then Japan scrambles. What happens?
    A. In effect, nothing happens. The US transport doesn’t participate in the sea battle because it’s not the
    US’s turn. Since there are no attacking sea or air units, there is no sea battle. However, the sea zone
    can’t be cleared of defending combat units, so the amphibious assault can’t proceed.

    :-)


  • Thanks for the responses…it all seems silly, like the allied ships are just watching their buddies get shot down and waving goodbye…but a rule is a rule

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    There have been various attempts over the years to use “combined forces” as a house rule or patch, but the problem arises that you are essentially letting certain pieces move or fight twice in one full turn if they are allowed to stage up on UK turn then attack again during US turn (or vice versa) once they are in place.

    You can already exploit this to give fighters 2 extra moves, by putting US fighters on a UK carrier, moving the UK carrier, then the fighters are staged 2 spaces further than they ever could have flown, not to mention that they are only capable of crossing the north atlantic if there is a carrier there to catch them.  The only problem is that if the fighters fly off or die during the US turn, the UK could not sub out or replace the empty carrier capacity without an intervening Axis turn, leaving empty carriers vulnerable.

    The fact that UK and US cannot fight together makes KGF very difficult.  You have to guard 2 or 3 SZs to stage your stuff, any one of which can be subject to a full Germany attack.  Then, once you attack Denmark and stack it up, the fleets still have to face defensive scrambles UK alone or US alone.  When you move in for the kill, you also have to guard a team in SZ 112, and Germany will hit the weakest fleet, the one crossing if not the one invading.

    losing one allied fleet before its troops are delivered during a KGF is a loss.  So, this requires that each of US and UK be independently able to fend off a German strike–you cant rely on the US to provide the carriers and capital ships and let UK focus on only transports, for example.

    The only upsides to the no combined forces rule is that you can:

    1. use the team that moves first to smash through blockers
    2. use the team that moves second to land fighters or men stax in defense of a recently-captured territory;  this is the only way to hold German territory

  • thanks, that all makes sense…

    I wasn’t proposing using both fleets to attack at the same time, but just that the US would serve as a shield to take hits and protect the British transports…

    I was thinking this way because scrambling to me seems like an offensive move (while on defense); the defender is sending planes out to stop the attack, so just like allied planes can help you on defense in a territory, I figured allied warships could help protect against a scramble…obviously, that is not the case.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    It is an anomaly, I suppose;  if Germany attacks your stacked USUK fleet, everything fights together.  It is only when the UK is acting on the UK turn (it being the weakest offensive power) that this “proactive defense of the fleet” concept comes into play because you are inviting a proactive German response on the scramble against a team that usually has only a few warships.

    If the Axis had to coordinate large, amphibious invasions together, it would seem like a more balanced rule but the fact that the Allies have a bunch of small junk teams makes combined arms offense AND defense a critical part of play

  • Customizer

    The combined arms rule (actually called “Commander In Chief”) was in the first edition of Classic but was removed from the second edition of Classic.  Apparently they thought back then that this rule was to easily taken advantage of by Allied players.

    The way it worked was:
    The US moves “X” units to United Kingdom.  The UK already has a number of units already there.  The US moves a number of transports that can carry all the current US and UK units on United Kingdom to the sea zone adjacent to the territory.
    During the Collect Income phase of the US turn, the US and UK players agree to make the US Commander In Chief.  The US player takes a stack of 3 US control markers and places them in United Kingdom.
    Then on the UK player’s turn, the UK player does not move any of the units intended for the combined force.  If the UK moves any of it’s units stationed on United Kingdom, they CAN NOT be included in the combined force.
    Then on the US player’s next turn, the US player is now free to move any or all units stationed on United Kingdom as long as they DID NOT move during the UK player’s turn.
    By the way, this includes UK aircraft if they didn’t move on the UK’s turn.

    So, basically, any country’s units that are going to be included in the combined force but are not from the country of the Commander In Chief have to be in the launching territory before the Commanding player is chosen.  It might be a little more complex, but I think this rule could be applied to Global 1940.
    For example:  Say England wants to attack a Japanese force in Burma from India.  They want to use a combined force of UK, US, Soviet and ANZAC units.  So on UK Pacific’s turn, UK can move units into India.  On the UK’s Collect Income phase, they get chosen as Commander In Chief.  The Soviet, US and ANZAC forces have to be already in India at this time and those are the ONLY non UK forces that the UK can move next turn.  Even if one of the other countries move more units into India, those new units could NOT be used in the UK’s next turn.
    Assuming the UK attacks Burma with the combined force and defeats the Japanese, UK India will get possession of that territory.  Also, I believe the last casualty HAS to belong to the Commander In Chief’s country (in this case, UK).

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