Clearing a sea zone and making amphibious assaults

  • '17 '16 Customizer

    Had a great game this last weekend. I plays the Axis and some new found friends played the Allies.
    Round 5 brought about an interesting battle where the US attacked Germanys navy in order to clear the SZ and land one artillery piece in W. Germany. The result raised a question that need some clarification.

    US attacked Germany’s Cruiser, destroyer, 3 xports and AC w/ 2 fighters with its cruiser, destroyer and 3 bombers. US also brought along 1 xport w/ 1 artillery to land in W. Germany once it cleared the SZ.

    The dice Gods smiled on Germany on the first round of battle as US scored only 2 hits and Germany scored 4. The US then retreated the remaining bomber to GB. It also retreated the xport 1 SZ and landed the artillery in GB.

    I was under the impression that once an amphibious attack is started, it’s committed to the attack and cannot retreat. If the SZ battle fails and the defender still has warships, the attacking transports are lost with all cargo. Is that correct or not. The rules are not clear explaining this particular situation. (When the attacker loses the SZ battle thus having the amphibious landing thwarted)
    TIA……Steve


  • My understanding of the rules is that the transport is allowed to retreat one space into a friendly sea zone that one of the attacking sea units had came from(all attacking sea units must retreat together to the same space but in this case you only had one remaining sea unit).  I do not believe the transport could then offload its units as that would be a non combat move, and the transport had already made a combat move.

    [Europe 1940 2nd addition rules pages 16(under transports) and page 20 (under Combat step 6 condition B - attacker retreats)


  • Braavosi (Welcome to the forum, Braavosi!) is correct. Only defending (defenseless) transports can be autodestroyed. Attacking transports may retreat. They may not unload then.

    @Maddog77:

    I was under the impression that once an amphibious attack is started, it’s committed to the attack and cannot retreat.

    Only seaborne land units that have been unloaded during the amphibious assault may not retreat.

    HTH :-)

  • '17 '16 Customizer

    Thanks for the responses guys. Much appreciated.

Suggested Topics

  • 37
  • 13
  • 2
  • 6
  • 3
  • 2
  • 8
  • 18
Axis & Allies Boardgaming Custom Painted Miniatures

26

Online

17.0k

Users

39.3k

Topics

1.7m

Posts