• Hi, I’m a new player and although I have AA® and set it up with my friends, we never actually played it.

    I just have a few questions:

    1. Can somebody tell me what units attack what? Can air units attack all units? Can bombers attack fighters? Can infantry hit air units?
    2. How can you keep track of what moved in noncombat move phase?
    3. Do the country symbols have to be on every country you own?
    4. What are the flight numbers for? (not the white 1-10, but the black 1-6 with multiple 1s, 2s, 3s, etc.)
    5. After a plane attacks, it HAS to go to the territory it came from?
    6. Can you explain the rule about stating your carrier will pick up the plane that attacked near it?

    Any tips, comments or ideas for a new player would be welcome. I’d also appreciate if you told me a way to help my friends understand this new game.


    1. Everything can attack everything. The ONE exception is that subs cannot hit planes.
    2. Memory?
    3. Typically just the ones that didn’t start off as yours. That is, even though the country is dark red, if germany owns it you want a token on it. If there is no token on a land, it is assumed to belong to the original country.
    4. Hmmm, I don’t know, or I forget.
    5. A plane can land anywhere that was owned by it or an ally at the beginning of the combat phase. You cannot land in newly taken over territories or anything owned by an enemy. If there is not enough movement for a plane to reach a safe landing area, then it may not attack.
    6. Trihero does a good job elsewhere, but basically you must state when you move a fighter into combat a valid place for the fighter to land. That can either be, as above, a territory, or it can be a sea zone. If it is a seazone, you must show how a carrier can reach that sea zone. If it is even vaguely conceivably possible for a carrier to reach, then it is fine. BUT, the carrier must follow through on the actions stated at the beginning of the turn. Example: A fighter moves 4 spaces to attack 1 transport, therefore it must land in that sea zone. There is a carrier two spaces away that will move there, but there are 20 battleships in between the two. That player can attack the battleships with a bomber, and say they are going to move the carrier into the fighter sea after the battleships are cleared in noncombat. Of course, the battleships are never going to be cleared because they, just won’t, but it is still a valid possibility. At the end of this turn your fighter will die, because it has nowhere to land. But, there was a potentially valid place for it too land at the beginning of the turn, so it was able to make the attack. If there was no valid conceivable place to land, it couldn’t attack the transport. (answer editted from being 20 subs to battleship, thanks to trihero’s point. I knew there was going to be something wrong with the example).
    7. Find better friends  :evil:

  • @aaFiendish:

    .
    6) Trihero does a good job elsewhere, but basically you must state when you move a fighter into combat a valid place for the fighter to land. That can either be, as above, a territory, or it can be a sea zone. If it is a seazone, you must show how a carrier can reach that sea zone. If it is even vaguely conceivably possible for a carrier to reach, then it is fine. BUT, the carrier must follow through on the actions stated at the beginning of the turn. Example: A fighter moves 4 spaces to attack 1 transport, therefore it must land in that sea zone. There is a carrier two spaces away that will move there, but there are 20 subs in between the two. That player can attack the subs with a bomber, and say they are going to move the carrier into the fighter sea after the subs are cleared in noncombat. Of course, the subs are never going to be cleared because they will submerge, but it is still a valid possibility. At the end of this turn your fighter will die, because it has nowhere to land. But, there was a potentially valid place for it too land at the beginning of the turn, so it was able to make the attack. If there was no valid conceivable place to land, it couldn’t attack the transport.

    Thats not entirely true.  If the subs submerge the Carrier can sail over them like they arent even there. In fact I THINK that even if they don’t, the carrier can sail right over them like they arent there since they are assumed to be below the surface of the deep.


  • It says in bold on page 15 that subs can only attack sea units…

    So if a bomber were to attack a submarine, it can’t defend?

    Does anyone else see a bomber attacking a fighter making any sense?


  • Try and suspend disbelief when applying rules of a game to reality. There are plausible and not plausible situations where everything could occur. For example, bombers destroyed a lot of fighters in WW2. They were grounded fighters, but still. And yes, subs cannot defend, but they can submerge after first round.


  • Dont think of the units as “A bomber” or “An infantry”

    They are more like squads. The bomber squad may be comprised of bombers and some fighter escort, the infantry is a group of infantry possibly with some other vehicles and armament to help. A carrier isnt just a carrier its a group of ships with the Carrier being the most important, thats how I view the units.


  • Exactly… not individual units, but groupings…
    Infantry, Artillery and Armored DIVISIONS
    Fighter and Bomber Squadrons
    Anti Aircraft Batteries
    Battleship, Carrier, Destroyer GROUPS
    Transport convoy
    Submarine task groups


  • So land units can attack air/land units, air units can attack all three excep submerged subs and sea units can attack sea/air, except subs can’t hit air and battle ships can do some kind of bombardment right?


  • Exactly.  8-)


  • I’d go one step further, Switch. Infantry units most likely represent armies rather than divisions. If you look at the board to start the game, and assume that the pieces are meant to be commensurate with Germany’s deepest advance into Russia, then each one should represent 200-300 thousand soldiers. The starting units in the Ukraine, for example, represent Army Group South, which certainly had more than 3 Infantry Divisions.

    What I’m saying does break down when you look at the Japanese islands (and Allied garrisons like Midway). The garrisons on most of them numbered in the tens of thousands, rather than the hundreds of thousands. However, the game has no way to reconcile these amounts, so we’re stuck with a 3 IPC Infantry unit to represent them all.

    The other thing I’d add is that the logistical support of a unit is included in the price. Feeding an army of 200,000 men, providing operational  intelligence, and keeping them resupplied with ammunition, clothing, replacements, etc. would all go into the 3 IPC cost.

    I know I’m off topic, but I do think it’s fun to keep the scope of the game in mind.


  • I agree, it is all of the support and logistics folks too.

    But, even with the number skew in Europe, thinking of it as “divisions” makes it a lot easier to work with.
    Also, once the “Stacking” takes place in central europe and elsewhere, those masses of teens and 20’s of INF figures certainly make more sense than whole armies :-)  I mean, 20 divisions in Eastern Europe makes more sense than 20 armies :-)  Even Russia did not float THAT many men :-)


  • @aaFiendish:

    Exactly.  8-)

    When a bomber attacks a submarine, does the bomber only get to fire? Afterwards, the submarine can submerge correct?


  • Yes.


  • Okay, two more questions…

    1. After you attack a territory with an air unit and you kill all of their units, must the air unit that you used, land back to any friendly territory within one space or does it go back to any territory within its movement range?

    2. If air units can not capture land territories, what’s the point of leaving men in territories like Yakut SSR?  Wouldn’t the game just be about stationing all men at the borders?


  • @Revelade:

    Okay, two more questions…

    1. After you attack a territory with an air unit and you kill all of their units, must the air unit that you used, land back to any friendly territory within one space or does it go back to any territory within its movement range?

    They can move to land in any friendly territory within the limit of their movement

    @Revelade:

    1. If air units can not capture land territories, what’s the point of leaving men in territories like Yakut SSR?  Wouldn’t the game just be about stationing all men at the borders?

    You can try to do this, and many folks do.  The risk is, once a break-through has been made in your front lines, you might not have any reserves to seal the breach.  Also, no nation (except Russia) has an IC on the frontier, thus all builds have to work their way to the front from an IC.

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