(long range )Heavy bombers vs. navy


  • First the question:
    Though the heading is specific regarding navy, the thoughts might apply more general.

    Background for my question:
    The situation is that in many of the games my group plays, USA will very often if not always research for minimum 15 pr round until they get Heawy bombers and long range aircrafts. If they don’t get a research on the chart for the 15, they use another 5 the following round to get 4 dices. In any case, as Japan who starts with a lot of navy it seems always (in our games) impossible to defend the navy, as a heavy bomber at the price of 12 has a good chance of killing a battleship at the price of 20. when one compares 2 heavy bombers to a fully loaded carrier the math gets even more crazy in favour of the heavy bombers. As for the long range aircraft, having 3 bombers or more in london and a similar amount in western USA, will actually enable them to strike an extremely large area with 6+ bombers.


  • @Fighter:

    First the question:
    Though the heading is specific regarding navy, the thoughts might apply more general.

    Background for my question:
    The situation is that in many of the games my group plays, USA will very often if not always research for minimum 15 pr round until they get Heawy bombers and long range aircrafts. If they don’t get a research on the chart for the 15, they use another 5 the following round to get 4 dices. In any case, as Japan who starts with a lot of navy it seems always (in our games) impossible to defend the navy, as a heavy bomber at the price of 12 has a good chance of killing a battleship at the price of 20. when one compares 2 heavy bombers to a fully loaded carrier the math gets even more crazy in favour of the heavy bombers. As for the long range aircraft, having 3 bombers or more in london and a similar amount in western USA, will actually enable them to strike an extremely large area with 6+ bombers.

    If your point is HB are unbalanced……

    they have been since A&A classic. Nothing that has ever been done, except ONCE, has ever fixed this imbalance.

    The one time, however, was LHTR for AAR. Which, of course, simply neutered HB.

    If you play with tech, the game you are playing is imbalanced. Since the USA can readily take advantage of HB…


  • @Fighter:

    First the question:
    Though the heading is specific regarding navy, the thoughts might apply more general.

    Background for my question:
    The situation is that in many of the games my group plays, USA will very often if not always research for minimum 15 pr round until they get Heawy bombers and long range aircrafts. If they don’t get a research on the chart for the 15, they use another 5 the following round to get 4 dices. In any case, as Japan who starts with a lot of navy it seems always (in our games) impossible to defend the navy, as a heavy bomber at the price of 12 has a good chance of killing a battleship at the price of 20. when one compares 2 heavy bombers to a fully loaded carrier the math gets even more crazy in favour of the heavy bombers. As for the long range aircraft, having 3 bombers or more in london and a similar amount in western USA, will actually enable them to strike an extremely large area with 6+ bombers.

    I’m not one to say playing with tech is the devil, it is just a different game (though I usually only play with tech in like 20% of my games).  That being said, as USA (or anyone else for that matter) I would still rather spend my 1st 2-3 turns being less risky and getting more valuable peices on the board and in action and not dump money into tech in my average game.


  • You could do the same as Japan. They will have more income than USA pretty early


  • If you limit each nation to one tech maximum, it’s playable.

    Else you get horror stories like: Long range Heavy Bombers with paratroopers…

    Even the paratrooper tech is not done correctly in my opinion, I doubt very much bombers would be loaded with bombs and attack while dropping paratroopers…

    Either you fit troops, fit more fuel OR you fit more ordnance onboard… but ALL of this inclusively!?

    Techs should not stack, I think this is irrealist.


  • I like limiting the tech numbers for nations, but generally that leads us to not wanting them at all.  Axis is in a better position here to get techs I think than previous versions, but the standard HBs can be totally devestating, which is great if they are yours.

    We’ve toyed with the idea of precursors to HB, where you must have both long range aircraft and rockets before you could achieve HB, because of the advances from those breakthroughs that would have feed into HB; HB didn’t simply come about in a vacuum of other advancements.

    often we’ll also just play where you roll two die, but only one counts, and if one of them rolls a 1, you get to pick the target.


  • @Funcioneta:

    You could do the same as Japan. They will have more income than USA pretty early

    agreed, BUT as Japan I feel I need a navy much more to control my many islands when comparing to the USA.

    In any case, going for HB and LRA seem to be the best options so far. I hope to be able to come up with other alternatives in my coming games however as the game otherwise seems too dull with an overpowered US airforce

Suggested Topics

  • 1
  • 8
  • 15
  • 1
  • 18
  • 7
  • 44
  • 10
Axis & Allies Boardgaming Custom Painted Miniatures

34

Online

17.0k

Users

39.3k

Topics

1.7m

Posts