Bottling up the Italian Fleet

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Bottling up the Italian Fleet

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Gary Grigsby's World at War: A World Divided >> The War Room >> Bottling up the Italian Fleet

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Bottling up the Italian Fleet - 12/11/2006 2:52:24 AM

aaminoff

Posts: 13
Joined: 12/11/2006
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Once Italy activates, the Allies can put a moderate sized surface fleet in the Central Med; because of the way naval combat works, it will take the Italians many turns to chase it away. Meanwhile, the Allies can clear North Africa of Axis and force the Axis to re-invade if they want to go there.

The reason this works is that the surface naval combat rules make it so only a portion of each fleet actually engages in a battle; however, to take control of the sea area requires a 2:1 superiority in "naval value", and since the sides start out close to equal this can take a long time, especially if the Brits reinforce more naval assets.

A human Axis player can solve this problem by using land-based air, but it seems like it would take most of the German air force to present enough of a threat that the Allied player would feel compelled to run away.

Even so, the timing works out such that if the Allied player has everything in readiness, they can still clear North Africa, thus:

T1 Axis - France falls, Vichy created, Italy enters (but has not moved)
T1 Allied - Fleet moves into central med (if not already there), land forces take Cyrenaica (Tobruk?) against no opposition
T2 Axis - the whole German air force moves to be in range of C Med
T2 Allied - fleet leaves, land forces take Tripoli from 2 militia

This seems like a great plan if the Axis is going Barbarossa 41. If they are delaying, this might be a dangerous diversion of Allied resources...

Thoughts?

(edit: added sig)

< Message edited by aaminoff -- 12/11/2006 3:00:55 AM >

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- Alex

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RE: Bottling up the Italian Fleet - 12/11/2006 3:53:28 AM

wargameplayer

Posts: 112
Joined: 4/4/2005
Status: offline

Hmm. They can delay it yeah. But with all that air power from the land they will eventually lose it to a Axis player who wants to make sure he takes the central med and Egypt. A determined Axis player has got very very good odds of taking Egypt almost no matter what the Allies do. I suppose the allies could go nuts but then they risk getting to light on their own naval needs. And Britain needs naval superiority or bad things start to happen.

Put that in the context of the historical result which was the Axis lost North Africa and the trade offs that each side face isn't so bad.

(in reply to aaminoff)

Post #: 2