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FAQ Tag: Naval Units

Rules 20G2g & 20G2h: Allocation of Naval Losses

Question:
Losses to Naval Units: Are these allocated after each air attack, or after all air attacks in a player turn?

Answer:
Rule 20G2g defines how this happens for both 20G2g & h: “For each air operation, resolve all bombing attacks of air units flying this mission before applying any hits achieved. (Keep track of the total number of hits achieved.) Apply the hits after all air units on this mission [naval units in port bombing] have finished bombing.” This means you do it on a per-air-operation basis, applying all hits (losses) to the naval units once all bombing attacks in the operation are over.

Source:
Errata published at http://www.hmsgrd.com/Files/Europa/Second Front/Second Front.pdf

Rule 20F3: Naval Units Firing AA at Minelaying Aircraft

Question:
(Rules 20F3, 22B, and 34E) The minelaying rules seem to make mines excessively effective; in particular, the lack of breakdowns for the big Allied TFs seems to make sweeping mines ridiculously expensive. The rules seem to prohibit naval units firing AA at mine-laying aircraft in their hex — is this correct?

Answer:
One slick trick would be to wait for the invasion armada to end a movement step, then do a night mine-laying air operation in the hex (the rules do not seem to prohibit this, even if the Allies are not sailing at night). There would be no AA, and only night fighters to contend with. If successful, even one mine point could inflict very heavy losses, far more than seem to have occurred historically.

Naval units don’t fire AA at air units on aerial minelaying missions, as the air units do not lay the mines in the part of the hex where the ships currently are. (The hexes represent a huge expanse of area, with it being impractical to impossible for ships to cover the whole extent.)

Air units dropping mines in a hex containing enemy naval units at sea, thereby doing all sorts of harm to the ships at the start of their next naval movement step, can be abusive. However, it requires numerous sorties over the course of a turn to lay enough mines to qualify for a mine point, so the enemy can’t catch the ships by surprise through a single overnight mine laying. The game’s sequencing of activities attempted to show this:

  • A player may aerially lay mines by flying a transport mission, which can be done only in the movement and exploitation phases of his own player turn (Rule 20F).
  • Enemy naval units in the hex are unaffected at this time, since per Rule 34E1 they check for mine damage if they enter or put to sea in the hex (they are already in the hex, so this doesn’t count) or if they start a friendly naval movement step in the hex (since it is not their player turn, this can’t occur at this time).
  • After the mine-laying player is finished his turn, the enemy player turn begins. The enemy naval units now can be affected by the mines, but before they do check for damage, automatic mine clearing occurs if the mines are in various coastal hexes or beyond the range of certain ports (Rule 34E3).

I had thought the above sequencing would take care of things in most typical cases. However, reexamining the point leads me to believe that when automatic mine clearing does not occur, the naval units in the hex have a big problem in the game, whereas in reality this would not occur in such a fashion.

The best way to handle this situation is: When a player aerially lays mines in a hex containing enemy naval units at sea, then during the immediately following player turn those naval units (only) ignore the presence of those mines (only) during the naval unit’s first naval movement step (only) of the turn.

 

Source:
Errata published at http://www.hmsgrd.com/Files/Europa/Second Front/Second Front.pdf

Rule 14C: Firing AA at Airbases

Question:

I am engaged in a PBEM game of Narvik, and a point of contention has arisen between my opponent and I. I am attempting to bomb the airbase outside of Trondheim, and he has stacked a pair of CLAs in the little tiny piece of ocean in the hex, and attempting to fire AA at my bombers. Here is his argument: Per rule 14C

“Naval units may only fire against units bombing ships, ports or bases.”

Does this include “airbases” or only the supply “bases”?

Here is my argument:
Per 11B3: When referring to Allied supply bases, the rules consistently refer to Allied supply bases as a “base” or bases”. This consistency extends to rule 12C3c, where it again refers to Allied supply bases as “bases” or a “base”.  In most cases, when referring to an airbase, the rules either use the term “airbase” or “airfields”. There are a few references to the airbases as “base” or “bases”, however, the most common reference is “airbases’ within the context of the rules. “Base” references include “return to base”, or damage to the “base”.  Rule 14, in it’s example, also refers to an “Allied base”, to me, meaning an Allied supply base.

Answer:

I looked at it from two different ways and both exclude naval units from
firing AA at airbases.

1. Rule 11B3 states

“French, British, and Polish units receive bases from
which they may draw supply.”

Spot checking various other rules shows that the intention reference of “bases” is indeed these bases and not airbases. The occasional use of “base” to mean airbase is in the air rules, where “base” obviously means airbase. (“Return to base” for example is a standard
term used across a number of games and always means return to airbases. I agree in the context of Narvik with its Allied supply bases, it would be clearer if instead of “base” only “supply base” or “airbase” was used. However, rules writing was less strict back then, and I never got a rules questions that questioned the meaning of “base”.)

2. In reading the Antiaircraft Fire rule (14), it is clear to me that the intention is that naval units can fire AA only in the naval “domain”: at sea or at the sea-land interface (ports and supply bases, [supply bases must be placed in ports]). Airbases are typically more inland (sometimes much more so) and are outside the naval “domain.” “Domain” is just a term I am using here to get the concept across and is not used in Narvik.

Not only do I read this as the intent of Rule 14, but as the person who worked on the 1980 edition of Narvik, I know it was the intent of the GDW design team and how we actually played it.

Source:

Posted on Yahoo Europa Mailing List by John Astell on 15.07.2013 07:10

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