Since my friend Peter is still having no success in getting added to the forum, I’m posting his question for him. We are now using the airbase rules in our games, and we have a question as to how airbase attacks are supposed to work. The first paragraph of the airbase rules reads:
“Air units may now conduct special attacks against enemy air units. On the movement phase, the attacker may fly air units to territories containing enemy air units and conduct an airbase attack. Each attacking fighter “pins” a defending plane from being able to react and fly defensive air support in the same or an adjacent space. Excess defending air units that are not “pinned” are allowed to fly defensive air support mission normally.”
Peter has interpreted this to mean that you can attack an airbase and thus prevent any defending planes (at least, up to the number of planes you have attacking the airbase) from reacting. Our other player, Jason, interprets this to mean that when you attack an airbase the defending planes are forced to either do combat with the attackers or try to retreat (after combat). I’ve been going back and forth as to which interpretation I think is correct. It seems to me based on the strict wording of the paragraph that defending air is not required to react (fight); on the other hand, it seems illogical that units being attacked would not be required to give combat.
The next question is whether or not defending aircraft can participate in combat in the first round, and then retreat before the next round. I think the third paragraph of this section makes it fairly clear that they can, but, again, this is being disputed.
I’m hoping that Peter’s interpretation is correct, and that the intent of the rule is only to prevent defending planes from reacting, not to force them into combat. We’ve played using Jason’s interpretation the last couple of games and I can tell you that forcing defending planes to do combat has a huge impact on game balance. Germany starts with a numerical advantage in aircraft, and with aggressive aircraft builds is always ahead of Britain. Britain can’t even adequately defend the Channel because if he deploys in London he gets hit with 8 or 9 fighters in an airbase attack. I realize that Germany had a larger air force at the start of the war than Britain or France, but they didn’t outnumber either of them by 5 to 1 in fighters as is the case in the game (historically, England and France combined had more fighters than Germany). In addition, approximately 25% of German fighters in 1940 were Me 110’s, which were almost useless against British single-engine fighters; the game does not account for this qualitative difference. I completely understand why France has been nerfed from its historical strength – you have to be able to account for Germany’s superior tactics (difficult to do in a strategic game), and if France is too tough you don’t have a game. However, I can tell you from our last couple of games that if Jason’s interpretation is the correct one the game is going to require a couple of tweaks.
