AA Rules – clarifications and questions
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Hi there, community (and devs, I hope!)
So, I recently bought a starter pack and an IJN pack and I’m having fun coordinating play-by-message tabletop sessions between friends in this horrible time of COVID.
We are trying to understand how AA works and, frankly, we can’t make heads or tails of it. So, I will be submitting a series of questions here, and asking you guys for your input, because this has driven us up the wall. Ideally, I would like the devs to pitch in and clarify exactly what the official rulings on these things are – homeruling is good and all, but if we ever play outside the current tabletop social circle, I’d like to know what is intended by the rules writer / publisher.
So, first of all. Observe the following image:
The enemy flights A, B, C, D, E, F and G are attacking the large capital ship, which in turn is screened by two DDs. Flights C and G are in base contact. Flights D, E and F are placed on the bases of the BB and the escorting DDs. Flights A and B are not in base contact with any of the ships. The distances indicated are measurements from the bridge of the BB to the lead plane of each flight (yes, the numbers are not very realistic, humor me, they’re just there as hypotheticals). My questions are the following:
- Is the placement of flights D, E and F legal? Is it possible to place airplanes ON the bases of ships? If not – does that imply that placing escorting ships near higher-value targets can effectively hard-counter planes, by zoning them out of any access to the large target?
- If the placement of flights D, E and F is legal, can the escorting DDs engage with their Local AA suites, even though the planes are attacking the larger ship? For Local to engage, does the plane have to be attacking your specific ship, or is base contact sufficient?
- What is the distance of the planes from the BB? I.e. which range zone of AA will engage them? Does the fact that they are touching the base immediately drop them to range ‘0’ (point-blank), or do you need to measure distance from bridge even when you have base contact? If the AA battery of the BB was zoned as 2/4/5/7, would flights B, D and E be considered ‘point-blank’, and flights A, C, F and G as ‘short range’?
- When specifically do the various different AA weapons fire? Do DP weapons and AA batteries all fire at the start of the Gunnery Phase, or do only the AA Batteries engage, and the DP guns fire as actual…guns during ship activation?
- And finally – Attack dice and attack modifiers for AA. Brace yourselves, this is a doozy:
Page 16 of the Starter Set rules: “Aircraft may only be attacked by AA batteries, light guns with the DP trait and other aircraft. When targeting enemy flights, roll the attack dice of the AA battery as normal. These attack dice are never modified. Every 6 rolled on the attack dice results in a Flight being destroyed. Against a TB flight in base contact with the ship, a 5 or a 6 is required to hit and destroy it.”
…OK? I have no idea how this would work.
Let us take a 1943 refit Indianapolis as an example. Her AA battery has 1″/ 2″/ 3″/ 5″ bands, 3 Attack dice and Local 1. Let us assume an enemy flight is 3″away. It is within Long range of the AA battery. How many dice can the ship fire at the plane and what is the to-hit modifier? What if the plane was at 5″?
If it were an enemy ship, the range zones would make sense, because the dice would be modified by +1 / 0 / -1 / -2 for every zone. But this is an AA battery, firing at a plane. So the dice are never modified. So does the AA battery have the exact same chance to hit (one out of six) at 1″ as it has at 5″? What?
The same goes for DP guns. Apparently, when operating as AA guns, you roll half the dice you would have rolled in an anti-surface role (rounded up) and can only fire up to half of the normal range. ‘Normal range’ – I am quoting p. 12 of the rules. What does ‘normal range’ mean in this instance, and are DP rolls also always unmodified? Does a 5″ DP gun have the same chance to kill a plane at 8″ as it does at point-blank range?
If yes – if the AA and DP guns have the same chance to hit throughout their fire zone and distance / attitude of planes make no difference, then why do these weapons have range bands? I get that DP guns can also operate as anti-surface guns, but what is the point of giving AA Batteries range zones if their performance is exactly the same from near the ship to several inches away?
I’m sorry if the answer is blatantly obvious, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure it out. I would appreciate any insight you fine folk can provide.
Ok after multiple edits after re-reading the rules now….this is how it reads by RAW….
You may not overlap bases (even though page 5 only talks about ships, aircraft flights are guverned by the same rules)
In the movement phase local X may shoot any aircraft flight that passes over the ship…this number of dice maybe used once per flight that passes over….
At the start of the Gunnery phase AA & DP weapons may shoot at any flights in Range (if the flight is touching the base of the ship add local X to the available pool of AD). This is before any ship is chosen to fire against other ship(s)…each Attack Dice can only be used once and you need to chose which flight is being targeted before rolling
Ships Gunnery activation any weapon system with DP trait may be used as light guns now if not used as AA earlier in the turn…
Things not covered but hinted at in the rules..AA systems will also be able to target MTBs in the full rules (rumoured to be December).
Now the to hit numbers against flights is always a 6… Unless it’s a torpedo bomber or kamikaze in base to base then it’s 5s to hit ….
The range band thing could be either needed to hit MTBs or just to fit in with the convention of the other weapon systems and they could have just left the other bands blank…
ps point blank is not base to base but rather the shortist of the four range bands.. the Yamotos 18″ guns have a Point Blank range of 11″ ! so its best to use BtB when talking about shooting something next to the base in this game to stop confusion
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