Vergilius Fleet Building Guide

I think this will be the most appropriate forum to place Vergilius' excellent fleet building guide. I will also put a link to this thread in the Goldmine Wagon.

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(Originally posted as a series on the old Forumini Fri Jun 10, 2011) 

Vergilius Fleet Building Guide

Part I: Introduction

Welcome to the War at Sea Fleet design guide! You may be a beginner, new to the game, or you may be a more experienced player looking for a fresh perspective on the game that youve played with friends. The goal of this guide is to provide something for both types of players. Most of the real strategy of the game occurs at the level of fleet build. Before you ever sit down at the table, much of the course of the game has already been predetermined by the particular units you and your opponent have chosen to bring. Consequently, nothing will improve your play more than a thorough understanding of the units, their capabilities, and the basic fleet types. Part II will address the concept of fleet archetypes, providing the beginning player with an overview of the possible fleet types you may build or encounter. Part III surveys the basic unit types, identifying strengths and weaknesses and providing insights into how a particular unit type, such as cruiser performs in a 100 point game. Part IV is more advanced, and details a wide variety of topics that are important to building and playing competitively. My recommendations are focused upon standard 100 or 200 point objective scenarios in daylight using standard rules contained in the official rulebook. It is my belief that if a player can understand fleet building for the standard daylight scenario, they can also adapt their builds if presented with nighttime conditions, squalls, long-distance rules, house-rules, non-objective games, or the games at point levels higher than 300 points. I also do not intend this guide to be exhaustive, and I want to acknowledge the feedback and support of the members of the Forumini boards, whose insights have substantially improved this guide. All remaining faults are entirely my own.

PART II: The Archetypes

Basic Fleet Types

Fleet types can be divided the Swarm, Air builds, BB builds, and mixed builds. In each of these fleets one predominant strategic aim or characteristic unit is present in the fleet. Meanwhile, a mixed build splits points among two or more of the previous build types. Someone could run a 37 points Caio Duilio, a bunch of cruisers and DDs, and some air cover, and you've effectively got a mixed build that plays especially like a swarm. Here I first provide overviews of the general type, but I also include several additional possibilities of each of the main archetypes.

Swarm Builds

A swarm build simply relies on maximizing the number of a particular unit type, such as a destroyer, submarine or aircraft. Destroyers pack torpedoes which are lethal to battleships, while appearing in greater numbers than the battleships can handle. Submarines require ASW to hit, and it is possible to remove fragile ASW units thus allowing your submarines to dominant. Aircraft can also swarm or support a swarm, but I cover them properly under air-builds. Most swarm fleets have the ability to contest/acquire multiple objectives.

1. DD/Cruiser swarms: Uses large numbers of cheap destroyers and adds cruisers to the mix as needed. Any nation can use this build, but several nations have specific versions of this swarm. Swarms can be played either as a smoke fleet, where you try to lose initiative, or as an initiative based fleet that uses cruisers with flotilla leader special abilities in order to maximize unit placement.

1A. Long Lance Swarm: Based on the Japanese Long-Lance torpedoes, mixes cruisers and destroyers. Generally works better as an initiative fleet, though a smoke fleet is possible.

1B. UK/Commonwealth Torp fleet: The UK gets a lot of cruisers with 2-2-1 torpedoes, which can be combined with their destroyers. Since a swarm is normally weak in the air, the UK has the benefit of the cheap Dido class cruiser (9pts), and access to the close escort Arunta (7pts).

1C. Objective Rush fleet: This fleet uses the various SAs that allow a unit an additional zone of movement (High Speed Run, Chase, Establish Screen) to bring units closer to the objective. These units arrive on the objectives on turn 2 rather than turn 3. This either forces the opponent to concede the objective, or to rush forward themselves. Since these builds often rely on torpedoes, the enemy ships are now in ideal range. If the enemy does concede the objective, the units are also better positioned to reach the main action on turn 3. The French and Italian navies have excellent speed possibilities.

1D: Smoke Fleet: While smoke can be effectively employed with most fleet types, it is also possible to dedicate a significant portion of your fleet to units with Lay Smoke Screen, Bad Weather Fighter, and Sharpshooter. Most of the time, this fleet will work like a Swarm, but it is also possible to include the Battleship Littorio as the Italians or the Russian Soyuz in an open build. The Italians, UK-Commonwealth, and US all have multiple units that are effective in smoke. All nations have at least one destroyer with the Lay Smoke Screen SA.

2. Sub swarm: Uses large numbers of subs to overwhelm the enemy. The rest of the fleet generally consists of units that can defend the submarines from possible ASW attacks, such as fighters, cruisers or bombers.

2A. Kondor/Sub Swarm: Adds a large number Kondors to a sub swarm with the intention of removing enemy DD assets with the Kondor's Anti-Ship Missile ship, thus giving the submarines free reign the rest of the game.

3. PT Boat Swarm: the US Pt Boat, German S-Boat, and overpriced Italian Patrol Boat can be used en masse to overwhelm an opponent. They move rapidly, can enter island sectors, and can ambush the unsuspecting opponent. Like other ship swarms, too many targets are presented to the opponent, and 33% of all ship-based gunnery attacks miss. They are extremely vulnerable to strafing.

Air Builds

Air builds are centered around aircraft, and I identify three main types.

1. Carrier+land Swarm: Carriers are combined with several land-based planes in an attempt to completely overwhelm the opponent, and especially to win placement advantage for at least some of your planes. This fleet is light on surface units, with perhaps a single escort per carrier. It usually wins be destroying the enemy surface fleet and seizing a single objective. The rearming patterns for land-based planes provide an excellent air-push on turns 1, 3 and 5.

2. Carrier Main force: Uses few if any land-based planes in favor of planes that can fly and attack every turn. Otherwise wins in the same fashion as the previous build. The land base is open for your planes if a carrier sinks, and youve still got decent chances of having a placement advantage.

3. Air Support: Properly a "mixed build." You are basically playing something other than an air heavy build, but due to the cost of a CV, fighters, and 3 bombers, you've still spent a bunch of points on air. The remaining units will cause the fleet to play like another major archetype, with simply a greater component devoted to air. For example, you could bring Torpedo Bombers with the intention of removing ER from the enemy battleships early in the contest, and then supporting your own battleship(s) in killing them.

BB Builds

Among the most popular and important build types are battleship builds. Battleships form the core of this fleet. Because battleships are quite diverse in cost (33-73 points to play) and power, two fleets with battleships can play very differently from one another. Battleships builds can fall into several categories. In a big Battleship build, the battleship(s) represent more than 50% of the total points, and rely on those battleships as the main offensive tool. But a player can also bring 30-45% of the points in battleships as a support unit to a swarm of destroyers and/or cruisers. This kind of build I see as a mixed swarm rather than a battleship-build proper. Because of the points devoted to the battleship, the player must strive with the remaining points to protect their battleship(s) from ship swarms, sub swarms, and air attacks.

Mixed Fleets

Some fleets simply do not fit well into one of the above archetypes. For example, someone could bring a fleet with 40% of the points in BBs, 40% in DDs, and 20% in air units. This would be a basic mixed fleet. These builds can be extremely powerful. Since we cannot create a taxonomy for every possible effective fleet type, I use mixed fleet as a catch-all for all fleets that do not seem to properly fit into any of the builds above. In most cases, they will have the strengths of one or more of the fleet types listed above.


Part III: Unit Overview

Understanding the Battleships

A new WAS player will quickly notice how powerful a battleship is. Despite the fact that WWII itself saw them waning, battleships hold a supreme place in WAS due to the fact that the game board is roughly thirty miles across. Since players are often attracted to larger ship sculpts, and the mere act of holding eleven or more dice gives the player a sense of power, battleships will always be the first and most important unit to understand in War-at-Sea. This will likely be the first few fleets a beginner plays.

The new player is also struck with a dizzying array of numbers on the card, and usually without a great idea of how to interpret them in relation to each other. Sadly, even more experienced players hardly know better, but simply rely on the experience of when certain Battleships have done well or poorly for them. Experience may feel more certain to us than abstract numbers, but in a dice game, unusual results may cause us to mis-evaluate the units.

The most powerful Battleships all exceed sixty points, but there are nine battleships that cost between 30 and 40 points. An additional three ships receive the battleship designation but cost below 30. In practice, most of these ships below thirty points function less like a battleship, and tend to have other odd or unusual characteristics. One ship with a cruiser designation plays similarly to the thirty point battleships. Battleships are frequently different from one another in one or more of the core stats. Two or three battleships in the mid fifties might be completely different from one another (Tirpitiz, Richelieu, Prince of Wales, Massachuessets), and thus require you to understand the differences in the stats. You cannot play every battleship in exactly the same way. Understanding their stats and how those stats interact in a battleship-versus-battleship match-up is critical to your success.

The battleships generally fall into four distinct groups of cost, divided into 10 point segments. At the top are the battleships which exceed sixty points. In fact, all of these battleships occur at the high end of the sixty point range, giving them a pretty big point gap between the next group of battleships. These represent the best battleships of the war. They all have six hull points, and armor values between 9 and 10. These are the strongest armor values in the game. Even other battleships have a hard time hitting armor 10 consistently. When combined with high vital armors of 15-17, these ships have excellent staying power. They usually obliterate any weaker battleship. Iowa and Missouri are the flimsiest of the battleships at this point level, though their main claim to power is the fact that both possess a key Flag-2 and ER5. Playing them correctly requires learning how to finesse them. Yamato and Musashi remain the kings of this tier. One of the key points to understand is that an increase in any stat on a battleship represents just a huge increase in the performance of the unit. When a group of statistics are advanced by one point each, the effect is exponential. Thus if you go from 8-14-5 to 9-15-6, the overall improvement is quite significant. The same set of guns will take approximately 3 more rounds to sink the 9-15-6 battleship than the 8-14-5. Thats why these monsters cost so much more and perform so much better in straight Battleship contests.

50-59 Point Battleships

This tier contains some of the ost frequent and commonly seen battleships. They are considerably weaker than the 60 point battleships, but they remain amazingly solid. All have torpedo defense, and even two of them have ER5. Many of these battleships experience trade-offs in abilities. The US battleships have the best guns, but the lowest vital armor at 14 and 2 of them are armor 8. The Royal Navy has Rodney at the high end, but it is saddled with Slow-1, meanwhile the KGV and PoW at the low end are hobbled with the jammed mount-SA. At least they are sturdy at 9-15-5. Tirpitiz picks up ER5, but also carries the lower armor 8. The French Richilieu is solid and can be helpful as both an ally or a Vichy-French. At the bottom end of this range are the Italian battleships, which fall somewhat between this group and the one below it. They have a hard time matching up with the other battleships in this group, but smoke can help them even the odds.

40 point Battleships

Twelve of the 15 units in this group have the Slow-SA. The US units have Slow-2, while Japan is frequently Slow-1. We also see several battlecruisers that trade-off defense in favor of guns. AA is a little weaker on the US battleships, though generally the same for the other nations. Meanwhile, almost all of these ships get excellent secondary and tertiary guns. This is the only range where the US can find range-3 secondary guns, which are extremely useful for picking off enemy swarm units. 8-14-5 is the frequent defensive rating. The stronger the guns that you face, the more of a liability this becomes. These units can often match-up well with a little help against the 50 point battleships, but they end up being completely outclassed by the high end battleships. On the other hand, the cheap cost makes it easier to include a range of other units that can help your fleet.

30 Point Battleships

Many of these ships are properly battlecruisers. The majority of them lose a hull point, carrying 4 hull points total. Torpedo defense is frequently absent. The advantage these units have is that they still throw enough dice to hit 8 armor satisfactorily, though they have problems with 9 and 10. Tertiary batteries are infrequent, but if youre squeezing them in as a second battleship, or using them add some pop to a swarm, this lack of a third attack wont matter as much. Almost all of the armor values dip into the 6/7 range, which even heavy cruiser can hit. In the 100 and 200 point games, these ships can often make a powerful addition to another battleship. If you arent using an expensive battleship, youll likely have points for one of these battleships along with some air even at 100 points. At 200 points, these ships make interesting 3rd or 4th choices without compromising the number of points spent on air defense or ASW. The other key build where they seem to fit well is a swarm. You get slightly more stability and the ability to compete somewhat against weaker BBs, while still allowing you to bring 6-8 total units. Moreover, only a handful of these 30 point battleships are slow, and thus you lose one of the main problems that the 40 point battleships experienced. In a swarm, these battleships counter opposing cruisers.

Some Battleship tactics to consider, which can help you in designing your fleet

An engagement with another battleship usually lasts several rounds. Occasionally, one battleship will achieve a lucky vital and end the contest early. But theyll usually exchange several rounds of fire before the final hit is delivered. Both battleships start an engagement undamaged and with extended range. Perhaps the most critical juncture in the battle is the point at which one of them loses extended range. From that point until the opposing battleship is damaged, the possibility exists on any round for the undamaged battleship to make unreturned long-range shots on the opponent. If you can make more shots than your opponent, you have a good chance of winning. So anything that helps you make those shots, or keep making them is an advantage to your side, while anything that hurts you is a disadvantage. Once you reach this phase, the game comes down to maneuvering. Three factors to consider at the stage of fleet-design are:

1. The Slow-SA: When it triggers you have a huge disadvantage in maneuvering. If you just damaged the opponent, hell likely be able to arrange a turn where you mutually fire at each other, or where neither of you fires. If you were just damaged by the opponent, youll likely face a turn where your opponent gets a free shot at you. As a secondary consideration, Slow can sometimes inhibit your ability to maintain proper range from a swarm. You get a huge discount on your BB for taking one with slow, but youll likely have maneuvering problems.
2. Flag: Battleships benefit from having flag bonuses and going second. When going second, any supporting units can maneuver more easily into torpedo range of the opposing battleship. If youre bringing a battleship, you want to win initiative and go second as much as possible. The only exception to this is if youre playing with smoke and intend on brawling with your battleship at close range. In this case, youve obviated the need for maneuvering by choosing to fight at close range. Moreover, at the critical juncture, going second will make it easier to set up or avoid unreturned shots from the opposing battleship.
3. ER5: Battleships with ER5 have the same kind of advantage over ER4 battleships that an undamaged battleship has over an undamaged one. Moreover if you do succeed in damaging the opposing battleship, youve now got 2 zones of space in which you can make un-returnable attacks.

Battleships at 100 points

Because the battleship costs so many of your points, you have limited points for the rest of your force. Youve got to control enemy ship swarms, sub swarms, and be able to defend your battleship from the air. Once you have selected your favorite battleship, you must address these concerns. Merely taking a battleship does not guarantee you victory against another one, so you also want some units that can help against the opposing battleship. The easiest categorization is into 1-zone, 2-zone, or multiple zone battleship builds at 100 points.

1-Zone Battleship Builds

Overview: Most of these builds spend 75-80 points on the surface fleet, and then make judicious use of the land-base to handle ASW, fighter-support, and swarm control. Additional subs are also possible in some of these builds.

1. Battleship+Battleship: 80-90 points are spent on a combination of two Battleships in the hope that it presents too many hull points for enemy torpedoes to sink, while the second battleship helps the first against any straight battleship build. But among the battleships that can be doubled within 100 points, many are slow, or otherwise too weak in combination to take out a high end battleship.
2. Battleship-solo/Battleship+Destroyer/Battleship+Cruiser/Battleship+destroyer+close escort/Battleship+cruiser+close escort destroyer: These builds vary slightly in how many guns are available from the surface fleet for handling enemy swarms, or in how much ASW comes from the surface fleet, but the land base remains the most flexible way of handling swarms, subs, and other aircraft. Of these option, Battleship+Cruiser and Battleship+Destroyer+Close Escort Destroyer are probably the most common and easy to use.
3. Battleship+small carrier: A cheap battleship and a cheap carrier join forces with the land-base. This is also a tough mix-n-match to get right. The UK and Germany might have the best chance at this with the ASW-boosting Glorious at 15 points, and the strong and sturdy Graf Zepplin

2 Zone Battleship Builds: This build has more surface ships, and therefore better control over opposing swarm builds. But this usually means that the ASW protection is in the form of destroyers, which can suffer attacks from enemy bombers. Moreover, it is more difficult to protect 2 zones from the air as it is one, so this build probably needs the fighter support from the land-base. Close escort is also possible one or both of the groups. Subs are usually forgone in favor of the surface fleet, but this means the additional surface ships must help the battleship against an opposing battleship. Finally, the extra zone adds additional deployment and tactical options, as you can sometimes seize an objective far from the action quickly. There are unfortunately too many combinations to cover here, but they usually break down into two basic types.
1. BB+DD, CA/CL + DD (additional close escorts possible): The cruiser provides extra guns against a swarm, but it mainly provides a stronger AA attack in the same zone as the second destroyer. This is mainly done to ensure its survivability. The real problem here is that if one or both destroyers is sunk, the fleet can be left without ASW protection.
2. BB+DD, DD+DD (additional close escorts possible): This fleet brings more destroyers, both to assist the battleship, but also to ensure more anti-sub coverage. Unfortunately, the second group of destroyers is vulnerable to air attacks, virtually forcing a couple of defensive fighters at the land base. Even a large Battleship like the Iowa can be brought with three destroyers, while leaving 8 points available for a land-based fighter.

3 Zone Battleship Builds, The Mixed Swarm: The battleship is normally cheap, and aims mainly to destroy enemy cruisers while adding 1-2 points of damage on opposing battleships and drawing the enemy BBs fire. The main damage is done by a swarm of destroyers or cruisers with torpedoes. Because of the points spent on the BB, it is usually difficult to get beyond 3 zones. The additional swarm units are used to counter opposing swarms, and the BB picks off the enemy cruisers in those swarms. The many destroyers counter subs. The land base is still needed for additional AA. Close escorts or cheap cruisers usefully increase the AA scores in the additional destroyer zones.

Battleship Reviews by Nation:

The Allied Battleships

The USN Battleships

The USN has the largest selection of Battleships that span quite a wide price. The forty-point battleships represent the interwar treaty battleships. All of these ships are Slow-2, with 8-14-5 defensive lines. This is a solid stat line for this particular era of battleship, though it can post problems with competing with 50 point battleships or larger. In the fifty point range are the two North Carolina class and the Massachusetts. These ships all pack a wallop, but they retain the 14 point vital score, which hurts them slightly against ships in their own tier or better. The stronger battleships also carry weaker secondary batteries and stronger anti-aircraft scores. Bristling with Guns is a specal ability that gives these ships a third attack, but with the limitation that the targets must be different ships. Finally, the top tier features the Iowa class battleships. Unless you really must play the Missouri for its range-1 AA, it is better to play the Iowa instead. Im going to review these battleships by selecting a representative from each tier, and in 1:1 match-ups similar to what you might find in a 100 point contest. I wont review every battleship or match-up, but Im going to try to give a sense for how each tier of battleship matches up against the other tiers. Included in the evaluation is not merely how the two battleships match-up, but how the players might decide to fill out the rest of the fleet, and how those ships might contribute to the outcome of the contest.

Iowa: The basic problem the Iowa will face in all match-ups is that few points remain to flesh out the remaining fleet. With 32 points, youve got to find some solution to a swarm, some protection from subs. AA9 will do well against the air, provided Iowa receives a good escort. If you do decide to play a weaker escort, a fighter can help out immensely. Most builds will attempt to play well against either a swarm or the subs, but will simply eat the loss against the other. Each of the high end match-ups plays slightly differently, but nothing is more iconic than the Yamato. Battleship match-ups will generally be a dice-off when the battleships are on the same tier, but subtle differences should be maximized to your advantage. Here, we seriously need to look at the odds for this match-up, calculated by comparing the two ships stat lines against each other.

Iowa hits Yamato R3: 56%, R1: 78%. Vitals Yamato: R3: 4%, R1: 14%
Yamato hits Iowa R3: 69%, R1: 87%. Vitals Iowa: R3: 7%, R1: 21%

If Iowa receives no extra free shots on Yamato, Yamato is a huge statistical favorite to win this match-up, thanks to the lower armor and vital on the Iowa. Iowa wins this battle in only two ways: 1. It receives some help from other ships that succeed in adding one point of damage to the Yamato. 2. Iowa manages to maneuver successfully and lands one or more unanswered shots on the Yamato. A single successful ER5 shot can easily snowball into several unanswered shots, which is what Iowa needs to even the odds and eventually win the contest. Neither side will have much in the way of additional units that can help tilt the contest, though Yamato often has a destroyer escort while may get the chance to fire a single salvo of deadly long-lance torpedoes. Some Japanese players like the Shigure. The smoke will help in some situations to avoid the ER5 shots during the critical early turns.

Iowa vs Tirpitz:
Iowa hits Tirpitz: R3 80%, R1 93%. Vitals Tirpitz: R3 7%, 21%
Tirpitz hits Iowa: R3 51%, R1 69%. Vitals Iowa: R3 2%, 7%

This is a good example of what happens when a larger battleship matches up against a battleship from a lower tier. Iowa is heavily favored on all of the stat lines. Both ships possess ER5 and will trade shots as long as possible, but since Iowa has much higher hit percentage, the chances that Iowa strips the Tirpitz of ER will basically force Tirpitz to close the distance. Otherwise, Iowa will snipe it from long-range with reasonably high odds shots. To win consistently, the Tirpitz fleet needs several points of damage delivered from supporting units, for each additional unit such as a sub that the Tirptiz fleet devotes to countering battleships, it weakens itself considerably against ship swarms, making for a tough trade-off in fleet construction. A cruiser escort along with some subs plays to the German strengths, and may offer them that chance. Does German air knock-out American destroyers so that supporting subs help with the Iowa? Does American air knock out the subs? These questions will dominate this match-up.

Iowa vs Nagato, the mid-tier range
Iowa hits Nagato: R3: 80%, R1: 93%. Vitals Nagato: R3: 12%. R1: 31%
Nagato hits Iowa: R3: 51%, R1: 76%. Vitals Iowa: 2%, 10%

Iowa severely outperforms the battleships of the forty point tier. Nagato cannot close without seriously increasing Iowas hit and vital chances. But the Japanese player can add a lot of different units to the battleship. Long lance units, cruisers and destroyers, and possibly air units. These additional units need to cause damage to the Iowa so that Nagato or Fuso can land the final blows. Smoke may be helpful in hiding the weaker battleship, and in keeping destroyers on the objectives. What should be clear is that the Japanese non-battleship surface force will easily overpower any surface ships brought to assist the Iowa. A heavy surface fleet will play like a mixed swarm, with three surface groups hitting the objectives quickly. An interesting option for Japan is a Chikuma escort with torpedoes from either a Betty swarm or subs. Despite having a weaker battleship in this match-up, practically any build will still be extremely dangerous to the Iowa and US fleet.

Iowa versus Caio Dulio. The 30 point battleships are sorely outclassed, not only by a top tier BB like Iowa, but even by the mid-grade 50 point battleships. In 100 point games, these thirty point battleships tend to show up as a strong element in support of what is essentially a swarm fleet. So a Caio Dulio would not exist in its fleet with the express purpose of countering the Iowa, though it would perhaps aim to survive long enough for remaining units to surround and sink the Iowa. I wont include many examples of thirty point match-ups, as the reader can extrapolate from these results as to how they would perform.

Iowa hits Caio: R3: 89%. R1: 96%. Vitals Caio: R3: 19%, R1 43%
Caio hits Iowa: R3: 22%, R1: 31%. Vitals Iowa: R3: negl, R1: 2%
The Caio really cannot be relied upon to even damage the Iowa. Gneisenau and Kongo possess stronger guns, but you pay more for Gneis and the Kongo gets those gains at the expense of being even flimsier (Iowa vitals 30% range, 55% brawl). This match-up is going to come heavily down upon your remaining surface units. If you can clear off swarming destroyers and suppress submarines, the entire opposing fleet will fall apart.

The US mid-tier Battleships: Nor. Carolina, Massachusetts, and Washington. All of these ships sport the same guns. North Carolina is 2 points more, but gets an extremely useful Flag-2, and some AA candy which may or may not be useful in a 100 point match-up. The cheaper Washington sports a Flag-1, and it should be clear that flags are useful on battleship fleets. The Massachusetts is primed for having one or more smoke laying escorts thanks to its lack of a flag. And the extra armor point on the Massachusetts means youll take less damage. As long as you arent fighting Yamato, all of these ships stand up well to the Axis Battleships. For my examples, Im going to use Mass, but recognize that the opposing battleships will hit NC and Wash at a higher rate. You have more points to fill out your fleet, and can more easily address the problem of a swarm or enemy subs. The US has excellent anti-air, so you do have the option of skipping fighters if you so desire. Many US players will simply add a group of destroyers to these ships, which will give the entire fleet the feel of a mixed swarm. One interesting possibility is the idea of adding Alaska to these builds. Then use the remaining points on ASW. The Alaska becomes your help against opposing battleship builds, while bringing some big guns against a swarm, guns that can easily vital a destroyer or cruiser.

Mass vs Yamato
Mass hits Yamato: R3: 47%, R1: 72%. Vitals Yamato: R3: 2%, R1: 9%
Yamato hits Mass: R3: 69%, R1: 87%. Vitals Mass: R3: 12%, R1: 31%

The Mass takes a step down from the Iowa in terms of capabilities, so it stands to reason that it if the Iowa required several unanswered range shots in order to win the game, the fifty point US battleships simply have major problems. Since you have more remaining points to flesh out your fleet, you certainly need escorts that can handle the Japanese escorts successfully, while putting some damage on Yamato. Id still put the Yamato fleet as an odds-on favorite, so it is possible to decide simply to accept a loss against this fleet, while building your remaining fleet to handle ship swarms, dd swarms, and air.

Yamato will bully any allied battleship in the fifty point range. Ideally, Yamato wants to fight at range 2 as often as possible, while limiting the number of range-1 torpedo shots that Massachusettss escorts get.

Mass hits Tirpitz: R3: 74%, R1: 90%. Vitals Tirpitz: 4%, 15%
Tirpitz hits Mass: R3: 66%, R1: 80%. Vitals Mass: 4%, 12%

These ships are only one point apart, the match-up works something like the Iowa versus Yamato match-up. The Mass has the advantage in firing percentages at all ranges, but the Tirpitz has the opportunity to land an ER shot first, plus the flag to help in maneuvering for it. The Mass can certainly pick up some help from a smoking DD, which probably tilts this match-up into its favor. The match-up between the non-BB units will be critical to the outcome of the battle.

Mass vs Nagato
Mass hits Nagato: R3: 74%, R1: 90%. Vitals Nagato: R3: 7%, R1: 24%
Nagato hits Mass: R3: 51%, R1: 76%. Vitals Mass: R3: 4%, R1: 17%

With an extra point of armor and an extra die on the guns, Mass has an edge here. While maneuvering is a benefit of Nagatos flag-2, its slow-1 may trigger at an inopportune time. And Mass can still be hid in smoke to negate any benefit Nagato may get out of its flag. The same builds that worked against Iowa will also work against Mass for Japan, perhaps even better because two long lances will now cripple the Mass. The US simply must bring units that can deal successfully with additional Japanese surface ships. If the US player brought subs to ensure they could handle a Yamato, they might consider holding back and shooting from range and concealment at the cruisers in the hopes of triggering a vital or two.

The forty pointers: My primary example in this category is the Tennessee. The other ships have different secondary values, AA values, flags, and a die or two in the main guns, but they all perform similarly from game to game. West Virginia is the best, but priciest of the lot, is somewhat more capable against the 50 point battleships than the other ships in this tier. The forty point ships are all slow, but their main advantage is in the ability to fill out the rest of your fleet with a good assortment of units, including the possibility of a mini-swarm. Smoke can be helpful for hiding these slow units, or you can take a cruiser with an initiative bonus. To match-up against most battleships will require major help from the rest of your fleet. If youre going to handle enemy battleships with torpedoes anyway, you might as well downgrade these battleships into an Alaska or even a light cruiser. You do have the possibility of running 2 40 point battleships with a very minimal remaining fleet. The two battleship will present tons of hull points for opposing fleets to sink, but they statistically have problems with a single-Yamato build.

Tennessee vs Yamato
Tenn hits Yamato: R3: 19%, R1: 56%. Vitals Yamato: R3: negl. R1: 4%
Yamato hits Tenn: R3: 80%, R1: 93%. Vitals Tenn: R3: 12%. R1: 31%

The nice part about the Tennessee is the Yamato does not have any greater chance of putting a vital on it than the more powerful and expensive North Carolina. The bad part is it just cannot hit consistently at range, and if it moves to Range 1, it still is a coin-flip to hit while taking a beating in return. Almost all of your damage in this match-up will have to come from torpedoes, and in that case, Id rather more torpedoes than a Tennessee. Thankfully, only the match-up with the Yamato is incredibly rough.

Tenn vs Tirpitz
Tenn hits Tirpitz: R3: 46%. R1: 80%. Vitals Tirpitz: R3: negl. R1: 7%
Tirpitz hits Tenn: R3: 66%. R1: 80%. Vitals Tenn: R3: 4%, R1: 12%

Tirpitiz gets so many advantages in this match-up that it is just sick. First, Tirpitz flag and ER5 give it a significant advantage in landing shots on the Tennessee. Add Tennessees slow penalty and the ability of Tirpitz to land achieve these shots is significant. The only chance for the Tennessee is to hide behind smoke, where its guns compete much more easily with Tirpitz at close ranges. The lower vital armor on the Tennessee does show up in an increased vital chance, but if Tennessee can prevent many long range shots and can get to the objectives without taking damage, there is a very good chance that it will be able to put significant damage on the Tirpitz. The wildcard in this match-up is the composition of the remaining surface fleet. The US probably wants to bring a swarm of units with the Tennessee, enough to provide assistance to the Tennessee against opposing Battleships, especially in other engagements, while still giving the US fleet the feel of a swarm. The German escorts and air fleet need to provide significant help to Tirpitz in this match-up. With plenty of smokers and a swarm, this match-up is potentially very well for the US.

Tenn vs Nagato
Tenn hits Nagato: R3: 46%. R1: 80%. Tenn vitals Nagato: 1%, 12%
Nagato hits Tenn: R3: 66%, R1: 86%. Nagato vitals Tenn: 4%, 17%

Tennessee should use smoke to hide itself, working against Nagatos flag bonus. The most decisive aspect of the battle will be the interaction between the non-BB fleets. But since the Japanese have excellent options, the US may have trouble building a counter against all a betty swarm, subs, and surface ships

The RN Battleships

Overview: The Royal Navy does not have near the range of choices as the USN, and many of them are hobbled with weaknesses. What this means for the RN battleships is that the player must use more creativity and subtlety. Ive chosen 3 battleships that receive the strongest recommendations from players and show up frequently in builds: Rodney, Warspite, and Repulse, as representatives of the 50, 40 and 30 points Battleships. As of the release of Set V, the RN does not have battleships higher than 58 points.

50 point battleships: The Rodney is the most expensive RN battleship at 58 points, but other possible choices are the two KGV-class battleships. KGV itself weighs-in at 51 points, and has excellent armor. Its gunnery, however, suffers from the jammed mount SA. When you can avoid jammed mount, youve got an excellent battleship. When it strikes, however, it could easily spell doom for your fleet. Thus I would discourage players from using KGV at 100 points. Prince of Wales costs 3 more points, comes with an extremely useful Flag-2, and has an Opening Salvo SA giving it an effective extra dice on its first shot of the game. But at 100 points, you effectively surrender some Battleship contests that you probably should have won. Still, if you want to take a cheaper KGV or PoW, youll have plenty of points to flesh out your fleet which likely makes you more competitive against a sub heavy build or a destroyer build than using Rodney.

Compared the USN battleships we surveyed in the previous section, Rodney is completely different. It carries an extremely sturdy 9-15-5 defensive stat line, but it loses a die from the main gun compared with the USN Battleships in the fifty point range. This gives it extra staying power against a stronger battleship like the Yamato, while still providing excellent gunnery. Flag-1 is extremely useful, but Rodney also carries the Slow-1 weakness. Interestingly, Rodney does get a torpedo attack, which can add up over the course of the game if you manage to brawl. It also packs an extremely strong secondary battery at range-3, but lacks a tertiary altogether. This combines to make Rodney an excellent brawler, but somewhat more limited against a swarm. Surround Rodney with several units that are well equipped to handle a swarm. Sunderlands from the land base can patrol the sea for subs while providing a light 7 dice bomb attack, or mining a key sector. There are few patrol bombers that are really better at 100 points. UK gets excellent destroyers, and their cruisers are not too expensive. Close escorts are an option for the UK player, either by using the Commonwealth Australian Arunta, or by borrowing the Dutch Van Galen. In short, there are a lot of good options for your remaining surface ships, and for your land-based planes in a UK 100 point Battleship build. One final possibility is using a smoke-laying destroyer with Rodney. Naturally youll win initiative some of the time and the SA will be more difficult to use, but youll probably lose initiative on a couple of key turns, and laying smoke will help shield Rodney from potential blows.

Rodney vs Yamato
Rodney hits Yamato: R3: 37%, R1: 64%. Vitals Yamato: R3: 1%. R1: 6%
Yamato hits Rodney: R3: 69%, R1: 87%. Vitals Rodney: R3: 7%. R1: 21%

Rodney is fairly heavily outclassed by Yamato, though it at least has the potential to put some damage on Yamato before succumbing in a straight contest. The wildcard is always the possibility of brawling and using the torpedo. Over the course of several turns, as is normal in a battleship on battleship contest, these torpedo dice add up. The presence of a few extra torpedoes can make a big difference in the outcome of this match.

Rodney vs Tirpitz
Rodney hits Tirpitz: R3: 66%. R1: 86%. Vitals Tirpitz: R3: 2%. R1: 10%
Tirpitz hits Rodney: R3: 51%, R1: 69%. Vitals Tirpitz: R3: 2%. R1: 7%

This match-up takes on some of the similarities between the Iowa-Yamato match-up. Tirpitz has range 5 and a flag-2, while Rodney has the superior dice scores at all ranges. Tirpitz is short a key point of armor, and a key die at closer ranges. This makes Rodney quite superior at brawling ranges. The German player should want to fight this match at long range for as much as possible. Since Rodney wants to avoid these shots and Tirpitz gains both a Flag bonus and Rodneys slow roll in its favor, a smoke-laying escort can help limit these attacks. Overall, this match-up presents two ships fairly close in points, but with quite different strengths and weakness.

Rodney vs Nagato
Rodney hits Nagato: R3: 66%. R1: 86%. Vitals Nagato: R3: 4%. R1: 17%
Nagato hits Rodney: R3: 51%. R1: 76%. Vitals Rodney: R3: 2%. R1: 10%

Both ships carry the exact same gunnery line, but Rodney has the edge with an extra point of armor and vital armor. Both ships come with slow-1 while Nagato exceeds Rodneys flag by a point. But the 10 point difference in cost is a 10 point Long lance destroyer, which could easily tilt the game toward the Japanese players favor. In these match-ups with 40 point Japanese battleships, it becomes imperative that the UK player have good answers to a swarm of ships, and can keep any long lance units away from the Rodney. Slow-1 can seriously hurt Rodney in maintaining proper distance from them.

40 point battleships: As with the fifty point battleships, the UK gets several choices, but many of them are flawed. Fatal Flaw seems to trigger altogether too often. Warspite lacks torpedo defense, while Royal Oak is plagued by Slow-3. The most popular choice remains Warspite for its Long Shot 6 ability. It has some similarites with Rodney above: Flag-1 and Slow-1. But it carriers an 8-14-5 defensive line and loses a die over Rodney from the main gun. This makes it remarkably effective against many battleships in the forty or fifty point range. Long Shot 6 can frequently get you an unanswered shot during the second turn of the game, although the 12 dice attack makes it a coin flip against 8 and 9 armor battleships. But LS6 will always give Warspite a chance to follow it up with a second unanswered shot in round 3. Great care must be taken to shield the Warspite from torpedoes, and this is a central weakness, leaving you incredibly vulnerable to many different kinds of builds, and thus Warspite is somewhat less than ideal of a battleship at 100 points.

Warspite vs Yamato
Warspite hits Yamato: R3: 28%. R1: 56%. Vitals Yamato: R3: negl. R1: 3%
Yamato hits Warspite: R3: 80%. R1: 93%. Vitals Warspite: R3: 12%. R1: 31%

The LS 6 will not hit consistently. As with Rodney, smoke can help conceal Warspite and keep it fighting for much longer. If you do decide to take Warspite, be aware that youll need significant help from destroyers like the Saumarez, or your Truculents if you want to take Yamato successfully. Yamato meanwhile has strong advantages over Warspite. Few battleships in the forty-point range stack up against Yamato well, so the opponent must depend upon torpedoes tow in. If Yamato can effectively control these units, it will have excellent chances of winning.

Warspite vs Tirpitz
Warspite hits Tirpitz: R3: 56%. R1: 80%. Vitals Tirpitz: R3: 1%. R1: 7%
Tirpitz hits Warspite: R3: 66%. R1: 80%. Vitals Warspite: 4%. 12%

This is among the more interesting match-ups that Warspite will face. The ER5 versus LS 6 means that initiative will be important on round 2. Whether Warspite can fire an unanswered LS6 or merely exchange fire at range 5 will be crucial for how this match-up proceeds. If both of the first shots miss, both players also face the prospect of Tirpitz then maneuvering for a free shot on round 3. Warspite matches up here pretty well, despite being a whole tier cheaper, but any German units with torpedoes are extremely dangerous to Warspites long term chances.

Warspite vs Nagato
Warspite hits Nagato: R3: 56%. R1: 80%. Vitals Nagato: 2%. 12%
Nagato hits Warspite: R3: 66%. R1: 86%. Vitals Warspite: 4%, 17%

Nagato gets an extra point on its flag bonus, which can help with its maneuvering. Both are slow-1. But Nagatos guns give it an edge in a straight match-up, so the real question is whether Warspite wins the coin flip on its LS6 attack. If it wins that shot, it gets the opportunity to maneuver for a second unanswered shot. If it misses that shot, the match-up passes into the favor of Nagato. Since both fleets can bring quite a few more units, Warspite also loses some maneuvering room as it will need to steer clear of any deadly Japanese Long-lances. Without Torpedo defense, the UK player can lose the game quickly. Since the IJN player is likely bringing torpedoes in some fashion to assist his Nagato against larger battleships, those torpedoes have the potential to be doubly effective here.

30 point Battleships: The UK has the economical Repulse in this category, which has impressed everyone since it was first released in Flank Speed. The battleship is a star supporter of UK swarms, and carries a fine 11 die range 3 gunnery attack. The main guns are sufficient to destroy threatening cruisers, and occasionally add a point or two of damage to the enemys battleship. Its defensive line is typical of this point range, strong enough to hold up for a turn or two against stronger battleships, while its primary role is not to sink that opposing battleship itself. Nearly two-thirds of the fleet is available for solid swarm units.

Other Allied nations

The Russians and French have decent navies in WAS, but nowhere near as many ships or range of choices as the British and Americans. Among these battleships are the high-end Soyuz, and mid-tier Richilieu. The French also get the Provence and Jean Bart at the 30 point range, though I am limiting my coverage of 30 point battleships. Soyuz is not as powerful as Yamato, but the 10-16-6 defensive line gives it incredible staying power. Moreover, you will almost always want to use the Bad weather fighter SA. If you dont at least attempt to bring a smoke-laying DD with your fleet, you lose one of its major advantages. At the time of this writing, the smoking-laying destroying must come from another nation.

Soyuz vs Yamato
Soyuz hits Yamato: R3: 47%. R1: 64%. Vitals Yamato: 2%. 6%
Yamato hits Soyuz: R3: 56%. R1: 78%. Vitals Soyuz: 3%. 14%

This match-up features two remarkably similar ships but with a key difference between them. Soyuz is short a die over the Yamato which costs it significant hit percentage. To counterbalance this, Soyuz receives the bad weather fighter SA. When in concealment, 50% of the opponents successful attacks will miss, so being able to make 4 concealment rolls in this shoot-out is essential. Yamatos fleet wants to remove the smoke-generating capabilities of the Soyuz fleet as soon as possible, and the presence of a patrol bomber in addition to Yamato can be crucial in this respect. Meanwhile, Soyuz should definitely have a fighter to ensure that bomber gets aborted.

Soyuz vs Tirpitz
Soyuz hits Tirpitz: R3: 74%. R1: 86%. Vitals Tirpitz: 4%. 10%
Tirpitz hits Soyuz: R3: 37%. R1: 56%. Vitals Soyuz: 1%. 3%

The Soviet player should probably play Soyuz as it does with Yamato, bringing smoke to limit the damage of the ER5 shots, while attempting to force Tirpitz into a brawl. Unfortunately, it will take more than a few early strikes from Tirpitz to even this match. If the German player recognizes that Soyuz wants to brawl, a couple of key submarines can force Soyuz to run a gauntlet of torpedoes to beat the Tirpitz. ASW will be critical to the Soyuz fleet and its success against a match-up against Tirpitz.

Soyuz vs Nagato
Soyuz hits Nagato: R3: 74%. R1: 86%. Vitals Nagato: R3: 7%. R1: 17%
Nagato hits Soyuz: R3: 37%. R1: 64%. Vitals Soyuz: R3: 2%. R1: 6%

That stat lines clearly offer an advantage to Soyuz, one that is cemented by smoke and concealment rolls. The smoke can even help turn back critical long lances. Nagato can do some damage to Soyuz, but has its higher chances at close range. If the Japanese player can get two long lances to fall, Nagato can probably finish the job.
Adding smoke and concealment rolls to the Soyuz fleet is only going to improve the chances of the Soyuz. The Japanese player will need some good long lance units to even the odds. Nagato has the ability to do some damage to Soyuz, but mainly at close range. If Japan can get a couple of Long lances to hit, Nagato can finish the job.

The mid-tier: The French have an amazing battleship in the Richelieu, and an amazing special ability called Excellent Spotting. If youre going to bring the French, always try to find a way to trigger this special ability. The French also have the useful distinction of being played as the Vichy-French, and given the few French ships present, Im quite fond of using them with the UK, Italian or German fleets as needed to make the game more competitive and interesting. Richelieu also has the excellent ER5, and is cheap enough that an assortment of French surface ships can be chosen to assist it. Speedy French destroyers are useful for hitting an objective or two early, and in laying smoke in key squares for the Richelieu, allowing it to fire unreturned shots at will. If you win initiative, you can line up the ER5 shot on your own. If you lose initiative, you simply fire, smoke, and hide behind the smoke. Excellent spotting requires another ship, so bring several escorts to ensure that you receive the bonus on multiple rounds.

Richelieu vs Yamato 15/12, 9-15-5
Rich hits Yamato: R3: 28%. R1: 56%. Vitals Yamato: R3: negl. R1: 3%
Yamato hits Rich: R3: 69%. R1: 87%. Vitals Rich: R3: 7%. 21%

Richelieu is outclassed, but it does carry ER5, which can help it fire an unanswered shot or two at the Yamato. Yamato hits Richelieu at a higher percentage at all levels, so the French player clearly needs some torpedoes to assist the Richelieu, so a swarm of speedy destroyers around Richelieu can potentially hit the objectives early forcing a contest around the final objective. Their speed brings them into torpedo range and maximizes the number of dice rolled. Excellent spotting raises your percentages to 37%/64%. But 2/3 of the damage on the Yamato has to come from torpedoes. If the French player can maneuver Richelieu, taking the free shots when possible, or avoiding shots altogether when it cannot, and then wait for the French destroyers and cruisers to engage Yamato, Richelieu might succeed in avoiding damage altogether and fighting a Range 5 versus 3 fight once Yamato clears the destroyers. Smoke can allow Richelieu to fire even when it cannot maneuver for a range 5 shot.

Richelieu vs Tirpitz
Richelieu hits Tirpitz: 56%. 80%. Vitals Tirpitz: 1% and 7%
Tirpitz hits Richelieu: 51%. 69%. Vitals Richelieu: 2%, 7%

Since both sides have ER5, they will fire mutually unless France loses initiative and hides behind smoke with their shot. Tirpitz gets an edge if it manages to land a shot on Richelieu first, but if the French fleet is using smoke successfully, it will be hard to land more unanswered shots on Richelieu. Richelieu does maintain an advantage in hit percent over Tirpitz, and can expand that advantage further through excellent spotting. The dynamic between the non-BB ships in both fleets will be important.

Richelieu vs Nagato
Rich hits Nagato: R3: 56%. R1: 80%. (66/86). Vitals Nagato: 2%. 12%
Nagato hits Rich: R3: 51%. R1: 76%. Vitals Nagato: 2%. 10%

Nagato has more dice but not enough to give it an edge against Richelieus 9 armor. When combined with Richelieus ER5, Richelieu has a huge maneuvering advantage. The range should help it steer clear of any long lance units. France should attempt to fight this battle at long range, using escorts to clear out as many of the supporting Japanese ships. The French player will want to watch the situation around the objectives carefully. You dont want trapped in a situation where Japan has taken two objectives and Richelieu is forced into guarding the final objective while long lance units stand at range-1. So even better than stopping the Japanese player from taking an objective is simply concentrating your destroyers and cruisers on taking one yourself.

The Axis Battleships

Japanese Battleships

The Axis nations have fewer good choices than the Allies. Japan has several 30 point battlecruisers, then a few older and slower 40 point battleships, but nothing in the 50 point range. But they possess the behemoths, Musashi and Yamato. The 30 point battleships really are not needed in a Japanese swarm fleet, since Japan has such excellent cruisers. The lack of torpedo defense on the Kongos and on several of the 40 point battleships pushes them into the not-recommended category. The forty point battleships are more useable as a stable battleship platform, while allowing points for a few critical long lances. Both of Japans top battleships are excellent. Musashi is probably the more popular at all point levels because it is cheaper and has an additional 5-dice AA attack. Yamato gets stronger secondary guns and an extra point on your flag bonus. But both of these expensive battleships leave little room for additional units. Yamato has much better chances against enemy cruisers, and much higher vital chances against enemy destroyers. In particular, the Yamato hits destroyers at least 6% better a range, and over 20% better in close settings, and its vital score against those destroyers improves by 15-20%. You still want to be able to take more shots, but the extra dice make it more feasible to oppose a swarm with a Yamato than a Musashi. The extra 5 dice AA attack is worth on average an additional abort every 4 rounds, and thus at 100 points, Yamato might actually still be the better ship.

Finding a good escort is perhaps the biggest problem. Other nations might use a cruiser escort to expand the anti-swarm capabilities, but Japanese cruisers are more expensive due to the long lance. Agano is an interesting choice because it is cheaper and carriers an ASW threat. You wont be trying to sink opposing subs, merely suppress them. Tone and Suzuya are really more suited as escorts to the cheaper Japanese battleships, where the extra die on the battleship gunnery can improve their performance in the relevant match-ups. Suzyua gets you a second 7 AA attack and raider SA for clearing up swarms. Given the expenses involved, most players wont bother with cruiser escorts, theyll just grab a destroyer instead. Shigure is common for smoke, and the 3-3-2-1 Long lances, but at this point you should probably just aim for cheap AA, leaving Terutsuki and Akitsuki as your main options. Statistically speaking, if you fire 2 five dice attacks or 1 six dice attacks, your odds are slightly higher of achieving 1 abort with the 2 five dice attacks, but youve got a 1 point difference in the units. A single destroyer is not going to help much against a swarm, and barely helps with ASW, but at least you have 20-25 points to spend at the land base. The Emily is useful since it carries a 3 dice ASW attack, a 7 dice bomb attack, loiters, and picks up 2 more armor when challenged by opposing fighters. More importantly, it offers better placement chances for your own defensive fighters. In fact, one might even consider running the Yamato/Musashi solo and simply carrying 2 Emilies, and 2 Zekes from the land-base.

See Iowa versus Yamato, Mass versus Yamato, and Warspite versus Yamato entries above for further explanation.

The forty point battleships, Nagato and Fuso, leave many remaining points for your fleet and probably offer you the most flexibility. Youve got several problems to address. First, youve got to determine how youre going to match-up against stronger battleships. Then youve still got the problem of subs and ship swarms, and finally keeping your entire fleet safe from the air. You can almost always select units that solve two of these problems simultaneously, if not three, but you are limited in what you can do against the fourth. For example, selecting additional surface ships will provide you with some protection against subs in the form of destroyers, help against swarms from the plethora of your guns, and some long lances to assist your battleship. But air attack will pose problems. Alternatively, the land base can be filled with planes for anti-air and ASW, with some possibility of providing torpedoes against battleships. The Betty swarm can provide a cheap punch to help land a couple of torpedoes on the enemy battleship. Even Kamikazes can pack a critical punch against a swarm and do not require a heavy investment. Thus, for example, 3 Kamikazes, 3 Bettys, and 2 Zekes will run 39 points, leaving 13 points for an Agano to escort Nagato, or 17 points for Fusos escort. This would seem to protect reasonably well against a swarm, offer some important assistance against enemy battleships, and provide several units with ASW values in case you are struck with a sub swarm. All of the air units together give your zekes excellent placement chances.

Long Lance units are iconic, and definitely give your battleship extra chances. Nagato already comes with a Flag-2, so Haguro, Suzuya, Tone, and Nachi are interesting options. Fuso lacks a flag, which gives you the option of Atago or Aoba, or even running Yahagi and at least 3 destroyers. It largely depends upon how much youd like a flag bonus for your fleet. Finally, Japan has excellent range on their submarines. The I-19 in particular seems especially made for helping you hunt down enemy battleships. Thus something like Nagato, Haguro, Rufe, I-19x2 gives you a much needed push against an enemy battleship, while bringing a Rufe to handle pesky unescorted patrol bombers that will undoubtedly threaten your I-19s. Overall, Japan has a lot of options when mixing Nagato and Fuso into a 100 point build. I think these builds are very flexible and likely to provide the Japanese player a lot of interesting games at 100 points.

See Iowa versus Nagato, Mass versus Nagato, and Warspite versus Nagato above for more detailed analysis of specific match-ups.

German Battleships

If Japan seemed to have fewer choices than the USN or RN, then Germany really only has a few choices. Thankfully, their battleships are all very different and span an excellent point range. They tend to have good AA values, excellent protection, and gunnery or range advantages. This makes them all formidable against both USN and RN fleet types. The most powerful Germany battleship is the recently released fantasy ship, the Friedrich der Grosse (FdG). This behemoth runs 2 more points than Iowa, while packing a whooping 17 vital armor. Its gunnery is not as competitive, but it does have a range 5 attack. As with other super battleships, fleshing out a surface fleet at 100 points is a serious problem. The FdG does not need sub help, so a good escort or two and land-based planes will be the main options. A close escort Karl Galster offers an extra 5 dice AA attack in the zone, but the ZG3 is a point cheaper. So perhaps a Karl Galster, Hans Ludeman and a pair of Bf109s would offer excellent air coverage, some minor ASW suppression, and a few extra guns and strafing attacks to handle enemy swarms.

Taking a step into the fifty point range leads us to Tirpitz and Bismarck. Tirpitz has an edge on flag bonus, extended range, range 3 dice, and AA, which leads it to be the nearly universal choice. Compared to the FdG, youve saved 15 points which leads to a lot of different options. Sheer and Hipper with their raider SAs help for picking off enemy destroyers and a close escort can still be added cheaply. A single compact zone is probably Germanys best bet when using Tirpitz. ASW and a fighter or two at the land base can also benefit this concentrated surface group. Germany does not have great Aerial ASW options, though perhaps the suppression from a Kondor or Ju88 can help against the heavy sub builds.

At the bottom of the forty point range and top of the 30 point range are the twin sisters Gneisenau and Scharnhorst. Gneisenau is the better ship, with torpedo defense and Long Shot 6, but as with other 30 and 40 point battleships, neither stacks up well against the more solid and expensive battleships. Adding subs takes this build towards Germanys sub strength, while Germany also has the option of expanding their surface ships. The difficult problem is that Gneisenau is almost too expensive for the role it is being asked to play. 2 subs does not seem to help Gneisenau enough, while 3 subs puts too many eggs into the anti-BB basket while leaving the fleet extremely vulnerable to a swarm. Id recommend leaving Gneisenau at home at 100 points. As a second or third cheap battleship in 200 point matches, it has a much firmer role to play.

FdG vs. Iowa
FdG hits Iowa: R3: 61%. R1: 76%. Vitals Iowa: 4%. 10%
Iowa hits FdG: R3: 69%. R1: 87%. Vitals FdG:1%, 8%

While both of these ships possess ER 5, the balance between vital armor and gunnery gives FdG higher chances of putting a vital on Iowa, while still hitting Iowa less frequently than in turn. A straight-up match is about as clear of a dice-off as it gets in this game, so an extra useful unit or two with the remaining points will matter a great deal in who wins. The percentages suggest that Iowa can optimize its chances by attempting to fight at range 3 as much as possible.

FdG vs. Mass
FdG hits Mass: R3: 61%. R1: 76%. Vitals Mass: 7%. 17%
Mass hits FdG R3: 61%. R1: 82%. Vitals FdG: 1%. 5%

While Massachusetts is outclassed, the guns allow it to hold its own against the FdG in gunnery, while FdG gains a huge advantage in vital percentages. Since Mass lacks a flag, the US player really ought to bring smoke to conceal it, limiting ER5 shots, and simply fighting at the closer ranges. It is probably better for Mass to fight at range 2-3 than to brawl, as the 17% vital at close range is substantial. In this match-up, Id expect the US player to do well enough at bringing at least one other unit that can damage the FdG, and the Mass ought easily to do four points of damage to the FdG, especially if hidden in smoke for several rounds. Other match-ups against 50 point battleships will play out similarly for the FdG.

FdG vs. Warspite
FdG hits Warspite: R3: 74%. R1: 86%. Vitals Warspite: 7%, 17%
Warspite hits FdG: R3: 41%. R1: 69%. Vitals FdG: negl. 1%

The chance of the FdG taking a vital is extremely low, even at close range. Most of the battleships below 50 points will not be able to threaten FdG. But many of these battleships can still hit the FdG and do basic damage, and thats enough to threaten the FdG when combined with other fleet elements. Additional fleet units need to offer the possibility of generating 3-4 points of torpedo damage, along with smoke to generate some concealment rolls and prevent unanswered shots.

Tirpitz vs. Iowa
Tirpitz hits Iowa: R3 51%, R1 69%. Vitals Iowa: R3 2%, 7%
Iowa hits Tirpitz: R3 80%, R1 93%. Vitals Tirpitz: R3 7%, 21%

Tirpitz needs additional units that can damage Iowa along with some way to force Iowa to close the distance to those units. Both possess ER5, but the trade-fire heavily favors Iowa. 40% of the time, both will mutually damage each other. 10% of the time, Tirpitz will damage Iowa without taking damage. 10% of the time, both will miss. And the remaining 40% of the time, Iowa will damage Tirpitz and take no damage in return. Tirpitz has some subs, smoke, or ships with torpedoes, or any way to damage the Iowa quickly, the game can tilt in his favor, but this will likely be a difficult match-up for Tirptiz and highlights the main limitation she faces in being a mid 50s battleship with only 8 armor.

Tirpitz vs. Mass
Tirpitz hits Mass: R3: 66%, R1: 80%. Vitals Mass: 4%, 12%
Mass hits Tirpitz: R3: 74%, R1: 90%. Vitals Tirpitz: 4%, 15%

The performance lines are similar, with a slight advantage to the Mass. Mass should use smoke to prevent any unanswered ER5 shots from landing. Interestingly enough, the interplay between escorts will tell the story of the game, as even a single torpedo can tilt the game either direction.

Tirpitz vs Warspite
Tirpitz hits Warspite: R3: 66%. R1: 80%. Vitals Warspite: 4%. 12%
Warspite hits Tirpitz: R3: 56%. R1: 80%. Vitals Tirpitz: R3: 1%. R1: 7%

Since the Germans are the kings of sub torpedoes and Warspite lacks torpedo defense, a few key subs can tilt this game rapidly toward Tirpitz favor. This match-up reveals how much the 8-armor on Tirpitz makes it perform a lot like the 40 point ships. The Tirpitz definitely wants to fight from range 2 or beyond here, but it also wants its escorts and other ships to get close enough to the Warspite.

The Italian Battleships

Most of the Italian battleships are sisters or related designs, and so they have a severe lack of diversity. The Littorio group comes in right at 50 points, and represent the better Italian battleships. At 50 points, they are somewhat of a bridge between the weaker 40 points and the stronger mid-to-high 50 point battleships. Distinguishing them from the majority of the forty point battleships is the fact that none of them are slow. But they have the same approximate gun power that the 40 point battleships posses, and the same 8-14-5 A-VA-H structure making them in essence, a 40-point battleship without the slow roll. As weve seen time and again, the 40 point battleships do poorly against the mid-fifty point battleships, and very badly against the high-end battleships. This has almost forced the Italians into a pattern of intentionally losing the initiative, then using smoke to bring their battleships into play. Of the top tier of battleships, the Vittorio is the most vanilla, but you might as well pay a point more for Littorios sharpshooter ability, especially if you play a smoke fleet. You can never be certain that a situation wont arise in which the opponent sails into your own smoke. Littorio ensures that you keep firing. Roma adds a flag-2, but the art of using smoke while winning initative is difficult to master. The other weak point about these battleships is the presence of only a single secondary attack. The attack is range-3, but a battleship really benefits from being able to make three attacks against a swarm.

In the thirty point tier are the 34 point Giulio Cesare and the 37 point Caio Dulio. Giulio Cesare is fairly vanilla. No flag, and just a generic ER4 and torpedo defense, but at least it has torpedo defense, which many battleships in this tier do not. Another weak point of the Cesare is the lack of a range 3 secondary and no tertiary battery. Otherwise, like many other mid-30 battleship, it carries a 7-13-4 defensive line. Caio Dulio represents a significant improvement for just three points more. You add a single point to your flag bonus, your secondary battery extends to range 3, and you gain a very useful SA called covering fire. Just as the UK used Repulse as a secondary addition to a swarm fleet, Italy can add Caio Dulio for the same purpose. Adding Caio to Roma in a 100 point build does not leave many points available to fill out a fleet, but does present a lot of hull points for torpedo heavy builds. Unfortunately, both ships will remain weak against larger battleships. Caio and Cesare have a good battery for dealing with cruisers, and for helping against weaker battleships, but they lack the dice needed to consistently damage 9 or 10 armor. Otherwise, Caio and Cesare make excellent battleships for dealing with pesky cruisers threatening your swarm, and Caio can use covering fire to prevent vital hits against your own cruisers.

Littorio vs Iowa
Littorio hits Iowa: R3: 31%. R1: 69%. Vitals Iowa: negl. 7%
Iowa hits Littorio: R3: 80%. R1: 93%. Vitals Littorio: 12%. 31%

In addition to the range bonus, Iowa out-damages Littorio by quite a clip. And this should reveal the main Italian strategy. If concealment rolls can cut 1/3 of Iowas damage, and cut Iowas ER5 ability, the match evens up. For example, across 10 turns of R1 fire, Littorio will produce 7 hits, enough to sink Iowa. For example, the numbers suggest that at range-1, Iowa will produce 9 hits and 3 vitals over 10 rolls. Smoke cuts those numbers by a third, so 6 hits and 2 vitals. All of this suggests the fight will be over in less than 10 rounds of fire, but if Italy can use the 18 point difference in the battleships productively, theres a possibility that they can sink a high-end battleship like an Iowa. 50 points is plenty of space to include subs, air, or even a swarm of ships. Littorio will need help in several directions. The easiest is probably a mix of ships and subs.

Littorio vs. Mass
Littorio hits Mass: R3: 31%. R1: 69%. Vitals Mass: 1%, 12%
Mass hits Littorio: R3: 74%. R1: 90%. Vitals Littorio: 7%. 24%

The odds at range 1 are probably better for Littorio than at range 3, thus using smoke to cover the approach and to limit damage is a good idea. If the US player happens to bring smoke with his Mass, then the sharpshooter on Littorio provides it an advantage. The ships are close in cost, so the match-up between the supporting units will decide the outcome of the contest.

Littorio vs. Warspite:
Littorio hits Warspite: R3: 46%. R1: 80%. Vitals Warspite: 1%. 12%
Waspite hits Littorio: R3: 56%. R1: 80%. Vitals Littorio: 2%, 12%

Since the Italian fleet will likely rely on smoke, Long Shot 6 should not come into play. Warspite has a dice edge at range 3, but the Italian player is attempting to use smoke to limit shots at longer ranges. Ideally, Italy wants to advance and fight a closer range battle. Not only does Littorio match-up better, but the other Italian torpedo units have an excellent chance of putting 2 points of damage into Warspite.

Understanding the Cruisers

A beginning player almost immediately notices how fragile cruisers are when battleships are on the board. Cruisers fill a very important niche between the battleship and the destroyer. Destroyers can swarm and overwhelm a battleship with torpedoes. Battleships can overpower all other ships with guns. Cruisers offer a way to protect battleships from swarms of destroyers and protect destroyers from preying enemy cruisers or aircraft.

Cruisers tend to fall in the range of 3 hull points, 3-5 armor, and 8-10 vital. A few exceptions such as the Georgios Averof and San Giorgio have an impressive 6 armor. The Alaska is also classified as a cruiser, and at 28 points is substantially more costly than any other cruiser in the game, but its performance tends to be somewhere between the 30 point battleships and the high end cruisers, being excellent at the role of killing other cruisers, while the lack of torpedo defense generally suggests that you keep it away from the front lines if possible. A vital armor of 8-10 is roughly the same as the basic armor value of the battleships. If a battleship could hit those armor values consistently, it will also hit the vital armor values of a cruiser consistently.

The cruiser guns also exhibit quite a range. At the higher end of the range, cruisers like Scheer can throw a lot of dice, enough to damage a battleship (12-35 percent). Cheaper cruisers, on the other hand, barely throw more dice than a destroyer. These point ranges also feature different values of armor and vital armor. And these values reflect different roles. Some cruisers do an excellent job hunting the opponents cruisers and destroyers. Other cruisers provide some special bonus to year fleet (flotilla leader, cruiser leader, anti-aircraft). A gun cruiser can usually hit the armor values on other cruisers (70-90%). A cruiser of this type even has an outside chance (6-12%) of landing a vital against opposing cruisers.

Cruisers frequently carry torpedoes, their main weapon for countering battleships. If youre just trying to maximize torpedoes, cruisers are not your best ship, but combined with better anti-aircraft values than destroyers, a sturdier hull and helpful special abilities, cruisers mix very well with a swarm fleet and help ensure that your destroyers make it to the front line.

Moreover, cruisers are about the same margin better than destroyers than they are weaker than battleships. Cruiser guns are highly likely to hit the 2-3 armor present on a destroyer, and the better guns of 9-10 dice have a forty to fifty percent chance of putting a vital hit on a destroyer. And light secondary battery makes them exceptionally good at protecting battleships from swarms. Together with the 3 shots from the battleship and 2 from a cruiser, there are good odds of putting away several destroyers on a round of fire.

The large array of special abilities that decorate the stat cards of the cruisers represent the most important differences between cruisers. A small die adjustment to a cruiser for example will not prevent it from carrying out its role in your fleet, and you usually have several cruisers to pick from in a desired range of units. (Do you take Baltimore, Quincy, Cleveland, Montpelier, or San Francisco in the 16-18 point range?) Unlike the Battleships where a die mattered a great deal, a die on a cruiser does not affect its ability to perform its role significantly. An extra die just makes it slightly more consistent. It will still counter destroyers, do a decent job against fellow cruisers, and have its torpedoes to assist against larger ships. Any improvement in the number of dice helps, but it becomes secondary to getting the right special abilities into your fleet.

Roles in you fleet:

1. Small unit killer: Keeps the power of a swarm down by providing you with an extra set of primary and secondary guns. Look for SAs such as escort killer, destroyer killer, or cruiser killer, or even Tough Cruiser. Look for solid gunnery scores, a secondary attack, along with a solid armor and vital armor score.
2. AA escort: Many cruisers carry excellent anti-aircraft attacks, and some cruisers are built with special abilities allowing them to re-roll attacks, add dice, or are otherwise allow you to buy a cheap cruiser with an above-average AA score. If youre trying to cut down on the number of fighters in your fleet, or are trying to play without any air at all, take one or more of these cruisers.
3. Initiative Booster: If you dont have a flag elsewhere, a cruiser is a good place to put one. If you need more initiative, most major nations have a unit with the Flotilla leader-SA, and the Dutch De Ruyters Cruiser Leader also grants a small bonus.
4. As a part of the main force using torpedoes against any opposing battleships.

If the opponent does not bring many destroyers or light units, and does not bring any air, your cruisers might find themselves useless either against a sub-heavy force or against a battleship heavy force. This is perhaps a major limiting factor in deciding how many cruisers to bring, and affects the USN worse than the other nations since his cruisers lack torpedoes.

Counters to Cruisers: Cruisers suffer from being vulnerable to just about everything else. Bombers can hit or vital them. Other cruisers and destroyers can hit and torpedo them. Subs can cripple them one turn. Torpedoes in general cause damage to mount quickly on them. Fighters occasionally strafe crippled cruisers. And Battleships easily hit them and can potentially vital them. Cruisers are among the best candidates for dead weight in your fleet. So it helps to have a clear plan on what role your cruiser is going to serve in your fleet at the time of your fleet composition.

Cruisers in 100 point Fleets

It is possible to build a fleet around a battleship as the main element. Only the IJN can effectively build a fleet around their cruisers as the main element. For all other nations, the cruisers will play a supporting role to other ships. In battleship fleets, a cruiser with excellent primary and secondary guns makes a good escort for your battleship. In fleet with Aircraft carriers, a cruiser will often escort the carrier and may actually be the heaviest element in your fleet. In fleets centered around subs, several cruisers may form the core of the surface fleet, and use their guns to pick off enemy destroyers attempting to gain objectives and/or sink your subs. And finally, swarm fleets may benefit from the presence of one or more cruisers. The same basic logic holds at 200 points. You generally want to be careful about how many cruisers you bring to a fleet at 200 points, the USN especially.

Understanding the Destroyers 

Destroyers are extremely fragile and vulnerable to nearly all units, but they contain some qualities that make them indispensable. Their torpedoes can threaten a battleship, and because they are so cheap, destroyers can be used in a mass to overwhelm the opponent. Moreover, they are the premiere unit for hunting and sinking subs. Destroyer armor tends to be exactly 2. The USN Fletcher class have 3 armor, which helps them slightly against strafing fighters, secondary and tertiary guns, and other destroyer guns, but generally isnt enough to stop a 10 dice attack. The standard destroyer has 7 or 8 vital armor, while AA values range from 4 to 6. This is not enough AA to handle dedicated anti-air attacks, but it does add a small noticeable bonus to a sector. Their main guns usually range from 3-6 dice, depending upon bonuses from special abilities, and are limited to range 2 attacks. This nearly forces them into close range with the opposing fleet.

Main roles:

1. ASW: A destroyer has an ASW value, which offers you the chance to sink a sub by making an attack on it, but more importantly, offers you a suppression value for any neighboring subs. In builds where the opponent has several subs and you have several destroyers, this can result in the enemy subs firing a single torpedo die while allowing the destroyers to make gunnery and torpedo attacks on enemy ships. The destroyers do not need to actually attack the subs to suppress them.
2. AA escort: Basically, the destroyer is adding its admittedly meager AA to a sector with another ship. This can be mutually beneficial, in that the extra AA might help the bigger ship keep its ER, or it may help the destroyer reach the front line safely.
3. Screening Force: Your destroyers rush ahead of your main force in an attempt to seize objectives, deny objectives, push units off the objectives, use smoke, or speedy movement to get into range and threaten the enemy fleet. Just having a screening force offers you the tactical option of keeping some of your bigger ships further back from the fight, which is often beneficial to them. Establish Screen and Smoke are useful SAs in this respect. Sometimes the point of the screen is simply to live as long as possible. If at the end of surface fire, you have one crippled destroyer in a zone next to the objective, youve just successfully denied the opponent from taking it.
4. Ship overwhelm: The destroyer can be used in mass along with cruisers to simply overwhelm the opponent through a large number of ships.

When using destroyers in your fleet look carefully at all their stats. Weve gotten tons of different destroyers into the game now, and they are all unique. While it is easy to discount the gun dice on a destroyer, the presence of 1 or 2 additional dice can greatly affect your ability to hit other destroyers and enemy cruisers. Check the probability chart to see how they fare against 2, 3, 4 and 5 armor. There is also a big difference in 4-4-3 guns, and 6-5-5 guns. If you play a lot of swarms, youll have to fight with destroyers against destroyers While they do tend to bludgeon themselves, youll want to keep track of the small edges you have.
Torpedo dice matter quite a bit. You can sometimes build a fleet around the Range 2 values using cheaper DDs. A unit like Arunta or Cossak gets 1 torpedo across the board, and a decent 5 dice gunnery attack. You can fight at range 2 without worrying about losing efficiency. Most are 2-2-1, which means you want to close to range 0 or 1.

Destroyers often get added last to a fleet, and thus having useful destroyers when you have 6, 7, 8 or 9 points remaining in your fleet can be beneficial. Or perhaps youve built a fleet that is going to have 4 destroyers, but youve got 34 points left. These 34 points leave a lot of room for determining exactly how to split your destroyers into 7, 8, 9, and 10 point destroyers. Even if youve left room for 68 points of destroyers in your fleet, the presence of numerous destroyers at the various price points will be extremely useful in determining how to split them up. Learning to get the right destroyers into your fleet, without leaving any ship off in a zone to itself, when youve got a specific number of points left is a fine art that takes game experience to master.

Destroyers in 100 point Fleets

Destroyers are a supporting element to several fleet types, while also tending to be the core element of a basic ship-torpedo swarm. First of all, battleships will often leave you with a limited number of points. If you desire a heavy surface fleet, the destroyer is your best pick. You may pick several with the idea that if you lose a couple of them to attrition, you still have several to suppress enemy submarines. These destroyers then provide assistance to their battleship against enemy battleships, and their guns do an excellent job of clearing off enemy surface units. You might have a choice for example of spending 14 points on 2 destroyers or 1 cruiser. Both options will get you 2 gunnery attacks, but youll gain an extra hull point, ASW suppression value, light-die AA attack, and extra torpedoes against the opponent. Second, destroyers may also be used to flesh out a heavy carrier air fleet. This largely depends upon how you choose to handle the ASW, and it is probably more common just to use a carrier and cruiser while handling ASW from the air. Third, Destroyers form at least an option in the surface fleet in a sub-heavy game. Likely, they are just filling out points or providing an extra AA attack through close-escort. Fourth and finally, destroyers will frequently be the core to a torpedo-ship swarm. If youre buying 2 destroyers for 16 points or 1 cruiser, youll tend to throw at least a few more torpedoes into the water over the average game. Games at 200 points tend to follow the same logic, just at greater volume.

Understanding the Submarines

Submarines are tricky and difficult units, both to manage and to play against. You can build a fleet around submarines as the main weapon, or sprinkle a few into your build as support. Submarines are the stealthy units of the sea, difficult to spot and attack, but also somewhat easy to render impotent. Great care must be taken both in using submarines, and in defending against them.

Submarines attack with torpedoes, with the average submarine having a 3-3-2 stat line. Weaker submarines might have a 2-2-1 stat line, while Japans submarines typically have a range-3 attack die. Submarines have a relatively short range, so youll need several so that you can concentrate torpedo dice. Cheap submarines weigh in at 8 points, while the most expensive are 15 to 16 points.

Defensive stat lines: Submarines can be either one or two hull points, with the majority having two hull points. Armor values tend to chime-in at a steady 3. Planes will tend to roll 3 dice against this, while destroyers will roll 4-6 dice. To some extent the destroyers will often find other targets and planes will miss more often than not, so suppression from both will be your primary worry. Vital armors range from 5-7, but successful hits are infrequent.

Submarines also come equipped with a host of interesting and powerful special abilities. Some of these are defensive. Run Silent allows you to find a good position, and then remain there, and is worth about a 15% improvement in your survivability. Slip-away is another semi-useful defensive ability. Elusive Quarry allows your submarines to escape the Sub Hunter ability, which is beneficial both to the submarine and to any other ships that might be in range from the sub-hunting destroyer. The destroyer can only make surface or ASW attacks, but many players will use sub hunter to improve their odds against surface units, without attacking the sub. Additionally, two German submarines trade away a hull point for a point of armor, which improves the probability of surviving by about 20%. Other special abilities are offensive. German submarines have a wolfpack special ability. As long as you have at least two submarines with this SA, those two will throw an additional die. Japans I-19 receives Finish him Off, which makes it among the most useful subs in the game.

German submarines: These seem to be cheaper than everyone elses submarines for their abilities. Most of them are wolfpack submarines, which gives them an extra die provided you bring another submarine with the wolfpack ability. The Germans also pick up excellent synergy with their Kondors, which can pinpoint targets for the German subs. If you can get a 5-5-4 dice-line from 2 or 3 subs on a turn, your opponent wont last long.

Japanese submarines: Sturdy (extra VA) and with a long range attack. Japanese subs can also threaten the opponents ships on turn 1, by moving from your side into the center row, they gain a 1-die attack against any ships that made a two-sector move. The I-26 can also deploy to the center rank, where it gains a 2-die attack against those same ships, and 1 die attack against any ships that made a single movement.

If youre facing a battleship at 100 points, three submarines in the 12-point range are generally enough to herd that battleship and gain multiple rounds of quality torpedo shots. A so-called bad sub is still incredibly good at countering enemy battleships. Likewise, even an impressive sub can be suppressed to a single die, or sunk by enemy ASW attacks. So while the German and Japanese submarines may be the best in the game, the allied submarines are still useful. The allies on the other hand possess some of the best ASW units in the game. For example, compare axis destroyers against allied destroyers, and Axis ASW aircraft against Allied ASW aircraft. The Allies receive plenty of options and many roll excellent die numbers. The implication of this is you can bring the allied submarines knowing that the Axis players wont be as effective at countering your submarines.

Submarines at 100 points

The main purpose for your submarines is to counter the enemy battleship. One submarine can be outmaneuvered, but can either deter the enemy from an area of the map, or at least fire a few dice. Two submarines cover more ground, and generally leave at least one submarine making 3 dice attacks on the opposing battleship for a period of the game. Three submarines are generally the prime spot for countering an enemy battleship. Frequently, 2 submarines will have attacks on any given turn, while one submarine is a bit out of the picture. 3 submarines can generally deploy middle, center-left, and center right, which covers the entire gap. At 100 points, you can even play a 4th or 5th submarine. While these represent a lot of points designated to submarines, youve got some leeway if the opponent manages to sink a submarine. But probably the 5th submarine starts to leave few available points for the surface fleet, and youll want some units that can control enemy ASW units.

One strategy to keep in mind for any nation and at any point level is to mix and match submarines for different purposes. Archerfish and I-26 are expensive, but can flush out enemy carriers and can be deployed in the center rank upon set-up, which means they can be mixed with Barbs and I-19s.

Finally, perhaps the biggest key to the effective use of submarines is to develop a clear and concrete answer to ASW suppression. In sub-heavy fleets, this normally involves the use of air. A mix of fighters and cheap bombers can keep destroyers and Aerial ASW away from your submarines.

Understanding the Aircraft Carrier

Aircraft carriers can hardly be discussed apart from the aircraft they carry, but a few general comments are relevant here. Generally youll determine how many aircraft and what type first, then look for carriers and weigh the basing capacity and Special Abilities. Carriers range from 1-4 basing, which provides some flexibility in mixing and matches carriers and special abilities for your aircraft. So if you want to fly 10 planes every turn, youll have different combinations of carriers that can cover those 10 planes.

Carriers are mainly meant to be platforms for your planes, offering them the ability to fly every turn, but they also have stats that help them interact with other ships. Most carriers simply are not built for combat, and require that you baby them behind the lines rather than rushing after the objectives. Gunnery scores are similar to the typical destroyer, but some carriers possess cruiser guns. Since points are usually tight in the process of building a fleet, the gunnery score on a carrier can be extremely beneficial to your ability to threaten units at an objective. Defensive scores are also important, since you want your planes to fly as many turns as possible. Losing your carrier early in the game, or even in the middle of the game can be a crippling blow to your long-term success. Thus, you want to consider how exactly youll defend your carrier, how youll use it in your fleet, and what kinds of armor and vital scores are appropriate to your selection. And sometimes you have to accept trade-offs with the Flag bonuses, SAs or squadron allowances. Dive Bombers are the biggest threat. Since carriers do not normally rush forward into gun range, the best way to hit them is with planes. A basic 7-dice bomber will hit 4 armor 71% of the time: thats a fairly consistent and reliable attack, and frequently these dive bombers can put higher dice totals together. The more important score is the potential for a vital. 7 dice is a mere 1% against 10 vital, but pushing that to 13 dice puts you to 31%. Thus a higher vital on your carrier greatly increases its survivability against its most fearsome adversary. Armor 4 and 5 is the cusp where destroyers and secondary batteries have difficulty hitting.

Carriers possess numerous SAs, the most important of which are the Expert abilities. Expert Dogfighter (EDF) allows a fighter to receive a one-die bonus every turn in its AA attacks. Expert Bomber (EB) gives a bonus die (Or 2) to a dive bomber. And Expert Torpedoes (ET) gives a bonus die to a friendly torpedo bomber. In selecting a carrier, pick Expert bonuses that match the group of planes you will be taking. At lower point levels, you typically wont have both torpedo and dive bombers in the same fleet.

In addition to the Expert SAs, youll find an assortment of other situational abilities. Airfield strike allows you to hit the opponents rearming land-based planes once per game. Naturally the ability to do so requires that you face a fleet where your opponent has land-based planes, and a situation in which the best use of your fighter is to make that attack. This happens infrequently at best. This does not make the SA bad, but it should not be the defining reason why youd chose a carrier, just a something extra that you can take advantage of. Enterprise and Yorktown both possess abilities that help their survival in different ways. Illustrious, Soryu and Kaga all have abilities that trigger when you roll an initiative of 10 or more (6 out of 36 possible die combinations).

Carriers at 100 points

The player has a lot of considerations when deciding to bring a carrier at 100 points. The first is simply that you need dive bombers for some match-ups, and torpedo bombers for others, yet it is hard to find the points to bring both effectively. A single zone of carrier aircraft including the carrier will run over 60 points. Expensive US planes can push that to nearly 80 points. As with the big battleship builds, a dedicated air build puts all of your eggs in the same basket. This will usually mean that you get a prime selection of one and only one major fleet carrier. The remaining points must flesh out the rest of your fleet. A dedicated air-build can try to get around some of the expense by supplementing from the land-base. For example, a US player might take 2 Avengers and a wildcat on the carrier, and 2 B25s on the land base. This wont be as expensive as attempting to take 3 or 4 avengers/helldivers/dauntlesses, yet still gives you a good chance of using Expert Torpedoes every turn on an avenger, while adding some bomb dice for smaller ships.

If youre not taking a dedicated air build, a carrier may assist with air cover every turn. Having two fighters and a loitering patrol bomber every turn can greatly assist in swarm control, ASW protection, and air placement.


Understanding the Airplanes

Complementing the floating beehives are the swarms of stinging airplanes. These planes form one of the most complicated aspects of the game. Almost any fleet type can benefit from the use of air, but it is also perhaps the easiest portion of the game to play incorrectly. Especially at 200 points and above, the game revolves around competing capital ships, either battleships or carriers. While at 100 and 200 points, it is possible to bring no airplanes, the larger point games will almost certainly feature at least a few airplanes. Airplanes are divided into 4 major types: Fighters, Torpedo Bombers, Dive Bombers and Patrol Bombers. Each of these types has its own strengths, weaknesses and limitations, but they also share some strengths and weaknesses together.

Strengths of the air game:

1. You can attack anywhere on the map.
2. You can start attacking the enemy fleet on the first turn.

Weaknesses of the air game:
1. Successful attacking requires critical mass. You cannot just put a single plane in every sector the opponent has ships in. Moreover, you cannot just bring 2 patrol bombers and think youve got a nice air attack. You need several quality planes, and possibly replacements. Your opponent is not going to sit there and let you attack him, so be prepared to suffer an abort or two every turn.
2. Successful attacking requires the right air unit for the job, and not all air units are versatile.
3. Successful air phases require good chances at positive placement. Consider this situation. Youve brought a single fighter to a 100 point match-up. Youve lost initiative. You can either place the fighter on the board where you think it might do some good, or hold it back for the next round. Either way, youre far less than ideally situated for this round. You can run into the same problem at 200 points if youve brought merely four fighters. Dedicated air builds thrive on placement, and look to use their numeric advantage to trick you into placing your fighters in areas where they wont be.
4. Successful air requires sturdy bombers and/or correct placement of weaker aircraft against targets with weaker AA. If you get shot down or aborted too frequently, your aircraft will be ineffective
5. Your carrier can be taken out, weakening your air attack critically.
6. An air attack can stall out if the opponent can flood a sector with sufficient AA.

Understanding the Dive Bombers 

Dive Bombers are carrier-capable planes with a bomb attack. The bomb attacks range from a meager 7 dice to a fully buffed 15 dice, capable of vitalling any destroyer, with decent chances of putting a vital on a cruiser or carrier. At the upper end of this range, they can even hit a battleship consistently.

One of the key values for any plane that you want to focus on is the armor score, since that is the value at which the attack is stopped. If you can abort all the bombers is a zone, the air attack has stalled out. Likewise, if you are playing an air heavy game, you will want to remove as many AA attacks from the sector as possible, to cut down on your overall aborts for the rest of the game. If you only have one bomber attacking per turn, most likely, you will do insufficient damage to stop the enemy fleet. The vital armor on a plane is its effective splash score. 9 vital represents the sturdiest bombers, and these bombers tend to last the entire game. Bombers with a vital of 8 are still sturdy, but much more prone to suffering an inopportune splash. Bombers with vitals below 8 are likely to suffer attrition before the game ends. The trick with bombers is to use the bombers correctly based on these scores. It might be a horrible waste to place 3 Helldivers over 2 destroyers. The Helldivers are likely to get through and put 2 vitals on those destroyers. It might be much more efficient if you have 3 bombers that cost 7 points each over those destroyers. A light bomb attack will normally hit, with an outside chance of a vital. Meanwhile, the weaker 4-7 plane has decent chances of living through the destroyers AA. And this is perhaps the biggest key observation in the game: You cannot play a Val in the same way that you play a Dauntless. The two planes are built for different tasks.

Finally, many dive bombers have a key SA, Press-the-Attack, that allows you to roll a die even when aborted. 16% of the time, your plane blows up. 50% of the time, you get to make an attack in which only 5s and 6s count. The rest of the time you simply remain aborted. These attacks are helpful when you need damage now instead of later.

Dive Bombers are:
1. the main weapon for hitting and killing enemy carriers.
2. Excellent against enemy cruisers.
3. Even more excellent at sinking enemy destroyers, though sometimes overkill.
4. Strong Dive bombers with excellent dice boosts can hit battleships.

Understanding the Torpedo Bombers

Torpedo Bombers are carrier capable planes that carry a torpedo attack and an ASW attack. This makes them good at two roles: They threaten enemy battleships seriously. They patrol the seas for submarines. Additionally, some of the Torpedo bombers possess an SA that allows them to make an alternate bombing attacking once per game. Some other planes in this category are given the mission selection ability, which allows them to function as a dive bomber if the situation requires. This makes the Torpedo bomber a versatile plane, and perhaps the best choice as a first carrier group.

Torpedo bombers generally throw 2-3 torpedo dice as the basic stats, though several SAs can more than double this basic value. Since one in every six dice will tend to be a hit, you come close to averaging a hit per round. If you can reach 10 dice consistently, you probably sink the enemy battleship after 3 consecutive rounds of attacks. ASW values range from a paltry 2 dice to a superb 5 dice. These attacks offer potential suppression against enemy submarines, while the stronger 5 dice attacks will consistently hit enemy submarines. Torpedo Bombers are less than ideal if you have to sink a swarm quickly. Still, if youre putting 6 or more torpedoes into the water every turn, you stand good odds of sinking a destroyer outright, and crippling a cruiser.

Understanding the Fighters

Fighters are among the most misunderstood units. Some are carrier capable, while others are limited to the land base. They vary from 5 points to 11 points, and their abilities range from just barely being able to achieve an abort to being able to splash enemy fighters with ease. They also have diverse roles. Their primary and most important role is to protect your fleet from enemy air attacks. You fleet cannot win the game if it is sunk quickly. Once youve maximized the AA from your surface fleet, the only way to increase your AA in a sector is to add fighters. Their second role is to escort your own bombers, if necessary. Escort reduces the ability of any intercepting fighters to shoot down or abort your own bombers. The intercepting fighter hits on only a 5 or a 6. A third and final role represents the suppression of swarm units through strafing.

The Fighter as Interceptor

Most fleets benefit from at least a little fighter cover. This is great if you can catch bombers unescorted, but not quite as good if you have to fight through the opponents fighter. The key figures for an escorted bomber are as follows: 7dice: aborts 29% of the time. 8 dice: aborts 38% of the time. 9 dice: aborts 48% of the time. Most fighters can get 7 dice quite easily, and frequently youll be able to raise it to 8 using one or more special abilities. The best fighters can generally get 9 dice, whether naturally or through a special ability. None of these numbers are extremely high, but they arent inconsequential either. If youve got important ships in a zone, you need to protect them. Over a typical 5 round game, your basic 7 dice fighter will produce 1 abort, and occasionally a second. If you can get 8 dice consistently, your fighter will produce 2 aborts. And thats for a single fighter. You can add a second fighter to double those numbers. Consider it from this perspective, your 8 dice fighter just stopped 2 hits on your BB.

The Fighter as Escort

The two best candidates for an escorting fighter are the extremely cheap fighter, and the advanced fighter. The biggest bonus to your bombers comes from simply having an escorting fighter in the zone. So cheap fighters like the Folgore can be extremely useful as an escort despite lacking the dice to generate significant aborts. Advanced fighters offer you the chance to remove intercepting fighters since as an escorting fighter, you have nothing better to do than shoot at any intercepting fighters. The mere act of splashing an opposing fighter can help you on later turns with placement bonus not to mention the victory points you would achieve. Generally if the opponent brings no fighters, he wont generate the kind of AA necessary to stall out your air attack. Advanced Fighters can deal with any air that he does bring.

The Fighter as Swarm-control support

Fighters also have a gunnery score. They take a -2 strafing penalty to armor and vital, but even after this penalty, theyre basically a generic 4-7 or 5-7 score, equivalent to most light bombers. Since you have to declare strafing, youre also susceptible to enemy fighters and will not have the benefit of any of your fighter abilities against them. Your main targets are enemy destroyers, and your chance of hitting is not certain, but strafing provides you a way to punish the opponent who has brought no fighters of their own.

Since fighters are mainly defensive units, the counters to them are two-fold: Gain a placement advantage over the opponents fighters. If youve only brought fighters, the chances are extremely high that youll have to place one or more fighters inefficiently. The chance increases as you play at the higher point levels. If youve got a clear understanding of where your fighters need to be, then youre in better shape. For example, if you have a single zone with a battleship and cruiser at 100 points, then the opponent can only attack you in that zone, unless he possesses one of the rare Range-1 air attacks. But if youve got to cover several zones with a small group of fighters, your opponent can place a couple of his own fighters first to force you to make your choices clear. He can then place his bombers in zones where you lack fighters.

For the most part, fighters thrive if you have other planes. In cases where the two sides match-up with 5 versus 7 planes, your opponent is probably going to have to commit a bomber or two before you run out of planes, so this match-up is more manageable for the side with fewer planes. If the match-up is 7 versus 15 planes, the chances were already good that he was going to place one zone of aircraft unopposed, but the opponent has much more control over which set of bombers he shows you. In these kinds of situations, there is a bit of a cat-and-mouse game with placement, and the situations simply require experience and explanation on a case by case basis.

Carriers versus land-based fighters: One of the worst mistakes Ive seen is the act of bringing a huge fleet carrier and loading it with 3 fighters. In terms of points, this frequently costs more than simply running double the number of fighters from the land-base. In terms of efficiency, there are times when you might find it more useful to deploy double the number of fighters from the land-base, either to match-up better against an opponents land-base heavy bombers, or simply to bring more strafing units into the field earlier. This also represents a sizeable number of points in your fleet that are committed to air defense. One must also not count out the fact that a carrier is fragile. When the carrier is sunk, 3 Zekes return the air base and fly every other turn for the rest of the game, diminishing the air defense considerably.

A 2 cap carrier with 2 fighters is somewhat more respectable, especially at lower point levels. You still have the same problem with carrier fragility and the possibility of losing a fighter to a roaming advanced fighter, but youve still usually got an Expert Dogfighter SA out of it, and youve committed far fewer points. Germany will frequently do this with Graf Zepplin since they usually do not need to run dive bombers from the carriers.

Understanding the Patrol Bombers

The last category of bombers are the Patrol Bombers, a generic term for any larger bomber that is limited to the land-base. These bombers vary widely in ability and purpose, and are usually quite different from the carrier bombers. First, their armor scores tend to be lower, requiring only a 3 or 4 to abort. Second, their vital armor scores are also slightly lower, with 6-7 being normal. The dice on almost all attack types can be lower, though some patrol bombers compete quite well. But unlike the carrier bombers, the patrol bombers are quite diverse; tend to have multiple purposes, and their unique SAs give them a special place in many fleets. In small point games at 100 and 200 points, a Patrol Bomber may be able to address two concerns for your fleet. The Sunderland can use its bomb attack against destroyers, and its ASW attack to suppress submarines, while it can also mine a sector, which amounts to a single-die torpedo attack against opposing ships. Thats a pretty impressive plane, and since youre hard pressed for units that can accomplish two or more goals, the Sunderland makes frequent appearances. Patrol bombers also offer you placement advantages for your defensive fighters. At 100 points, a single fighter at the air base may have trouble getting placed against the enemy air attack. The presence of an additional patrol bomber can give the player a second plane that can be placed first, thus allowing the defending fighter a better vision of what the opponent is doing. At 200 points, Im pretty convinced that nearly every fleet type can benefit from a zone of attacking-patrol bombers, which is usually enough to give defending fighters a chance. A thorough discussion of the patrol bombers would require examining each patrol bomber, so I will temper my discussion toward a few general types.

Loitering Patrol bombers: Catalina, Emily, Sunderland. These patrol bombers have options against several different fleet types, while the Loiter SA allows them to keep up with any carrier-based planes that you have. The Catalina and Emily are staples in air-heavy builds because they also possess the Shadowing SA, which adds a single die to all of the attacks made against a ship. You may have paid 14 points for a 3 dice attack from an Avenger, but if youve got 3 avengers attacking the ship, the Catalina has just given you 3 more dice for a mere 7 points. The Catalina, however is fragile, and usually requires you to commit to an air placement strategy.

Multipurpose Bombers: Of the three main kinds of attack: bombs, torpedoes, and ASW, multipurpose bombers have attacks against at least two of the three. Some bombers have attacks against all three. While these bombers are generally weaker than more specialized bombers, these bombers see use when points must be spent carefully.

Single purpose bombers: These units are capable of addressing a single concern, either in an extremely cheap way that is mildly effective, or in a clearly effective way at a premium. A unit like the B25 is fairly expensive for a patrol bomber (9pts), and while it possesses two attacks, both are directed against ships. The B24 is cheap(6 pts), and while it has attacks against two opposing ship types, youd mainly bring it for its ASW value. Its bomb attack limits it to larger ships, and only hits on 6s, which means you need to roll two 6s in 8 dice, and thus somewhat of an impractical attack.

Gimmick Bombers: These bombers usually have some kind of trick SA to them. Kondors have an anti-ship-missile. B25s can also make a range-1 strafing attack. Both of these attacks come from outside of a ships typical AA window.

One final note about patrol bombers is that they are normally cheaper than carrier based planes. When one considers that a carrier bomber will typically make 5 attacks in a 5 round game, and that a patrol bomber will make 3 attacks during that same 5 round game, we can see that the patrol bombers make 60% of the attacks for approximately 60% of the points. Perhaps one of the most common but incorrect comments made is to denigrate the land-base for only attacking every other turn. Sometimes every other turn is exactly what you need, just enough to cause some damage on turn 1 and 3, and to finish off any stragglers on turn 5.

Air units in 100 point fleets:

A fleet dedicated to air usually brings one fleet carrier with a couple of land-based planes. If you lose your carrier, you at least have a few slots open at the land-base for your planes. Your most flexible option is torpedo bombers, which will help you counter enemy battleships and subs, but leave you somewhat more open against swarm style builds. Normally a cruiser is chosen as an escort, thus providing a decent AA attack and some guns to help control an enemy swarm. If the carrier has excellent guns, even better.

Plenty of options exist to mix land-based with carrier based planes. A carrier with 2-basing capacity can be used to supplement what is primarily a land-based attack. Depending upon what the opponent has brought, you can even attempt to trade out planes on your carrier for those most appropriate for the job. So fighters would fly from the carrier when you need air defense, and bombers when you need to attack.

Finally, one can achieve quite a bit with simply using land-based planes. One simply fills the land base with planes and uses them every other turn. With approximately 30-40 points tied up at the land base, youve got excellent chances to offer significant support to your fleet. Torpedoes might assist your battleship, bombs may wipe a zone of destroyers on turns 1, 3 and 5. Fighters may keep your fleet safe. Many fleets will operate with defensive fighters, but one option is to consider bringing an additional patrol bomber to give your fighters more favorable placement chances. Probably the best candidate for avoiding air entirely is the swarm fleet, where an extra destroyer or two might mean more in the typical 100 point game than defensive fighters. But extra care must be taken with the swarm to ensure that ships offer sufficient air cover for each other.

Auxiliaries

The final category for this guide concerns the auxiliaries. For the most part, Auxiliaries can do little in-game, and most of them exist for scenarios and collectors. For example, the Kinai Maru, T1 Landing ship, Gunston Hall and Jeremiah OBrien all generate victory points, but you must get them across the center line and into enemy territory. They then must be adjacent to an island that occupies at least one square on the enemys side of the map. I recently spent a lot of time working on a fleet that could be competitive while generating victory points, and simply found them barely feasible. Most of these units move at one speed, and thus require six turns just to get into position to acquire victory points. The standard game lasts between four and six rounds. Moreover, once you plop down the auxiliaries, the opponent will know what you are up to and can interpose his units between your fleet and the islands. Whatever escorts youve brought with your auxiliaries are going to have to fight your opponents fleet anyway, except youre now down the number of points that youve spent on auxiliaries. Swarms with smoke work best, and so youre going to win some games with that swarm, but you probably would have won them anyway. The best candidate for a VP generating fleet lies with Japan. The T1 landing ship is simply slow, rather than speed-1, and it has at least some combat capabilities. Youve also got a Japanese destroyer with long lance capabilities that can generate 2 VPs here and there. Im not sure how many VPs this fleet could generate consistently, but it at least has the possibility of generating those VPs within the span of a regular game.

So aside from the Auxiliaries that generate VPs, the Germans also get two auxiliaries with trick-like properties to them. The Nordmark costs 5 points, has a range-3 gunnery attack equivalent to a destroyer, but is slow. On the other hand, the Nordmark has the opportunity to attempt to repair a unit once per game. Unfortunately, this is hard to pull off in practice, since you have to commit to no-movement and no-gunnery attacks. Ive known a few players who like taking the Nordmark, but I havent seen a real crafty use of it. Perhaps by hiding a Tirpitz or FdG in smoke on the turn you commit to repair, but most of the time, youll want to shoot with a heavy unit. And one could also try to repair a Graf Zepplin that was damaged by a bomber attack, but finding good uses for this unit are difficult, since almost always, it will be better to move and/or attack.

The final German trick unit is the Atlantis, which deploys anywhere on the map and remains disguised until in the same sector as an enemy ship or it attacks. The Atlantis basically has destroyer guns, so youve got a good chance of damaging enemy destroyers and an outside chance of hitting an enemy cruiser. Atlantis receives fairly low dice on torpedo attacks, but a group of them might provide sufficient strength to damage a critical enemy battleship or carrier on the first round. Ideally, you want to be able to use all attacks as effectively and efficiently as possible, and you stand a good chance of losing the unit through the enemys return fire. Swarming with Atlantis can be good if the enemy lacks sufficient guns, and you definitely benefit from setting-up second. On the whole, Atlantis strikes me as a win-big, lose-big unit.


Part IV: Advanced Fleet Building: Pushing Beyond Archetypes

The Archetypes are useful because most fleets really do have one of three major themes to them, but if all that you do is indiscriminately throw a bunch of units on the table and call it a swarm, you'll have problems winning consistently. You'll get a good match-up and win occasionally, you'll get a bad match-up and lose more frequently. A smart opponent will be able to operate in that middle ground where he can make small subtle moves that undermine your fleet. To win consistently, you must play smarter. In this respect, you need not only to understand what you are trying to accomplish with your fleet, but also to understand what the opponent is trying to accomplish with his fleet, and how those two concepts interact with one another. Even the presence of a single unit can affect how two fleet archetypes play each other. I might beat 2 BB fleets with my swarm, but lose badly to a third one due to the difference in these extra units. Sometimes you can correct for this difference, and sometimes you simply accept the loss, and learning the difference between these two situations is key.

It is helpful with any fleet build to think backward from the end of the game. How exactly are you going to win the game? The rules state 150 points, but there are several viable paths there and different fleet builds will be reach 150 points in different ways. If you don't know how your fleet gets to 150 points , then you won't play your fleet as effectively as possible, and probably wont design your fleet as effectively either.

Regardless of what point level you play at, the same ratio between victory conditions apply:

1. Take all 3 objectives
2. Take 2 objectives and destroy half of the opposing fleet
3. Take 1 objective and destroy the entirety of the enemy fleet
4. Take 1 objective, destroy the enemy surface fleet (worth the value of an objective, and destroy at least half of the opposing fleet in total.
5. Destroy the entirety of the opposing fleet (total points).
6. Mutually destroy both surface fleets while preserving more subs/aircraft than your opponent and remaining even on objectives. This condition is pretty rare and usually results in a victory at less than the total points value.


One of the other key strategic factors is the notion of "concentration of force." In all of human military history, this is probably the most basic and most important of all strategic principles. In general, you want to maximize the amount of fire on the narrowest point of the opponent's line, while minimizing the amount of return fire at your own weak points.

In this respect, one of the biggest mistakes I seeing being made frequently is the attempt to spread out the entire fleet and cover all of the objectives. The objectives are on the maps to force the fleets forward and to engage, but a lot of games are decided by the surface engagement, with one fleet taking the final objective only after the opposing fleet is destroyed. If your units get taken out piecemeal, owning an objective means very little if it didn't actually help you get over the total points required for victory.


Part 1 The implications of the dice chart for Fleet design

For those that aren't familiar with it, the dice odds chart for WAS can be found in Newsletter three. Go to the right hand side of the screen at the Forumini and scroll down slightly. You'll find all of the latest newsletters. The dice chart has several uses, most of which fall outside of fleet design. Most people know enough to use it to determine how to assign attacks on a given round. You want to get the most out of your shots, and that means maximizing your dice odds. I use it additionally to get a feel for my average performance in a round and over the course of a game. If you have a cruiser in 100 point game that has nothing better to do than shoot at the enemy 8 armor BB, how well should it actually perform? 9 dice performs at about 25%, so if you make 4 shots, you have decent odds of scoring one hit. It is this later use that is relevant for fleet design, since you want to take into account how your fleet ought to perform on average against particular builds. Did you bring enough to counter an enemy BB? Do you have enough guns to hold back a DD swarm? How do you even know when you have enough? These are all good questions that I hope to address throughout.

The reason Ive included this in the fleet build section is that in my year and a half on these boards, Ive seen repeated comments to the effect of, Ive included X and Y unit in Z quantity as a counter to the enemy battleship (or sub, or to provide enough guns against a swarm, or to provide air cover). A quick glance at the fleet and the odds chart along with a general sense of the course of the game reveals that these units might be insufficient to that task. More generally, I see different fleets load up on one particular type of unit to counter some aspect of an opposing fleet, and in the process bring more than they need.

There are two aspects to the chart that you can incorporate into fleet design: Guns versus BBs, and AA-aborts. Earlier in this guide, Ive presented the hit percentages of various battleship match-ups, but once youve selected your own battleship, you should probably look at the chart to see how it matches up against a variety of other battleships. Sometimes the conclusions are counter-intutive. For example, 2 Tennessee hit a Yamato at 19% at range-3. Just making more shots at 19% effectiveness is not going to help you sink a Yamato quickly. In fact, Yamato is probably slightly favored to beat two Tennessee.

Cruiser guns are also frequently underestimated against battleships. The better cruisers get decent odds against 8 and 9 Armor BBs. 10 dice hit 8 and 9 armor at 35% and 22% respectively. 9 dice hits at 25% and 14% respectively. Granted, one probably should not build a fleet around the idea of using cruiser guns to counter battleships, but the cruiser guns may be a useful minor assist to your other anti-battleship capabilities.

AA-Aborts: I see many players view the Air phase of the game from the standpoint of shooting down the opponents. The key to the air phase is the aborts. If youve aborted nearly every attack for the entire game, youve effectively shut down the attack. I think it is also beneficial to think about your AA performance from the standpoint of the whole game. 9AA hits 5 armor 74% of the time. In 4 rounds, it is likely to miss once. That is important to know. 5AA hits 5 armor 24% of the time. In 4 rounds, it is likely to hit once. That is important to know as well. Generalizations such as 9AA almost always hits or 5AA just never seems to hit tend to hit the facts behind these values. In general, anything that increases your AA odds is a good thing, even if youve only added a close escort with 5AA to the zone. In general, you want to adjust your fighter totals based on the strength of your own fights and the number of bomber zones that you expect from the enemy. Every nation is a little different in this respect. You might need to be able to put 3 fighters above a zone on turn 3 in a Japanese LL build, but only 1 Bf109 above 2 Germany AA8 ships with a AA5 close escort.

You can also quite easily calculate the probability of multiple shots performing at a particular level. For example, I recently calculated the probabilities of two ships with 8 and 7 dice, supported by 2 Bf109s throwing 8 and 7 dice, reaching particular numbers of aborts. Probability of 4 aborts: 4%. Probability of 3 or more aborts: 24.4%. Probability of 2 or more aborts: 61%. Probability of one or more aborts: 90%. Since the air game revolves around critical mass, then stopping the opponents air game is a question of achieving enough aborts over the course of the game. In this particular sector, there are excellent chances of shutting down the air game.

Part 2 Efficacy versus Efficiency 

One of my important realizations for the past few months is that the game is tough balance between efficacy versus efficiency. Efficacy basically means that the job gets done. If I bring a fighter and it regularly aborts the enemy bombers, it did its job. Every unit has one or more roles to play in a fleet, and if it fulfills those roles, it is efficacious. An efficient unit in this case represent a unit that does those roles better than another unit. A Hellcat is simply better than a Wildcat at aborting enemy bombers, because it gets more dice. Thats performance efficiency. If we just compare one plane against another, then clearly some planes are better than others. But theres this other factor called cost and since our fleet is limited by cost, weve got to carefully consider how many points we want to devote to a particular role. If I only need to achieve aborts, and the wildcat gets the job done for me, then I waste 3 points by bringing the Hellcat. Naturally, if I bring a bunch of fighters against my opponent who decides against bringing any air at all, Ive lost some efficiency, because those are points that are poorly spent in the present circumstance.

Part 3 Evaluating your fleet from the standpoint of the opponents responses

If you want to play the game as rock-paper-scissors, go right ahead. You will have to write some losses off, but I also believe you can design fleets to give you an edge that will translate into a win/loss record above 50%. You might not exceed 75% because the game does involve dice and there will always remain a paper-rock-scissors element to fleet design, but you can certainly use intelligence to improve your chances. To do this, you need to design from the standpoint of the various roles for your fleet. You need enough units of a particular type to get the job done and not a unit more in that particular role. You need units that maintain some effectiveness against several fleet types. The George may still have a roll to play against a ship swarm that uses no fighters if it can successfully strafe some of the destroyers.

What I see as some of the main roles that correspond to the major fleet types that people tend to build.

1. Anti-Air: Every fleet needs at least some way to deal with opposing air. But anti-air is one of the more difficult choices you have to make. Too many fighters and you lose efficiency against fleets that have no air component at all. Too few fighters (or aircraft in general) and you lose placement advantage on at least some of your fights and possibly do not achieve the aborts you need. Strong AA ships have their weaknesses too, usually making them weaker as surface combatants, or simply more expensive than their counterparts.
2. Anti-Sub: Every fleet needs at least some way to deal with opposing subs. You may face none or several. Aerial ASW is weaker than ship based ASW, but eats up slots at your land-base, and sometimes the units are weaker than other air units, making it easier to shot them down, though defensive armament improves their odds against aborts. Additionally, they get lower dice totals, which means you have to bring several of them just to score one hit on a turn. One other choice is the destroyer, and the main bonus I find for them is suppression, while opposing cruisers and dive-bombers can take them out easily. Since ASW assets tend to be fragile, you need some way to keep them in the game. Two other ASW tactics are more crude, but sometimes effective. You could just bring your own subs and use submerged shot against the opposing subs. You have about a 25% of mutual destruction, 25% chance of both missing, 25% chance of losing your sub for nothing and 25% chance of killing remaining alive. A little ASW suppression can alter these odds considerably. Finally, you can simply bring so many hull points with torpedo defense that the subs cannot effectively handle them all before they occupy all 3 objectives. This type of approach aims to ignore the sub threat by winning the game before it becomes a problem.
3. Anti-BB: You need the guns on your own BB, Torpedoes from various sources, or a combination of both to handle enemy BBs. Since BBs are so common, how you deal with BBs is fairly central to your own fleet. Since all of these counters to BBs have counters of their own, you then have to consider how youll counter the countering elements, and it gets complicated quickly.
4. Anti-small ship swarm: You dont need one big gun, you need a number of smaller ones. Put too many points into BBs and you wont be able to sweep the field of smaller ships before they put the torpedoes into you to finish you off. Dive Bombers are a key element here.

Rather than classifying a fleet from the standpoint of its main elements, this approach to fleet building aims to include some units in your fleet to counter the main types of units. The trick is to have just enough, or at least have a pathway forward against the opposing fleet, without loading up too much on one element.

Efficiency is about finding units that can do several of these things well. DDs might form the core of your anti-sub and anti-BB (torpedo) build, while providing you with the guns for an anti-swarm. Since they are weak against air, the only thing left is for you to cover up this weakness by addressing the AA problem. Some of the most popular units have abilities that allow them to operate well in several setting. Avengers are extremely popular because you get an anti-BB SA, an alt-bomb against swarms, and strong ASW against subs. Patrol Bombers often come with an ASW attack, a light Bomb attack and some other useful special abilities. Fighters can provide air defense, and depending upon the fighter, may have decent strafing potential.

Part 4 Managing the Metagame

The word metagame means game within a game. In WAS it generally refers to factors outside of game that influence how the game gets played. If you play against a player who always plays the USN, that is part of the metagame. If your entire gaming group prefers 200 point games without objectives, that is part of the metagame. If your entire gaming group has decided on their own that Battleships, subs and fighters are the best way to play the game, then that is part of your metagame. Or perhaps your group is very strict about always playing a fleet of the same nation, or class limits, or year limits, or night battles, or any of a number of factors. In short, tons of factors from outside of the game can affect what the best units or fleet types are. All of these factors are a game in and of themselves. If you play the same player again and again, you are not only playing against the general game itself, and what units and builds are stronger and weaker, you are also playing against everything that you know about your opponent, his likes and dislikes, preferences and biases, and so forth. This is the metagame, a game that you play against this regular group of gamers that functions within the game itself.

First of all, changing your group can sometimes seriously affect your game. Small groups of players regularly develop their own biases and general goofiness. Starting to play online or moving to a new city can lead to a completely different experience. In my recent tournament, one player responded to a particular move of mine, Thanks for educating me, Ive never thought to do that before. The more exposure you get, the more chances you get to see how the game is played and what moves work. Even if you prefer only a small aspect of the game, you can get better at the game as a whole by playing as many different game types (night, squalls, point-values) as possible.

Second, try to be as unpredictable as possible in your fleet designs. You may like swarms or BBs or USN air, or German sub-Kondors, but if your regular opponent catches on, youre going to see them tailor their build specifically to counter your preferences. Even if you are playing completely new players, it helps to pay attention to the kinds of builds that are popular, because those builds are going to show up frequently.

Third, sometimes players agree to nations ahead of time. This is important metagame knowledge, since every nation has a reputation for at least one aspect of the game. If Im playing against IJN at 200 points, I must understand that a long lance build is a distinct possibility, and having that knowledge is going to affect the kind of fleet that Ill choose. If Im playing against the USN at 200 points, Ill know that air is a distinct possibility and that will affect my build. In fact, if Im playing IJN, then my build is likely going to be different if A. I dont know anything about my opponents nation ahead of time. B. I know they are USN. C. I know they are UK-Commonwealth. D. I know they are something else.

Fourth, if you are playing an open tournament, you need a build that can win most of its games against a wide variety of fleets. This is metagame knowledge. The more games in the tournament, the less likely youll go undefeated. Even if you do everything brilliant in your fleet build and in-game tactically, the dice will be against you at least some of the time.

Fifth, do your best to understand and mitigate your own biases. These are mostly developed in our own isolated conclaves of gamers. Perhaps everyone plays a bunch of games against each other and always notice cruisers getting blown up easily. Then they come onto the forum and explain how such a unit really stinks. Well, that may simply be a factor of their own metagame, and a general lack of creativity. If everyone is playing 300 points with lots of dive bombers and BBs, then the cruisers are going to have a hard time gaining traction. In fact, if everyone is playing dive bombers and BB at 300 points, thats probably a pretty good argument to play something else as your response build, but not a good evidence that a particular unit type (or just a unit) stinks. It is definitely part of the game that as we go from 100 points to 300 points to 500 points, certain units and unit types get stronger while others get weaker.

Part 5 Special Abilities and Synergy

Synergy is the concept that while one horse might pull 5000 lbs, when added to an equal, they pull 15000 lbs together. What they could accomplish separately turns out in fact to be quite a bit smaller than what they can accomplish together. In any kind of customizable game, there is nothing more valuable than flipping through your cards frequently and thinking, How might I put that ability to use? The special abilities make or break the game. Without them the game is far less interesting. Special abilities require synergy. Just about every ability that provokes an unusual or odd response from you has a unique purpose in the game.

Sometimes synergy is quite simple: One destroyer with the SA: Lay Smoke Screen sets up a smoke screen which a unit with Bad Weather Fighter then uses to gain +1 to their concealment check. Or perhaps an Avenger attacks a Battleship while being spotted by a Catalina and receives an Expert Torpedo bonus from a carrier.

Sometimes the synergy is more complex: The Kondor uses its ASM against an enemy destroyer. The roll has a high-odds vital, and almost certain hit. The second round a fighter strafes the weakened destroyer killing it. The third round the Kondor pinpoints for a U510 giving it an extra torpedo die against the enemy BB, but the sub also picks up a wolfpack bonus from another submarine. In this more advanced case, the Kondor performs an important role in your fleet, while simultaneously making a second unit better.

Most players learn pretty quickly that one should observe some fairly good laws of synergy, here are some relevant for fleet design:

1. If youve got an expert ability on a carrier, bring planes that can use it.
2. If you are dead set on bringing a particular kind of plane, find a carrier that can give it the appropriate expert bonus. Dont just bring the carrier because you happen to like enunciating the syllables that comprise its name.
3. If you bring smoke, try to bring units that can gain a bonus from the smoke screen. Many of these units fit well into smoke fleets anyway, so you are not necessarily going out of your way to include them.
4. Try to select units and a fleet design that can help you maximize your SAs. If youre going to bring an Iowa, Tirpitz or Richelieu, at least try to build a fleet that will give you chance to take at least one ER5 shot against an opposing BB. In fact, I see many units misplayed, simply because the player does not try to maximize their fleet with respect to those SAs. You dont play every nation the same. And in nations with lots of unit choices, you dont play every cruiser or destroyer exactly the same. If you just play a I move forward all my units two squares, every turn, youre going to miss the movement subtlety of many of these SAs.

Notes on Using Smoke

Lay Smoke Screen/Sharpshooter/Improved Radar/Bad Weather Fighter: Smoke can make just about every fleet type better. In general, you want to link up lay smoke screen with losing initiative, so that you can fire, use smoke, and the opponent is forced to fire back into the smoke. In mirror matches (BB vs BB, swarm versus swarm), this often is enough to give you the edge. You can also use smoke by winning the initiative, but it requires more skill and a bit of foresight. Essentially, you set up the smoke screen in the spot where youll sail an important unit on your following turn. Setting up smoke on the third rank and then moving a BB laterally is one idea. You can also use the SA establish screen with a smoke-laying DD, and then set up smoke on the fourth rank on the first turn, and sail into it on the second turn---both of these can be good vantage points for hitting the places your opponent is likely to be on turn 2. Meanwhile the smoke-laying units go to a spot on turn 2 where you might like to be on turn 3. Usually if Im using smoke with an initiative fleet, I dont have many smoke laying DDs and smoke is a minor element of my fleet.

More generally with all smoke fleets, it is important not to get too glued to laying smoke. Sometimes you need to shoot, and losing a torp die and your DD guns are going to hurt. So dont lay smoke mindlessly. Smoke increases in value the more attacks that are getting rolled. So if youre playing swarm versus swarm and you have smoke, your fleet is at a distinct advantage. If you lose 4 attacks to lay smoke, and do 8 hull points instead of 10, while your opponent would have done 10 but now does 6, youve picked up a small subtle advantage. If youre playing a 300 point fleet with lots of BBs on both sides, your DDs might be better spent laying smoke for your BBs while trying to fight from a distance for as long as possible. Youll see a lot of BB shots back and forth at that point level, and smoke is going to matter if you cut his total number of hits by 1/3rd.

Part 6 General Tips on Swarm Style builds

In these final three sections, Im going to confine myself to tips on building these types of fleets based on a consideration of what you are trying to counter, rather than how to play them effectively. Playing a fleet effectively usually requires that youve built it effectively in the first place. I also will not pretend to be exhaustive, or even that this represents all that I know on the subject.

At lower point levels especially, torpedoes will be the main way that a swarm handles opposing battleships, so you need units that generate over 30 torpedo rolls per game. If you cannot at least generate that many torpedo rolls, consider revising your fleet. With respect to total torpedo rolls, the number 30 comes from the idea that 1 in 6 rolls will be a hit, and it takes 5 such hits to sink a 5 hull BB. Youll need 36 such rolls against a big 6 hull BB. Moreover, this is simply what the dice odds say ought to happen. You could just easily make 30 rolls and hit 3 times, so you will want the potential to hit the mid 40s in total number of torpedo dice, where even a particularly bad streak is still likely to result in victory.

I usually count on a sub to make 9 rolls per game. If I bring more than a single sub, chances are that one sub will make more than 9 rolls, and the other will make less than 9. Infiltrator subs can deploy into the center rank and then potentially fire on the first turn, so they almost always generate an additional 2-3 rolls per game. Naturally, one can also modify these base numbers by any additional SAs such as Wolfpack, Pinpointer, Scout Planes or Finish him Off. A single sub with your surface fleet can often be deployed center and directed to the most important part of the engagement. Three subs however can still be deployed center, but one of them could easily find itself out of the action if the opponent moves to one of the sides. In a four or five sub build, this could easily jump to two, but you have better board control and give the opponent fewer opportunities to simply escape your submarine.

Ships are a little different. You need to look carefully at the SAs. Battleship killer is pretty important and may double your total number of rolls. Also look carefully at the range. You generally need to close and have at least some of your ships fire from R0/R1 for several turns per game. The basic idea here is that the enemy BB can fire once from the MG hitting on 6s, then can fire secondaries and tertiaries, but is limited in how many ships can be crippled or cleared per game. So if you have 8 ships in range and calculate that youll lose 2.5 hull points per round, you can make a decent projection on your total number of torpedoes.

Keep track of your total torpedo rolls per game. Try to get a feel for when youre over or under, and ask why that was the particular case. Sometimes the answer is extremely favorable dice early in the game (for example, your opponent manages to cripple 2 DDs with strafing fighters). Sometimes the answer is tactical movement patterns that hurt you. But sometimes, your build just didnt have enough torpedoes. At 100 points, you probably want at least 8 ships that can generate torpedoes.

Smoke is powerful in a swarm build. The destroyer is already a key unit in a swarm, and the lay-smoke-screen is an important SA. Your opponent is going to have to make a lot of dice rolls in order to sink your fleet. If you can make him miss a third of the time, that will help you maximize your rolls. Against a fellow swarm, youre both making a lot of attacks per round, so having smoke on your side could very easily throw the game in your favor.

Against another swarm, you want to keep track of your guns and the SAs that influence your guns. In preparing to deal with a competing swarm, you want to be very careful about the balance between destroyers and cruisers. In swarm versus swarm, cruisers help remove enemy cruisers and have great vital potential against enemy destroyers. Frequently cruisers get special abilities that help them against destroyers, and in just about any fleet, these are the cruisers you want for their anti-swarm potential. Some destroyers get SAs that give them bonuses against other destroyers, and these are also useful for increasing your chance to hit.

Setting screens or using speed can sometimes be useful even if you are not trying to rush the objectives. If you can line the screen up on a wing objective that your opponent is not trying to contest (you can sometimes tell by placement what he is intending), you can frequently cash it out on round 2, and then use round 3 to reach the center action. If you did not set a screen or use a speedy ship, youd have taken the objective on round 3 and been out of the action until round 4.

The other consideration is anti-air. At 100 points, many fleets will want two fighters and perhaps a loitering patrol bomber. And everything you spend on air comes out of the units assigned to the swarm. Just placing a single fighter on a round can be difficult for placement, so the loitering patrol bomber gives you something you can place first to force your opponent to commit. One other key option is the close-escort special ability. This SA has three main purposes. First, it allows you to concentrate AA fire in a zone. An extra 5 dice AA attack is quite meaningful at 100 points, especially if youre firing at a 3 or 4 armor bomber, which happens frequently at 100 points. Second, it allows you to concentrate another unit in a zone, which can be useful if you have a lot of ships and need to maneuver against an opponent for maximum torpedoes. Above 100 points, fleets with lots of destroyers can sometimes get into each others way, so the special ability allows the units to be more compact and avoid this problem. Third, in just about any fleet, you can pair a close escort destroyer with two bigger units who have much stronger AA if you want to increase the chances that at least one destroyer makes the front line, for example, if youre playing a BB fleet and using destroyers as at least part of your ASW. So the close escort special ability can allow you to skimp on air and just bring more ships. Any planes that do get through, and then take out a DD or two just bring you back down to the number of ships you would have if youd taken fighters instead which succeeded at their aborts. If you dont take any fighters at all, you may have trouble sitting on the objectives long enough to claim them against a dedicated air fleet.

Part 7 General Tips on Battleship Builds

Handling the opposing BB fleet: Youve got a great range of choices and point values for your own BB, so this comes down to battleship match-up. Even if youve brought a BB, you cannot just pat yourself on the back and claim youve solved the problem of BB builds. You need to consider quality and the odds of winning. If you bring Dunkerque, you probably need to have enough subs to handle Yamato without. Dunkerque can still be extremely good against cruisers, but youre going to have major issues against Yamato. For this reason, subs are extremely common in Battleship builds because it gives you a chance to land an important strike on an unwary opponent and even the odds when you bring a weaker BB.

Depending upon how many points you spent on the BB, you have to divide the rest among AA, ASW, and ship swarm, and it can be a challenge to do all three extremely well. The more expensive your battleship, the more you have to skimp on one or more of these. AA provides a double worry in that you may need to protect your BB, but you might also need to protect any other surface ships that you bring. In a BB build more than any other build, it is extremely important to find dual-purpose units. A couple of Patrol bombers with 3 dice ASW scores and 7 dice Bomb scores and Loiter can be pretty potent, offering excellent ASW suppression and an off-hand chance of damage, along with a chance to cripple an opposing DD, or even a cruiser in a swarm. Fighters provide extra AA, but can also strafe effectively enhance the fleet against a swarm. Or you might use your submarines to assist in killing an enemy BB, but you also use them for ASW through submerged shot. Whatever other surface units you bring, it is helpful if they can somewhat protect themselves, since you wont have many points left over for fighters, at least at 100 points. At 200 points, you start to have more options. It is possible to address the ASW, AA and swarm possibilities first, and only then fill out the BB core to the fleet. In addressing a swarm, youre mainly looking to add more shots. But also consider their quality and range. Range 3 secondary batteries can clear important targets before they come in range. And stronger secondary batteries hit their targets more frequently, though even a 4-4-3 battery still hits a destroyer frequently enough.

Part 8 General Tips on Air Builds

The key to understanding all air builds is the concept of critical mass. Critical mass is the threshold at which your attack goes from faltering to pushing rapidly into the positive. Lets say you put 1 bomber in a zone with two ships. They both get AA against your bomber. If one of them achieves an abort or a splash, you do not get to attack. Now, lets say you add 2 bombers into the zone. It is still possible that both ships abort both of your bombers, but if you only see one abort, you at least get an attack out of it. Now add a third bomber, you only suffer two AA attacks, so youre guaranteed at least one attack. You are capped at 4 planes per zone in the standard scenario. This is a piece of tactical placement wisdom, but it rolls all the way back to fleet design. If you did not build your fleet at the start to allow you to place 4 planes in a zone, you just wont make progress with your air attacks.

Working against your efforts to maintain critical mass is the concept of attrition. Over the course of the game, one or more planes will be destroyed. Sometimes youll fall below critical mass, which means you only have 2 planes of your initial three and are now suffering 2 aborts per turn and no attack. Some planes will attrition faster than others. You have to account for attrition at the build stage of your fleet.

In short, if youre going to bring air units, you need to think of them in terms of zones. A zone is four aircraft, and then youve also got to account for attrition. For determining how many zones of aircraft to bring, I use the guideline of 1 zone of aircraft per 100 points. So at 200 points, you probably do not want to exceed 2 full zones of aircraft. The reason is quite simple. Your opponent can potentially consolidate zones by bringing big units. Ive got a few anti-air builds at 200 points that squeeze everything into 2 zones with a fairly compact fighter cover. If youve brought 3 full zones, youll have 30-50 points of aircraft that will do basically nothing for the rest of the game. The only exception to this rule is the rare units that can still attack from range-1. And youre not going to win many games where 50 points of your fleet is completely ineffective. Moreover, as the game progresses and you do damage, the number of zones are going to diminish. Something that is very difficult to sync-up is the idea of bringing 3 zones of aircraft that will attrition into 2 zones of aircraft as the game progresses. In theory it sounds good, but Ive not had a game yet where I thought that it worked well.

Another consideration is when to place 4 bombers into a zone or 3 bombers and an escorting fighter. Now, if you dont bring 4 bombers at the fleet design phase, then the answer is already predetermined, but lets say you really want to know if you should design with an extra bomber in mind. First of all, if you can gain a placement advantage, as happens often when you supplement heavily with land-based patrol bombers, you definitely want the 4 bombers. They may be weaker, but your goal with the fleet design is to bring enough planes that you can safely place these weaker patrol bombers last and away from enemy fighters. Second, if you do have 8-9 vital armor on your bombers, you can sometimes justify placing them against a single defensive fighter, though watch out for Interceptor. This is especially true if youve got defensive armament or light defensive armament. In this case, youre just trying to maximize your attacks. If you do lose a bomber to attrition, you still have 3 to the zone for the rest of the game and you can then add your own escorting fighter.

All of this knowledge can be taken into account at the build phase. Bringing 4 bombers to a zone is a useful technique because it gives you the option of that fourth bomber while also providing you some room for attrition. In fact, one build that Ive used at 200 points is basically a 1.5 zone build. What this means is that I bring 6 bombers, 4 carrier based and 2 patrol bombers. 4 bombers can potentially be placed in the same zone against a strong target, if the opportunity arises, while 2 can be placed against targets with weaker AA, and therefore less likely to achieve an abort. Alternatively, the 6 bombers can be broken into 2 groups of 3 bombers + escorting fighter. Moreover, this does not tie up a huge number of points in the air wing while still giving the air wing some zip.

One other option is to bring carrier planes but station on your land base. If you lose a carrier plane, you land one of these planes on your carrier and continue attacking every turn. The most frequent strategy for this is to bring a weaker or cheaper carrier plane. Keeping a spare Avenger or Jill at the land base is pretty expensive, but running Vals from the land-base runs only slightly more expensive than the average patrol bomber and they remain effective if carrier-deck space becomes available. Fighters are likewise an option if you expect to lose some carrier fighters.

Yet another option for carrier efficiency is to bring the four planes for the zone, but operate a Cap-3 carrier. After the first turn, you determine how many fighters you really need and assign those to the carriers, completing the deckspace with your bombers. The remaining planes visit the land-base for a turn.

Make sure your Expert SAs and the planes you bring match. If youre going to pay for the SA, at least bring the correct type of bombers for it.

If you really want to make use of your Expert SAs, make sure you bring enough of the correct bomber type. Mixing bomber-types is a good way to ensure that you wont get to use your expert ability. Naturally, if youre playing 300 points and have multiple carriers, mixing bombers is acceptable and even beneficial. But if youve got a single carrier, youll have a hard time being effective if you bring a historically realistic contingent of 1 Torpedo bomber, 1 Dive bomber and 1 Fighter. If youve brought two carriers with those contingents, but both carriers have different SAs, you have better odds of getting to use them. If youve brought two 3-cap carriers that both have Expert bomber 2, and have 4 dive bombers and 2 fighters. Youve got decent odds of using both Expert Bomber-2 SAs.

Ideally, you want to be able to use each Expert SA every turn. Expert Dogfighters are normally not that hard, but using your expert bombers and Torpedoes require that you have unaborted bombers of the correct type remaining. This in turn means you need enough bombers of that type to survive the AA fire in your build. 1 Expert Torpedo/Bomber ability for every 3 bombers is a good ratio, or 2 expert abilities if you can regularly put 4 aircraft into a zone.

Units with Shadowing belong in nearly every carrier air build.

Build an air dominance fleet with the idea of achieving placement superiority. Youre going to need to fill your land-base and supplement placement wherever you can. But nearly every heavy air fleet has some units that really must be placed last and away from the enemy fighters. USN Catalinas are a good example of this.

If youre going to include an advanced fighter in your build, plan your build on maximizing its Advanced Fighter dice. This means that you ideally want it escorting bombers. It can more freely shoot down opposing fighters as an escort, or completely discourage the opponent from putting any fighters into the zone. And if youre bringing a Hellcat, you should bring an Expert Dogfighter SA for it, and preferably an Expert Dogfighter 2. If youre going to do something, make sure that you do it well.

Unfortunately, there is quite a bit more to say about playing an air build effectively, and this document is already running quite long. My goal here has been to get the beginning player started while giving more advanced players some tips to chew on. A quick glance at the fleets Ive seen posted over the years, the fleets Ive encountered both in-person and online, and the general comments made over this time shows that some concepts have not been absorbed within the broader community, so I offer these meager insights to spur our thinking on these builds.