Deck 5 Opening Salvo - Painlevé and Caracciolo

Painleve is a nice addition with its twin joffre she complete the DB combo panel

What is the class limit for the Francesco Caracciolo?

Very impressive work.

My apologies. I had to re-export that card with a different card number. We had a card alphabetically out of order that required shuffling the Italian cards. I have posted the fixed images.

The whole topic of "never were" (as Alnavco calls them) ships and aircraft is subjective and controversial. I personally think they are a necessity for the Axis if you want to play beyond 1943. Everyone has their own "line in the sand" where they would prefer to go with "fantasy" (as the haters named them) ships and aircraft. Some don't want any of them. Rich Baker (game designer) let that horse out of the barn with Graf Zeppelin in the second WotC deck. Some people actually quit the game over that one. Graf Zeppelin also set the "precedent" for 'what if' (as the alternate timeline books call them) aircraft with Stuka operations. The Germans were planning to base navalized Stuka's and Bf-109's on Graf Zeppelin and her sisters. They even converted some aircraft and were training pilots on a mock carrier deck on land. RB put the Italian carrier Aquila in the next deck (it was basically complete and two weeks away from scheduled sea trials) along with the planned navalized Re.2001CB fighter-bombers. Then he gave us Moltke, Freiderich der Grosse, Sovyetskiy Soyuz, and Montana. I may be missing one or two there. Anyway, we create these "Sea God" expansion decks with the general rule that we stay within the boundaries set by RB in the original game. We leave "rules expansions" to other deck projects. He definitely opened the doors for "never were" units.

But we have had to make some subjective decisions along the way because RB didn't exactly write down a "game makers guide" for the game. After some discussion it was decided that class limits for "never were" ships would be limited to the number of actual named cards for ships in that class. The precedent there is Montana, FdG, and Graf Zep, where RB officially only allowed one of them even though sisters were under construction or planned. So we just increment the class limit when we create a sister. Fairly easy decision. For aircraft we have to look at proposed purchases, modifications and prototype development. Wildcat Operations clearly derived from the purchase order France made for Wildcats to base on Bearn and the under-construction Joffre. We added Dauntless operations because the French navy had also ordered some of those for their carriers. As with the Wildcats, the Dauntlesses that were built for France were diverted elsewhere.

We were on our own when it came to how we should configure pre-war "Treaty ships" that were never completed. Again after some discussion we decided the only practical way to do them would be to represent their likely state of refit at the time the war started. If we did them "as planned" (back in WWI) they would be pretty useless. And arguably they wouldn't be "historically correct" either since they would definitely have been upgraded/refit along the way just like the WWI-era ships that were still in service. So for those "what if" ships we look at the upgrades their closest commissioned ships received during the inter-war period and apply those to the "never were" ships. It's not that hard really. The inter-war upgrades given the old ships were pretty consistent by nation for weaponry and armor/blister/rangefinder technology. So those ships represent "start of WWII" status which I think is a reasonable, and conservative, approach. 

I hope that helps those of you that are relatively new to understand how we got where we are with "fantasy" units. There are a few deviations, but we try to keep those in check. As I said earlier, everyone has their own "line in sand" with these. Some don't want any, others would do German flying saucers, and everything in between. The default for the entire project is usually to stay within the boundaries set by RB/Wotc because that is the only defensible position. Once you go outside those boundaries then there are no boundaries. It just becomes a free-for-all of everyone trying to get their own way for units and rules changes and additions. It is definitely subjective, but common sense (sometimes) can see the obvious outliers.

My own personal preference would have been 1) ships that at least had their keels laid, and 2) ships and aircraft that could have reasonably been built and operational by the end of the war. (Allowing for the fact that the Axis factories were being constantly bombed the last two years of the war.)  But RB broke those barriers with Moltke and Montana so we are left with a "lively debate" whenever units like that are proposed.

In the case of Italy we are talking about a single canceled BB. I doubt she would have been left in 1920's configuration while the others were rebuilt. If anything she would have been rebuilt and one of the older BB's would have been scrapped or left unmodified for second line service.