Matrix Games Forums

Malta's a major port on the Italian Coast sea area. It can hold all the ships and 3 air units (more with seaplanes, engineers, or HQs).

IMO that makes it a valuable asset to defend for the Allies. Makes life much simpler when they are on the offensive in the Med.

ORIGINAL: composer99

Malta's a major port on the Italian Coast sea area. It can hold all the ships and 3 air units (more with seaplanes, engineers, or HQs).

IMO that makes it a valuable asset to defend for the Allies. Makes life much simpler when they are on the offensive in the Med.

warspite1

Aircraft re-basing is also easier with Malta in CW hands. I agree with those posters that said they would not give it up without a fight.

ORIGINAL: warspite1

ORIGINAL: composer99

Malta's a major port on the Italian Coast sea area. It can hold all the ships and 3 air units (more with seaplanes, engineers, or HQs).

IMO that makes it a valuable asset to defend for the Allies. Makes life much simpler when they are on the offensive in the Med.

warspite1

Aircraft re-basing is also easier with Malta in CW hands. I agree with those posters that said they would not give it up without a fight.

Let me put it this way. Only if I get a good draw of units which I can transport to Gibraltar or Egypt, I might be persuaded to put a unit in Malta to defend it at setup. Now, if the Italians are not going to go to war in 1939, I will put a unit in there. But it isn't on my "must put a unit in there at start" list.

ORIGINAL: Centuur

ORIGINAL: warspite1

ORIGINAL: composer99

Malta's a major port on the Italian Coast sea area. It can hold all the ships and 3 air units (more with seaplanes, engineers, or HQs).

IMO that makes it a valuable asset to defend for the Allies. Makes life much simpler when they are on the offensive in the Med.

warspite1

Aircraft re-basing is also easier with Malta in CW hands. I agree with those posters that said they would not give it up without a fight.

Let me put it this way. Only if I get a good draw of units which I can transport to Gibraltar or Egypt, I might be persuaded to put a unit in Malta to defend it at setup. Now, if the Italians are not going to go to war in 1939, I will put a unit in there. But it isn't on my "must put a unit in there at start" list.

warspite1

And there again is yet another example of why this game is so damn brilliant and so replayable.

There is no right or wrong strategy, each player determines what works - but then what works is not necessarily the same from game to game thanks to the ingenious idea to make starting forces (and subsequent builds) open to chance. Simple but brilliant too.

I'm on the side of putting "a unit" in Malta. I don't think you want to give it away that easily. However, one unit, and that being the ARTY should be the only set up unit...the other CW units are too valuable elsewhere...esp. France.

ORIGINAL: Centuur

It takes too many land units to make Malta "invade proof". So why put anything in there? Let the Italians take it. The CW still has major fleet bases at Gibraltar and Alexandria, far from Axis land based air. Malta isn't important at all IMHO. If you garrison it, you are destined to lose a unit for a long time (or it gets destroyed if the Italians decide to attack the Island).

I've found that when trying to attack Italy late in the game it is much harder without Malta. At that point the Italians can put a decent defense in malta that makes it hard to take. (A white print GAR at least, sometimes more.) Trying to get into the Italian coast with only the minor ports is much harder. Doable, but much harder. If the CW can hang on to Malta it makes the invasion of Italy happen so much easier.

And as someone else said, the Allies are playing for time. Even if the one unit you put in Malta dies it costs the Axis at least one impulse and probably an entire turn of shifting units to pull it off, and they don't have that much invasion capacity anyway.