Long has the rule governing patrol attacks bothered me. In my more radical moments, I've said to an Europa friend or two that the rule should be dropped from the game altogether. Only more recently, after some careful consideration, have I stumbled on a simple answer that solves the patrol problem but also accomplishes everything the official rule was designed to accomplish.

What's wrong is that patrol attacks and interception are two different ways of showing the same thing, and Europa, instead of settling on one or the other, has greedily opted for both. Thus defending fighters work time and a half. This is theoretically unsound. But if patrol attacks were dropped from Europa, the game would be historically unsound because air combat didn't just occur over the mission's target.

It is easy to imagine that the interception rule was designed first. In playtesting, it must have become quickly apparent that the interception rule had a loophole as big as a hangar: a mission force could fly to a target deep inside enemy territory, right over a barrier of fighter defenses, but encounter no resistance whatsoever unless enemy fighters happened to be within interception range of the target hex. In real warfare, the mission force would likely have been intercepted when passing through the frontline fighters. Thus Europa's patrol attack was probably born. It would've been an incredibly messy design feature to allow true interception anywhere along the mission force's flight path, but patrol attacks could do much the same thing at minimal cost in playability. Then it probably arose next that patrol attacks could be too effective, thus they were limited to one attack per hex per occasion.

That patrol attacks are still too effective is evident in play, and I believe others would agree. Ken Kettering spoke of it in ETO #33. Rick Gayler and Deen Wood have both mentioned it to me directly. One way to prove the point is to examine the effectiveness of patrol attacks relative to interception.

First, patrol attacks have a somewhat freer choice of targets than interceptors do (though the phasing player will do all he can to dupe the defender). In interception, there's usually an escort screen getting in the way, but a patrol attack can bore right in on a bomber. (A good tactic, though, is to patrol attack the escorts and thereby weaken the screen prior to interception.) Second, the chances of the return result in a patrol attack are nearly the same as the chances of a K or A result if the two air units were lined up in air combat. In addition, the patrolling fighter itself suffers no adverse result. So in its own way, a patrol attack is about the equivalent of an interception. The rub is that defending fighters are allowed to do both.

A simple solution to this problem is to make patrolling a mission. A patrol mission is executed as normal, i.e., the patrolling fighter performs it during the phasing player's Air Movement Step but the unit never leaves its base. (in this way, the fighter could later be caught on the ground by bombers.) A defending fighter could either patrol or intercept during the air phase but not both. Thus a barrier of fighters can still disrupt a mission should it fly over them towards a distant target, but those same fighters can't be called upon for more interception work that phase.

While this solution muzzles the bonus bite that defending fighters used to have, it also adds an extra layer of decision making. No longer are patrol attacks a free gift; they must be exercised wisely. Likewise the phasing player is better able to overload the air defenses by using feints. This solution balances the air game and makes it more dynamic. Consequently your next air campaign will be influenced more by player decisions than by the throw of the dice. Thumbs up!

Letter to Editor: Reaction (EUR4)