Aircraft on CAP are placed to show "where they will enter play" so are not actually on the table to be intercepted.

From 4.2.7
All of the Blast markers are removed from the formation
immediately after it takes the action test, whether it passes the
test or not. If it passes the test, it may carry out an action, and if
it fails it may not.

Again, technically CAP aircraft are not on the table they are placed to show where they will enter play.

What I seem to be seeing from the supporters here are aircraft with very few detrimental consequences from failures. That's not GW's style for sure.

Now look at the practical aspect of the jinking penalty. There is none. If you have made it to the ground attack target, survived ground flak and are being fired on by CAP, who in their right mind would choose not to drop their bombs and jink instead? After the bombs are dropped, do you seriously believe that every AC can then get a free 4+ jinking save with no detriment whatsoever? That they can shoot AA at another dog fighter while they are busy dodging fire themselves? Can't shoot is pretty clear. If all jinking ever affected was ground attack runs then they would have said AC must abort the ground attack run. But there is other types of AC shooting, defensive AA and CAP AA (both far more often referred to as shooting compared to ground attack as I recall, I could be wrong of course.) Therefore if jinking stops all shooting, then situations could exist that would require you to jink before both types of shooting.

Additionally, why bother placing planes on the table if they are not really there? They would not benefit from existing ground flak protection, nor would they apply the benefit of their own AA umbrella. How does "showing where it enters play" translate into "the model you activated and placed on the table is not really there"? hmmm, place a marker on your own table edge to show where your objective enters play, but its not really there.

_________________
~Laserwolf

Yes, we know, the game was intended to be played in the 2000-5000 points range...

The down side from failing to activate is obvious, the formation gets to do nothing for a full turn thats a massive downside.

Usually the ones who have to make a save on all their fighters/fighterbombers . At home games and especially at tournaments I quite often see players choosing to jink and losing thier ground attacks etc. when faced with making 6+ saves on every aircraft in the formation.


Yes I do, Also if they are intercepted after performing a ground attack they would get thier defensive AA attacks before the intercepters fired thiers so any dodging/jinking would come after they had already fired defensive AA in that situation.


Jinking doesn't just affect ground attack runs it affects the Action that the AC are taking. If they jink then that Actions attacks are forfitted.
So whatever action the AC formation is performing (ground attack/CAP/Intercept) if they jink before making thier attacks those attacks are lost.



CAP and Intercept are part of the AC's action for that turn and are lost if the formation jinks before making those attacks, it is only defensive AA attacks that can be used after jinking.
This (for me) is akin to broken ground formations who also according to the rules "never shoot" or lend support to an assault still getting to fight back if they are engaged themselves.


The rules are,
Combat Air Patrol (CAP): Only fighters and fighter-bombers
can choose this action. Take an action test for the formation
and if it passes set up the formation touching your own side’s
table edge to show where it will enter play.

highlighted the relevent part, the AC are not placed on the table they are placed at the edge where they are to enter play and some players do use CAP markers instead of actual AC in that situation.

I understand the "what's the trade-off" issue. However, I don't think there is intended to be a tradeoff. I think jinking really is supposed to be a "free" benefit for fighters and fighter-bombers, no different than their inherent improved turn radius. From a realism standpoint, once they've finished a dedicated attack, of course they will revert to dogfight/survival mode to try to get back to base. The defender may be attempting to disengage but is still going to take any attacks of opportunity against the attacker, not just blindly run.

From a game mechanic standpoint, the +1 to hit for the attacker versus the 4+ save for the defender reflects that pretty well. The interceptor is focused on trying to down the enemy, while the defender is trying to get away and has less effective fire (assuming fire arc restrictions don't remove it completely).

For the rule text, I've always read "lose their attack if they have not already taken it" to refer to the appropriate action-related attack (ground attack, intercept, CAP). Also, the one FAQ we have on jinking (which was not written by me) seems to have that interpretation as well. An air assault transport which jinks does not lose its ability to participate in a ground assault, meaning it only loses its ranged attack.

I'm with Meph's and dptdexys' interpretation. Jinking means you lose the action-related attack if any remains, but defensive AA continues to operate.

Fair enough good to have the call on this :-)

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

I'll play that if opponents want, but I'm not keen on it personally.

I suggest a good compromise house rule could be to allow the aircraft to have defensive AA fire post jink, but to apply a -1 to hit.

So you can intercept someone on CAP and if they jink they cannot CAP?

_________________
~Laserwolf

Yes, we know, the game was intended to be played in the 2000-5000 points range...

You can't CAP a CAP, CAP only works against enemy Ground Attacks.

You can Intercept a CAP'ing air formation, but since this is a separate, later, activation, the CAP attack will already have take place, and the CAP'ing formation is suffers no penalty from jinking at that time.

(reference: Rulebook section 4.2, p49)

Side note, and Opinion only: It would be nice to be able to CAP an enemy CAP action; It would give a way of representing fighter escorts to bomber attacks.

I believe many groups do allow caping of cap. But from my point of view you then have to allow cap to cap a cap that is intercepting a CAP and so on!

That depends on what you mean. I was actually thinking of ground flak. Flying through ground flak on CAP and then jinking to avoid it (negating the CAP) would be rather poor play, but people make mistakes.

You cannot intercept a CAP formation before it enters play, so you can't pre-emptively intercept them to stop their ability to CAP.

As others noted, you cannot CAP a CAP under the book rules, but if your play group allows it, a CAP formation intercepting might decide to jink if they were themselves attacked before they were able to hit the primary interception target.

And, of course, once a CAP formation has performed the CAP interception and is on the board, the opponent could use a later activation to Intercept them as normal. The CAP formation would have no reason not to jink.

So it sounds like "If an air unit wishes to gain a 4+ save it must sacrifice it's mission, otherwise after the air unit has completed its mission it gets a 4+ save."

I believe you should be able to intercept units sitting on CAP. Intercepting patrols is a rather common practice as I recall.

_________________
~Laserwolf

Yes, we know, the game was intended to be played in the 2000-5000 points range...