Check Your 6! - Target: Portland

Some weeks ago I hosted another game of Check Your 6! This time it was a fairly large game, with Luftwaffe bombers and fighters opposed by RAF Spitfires. We were playing a modified version of the Target Portland scenario from the CY6! Battle of Britain campaign book.

Below, the German BF-109 fighters were piloted by Conscripts Brian and Kevin. I ran the JU-88 bombers flying in formation.



Below, a Vic of three Spitfires.



Conscript Frederick, and newbie flyer Malcolm ran the Spitfires.



The Brits drew first blood, erasing the German squadron leader in a hail of bullets. Frederick's wingman did enough damage by himself to auto-kill the bomber! The crew parachuted into captivity.



Both sides traded fighters as a Spitfire and Bf-109 went down, and a German bomber takes an engine hit. The Spitfire pilot bailed out OK; he was probably back in the cockpit the next day. The German fighter pilot did not fare so well, being killed as he tried to hit the chute. To the right of the frame, Duncan's ME-110 Zerstroyer fighters have shown up to party.



Brain, Kevin, and Duncan contemplate their moves.



The stricken bomber slowly drops out of formation.



The ME-110's and a couple of Bf-109's tie up the majority of the remaining defenders.



Frederick's flight leader damaged another bomber.



A Spitfire with airframe damage tried a tricky manoeuvre...



...but pulled its own wings off in the process! The Spitfire closest to the camera was set on fire by cannon fore from the German heavy fighters.



As another Spitfire drew a bead on a bomber, an escorting ME-110 executed a mid-air ram!



Both planes received engine damage and spun out of the fight. Meanwhile, fighters who had run out of ammo headed back to their respective board edges.



Most of the bombers managed to survive the gauntlet, dropping their bombs on Portland!



We don't play enough Check Your 6! It's fast to learn; both Malcolm and Duncan were new to the game, and picked up its basics within a couple of turns.

Wings of Glory - Campaign Game

Some time ago, we played another game in the long-running Wings of Glory campaign. For that night’s game, the first game of the campaign set in 1917, the scenario is Mission 4a: Stalled Advance:


Background: Hoping to prevent a stalemate and gain the upper hand on Intelligence for a major ground offensive, HQ has called for a renewed effort to eliminate the enemy’s observation balloons.
Type: Balloon Busting
Victory Conditions: Mission Points.  The side with the most mission points wins the mission. For this mission, Balloon points are worth double the normal value.
Fallback: Mission 3a or 3b
Setup: Mission was played length wise on a 4’x6’ table. The Attackers have a 16 inch deployment zone and the Defenders have a 32 inch deployment zone. This leaves 24 inches of No-man’s Land.

• Both sides must start the sortie with their planes inside their deployments zones in a loose formation with no more then a ruler length between planes. 
• The (French) defender’s side must place two balloons per sortie using the special Balloons rules.
• Each side has a chance for random ground targets. Use the special Ground Targets rules.

Frederick and Kevin ran, respectively, the Germans and the French. Since it was 1917, the best pilot character on each side got an upgraded plane: an Albatross D.V. and a Spad XIII.

Below, Kevin contemplates the table.



Frederick overlooks the defending artillery observation balloons, and the pair of machine-guns placed between them, deep behind the French front line trenches.



The two patrols flew over No-Man's land.





The French opted to pass to the south of the Germans, seeking to gain their tails.



The northern balloon took several hits...



...and took several more as the Germans made long firing passes.



The French ganged up on the German wingman, who weathered their shots.



The German flight leader then fired on the southern balloon.





Concentrated fire brought the German wingman down.



By this point, the balloons had been winched down half of their altitude; the French might save them both!



Frederick's flight leader made a couple of passes at the northern balloon again.







Eventually, the balloon's hydrogen exploded!



Jousting with the French, the surviving German opened up his throttle...



...and headed east for home. Only the Spad had the speed to potentially catch up.





Kevin zigged when he should have zagged, resulting with the French leader ended up facing the wrong direction, and so he decided to head back to the French lines. The Germans won!





Knights of the Air Campaign: Results as of March 19, 2015

Scoring:

• Bill (suffered 2 wounds in Mission 1): +2 (two sorties flown) -4 (being shot down) +4 (one plane shot down) = 1 victory, 2 campaign points
• Brian: +1 (one sortie flown) +4 (one plane shot down) = 1 victory, 5 campaign points
• Byron (suffered 3 wounds in Mission 3a): +1 (one sortie flown) -4 (being shot down = -3 campaign points
• Indo: +1 (one sortie flown) +4 (one plane shot down) = 5 campaign points
• Jim: +1 (one sortie flown) +4 (one plane shot down) -4 (being shot down) = 1 victory, 1 campaign point
• MikeA: +1 (one sortie flown) -4 (being shot down) = -3 campaign points
• Frederick's German Flight Leader: +4 (four sorties flown) +19 (three and 1/2 planes (14) and one balloon (5) shot down) +2 (drove off enemy aircraft) -4 (being shot down) = 4 1/2 victories, 21 campaign points; awarded the Knight's Cross!
• Frederick's German Wingman  (suffered 1 wound in Mission 4a): +3 (three sorties flown) + 2 (drove off enemy aircraft) -4 (being shot down) = 1 campaign point
• Kevin's French Flight Leader: +2 (two sorties flown) +6 (1 victory (Frederick's Wingman) and one shared victory) = 1 1/2 victories, 8 campaign points
• Kevin's French Wingman: +1 (one sortie flown), 1 campaign point

Next Game: Mission 5 Break Through

Dassault Ouragan from Battlefront - 1/144 Scale

Dassault Ouragan from Battlefront Miniatures

More "Fate Of A Nation" stuff.  This is a 1/144 scale Dassault Ouragan from Battlefront, a resin and metal kit released as part of their "Fate Of A Nation" supplement to the Flames of War game.  I finished this off this past weekend, where it rained for pretty much 48 hours straight.  The prairie climate can pretty much just go f*ck itself, but I digress...

Inspiring box art

Near-total air superiority was one of the key factors of the IDF's stunning success in the Six Day War in 1967.  The IDF opened the war with "Operation Moked", a surprise air assault by the Israeli Air Force that caught the Egyptian air force on the ground and pretty much toasted it. I think they took out something like 400 Arab aircraft. After that, the IDF armoured brigades could roll out into the Sinai with full-on air cover.

I suppose the artful nose was a common thing on these planes?

Beautiful plane! The golden age of jets!

With the Egyptian Air Force in tatters, the IAF was free to strafe and bomb the Arab columns as they tried to fall back to the Suez Canal.  French-built beauties like these prowled the skies over the Sinai, crushing the Egyptian troops. No wonder the thing was over in a matter of days.

Nuln Oil pin washes are your friend

With all of this in mind, I thought it would be fun for the IDF to have some air support when we try "Fate Of A Nation" at some point in the future.  Besides, the Egyptian ZSU-57-2s will need something to shoot at, right?  And air support activity always seems to be fraught with drama during Conscript games - see here, here and here for a couple of examples.  Goodness knows what the heck will happen when this puppy gets called in...

Couple of bombs underneath

The Dassault Ouragan carried bombs and was armed with four 20mm cannons. All useful for tuning up enemy armoured columns!  

Flight stand from Battelfront includes magnets - brilliant!

The Battlefront model is very nice. The base is sturdy, and you get magnets to boot - yay! The decals are great too. You can't go wrong with the whole growling-face-on-the-front-of-the-plane motif.  I wondered where this symbol came from - it seemed awfully custom, but a cursory online search seems to reveal that it was popular in the IAF.  Or perhaps just popular with model box art people :)  Either way, I love the look of it.

I think the dice is supposed to represent how strong the actual mission is? I don't really know Flames of War that well

My only gripe? I wish it was 1/100 scale, like the other vehicles - not that it matters at all in terms of the gaming, just a pedant tic in my own mind. The model would probably be impractical at 1/100 for gaming...

So my IDF now have tanks, some infantry and air support.  Need to focus on the Egyptians now. Stay tuned for more "Fate Of A Nation" stuff...

Check Your 6! - Breaking the Luftwaffe Campaign

Feb. 20th saw the latest installment of Bill and Jamie's Check Your 6! campaign. This long-running campaign has seen the 8th Air Force players winning the majority of their games against the hard pressed Luftwaffe.

Unlike our last several games, this scenario was a straight up dogfight, pitting 8 P-47 Thunderbolts against 8 Bf-109G's. However, only 3 of the German aircraft had 30mm cannons, the only weapon type amongst the involved aircraft that had a chance of destroying the tough P-47's.

Below, Glenn, DaveN, and Jamie contemplate the developing situation.






Brian observes over BillC's shoulder as two German rottes make the initial attacks; Brian and I each flew one of these two-plane elements, led by an ace (+3) pilot.



In a close-range exchange of fire, two American planes were shot down by the German aces'  heavy 30mm cannon, but Brian's ace was forced to take to his parachute.



My ace then ran out of 30mm ammo during another pass, as the Germans lost another plane.



Conscript Kevin flew brilliantly, setting up great shots. However, the dice were not with him. He missed by 1 pip on the dice at least 4 times, and the couple of times he did hit, he failed to damage the robust Thunderbolts. Meanwhile, the Germans kept losing plane...







...after plane...



Near the end of the game, my ace's wing man was trying to exit the board with a damaged engine. Seeing one of Bill's planes closing in for an easy kill, I invoked the "It's what he would have done" card and sent my ace head-on into Bill's guns, with only a pair of the Bf-109's mg's working. That German ace was lucky to just get knocked out of the fight with a damaged plane.



After that initial pass at the start of the game, the Americans didn't lose a plane. Conversely, the Germans ended up losing 6 of their 8 planes, with the majority of the German pilots surviving their bailouts. The Germans contented themselves with the thought that all these P-47's were stuck in with the Bf-109's, while somewhere else some FW-190's were tangling with the 8th Air Force bombers.

Wings of Glory - The Hun Attack!

Last Thursday night's game was the latest in our long-running Wings of Glory/Wings of War campaign. The game was still set in 1916, pitting men and machines of the French Army Air Service (Aéronautique Militaire) against those of the Imperial German Flying Corps (Die Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches).

From the last game, the German's had their choice of three scenarios for this mission. They chose scenario 3a. modified as follows:

Mission 3a: Hold the Line: With key targets and locations located in the last mission, HQ has ordered the air service to clear the skies while the ground troops make an advance on them..

Type: Dogfight

Victory Conditions: Mission Points. At the end of the sortie, the side that has the most victories wins the mission.

Fallback: Mission 1

Setup: Mission should be played length wise on a 4’x6’ table. The Attackers  have an 18 inch deployment zone and the defenders have a 30 inch deployment zone. This leaves 24 inches of No-man’s Land. Both sides must start the sortie with their planes inside their deployment zones in a loose formation no more than a ruler length between panes..

Below, Conscripts Frederick. Bill and Kevin (not pictured) played Die Fliegertruppen, setting up three Albatross DIIIs in the left (eastern) section of the table.



We had an odd number of players, so I stepped out of the campaign organizer role to assist Jim and Byron, flying a trio of Aéronautique Militaire Nieuport 17s. The planes can be seen angling southeast towards the three German machines...



Up until that point I thought that this was going to be a canny game of maneuver. However, the opposing forces ended up flying straight at each other in a no-deflection exchange of machine gun fire.



The first two phases after initial contact, my camouflaged Nieuport managed two heavy bursts against a couple of German aircraft. After the game, I found out that these close-range bursts had inflicted like 8 or 9 damage points to each plane!

However, the Germans gave as good as they got, damaging my plane severely. I Immelmanned back and went for Bill, who put in the finishing blow, sending my aircraft down  into No Man's land.



Jim made a wide loop to the south and west. Meanwhile, Byron got caught in a squeeze play between Frederick and Kevin, and was soon shot down.



Jim got back into the fight. His rudder got jammed by enemy fire, so he was forced to go head to head against Frederick. They shot each other out of the air - Jim's French plane also fell into the mud of No Man's Land, and Frederick's Albatross disappeared in a  ball of flame!



The takeaways from this fight? Maneuver to take shots on enemy planes from their rear; trading head-on shots leads to more pain than it's worth.

All the pilots who got shot down drew cards to see how badly wounded they were. Frederick's pilot, due to the nature of the incident, had a very high chance of dying outright.

Campaign Standings:

From Thursday's Game:

• Bill: one sortie flown, one victory (DaveV), still suffering from the effects of 2 wounds received in Mission 1 = 1 victory, 2 campaign points
• Frederick's Flight Leader: one sortie flown, one victory (Byron), 1 shared victory (Jim), shot down in No Man's Land (suffered 4 wounds but managed to evade capture) = 3 1/2 victories, 15 campaign points
• Kevin: one sortie flown, 1 shared victory (Jim) = 1/2 victory, 3 campaign points
• Byron: one sortie flown, shot down in No Man's Land (suffered 3 wounds but managed to evade capture) = -3 campaign points
• Jim: one sortie flown, 1 victory (Frederick), shot down in No Man's Land (unwounded and managed to evade capture) = 1 victory, 1 campaign point

Others:

• Brian: 1 victory, 5 campaign points
• Indo: 1 victory, 5 campaign points
• MikeA: -3 campaign points
• Frederick's wing man: 4 campaign points

If any pilot  manages to reach 5 victories (Frederick's Flight Leader is close with 3 1/2), he will become an Ace, and then be entitled to gain Ace Skills, special skills that functionally break the rules of the game (that is, to ignore some weapon jams, ignore certain damage effects, etc.). Double aces will get to choose another skill, or potentially upgrade an existing skill.

With 15 pilot points, Fredericks' lead pilot is also 5 points away from possibly winning the Knight's Cross.

The Germans currently have the advantage. Can they keep up their momentum?

Check Your 6! - Hunting the Hunter

As Conscript Dallas and his lovely wife made their house ready for a move, several of us other Conscripts have taken over hosting duties over the last couple of months. Several weeks ago, I hosted a Check Your 6! game. I used a scenario freely downloaded from the Check Your 6! Yahoo Group.



Hunting the Hunter

Date: 8 July 1940, 16h00

Location: South Eastern Kent.

History: A Spitfire of 65 Squadron indulging in the dangerous pastime of a low level solo patrol became the prey of four Me109s of 4 Staffel, JG51 that stalked it unnoticed as it proceeded northwards. However, the Germans found that they had been inadvertently lured deep into enemy territory…

Luftwaffe Forces:
Elements of 4 staffel, JG51
2x Me109E-3 w/ 2 skilled (+1) aircrew
2x Me109E-1 w/ 2 green (+0) aircrew
Started in two formations of two aircraft, in the rear arc of the 65 Squadron Spitifre, speed 3, TAL 4. The formation leaders were 9 hexes away from the 65 Squadron Spitfire.
(Note: For the Me109E-1 use Me109E-4 statistics, except that the Me109E-1 has 4xLMG)

RAF Forces:
65 Squadron
1x Spitifre I w/ green (+0) aircrew
speed 1, TAL5, facing north

Red section, 74 Squadron
4x Spitfire I w/ 2 skilled (+1) aircrew and 2 green (+0) aircrew
Entered from the east, speed 4, TAL 6. 74 Squadron have spotted JG51

Below can be seen the initial setup. To the north is the lone recce Spitfire, which I flew. From the south and west are the Me109s, flown by Byron and Bill. From the east are the 74 Sqdn Spitfires, flown by Frederick and Kevin.The planes are a mix of Bandai and Takara 1:144 scale models. The neat dial bases are from Noble Minis, obtained through I-94 Enterprises.



Below, Bill and Byron contemplate the Luftwaffe move.







I put the 65 Sqdn Spitfire into a shallow dive and banked east, since just surviving and getting off the table would garner Victory Points.



The Luftwaffe ignored the solo patrol plane and turned to face the other RAF flight. The 65 Sqdn Spitfire proceeded to fly off the table unscathed.



The RAF concentrated their fire on a Rotte leader, shooting down one of Byron's planes in a single pass. The pilot failed his roll and was killed attempting to bail out.



The dogfight broke up as one of Bill's planes Immelmanned to get a bead on a Spitfire.





The Me109 below is angling away from the fight, heading for home. The Luftwaffe had to exit from the southeastern edge of the board.





The yellow nosed Me109 had run out of cannon ammo, which made the Luftwaffe decide to try and get away with what they could.



Bill's plane was hounded by the British...



...but canny maneuvering prevented the Spitfires from getting on his 6.





So, the remaining Luftwaffe planes were able to fly off safely.



Result: RAF Victory

This was an interesting, sharply fought affair. The game outcome was also very similar to what actually happened.

Historical Aftermath:
Four Spitfires of 74 Squadron on patrol over Dover spotted the Germans and dived into the attack. The Germans split up, but one of them was chased down at low level by 74 Squadron and fatally damaged. In its desperate attempts to get away, the Me109 was chased inland, eventually crash-landing near Elham. It was the first Me109 to fall onto British soil intact.