Sorry, Charlie, Albacore are Airplanes!

We finally played a game of Check Your 6! that I've had in the works for about three years.  The planes have been mostly painted for about two years, and I finished them up a year or so ago, but never got them decaled and sprayed until this past weekend.  This scenario is a historic battle in which two Fairey Fulmars escorted six Fairey Albacore in an attack on an Italian battleship (don't remember now which one - I'd have to dig out the source and look it up again).  On the way to their target, they were intercepted by two Ju-88s.  I remember historically, the Fulmars beat off the Ju-88s, but I don't recall the results of the attack on the battleship. 


Perry and I flew the Albacore, Perry's son, Calvin, flew the Fulmars, and Doug took us all on with the Ju-88s.  Here's what happened in our refight of the battle:


The Ju-88s immediately turned towards the British squadron, while the Brits focused on the ship.  In the first pass, the Fulmars overflew the Germans, but fortunately remained undamaged - no harm, no foul.

While the Fulmars repositioned, the Ju-88s flew through the first section of Albacore, but drew no damage again.

The Fulmars got first blood with an engine hit on a Ju-88, which left the table at that point.  The Albacore are just about in position.

The first section of Albacore line up to drop their torpedoes.  The second Ju-88 took airframe damage, but flew on, hoping to take out an Albacore or two.  

The Albacore lined up to drop torpedoes.  They were too high and too fast coming in and actually had to overfly the ship and turn back in to drop.

One took an engine hit and had to jettison his torpedo before the attack run.

The Ju-88 tried to finish him off, but missed. 

In this turn or the next, the last Ju-88 took his second damage and was lost to the sea. 

The final torpedo launch.

In the end, five of the six Albacore were able to launch and the battleship took three hits, which we determined was enough to slow her down but not enough to sink her.  One Ju-88 was shot down and one was forced off the board with engine damage.  I think three, and maybe four, of the Albacore were hit, all by AA fire from the ship.  Neither of the Fulmars were hit.  I think we miscounted the AA and the Axis should have actually had an additional shot each turn.  It was a fun game - low and slow, but with lots of action. 


The planes are by Tumbling Dice.  Pretty much all of my WWII planes are 1/300, but I wasn't about to buy and assemble six Albacore in 1/300, so I went with the 1/600 for this game, at least.  Decals are from Dom's, of course!  The ship is GHQ 1/2400.  Doug didn't have any Italian battleships, so we substituted a Brit.  Shhhh!  Some of you might ask about the game mat.  It's home-made - marine vinyl with hexes marked out with Sharpie. 

Under the Sea

After my daughter left, I had to go out of state for a while with the National Guard.  When I got back, my son came for a few days.  One of the things I wanted to do with him was a LEGO game I had devised using the deep sea exploration sets.  I had a specific idea in mind that I wanted to test with him, but - as with everything - once he got a hold of the idea, he ran with it and I lost all control! 

The concept was that there were two teams - the Good Guys and the Bad Guys.  The Good Guys were trying to recover treasure and artifacts for museums, etc., while the Bad Guys are trying to recover the same for their own greed.  In addition, that Bad Guys could take treasure from the Good Guys on a limited basis.  The seafloor was simply a piece of muslin marked off in 6" squares.  Each square had six levels - the surface, the seafloor and four levels in between, represented by clear plastic cups. 

When the seafloor in each square was "explored" (by having a bathyscaphe or diver enter it), a chit was drawn to determine whether they found nothing, a shark or octopus, treasure, or both a creature and treasure.   If there was nothing in the square, the chit was left in the square to indicate that it had already been explored.  The creatures also moved each turn along with the bathyscaphes and divers.  The creatures couldn't do anything against a bathyscaphe, but if they ended up at the same level and same square as a diver, the diver got eaten.  That happened a couple of times. 

The Good Guys had the recovery ship and the Bad Guys had a Zodiac.  The recovery ship and the Zodiac could move as well.  I think Junior threw in the police boat at some time as well, but I wasn't sure if that would be too much for the Bad Guys since the game seemed to favor the Good Guys.  Of course, he also gave the Bad Guys the underwater lab, so they had a separate base of operations as well.  I foresaw the lab and some of the other features of the sets as separate games rather than throwing everything into one giant game.  The basic concept worked, but was rather muddied by A adding so much stuff to the game that I hadn't intended.   

 

The recovery ship hovers over two divers (one with a dive sled),

a bathyscaphe, and a treasure site.   

The main treasure, being explored by a bathyscaphe. 

A diver being eaten by a shark, with other divers in the background watching,

no doubt, in horror.

A also likes to play games with my friends, so Perry obligingly came over one night for a game of Seafarers of Cataan.  When Adam was younger - even until the last couple of years - his main strategy was to build a village or two as opportunity presented, but to rely on pick-a-cards for his points.  He'd usually come up with 6 or 7 points at the end of a game that way while the rest of us were within a point or two of winning ourselves.  As a result, neither Perry nor I were particularly concerned about him, seeing each other as our principle rival.  In the end, A won with 13 points!  That's him in the blue on the lower left.  I think I had 10 and Perry had 7 or 8.  J was astounded that he had won, but happily concluded that she would finally have some worthy competition from him!  (She first beat her mom and I when she was about 7, in only her second or third game - and has continued to win fairly regularly since then!) 

Roborallying

Haven't posted in a while, and haven't even kept up with posts that I have.  In part of June and July, my girlie, now 13 was here.  She isn't into the wargames so much, though she has played a couple with me and my friends.  There are even several of my family games she doesn't like, including Roborally and Formula De.  But when she was here, she asked if we could play Roborally so she could get good at it.  We played three or four games during the course of which she got progressively better. 

This was a close point in our second or so game.

 

 

The close finish came in our last game.  The following pics were taken at various points in that game.  You can see it was close through most of the game, but the last four pictures were taken in the last four turns of the game.  Wow!  She did a great job - coming *THAT* close to beating me!  (I was blue; she was green.)

 

Of course, it didn't work out so well when one of my friends came over to play it with us, but she still did great! 

Sci Fi Week

Last week I spent most of the week visiting the kids.  A (who's now 9, 10 in a little over a month) called me a month or so ago and asked me if I had any sci fi figs.  I rattled off what I had painted and raw lead and asked him why.  He told me about a video he had watched on YouTube by a Warhammer gamer about making your own buildings.  He was stoked and proceeded to cut up some a plastic bottle and glue a straw and bottle cap to it to make a storage tank.  Well, he never got around to making the building out of foam-core board, but I showed him an even easier way to 15mm sci fi buildings - spray painting some plastic electrical boxes.  We got a piece of tan foam-core board and lightly over-sprayed it with green spots.  We got some fake aquarium plants at Walmart and had an instant game board.  I painted up some Rebel Minis Earth Force figures and brought them with, along with some Scourge and some Khurasan Huntarrs, for us to play around with.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of the Scourge.  We got in three games.  He beat me each time.  The first game was very close, but when he understood the concept of creating rules, he just couldn't stop! 



Initially, the rules were very simple.  Turn order was Move, Conduct lightning strikes, Shoot.  Figures could move 6", 3" if climbing on the "mountain" or moving through/up/down inside buildings.  Range to shoot was 12" and you had to roll 8+ to hit, with a -2 if the target was in cover, and a +1 at less than 3" range.  All shooting was simultaneous.  Figures were figured to be in cover if they were partially behind something from the shooter's perspective.  Initially, I didn't intend for figures to be able to shoot multiple times, but it quickly devolved to that, with no additional modifiers. 

So, yes, this planet has a problem with electrical storms.  On a 5+, lightning struck the board.  We divided the board up into 36 equal areas, each 3-1/3" high by 5" wide (the board was 6 areas wide by 6 areas high - roll a die for each axis to determine which area was struck).  If a figure was in an area struck by lightning, it rolled for a hit, just like shooting.  On an 8+ it was dead.  The nails sitting on the board are lightning rods.  If the figure was within 2" of the longer nails or 1" of the shorter screws when lightning struck the area, the figure was safe.  (The lightning strikes were A's idea, needless to say!)  We didn't have any figures die from lightning strikes, but there were a few close calls where it struck an area adjacent to the figures or struck an area where figures were near a lightning rod. 

We had a lot of fun shooting each other up and moving figures around on the board.  With eight figures a side, games were short and bloody. 

The upended figure at left is dead from opposing fire.

A private and corporal (from left) rounding a building.

Enemies square off on a roof top.

A Huntarr (you know what this really is).  We used them in a

game but the rules we used didn't work too well.  The boy

wanted two hits to kill the good guys and three to kill

the Huntar, but the Huntarr had to be visible to attack or

 shoot, and could only shoot 6".  He died faster than he

could kill his opponents.

A pair of soldiers looking for the Huntarr and sticking close

to a lightning rod, just in case.

The mastermind himself, along with one of

the board set-ups we used. 

 

 

We had a grand time, but I have to paint up some new figures now as I left the ones I painted with him to play around with.  We also got in a game of Settlers with sister J.  I won that one.  And we played our first game of Flash Point, a cooperative fire fighting/victim rescuing game.  We used the basic rules to get a feeling for the game, and it was close.  J was pretty lucky for most of the game and there wasn't much fire on her edge of the board.  A and I kept running into more and more fire and at the end of the game, most of the house was on fire with the exception of J's corner where it was still mostly under control.  We did lose three victims, though, so getting the seventh out safely was a necessity.  Fortunately, nothing bad happened and we were able to rescue her.  A and I also watched The Empire Strikes Back.  All in all we had a great time.  Next week, J comes to stay with me for three weeks.  Wondering what we'll get into then!



Lost in Space

I bought X-Wing a few months ago and it's been sitting in my dining room awaiting an opportunity to play.  I brought it with me, along with the Millennium Falcon, when I visited my kids in Idaho, knowing that my son at least would like the game.  We played our first game on Friday.  Actually we played our first four or five games on Friday.  The first game was a standard two Tie fighters versus the X-Wing.  I gave the two Ties to my son thinking that it would give him a bit of an advantage.  It was a very close game, but I ended up winning that one although the X-Wing was down to 1 or 2 damage points remaining.

The master plotting his move. 

The final dice roll.

 

 

The second game was the Millennium Falcon against the two Ties.  This time, the boy was the Falcon and I had the Ties.  The Falcon was down to just a couple of damage points remaining when he blasted my second Tie.  

 

 

 

The third game, I think, he insisted on playing with two Ties against an X-Wing and a Y-Wing with some asteroids scattered around.  I warned him that it was unbalanced in favor of the Rebel players, but he wanted to do it anyway.  In the end, I think the Y-Wing had lost a couple of shields and maybe a point or two of damage when the second Tie bit the dust.

 

 

Felt like we were playing the game all day.  It was a lot of fun, though.  We tried the advanced rules but they didn't really stick with him so we didn't really get the full effect. 

 

He got sidetracked part-way through playing by the Nerf guns that I had sent earlier in the week so we could chase each other around the house when cabin fever set in.  We spent a lot of time having Nerf wars in addition to X-Wing.  Productive weekend, all-in-all.