Me-262s at Large

We got three games of CY6! in Saturday evening.  No, we didn't play long.  The games were just that short!  We played two games of a scenario I had read about somewhere (can't find the reference now) of two Me-262s attacking a lone B-17 protected by four P-51s.  In both games with the B-17, the Me-262s attacked as a pair head on and blew the B-17 out of the sky in a single pass.  They never rolled less than the 31+ column for damage.  Those four 30mm cannon are a lethal combination.  In both games, I flew the bomber, while Perry and Doug split the P-51s and Steve flew the Me-262s. 

The B-17 decaled up with the bling offered by Scale Specialties.

And in flight over Germany with some little friends for support

The last thing the B-17 crew saw two games in a row... 

The third game we played was the Heinz Baer scenario from the rulebook, pitting four P-47s against a single Me-262.  Here Steve continued with the Me-262 while Perry and Doug split the P-47s.  I sat this one out and just refereed. 

Steve's masterful handling of the Me-262 led to first blood when he got a point

blank shot and dropped one of the Thuds. 

 

Circling for position. 

The second Thunderbolt to go down... 

A close pass.  It wasn't long after this the third Thunderbolt hit the dirt and the

lone survivor ran for home. 

  

Steve's masterful handling of the Me-262 faithfully recreated the real life outcome in which Baer took down three of the P-47s while taking no damage himself.  The Thuds got a couple of shots off, but had no effect.  This also saw the inauguration of my home made flight stands.  It's a 1" length of plastic tube glued to a washer, with 1/4" doweling in 1" increments for the rods.  My fighters all have a nail head glued into the underside so I have a magnet on each rod to hold the plane.  The bombers are too big to be held by a magnet, so they have a 1/8" hole drilled in the bottom and I used a pencil sharpener to whittle down a set of dowels enough to fit into the hole and hold the plane up.  Worked like a charm, but some of the dowels are a little snug in the tube and the glue is a bit fragile.  We only had one catastrophe for the night, which wasn't bad.  Heck, I snapped one off just fitting the dowels in it!  





Saxon Seas . . . Errrr . . .

I realized it's been a while since I did anything with any of my blogs and figured it's time to post SOMETHING!  Not last Saturday, but the Saturday before we played a game of Roman Seas.  We really like the rules even though there are a few glitches.  A little logic irons out the problems and it does create a fun game.  We had four large Saxon raiders up against a Roman fleet of two scout ships, three hemoilas and a Liburnian command ship.

The Saxon Fleet

The Roman Fleet

First Contact

The points for both fleets were almost identical, but the Saxons, whose crews man the oars and fight, had significantly more manpower for combat than the Romans, who have separate rowers and marines.  The Saxons would row up to a Roman ship then grapple it, using their greater manpower effectively in hand-to-hand combat.  The Saxons completed hosed the Romans (thus the title of the post), who only escaped at the end of the game with one or two ships with relatively intact crews. 

I think this was the final position, or close to it,

of the ships.

This was the second time we played the game and had a good time both times.  The first time, we used the boardgame that comes on the disc with the rules.  It uses cardboard counters for the ships rather than the miniatures.  We did use a bunch of the ships playing another set of rules, which was ok, but Roman Seas were more fun. 

The ships are mounted on foamcore board that's been spraypainted dark-ish blue.  You can get blue foamcore board but I already had some green board and some blue spraypaint and I didn't want to spend more money for the blue board.  I mounted my first set of ships on artist's mat board, but the bases all warped from the spraypaint and disfigured the ships or pulled free from them.  This seemed to work much better.  It takes me about 15 minutes to cut out a ship, and I cut out several then glue them in turn with Elmer's glue applied sparingly with a toothpick.  It dries pretty quickly that way and doesn't make the color run.  In this way, too, I can assemble four or so ships in an hour and a half to two hours.  I forgot how I had done the inboard details so only one or two ships got that, but now that I'm back up and running, the next batches will all get it.

Next time we play, I'm going to create counters for the marine units so that it's easier to keep track of who's doing what, which was rather tricky.  You can use 6mm figures with the ships, but I don't have any, can't afford them at the moment, and really don't feel like painting them right now anyway!  We'll also do a more traditional Romans vs. Carthaginians battle so both sides have more or less equal ships and crews.  All in all, though, we had a good time.