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. 

Blockade Runners Come Home

We did a fairly large ACW naval game today that I have been planning for a long time.  The basic set up is that the Union is blockading the mouth of a river and receive intelligence that Confederate naval forces are on the move, heading downstream towards them.  The Union forces assume they Confederates are trying to break out of the blockade, but in reality, the Southerners are coming to escort a couple of blockade runners into to the river.  The board was set up as a large ox-bow with a small fort and some individual gun positions watching the river.  The Union had the Kearsarge and two Itasca/Unadilla-class 90-day gunboats, along with a pair of mortar schooners and the river gun positions.  The Confederates started with the Morgan, Gaines, General Moore, Nansemond and Hampton coming down the river.  Rolling randomly, the Alabama, Banshee and A D Vance entered from the ocean side on turn 7 or 8.  By then, the Union ships and the Confederate river flotilla had joined action. 

The Union patrol just off the coast.

The Confederate battle line rounding the ox-bow, with a small Union

fort on the point.

The Union mortar schooners, waiting for a target. 

 

Alabama, A D Vance and Banshee (r. to l.) entering the battlefield.

 

The battle became such a swirling mess that at this point, I couldn't even recap the highlights!  Everyone was shooting everywhere.  It was a tough slog for the Union, though.  The Confederates had more ships, but there was an even number of guns and the Union had a slight edge in weight of shot.  The Confederates were pretty confident from the beginning, but did become rather concerned when these little guys popped up on the table - three torpedo boats and their tender, an armed tugboat.  

 

The shot of the game probably came when one of the mortar schooners dropped a 13" shell right down Alabama's stack, demolishing her stack, cutting her speed in half and enveloping her in smoke for the duration of the game.  The schooners hit General Moore at least once as well. 

 

 

There was a lot of action and finally, towards the end of the game, ships started getting worn down to the point where damage was getting critical.  The Gaines was badly hit by the Kearsarge and the gunboats, to the point we thought it might sink or be forced to surrender from morale failure.  Neither happened.  The Nansemond surrendered to the armed tug a turn before the tug was sunk, and then was grounded on the shore.  One of the gunboats tried to cut off the General Moore, only to rammed and sunk.

 

 

The torpedo boats were unfortunately ineffectual.  One was sunk by gunfire.  The second was rammed and sunk.  The third made two attacks, missing with the first and the second was ruled a dud.  The A D Vance and the Banshee made it to the river none the worse for wear - the Vance had minimal damage, while the Banshee was in danger of being sunk.  If only the Union gunners in the fort hadn't been celebrating their victory a little prematurely they might have been able to do a little more damage as the Banshee screamed past.  Here, the Vance (left - one of its masts was accidentally knocked off) and the Banshee race of the safety of the pilings.  Banshee won by a nose with the last Union shot chasing them around the bend.  The Confederates had done a number on the gun positions, as well.  Two of the individual positions had been destroyed, and the small fort and remaining gun position were damaged. 

 

It was a fun - but LONG - fight.  Turned out to be about 8 hours of gaming or so.  I have two more ACW naval battles planned - neither as involved as this one, though hopefully as fun.  All of the models are from Thoroughbred except for the A D Vance, which is from Peter Pig.  We used Bay Area Yard's Under Both Flags rules, which, despite its flaws, we still find to be one of the most playable sets we've tried. 









Air Tango

Last week we played an air battle in the Falklands using CY6! JA.  The game started off with four Argentine A-4s barreling in to bomb a British ship, while two Harriers attempted to intercept.  Randomly, two more Harriers would join the fray as well as four Mirages.  As it worked out, the Harriers took out one A-4 on the ingress, but the Skyhawks were able to drop their bombs and beat a retreat with the second pair of Harriers entering while they were over the target.  One managed to hit the ship.  One was damaged on egress, and even turned back to take a gun shot at their pursuers, but the original Harriers had already turned for home.  The Mirages came on in a gaggle and managed to lose two planes before we called the game on the assumption that the tighter turning circle of the Harriers could keep the Mirages from getting the flank or rear shot they would need to fire missiles.

My 9-year-old daughter has played a couple of games of WotC Pirates! and Wings of War against her 6-year-old brother in the past few years, but this was her first actual wargame, playing with the grown-ups.   She flew the Mirages and certainly deserved better advice from me than I gave, but acquitted herself admirably and the other guys even said she was welcome back.  I just didn't have my head in the game or it might have turned out differently. 

Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, but my wife was able to get a pic of the best photo op in the game when she randomly dropped in to check on our girl.  I got a couple of pics of the Mirages with my daughter's camera, which my wife brought in from the car, but she hasn't downloaded them yet.  I was having trouble figuring out her macro, but if any turn out decently, I'll add them later.  At any rate, here's the third A-4, hotly pursued by two Harriers, as it bombs the ship.

 

I'm away for some military training for the next few months, so there won't be much action on here.  I brought Traveller and Snapshot to do some solo gaming and I'm running an e-mail campaign for my game group.  I also brought ATZ and some of my zombie gaming stuff so there will be a couple games put on over at Wanted: BRAINS! in the next few months.  Unless I have something interesting happen in a solo game of Snapshot and decide to put it up here, I'll see y'all when I get back!