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!  





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. 

Air Battle over the Sinai

Haven't posted for a long time, but haven't played any games with my units in a LONG time, either!  We got in a short Check Your 6! Jet Age game Saturday night, pitting Israeli F-4s against Egyptian MiG-21s.  We used the stock scenario from the CY6!JA rules - First Kill: Phantom.  I had the RF-4, Perry was flying to my rescue with another pair of F-4s, and Doug and Perry's nephew Daniel each had a pair of MiG-21s. 

Basically, the scenario has an RF-4 running for home with two pairs of MiG-21s being vectored onto it by GCI.  Another pair of Israeli F-4s are coming to defend it.  The Egyptians started on opposite sides of the playing mat, parallel to each other.  Daniel, being new to the game, could have set up almost on top of the RF-4, but didn't realize it and set up a whole area back from it.  I actually could have escaped, but just for gamesmanship, I suggested we move the planes back six hexes since Doug's playing mat is a little small in terms of number of hexes.  There hadn't been ANY action to that point in the game and didn't think it would be too fun to finish the game without any shooting.  This gave me an extra turn on the board. 

 

I was running at an angle to the Egyptians.  I couldn't turn away from them.  Although this would have given me the exit sooner, it also would have exposed my tail to their heat-seeking missiles.  They caught up to me, though, and at almost optimal range Daniel and Doug each launched two missiles and Doug's other plane fired his cannon.

 

 

Daniel's second missile obtained the kill before Doug even got to roll.  Perry was on the opposite side of the board from the Israeli friendly board edge so we decided to fight on, and I took over Perry's green pilot, while he continued with the skilled pilot.  I was able to get my revenge and shoot down Daniel's green pilot with my cannon, but his veteran finished me off in a head-to-head shot, while I missed.  And with that we decided to call it a night.  Not a bad tally for me - one kill, started with one plane and ended up losing two!   

 

 

This is the second Arab-Israeli air battle we've done and both times the Israelis have had their hats handed to them.  Not sure how that bodes, but it was fun anyway!  I really like the way my F-4s turned out.  I'm not quite as happy with the MiGs, but they look ok.  It's hard to see in these pictures, but there are thin light grey stripes on each side of each of the dark green stripes on the MiGs.  I have another pair of Egyptian MiG-21s to paint up and they are going to be in Nile pattern camo (which I like much better), when I get around to it.  The aircraft are from Tumbling Dice, and the stands and missiles are from Fight's On!  (And I should mention the decals are from Dom's, of course!)

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!