WWI Planes

About 2-3 months ago, I printed up some WWI planes to play the Algy ruleset. P-Y had already printed some planes from Thingiverse and painted them up. We have already had a couple of fun games. I always, however, like having my own toys and I thought it would be a bit of fun to try to print and paint some planes for myself. There was no real cost and it would be a learning experience for me in respect to 3D resin printing, the planes are quite small and they looked like a challenge to print. From what I understand WWI pilots being the individuals that they were were allowed to pick their own colour schemes for their planes. 

They have been done for a while now, I have noticed this summer that the polyurethane is taking longer and longer to dry and I hate photographing miniatures so there was some delay to taking the snaps. Time to take them off the table, so I took some photos today. I really need a better light source and I will get to it soon enough, I am in the middle of a massive move of my wargaming stuff from Massachusetts to Montreal and that is taking quite a bit of my time.

I am not even sure of the scale, I printed these planes at, but I think it might be 1/285. The WWII 1/600 planes were a lot of work to paint and I was not going to go there. I think it might have been a lot easier to print them at 1/144 as you will see they were a bit of a challenge to print. P-Y had already printed at 1/285 so I decided I would stick with that.

I did 5-6 trial prints with different supports before I got something barely acceptable but they did paint up nice enough aside from some missing struts/wheels as well as some bent wings. They are certainly useable though. The colour schemes are completely my own!

Sopwith Camels and Spad 13s

Albatross D3s and Fokker Dr3s

Well they are being put away in a box, I will apply some matt in a few months and that will be it.

Algy Pulls a Fast One

On Tuesday evening, I went to P-Y's for a game of Algy. We decided to go with the fast play rules that were in one of the TFL specials from some years ago. This was our 2nd game and we decided to go with the Fast Play version as they seemed quite streamlined and I found the charts much easier to interpret. The only thing, I found odd was the 12 altitude bands. This is not a big deal in itself but it was a little harder to keep track of as P-Y's stands have only 6 gradations, and to be honest I think it would be impossible to put 12 marks on each dial. We also used ground fire but that does nor come into play until you are at altitude 6.  I suspect 12 altitude bands is accurate but I believe it would not change the playability if there was 6, and changed the ground fire to 3.

I had 3 Sopwith Camels and P-Y had 3 Albatross's. We had a lot of fun with the game and I thoroughly enjoyed it, as it was the Germans were quite successful in the air battle driving off my Squad Leader quite early in the game, forcing him to head across the channel. He was soon followed by his 2 fellow pilots. If I remember 2 of my planes took some damage but by dropping altitude rapidly they were all able to safely land in Blighty. I do not remember the Germans suffering any damage. 

Of note this is the first time we played BtH or Algy in person and it was much easier than playing it virtually.

The battle ensues

Everyone is on everyone's tail!

The Sopwiths limping across the channel

I will look forward to our next game. I think this would be a great ruleset with which to start a campaign.

Algernon Pulls it Off!

 

Two weeks ago,  we took another plunge into aerial combat, but this time in WWI. We went with another TFL ruleset. We had a 2 on 2 game, as you can see below. I believe 2 Sopwith Camels versus 2 Albatrosses. I actually had a lot of fun, we did play virtually but it went well. I liked this game a little more than Bag the Hun, but I think the next time I try it I would like to play the Fast Play Rules which were released in one of the TFL magazines. I am all for simplicity!

Here are some photos from Pierre-Yves with is wonderfully painted 1/285 models that he resin printed.

Bag the Hun-Blenheims at Dawn

We recently played a WWII Airwar game over North Africa using Bag the Hun rules. we played it over 2 nights as we were a little rusty with the rules. This was the first time, I hosted a Bag the Hun game so I was a little slow, but things went generally well with no problems using Discord.

We had 2 squads each: I took the Italians and had 7 CR-32 biplanes while P-Y had 8 Blenheim Mk I bombers. The scenario was quite simple with the Blenheims approaching from the east to bomb a small air field in the North African desert. The CR-32 appoached from the northwest in attempt to take them down. The pilots were all Sprogs aside from 2 Regulars for the RAF and 1 Regular for the RA. I took a few more photos then usual and will give a brief outline of the action.

The CR32's in the foreground ready to attack the approaching bombers.

The RA yellow squad are quickly spotted.

The RA pilots had more difficulty spotting the bombers as they are coming out of the sun.

Yep...it is a bombing run!

Now if we could only get in position to take a shot, in Bag the Hun to take a shot the pilot has to be directly lined up with the target, although close in the above photo no planes are on the same grid row. 

The bonus cards really worked out for the RAF as they quickly moved pass the Italians.

Bombing run

The Blenheims moderately damage 2 hangers.

The white RA squad get on the tail of the lagging green RAF squad.

The Italians get some shots off and damage the lead bombers causing the fuel line leak and a fire.

But they just can not finish him off.

Meanwhile the RAF red squad make their turn back to home (Egypt) with the yellow Italian squad giving chase. It is going to be tricky as the bombers are almost twice as fast as the CR-32's.

P-Y pull off an amazing manoeuvre getting all his planes in position so the Air Gunners have targets .

Fortunately the Italians aeronautic skills help them to avoid any damage but they are quite trigger happy and the white squad is running very low on ammo and White 2 has a jammed gun so has to retreat. Yellow 4 tries to take his place to catch the lone bomber.

The yellow Italian squad breaks formation

Yellow 1 remains on the tail of Red 1 but just can not take him down

The CR-32's all out of formation try to manoeuvre into position to take out the isolated Blenheim. The other 7 bombers have made it off the table.

Lady Luck is against the Italians though, they get 3 planes in position to fire at the Blenheim , the deck is shuffled and can you believe the RAF move card comes up first! Although no planes are lost on either side, the RAF have a victory after a successful bombing run. 

I should note that the scenario was taken from a brochure The Falcon and the Gladiator by Chris Stoesen. He has put out 2 pamphlets on the easy Airwar over North Africa. They are jammed with a lot of detail and also an outline for playing a campaign. A campaign itself is not really included like a TFL Pint Sized Campaign for CoC, but certainly one could write one from the detail that is provided. In retrospect, I think the game might have been a little boring for P-Y as there was no fighter escort for the Bleinhams and bombers in themselves are quite limited in what they can do. Certainly I would like to play more North African scenarios using Bag the Hun, but I will have to add to my collection to make the games more interesting. Certainly, I have quite a pile of unpainted planes for this theatre.

Tiny Planes

I finally got around to taking some photos of some 1/600 planes I have painted for my Early War North Africa project. The planes come from PicoArmor and Tumbling Dice. The PicoArmor planes were much nicer than I thought they would be, the photos on the website do not do them justice. The Tumbling Dice were nice but I bought over almost 200 planes from them and they were in unlabelled bags with no identification. This was a special pain as I am completely new to this area and it took several hours to get things sorted. The Pico Armor planes were beautifully packaged.

I bought a campaign booklet from Chris Stoesen called the Falcon and the Gladiator which has an encapsulated history of the war in 1940-41 between the RAF and the Regio Aeronautica It also has excellent orders of battle, as well as a campaign system for Bag the Hun or Check Your Six.

I thought I would paint planes in order of the campaign, but the PA planes came much before the TD ones, so the RAF Lysanders and the Wellington bombers got painted first. Sorry about the quality of the photography, I usually do not photograph with shadow but I sort of liked the look.

PicoArmor

Westland Lysander

Vickers Wellington

Tumbling Dice

Bristol Blenheim

The 2 in the dessert camo are Mk IF

Fiat CR-32

Maybe a little easier to see!

Well there is a lot more planes to paint but I should have some 18th century sailing ships up next.

Catch the Pigeon

Focke-Wulf Fw189-A2

This past Monday, we got in our 10th Bag the Hun game by internet. Quite comfortable with the rules now with very few questions coming up. We are playing about 8-10 turns now in 3 hours which is really quite good when you think only one of us (P-Y) has to move all the planes. In this game we introduced a couple of new mechanisms namely flak and having to land a plane. This was also our first game where we played with some Russian aircraft while we introduces also some new German aircraft from Focke-Wulf.

Focke-Wulf Fw190/F8

This is another scenario by Jim Jackaman which can in found in the TFL specials. Here we have a lone Fw189-A2 reconnaissance fighter is returning from a mission during Operation Bagration (1944) and has to land at an airfield at the other end of the terrain, which is protected by 2 light flak positions. On turn 3, a zvenyo of La5-FN (6 Planes) enters from the same edge (east) trying to take down the Fw189-A2 before it can land. A schwarm of Fw190/F8 (4 planes) enter on turn 4 (north) to protect the lone reconnaissance plane from the pursuing Russians.

Lavochkin La-5FN

Victory to the Russians if they can take down the Fw189. As usual I will let P-Y's excellent photos tell the story.

We got in 9 turns before the Fw189 was shot down, it was midnight so time to stop. I suspect P-Y might have been able to take out another Russian plane if we played a 10th turn (our limit), this would have resulted in a draw. But a good Russian victory none the less.

Next Monday we are going to change things up a little with a Naval WWII game.