Battle of Britain: Wednesday 10th July 11:30

"The C.O. was furious. I thought a vein in his head was going to pop when he heard Lewellyn was missing. There was a bit of muttered invective which won’t grace the pages of this log followed by a ‘Show them how its bloody well done’. Scramble went at 11.15. Another lone raider, Fletcher-Hove as good as his word took Red Section up."

Red Section ready to go

Game 2 was again a small practice game with a very similar set up to game 1. Squadron Leader Fletcher-Hove took up Red Section with Pilot Officers Collins and Reynolds as his wing men. Interestingly both P.O.s had a rating of Regular where F-H was a Rookie; I took this to mean that F-H was either not a good pilot or wedded to poor tactics.

Ju 88 - would it be lucky this time?

To make it a little more interesting a solitary ME 109 was introduced to defend the Junkers.

ME 109 in advantage state

In the first round Collins and Reynolds went after the ME 109 whilst F-H tried to get into position to take a shot at the Junkers. The Ju 88's movement took it past Collins who gave it a blast and completely failed to hit the target. Meanwhile the ME 109  zipped in and outmaneuvered F-H which meant he lost an advantage level.

Break! Break!

Dogfight begins

F-H took a shot at the Ju 88, moved and then fired again but with the predictability of my die rolling failed to hit both times. Meanwhile Reynolds decided to go after the bomber too and there was another exchange of fire resulting in... a hit for the Luftwaffe.

By this time the ME 109 was in among the Hurricanes and found itself with their tails in its sights.

The Junkers is the centre of attention

There was another exchange of fire between Red Section and the Ju 88 resulting in another hit on the Hurricanes, though at least this time the RAF managed to hit the bomber, once.

17 seconds of ammo doesn't get you many results

But that pesky 109 now opened fire hitting Collins who failed to save and thus, being already disadvantaged, was shot down.

Its all about to go horribly wrong for Collins

This meant that once more the RAF had more boom chits than engines and so had to retire. Another Junkers had escaped.

Are 327 an unlucky squadron?

"Nobody seemed to know what had happened to Collins and there was no chat on Red Section's return. Two sorties and two missing pilots you knew everybody was wondering who'd be next..."

Black Seas Starter Set

 This was item 5 on the New Year list. Black Seas Starter Set from Warlord games.

Front of the box

Back of the box

Some intriguing stuff in there including smoke and a rule book

Lots of lovely sprues enough to construct 3 frigates and 6 brigs.

Various flags, sails, counters and build instructions

The set comes with a mat and terrain - like this large island

Finally, lots and lots of counters - what do they mean? Looking forward to finding out!

Battle of Britain: Wednesday 10th July 08:15

 "Low cloud and showers today and finally after weeks of sitting around the Luftwaffe appeared. Green Section scrambled at 0730 after reports of a lone raider on a recon. Cloud broke at 10,000 feet and Ball spotted the bandit, Ju 88"

This was the first flight for 327 squadron and my first game. It is based on an encounter on the 10th of July between a Do17 on a reconnaissance mission and three Spitfires of 66 Squadron based out of Colitshall. Since I don't have a Dornier, a Ju 88 was used as a surrogate.

Starting positions

In the first turn everybody climbed for advantage. Bourne and Llewelyn moved for a head on attack whilst Ball peeled off and tried to get on the 88s tail. The 88s goal was simply to traverse the board which seemed unlikely given it had to travel six feet at five inches a move pursued by three capable fighters.

Hurricanes climb

Hopefully an easy first blooding for 327 or so I thought.

As does the Junkers

Bourne got in a shot first, completely missing the target. 

My pathetic die rolling takes to the air!

The Ju 88 fired back with its pathetic single dice and, as is so often the way in wargames, scored a hit on Bourne. After its move the bomber took a shot at Llewelyn too but completely missed.

Luftwaffe sharp shooters!

Llewelyn then flew right past the 88 guns blazing and missing. He then burned advantage so that he could turn 180 degrees and find himself on the bomber’s tail.

Ball meanwhile was still trying to get on the tail of the Luftwaffe plane. Clearly some practice was required.

The next round, before moving, the bomber took a pot shot at Llewelyn and managed to score another hit! The RAF had two boom chits now which meant they were halfway to losing what was meant to be a straightforward combat.

And just to prove the dice gods desert me even when I’m on my own the 88 got another burst in at the end of its move and poor, hapless Llewelyn was shot down. The 88 had rolled three consecutive sixes and the RAF had failed to roll one despite having twelve attempts.

Seconds before it goes very, very wrong for Llewellyn

That gave the RAF more boom chits than planes and the Junkers slipped into some handy cloud cover and made good on its fortune.

“Only two Hurricanes from Green section returned. Neither was sure what had happened to David, Ball had seen his plane smoking and heading for the deck but had lost sight of it…”

2021 and all that!

This is gong to be one of those state of the projects posts, it being a new year and all, so you may want to click away now.

2020 started with probably more gaming than I've done since my teenage obsession with rooting through imaginary dungeons to nick gold from dragons. First up was a Sunday of Gaslands Revisited a very chaotic, fun game best played under the influence. This moved on to a few evenings of 10mm Ancients using the Milites Mundi rule set - one of those which builds up to a crescendo with the outcome being determined in the last couple of turns. I also was lucky enough to have a day playing the upcoming Mad for War from the League of Augsburg which is an immense amount of fun (the release I'm looking forward to most in 2021) and resulted in the purchase of many tiny, tiny Dutch ships.

The Dutch Fleet awaits

Sadly these have yet to see action, confined to port when the pandemic struck. Like many other hobbyists this led to a near cessation of gaming (apart from a couple of fun Western shoot outs via messenger) and a concentration on clearing the plastic/resin/alloy mountain. This was quite successful and I find at the end of the year I have finished off a few planes, a 6 mm Prussian army and an inordinate amount of Warhammer pieces of both Grim and Sigmar flavours.

Karl Franz on Deathclaw

Roboute Guilliman

Towards the end of the year I felt a need to start doing some gaming and began a Blood Red Skies campaign using my under utilised garage set up. Some battle reports are forthcoming on this.

Dogfight over Kent

But its all felt a little haphazard, so this year I have decided to formulate a plan, well a list really but plan does make it sound I've put some real thought into it!

This is to try and get me to actually finish projects instead of leaving them half done or worse in their original packaging.

1. Start and finish the 6 mm Austrian army I have kicking around in various sealed boxes.
2. Use that army to fight some 1813 engagements, the scenery, scenarios, Russians, Prussians and French are all waiting for them.
3. Fight the Battle of Britain campaign to a conclusion.
4. Finish off the two Warhammer 40K armies that are three quarters done (Necrons and Imperial Fists)
5. Open my Christmas present from 2019
6. Build that Lego model.

That I think will do, the stretch goal is simply to play a game or two with people in the same room. And I already have a mad plan for 2022 involving the Great Northern War played across three League of Augsburg formats Donnybrook in 28 mm, Mad for War to get some combined arms in and finally Beneath the Lilly banners but in 6 mm (with this scale I reckon I can fight the whole of Poltava in the garage).

But that's for another time.

All the best for the New Year, stay safe. 

"Look at the size of that thing..."

Lego... birthday gift from the other half.

Guess that's Winter sorted (or the next lockdown!). Better clear a space in the garage.

A Taste of Victory

Hot off the presses and straight through my letter box came this latest tome from the League of Augsburg, A Taste of Victory.

Penned as ever by Mr Barry Hilton this is a scenario book for Beneath the Lilly Banners third edition (though I'm sure could be used for any rules set covering the late seventeenth century).

Its my birthday this weekend (I'm not going to say which one) and I have a couple of days off work. That should provide an opportunity to curl up on the sofa with a good cup of tea and let Mr Hilton's battle plans fire the imagination.

The book can be found for sale on The League of Augsburg website.

Battle of Britain - Campaign Rules

 I didn't want to be mired in bookkeeping during the campaign so opted for a simple roster of 12 pilots and planes. This wasn't exactly accurate for the RAF at the time, squadrons tended to have a few spare aircraft and more pilots than aircraft when at full strength.

ME 110

A key part of Blood Red Skies is the pilot rating which can range from Rookie to Ace and has an effect on the order planes move in and the number of dice when shooting and avoiding hits.Having named the pilots, given them ranks and even the odd back story I rolled a single die for each pilot. I decided that pilot generation would be handicapped for the RAF (not so for the completely randomised Luftwaffe). Nobody could start as an Ace so a d6 -1 was rolled with the most likely outcome being a Regular. As the Battle rages on into August and September the modifier on the dice grows to -2 and then -3 to simulate new recruits with minimal training time.

Junkers 88

Two of the squadron rolled as Rookies and the rest as Regulars. Experience was going to be very simple, for each five sorties the pilot would get to roll a die, on a 5 or a 6 they would move to the next pilot ability level. Alternatively if they scored 5 kills then they would automatically go up a level.

327 Squadron ready for action

On the flip-side I felt I also had to simulate combat fatigue. So for each full week of active service the pilot rolls and on a 6 temporarily drops a level until their next leave or period of inaction caused by bad weather.

I also didn't want an aircraft being shot down in a game to automatically mean the end of the pilot, so another simple table for shot down aircraft was created. The results ranged from shot down and killed, to wounded (with a further roll on another table to see the effect), to minor damage and everything alright. Aircraft that were damaged would be inoperative for a period based on another roll. There was also simple d6 rolls for replacement pilots and aircraft.

Stukas

So with all that organised all I needed was a couple of sources for weather and typical sortie types. I used battleofbritain.com which has a timeline and the book Battle of Britain: A Day by Day Chronicle by Patrick Bishop.

Planes painted, campaign set.. Green Section scramble!