Plenty of projects

Enjoy the ride was fun. ride....wise advice when events take over. A four man game turned into a two person event.  

Also, visiting the local "toystore" I looked at the Achtung Panzer set of rules out and a sneak peek at the epicscale Punic War figures from Warlord.  

 

So back to the last game,  Barry of Maine,  brought along his Luftwaffe planes and pushed his Me109s and HE 111's to swamp my Yak 1 fighters. Barry enjoyed his second game of  Blood Red Skies and we discussed some of the options in the game . 

  Yak 1, Yakkity Yaks

Which reminded me that there were some questions about how the rules work. Hopefully the following helps. Without a specific walk through of a game....saving that for later, here are some of the concepts in Blood Red Skies. 

There are a few categories that the rules and options fall into. The basic rules....move shoot, damage; that is contained in about 10 pages itself Airstrike Commander  book. The use of cards to provide characteristics of airframes is extensive and also included. 

Also included there are scenarios and bombers,  bombing details. The book is useful. 

Each airframe is represented by a overall card with  firepower, speed, maneuver  ratings  listed.

Setting up a squadron starts with picking a type of airplane and determining pilot quality.  Pilot quality runs from green to ace, four grades increasing at 25 points per level.  My example would be the Yak 1 fighters, 6 planes at 28 points and six pilots adding three  hundred twenty five points for two level 2, two level 3, one  4 and an ace. 

Me109s are similar in cost, Mig 3's less, being 16 points each,while P38j models are 58 points. 

  

  Mig 3's, cheap, but are they worth it?

 

The other tome in the genre, Wing Commander, has a wonderful campaign system which is flexible enough to be adapted to theaters with litte work. Also there is campaign availability of airframes by year and country and a separate chart listing the airframe special rules cards.  This book also has ideas to adjust scenarios. And a mini campaign. While not necessarily obvious,  the supplement allows you to produce cards for nearly any aircraft in the war. So if you want Brewster Buffalo or Sturmovik or Bomerang or He163, with a little bit of homemade printing you can complete the inventory for your own force. While large, the offerings by Warlord do not include some pieces.   Other manufacturers are available for those thing, like Skytrex or Armaments in Miniature. 

So a little more time and then the Cactus Air Force versus the 1942 Japanese forces will be a short campaign here. 

 

In the last few days I picked up a copy of Achtung Panzer's 'everything but the tanks ' product. Basically,   late war armor crashes in the realm of armored platoon leader are presented in some detail. Several Tanks are shown for the British, American, Soviet and German armies. There are promises for other eras and combatants to be explored in later issues. 

 

Unlike the last game,  the cards are very granular in approach and serve as the analog to orders actions and ammunition records. 

 Now off to some 'light' reading of the rules. Tanks and guns and planes, oh my!