Checking In

 Not detailed reports, but it has been a month and life has been busy, strange and otherwise filled since my last post. I have gotten in gaming, just haven't written about it. A couple of weeks ago, Wayne and Mark came over for a day of What A Cowboy followed by Check Your 6 Jet Age.

 The Ski-Mark gang won that outing.. Wayne's dice just hated him and didn't want him to have a fighting chance.

 Up next was CY6JA. I set up an early Cold War scenario featuring MiG-15s facing off against some F-3 Demons. Again it was me and Mark against Wayne.

It was an entertaining encounter. The Demons have first-generation AIM-7 Sparrows and guns. Although we got a few lock-ons during the game, Mark and I never had a chance to fire a missile. We did well in the gunfighting department though, knocking out two while losing one with one more damaged. A fun day of gaming for sure.

Last weekend Ziggy came over for a round of old-school Battletech. We each ran two heavies. He had an Orion and a Black Knight while I used a Flashman and a Guillotine. 

Halfway through, my Flashman took back-to-back headshots from the Orion's AC10 and Medium Laser. That finished that mech off in one fell swoop.

I peeled off the whole left side of the Black Knight, then cackled as the engine went full Chernobyl. The Orion beat my Guillotine to a wreck for few turns then we called the game. Fun outing!

No painting recently. We've got my F-I-L staying with us for a bit so I don't have access to the room where I paint. I weep.
 

Check Your 6 Jets - Battling in the Baltic

 Four of the Space Cadets gathered for some CY6JA gaming on Saturday afternoon. Those in attendance were David, Ziggy, Wayne and myself. I had been working on a way to get some unloved planes into a game and put together some scenarios based on the idea of a Soviet attack on Sweden in 1967. It's enough of an excuse to put planes on the table... 

The scenario: Soviet bombers have been set to hit a shore position. They have some MiG-21 escorts. The UK is helping Sweden defend and send up some Lightning F.6 interceptors to stop the aggressors.

That's three (3) Il-28 Beagle with heavy bomb loads, three (3) MiG-21s w/ 2 R13 each. Facing them are four (4) RAF F.6 Lightning. The Beagles need to make it across the map (short direction) in order to bomb their targets. Damaged planes cannot drop bombs so they really need to remain intact.

David and Ziggy took the RAF defenders. Wayne drove two MiGs and a Beagle, I drove two Beagles and one MiG. The Baltic Sea was looking very polluted today. I couldn't locate my blue ocean mat, so I had to make do with ol' faithful tan mat.

Those Lightnings are quick! The bombers, suspiciously, are in Vietnamese and Egyptian colors. The Lego stands worked very nicely once again.

That's Davis, Zig and Wayne, left-to-right. 

At the end of that game, it was a total beating. We lost two bombers and two fighters and only scored five points for getting one undamaged fighter across the table. Score, 24-5.

Since it had only been two hours, we decided to replay the scenario with some tweaks. The defenders were replaced with Swedish J35 Drakens, all with Skilled crew. One MiG (mine) was upgraded to a Veteran pilot.

No pictures of the second game, but it went much better than the first one for the Soviets. Wayne and I did not fly the bombers in formation or at the same altitude. It made things a little tougher for the defenders. The Drakens' weapons aren't quite as reliable as the Lightnings', which was telling and the one better MiG pilot helped a lot. I think swapping one Draken pilot out with a Veteran might actually make this scenario "just right." At the end of the day, we got two bombers through and I shot down one Draken while the defenders only managed to damage one bomber. Final score, 14-2. Wayne and I retained some honor!

 A great afternoon of gaming for sure. Always looking forward to the next outing.

Some New Year's Check Your 6

 David, Ziggy and I got together for some CY6 for a first game of the year on Saturday afternoon. We played up at Roll the Bones game store in Savannah. This was to be the first real test of my new flight stands that I put together a few months back. 

The first scenario we played was "French Surprise" out of the CY6 MRB. The setup is that the USN is attacking a Vichy French airstrip in Morocco as part of the Torch landings. Ziggy commanded the four F4 Wildcats while David and I split the French D.520s 2 and 2. David's two were just taking off from the airstrip so had to start at altitude 1, speed 1. 

My two, flapping their wings as hard as they can!

I'm happy with how the flight stands worked. David and Zig also approved. I think the game ended with one French plane downed and two (?) USN planes taken out? Might have just been 1 to 1. 

We played a second game, this time in the far east with four Flying Tiger P-40s versus six Ki-27s. David flew the P-40s while Z and I split the Japanese target drones, I mean, Nates. 

My three were closer to David, so he wisely sent all four of his MUCH better planes after me, leaving Ziggy a longer flight to just get into the fight. 

There was a lot of dodging, weaving and fist-shaking. Zig and I got got so many hits on the P-40s but it didn't matter. The weak guns on the Nates just couldn't make a dent. I lost a couple planes, I think Z lost one. Two of the Flying Tigers ran out of ammo which was really our saving grace! Overall it was a really enjoyable match, it was just a shame our guns weren't up to the task. A great kick off to the year and we're all looking forward to more. 

Pico-Scale Lego Flying Stands

 I mentioned that I'd try to post details on my Lego flight-stands I put together for my 1/600 scale Pico Armor aircraft. Now I've done just that!

Ingredients : Lego parts from their website. 

                    1.25" clear hex bases

                    1" (25mm) metal fender washers

Step 1 : Attach the round flats to the undercarriage of your planes. This could be done before or after painting. I did mine first since it gave me a nice area to hold the models while painting.

Step 2: Superglue a 1x1 clear cylinder underneath the painted plane. The superglue will cause the clear peg to fog. You might want to consider using Gorilla Glue or similar which won't fog. All planes will be at a minimum of altitude 1 so this permanent peg does serve a game function!

Step 3 : Assemble Bases. This is a combination of the hex bases, washers and Lego rounds that are perfectly 25mm in diameter.

Step 4 : Just put them together! I picked up colored discs to add to bottoms of the flight peg stands to easily differentiate planes during a game. 

Voila!

I'll still mark aircraft speed with a small 6-sider of a color that matches the ID disc. Clear pegs can easily be removed as the plane changes altitude. No fiddly and frustrating magnets. I love it!

Recent Happenings

Hi all, I just haven't had the motivation to put up proper postings lately. A few pictures and progress of current goings on. For Memorial Day, a group of us played Alpha Strike then a large game of Check Your Six.

David and I barely hung on to a win with Clan Wolf preventing the Steiner forces from exiting enough units from the left edge of the battlefield. CY6 was a Battle of Britain scenario - He111s with escorts trying to get past Spitfires and Hurricanes.

It was a lot of stuff on the table, for sure!

Towards the end of the encounter, I had a Spitfire being pursued by what felt like the entire Luftwaffe!

But I bagged the bomber before getting shot down!
 

I finished up a handful of RCW Reds (Wargames Atlantic models) and some Etsy-sourced 3d printed vehicles. Afghans and other Russians are in the assembly and painting queue.

And the summer concert season has begun. The wife and seventeen-year-old accompanied me to Charlotte, NC for the Metallica M72 concert on Saturday. It was fantastic. Next concert is Ghost in July.

Will These Bombers Get Through?

 We've been without power since about 1:00am Friday. It's now Sunday morning. Hurricane Helene has been a major problem for huge areas of the US southeast. I'm posting from my cell phone. I have the fridge and a some fans running off my generator. Might be a couple more days, there have been shockingly few lineman trucks in town. 

After cleaning up the yard and checking on things at work, I got the decals done on the He 111s for Check Your 6. They're game ready! Models are Warlord Blood Red Sky 1/200 scale. 

Photographed in the 111's natural home... The glass-top patio table! Markings are a mishmash meant to look OK, even though they're wildly wrong. Most folks won't know.  Now, to get back to normal and get a game scheduled. 

A Challenger Has Appeared...

 For the Battle of Britain, that is. Joining the Spitfires I finished painting up a few weeks ago, I have some RAF Hurricanes! These are also Warlord BRS models. I added magnets so they'd be compatible with my flying stands.

I hope you like. I think the squadron markings are actually a Spitfire unit, but one applies the decal one has. I think they're pretty nifty. I also picked up a triplet of He111s which are getting close to completion. I'm still working through the decals of those. Of course I'll post pics when they're ready. 

Tonight, we wait out on the fringes of HURRICANE Helene. Nice timing there, eh? Will do my best to keep the family safe. Be well!

Check Your 6 - Battle of Britain Games

 Zig came by on Saturday afternoon for dinner and a couple game of WW2 Check Your 6. We're both Jet Age veterans so the new, simpler game would just be a matter of adjusting to slower speeds and shorter ranges.

The first game was just 2 @ Me109s vs 2 Spitfires. 

After a bit of the old "twisty turny" one of my 109s was done. It had taken an engine hit and I failed a piloting skill check to do something or other. The plane went out-of-control and over the course of three turns drove itself into the ground. Truly a crap way to lose a plane. We called the game there.

After wings + beer we came back for another battle. We turned up the chaos going to four planes each and assigning six pilot skill points to our four planes. Ziggy had four Spitfires with skill ratings of 2/2/1/1. I used two 109s and two 110s with skills of 2/2/2/0. 

The BF110s are Wings of Glory models which are conveniently also 1/200 scale so they match the Blood Red Skies models almost exactly.

As with many of these games, we got into a world-class "furball" before long. My tan 110 took an engine hit and an elevator hit early, prior to this mess. 

But while "untying the knot" I got blue and red into position behind a Spitfire that had taken airframe damage. The 109 finished off the British fighter, exhausting all its 20mm ammo in the process. The 110 hit, but also exhausted all its ammo during that shot! Ugh. 

Both 110s were done with one beaten up badly and the other with no offensive weapons. I was ready to call it when Zig beat me to the punch! He had one KIA, another with airframe damage and felt like he was in as bad a position as I was thinking I was. Classic, we were both ready to throw up the white flag and his went up moments before mine. A great battle though and loads of fun.

Be well!

The Plane Boss, The Plane

 After five and a half years, I have finally finished painting the planes that came with my Blood Red Skies starter box. I bought it in early 2019 when it was the new hotness. I didn't terribly much care for BRS but recently had the desire to play to WW2 air combat games. I picked up Check Your 6, since I lover CY6: Jet Age and started thinking about minis. Scrounging up the BRS minis was pretty easy and it was convenient that the I had airbrushed the Spitfires years ago. I placed an order for decals with Miscellaneous Miniatures (miscmini.com). A few days on the table and job's done! Colors and markings are "close enough" and unlikely to hold up to a geek's scrutiny. 

Oh, and I did attach magnets to the undersides of the planes so they'd work with my CY6 flight stands.

I can add a few to the numbers and variety via Wings of Glory since those planes are also 1/200 scale. These should keep me happy for a little while though.

A Bit of Gaming

 The crew got together for a Saturday of gaming yesterday. It started as just a Check Your 6 Jet Age game but Mike and I threw a Battletech Alpha Strike game in giving us a full day with two games.

Wayne set up the first game, an air battle set over Kashmir 1971. The Indians (Wayne, Mike and David) flew Mystere IVs and MiG-21s while the Pakis (me and Ziggy) had Sabres and Starfighters. There was also a bit of AA on the table that was ultimately nothing more than a distraction. 

My F-86es (nearest in the frame) hooked in to go dance with whatever they'd find in the center of the table. The Indian Mystere IVs were being played by Hawker Hunter models. 

And boy, howdy, they found it! Some real fortune maneuvering resulted in my Sabres catching Wayne's pair in a vice.

And one goes down in a hail of .50 caliber bullets!

A turn later a were were in a conga-line of DOOM. More gunfire resulted in me losing an F-86 and Wayne losing his second aircraft!

Adding insult to injury, Ziggy loosed Sidewinders from his F-104s way in the distance and managed a hit on one of Mike's MiG-21s, sending it into the ground below! In no time, things had gone south for the Indians.

A few more turns of maneuvering and we wrapped up. The Pakistani air force had clearly won the day.

I set the table up quickly for the Battletech scenario. I GM'ed and supplied the attacking force of Steel Viper Clan mechs. Mike supplied the Inner Sphere Davion defenders. 

The defenders start with about 40% of their force on the table, defending four objectives which the attacker must destroy. For a complete victory, the attacker must destroy all objectives and at least half his force (5 mechs) must exit the table edge from which they entered (the far upper left in the picture above).

David's very fast mechs made haste and got things going in no time.

Another conga line of DOOM!

The IS force was fortunate to get reserves in the clan backfield. They certainly had their hands full with Ziggy's Stone Rhino!

David made easy work of the objectives. It would be a clan minor victory for sure. Now they had to get out of Dodge!

Mechs started dying left and right! There are three smoke puffs in this picture. The Davion force gritted their collective teeth and managed to keep the Steel Vipers from escaping!  An excellent job of minimizing the loss. The scenario worked very well for something I threw together in a few minutes while on a 90-minute waste of time Teams call at work last week. I'll keep those scenario notes around for sure.