Canvas Eagles (Also klnown on the day as "Patrick Stacked it!")

 At the club yesterday Graham put a game of "Canvas Eagles" on. For those many of you who have not tried it the rules are free to download in the WW1 section of http://www.freewargamesrules.co.uk/. Although not exactly the same you can also try the online game which is very similar called "Blue Max" at http://www.youplay.it/.

As mentioned when we played X Wing at the club part of my dyslexia is telling left and right (for me RoboRalley is a nightmare...fun but only in an I have no idea where I will really end up). So struggling with left and right I have a history with these rules of lasting considerably less than 20minutes of flying time. So for a change I was given a bomber and a mission and the other three were to act as escorts in Grahams case or Interceptors in Tim and Patricks cases.


So for those of you interested in the technical details and who flew what.

Germans on a bombing mission to hit a rail depot behind the lines.

Graham: DVA Albatross (yellow fuselage)
Clint: AEG GIV (The biggest plane on the board by quite a long way!) AEG stands for "Allegmeine Elektrizitats Gesellschaft"

British had to stop the bomber getting through and dropping it's load.

Tim: SE5a
Pat: De Haviland DH4

 That covers the technical side of who had what and what we were trying to do. Graham and my self had the whole length of the board to fly and given that my plane had a speed of 2 hexes a turn MAXIMUM and an upper altitude of 5. It was also less manoeuvrable than a block of lead on a surface with a high coefficient of friction, in other words any fancy flying was out of the question!

The first few turns the fighters jockeyed for position and I trundled slowly across the board. Patrick did get one shot on me with a lewis gun a couple of points damage to my wing..... seriously not even an annoyance as my wings could happily suffer 10 times the damage and still keep flying so I was not worried.

Tim and Graham out foxed each other and ended up flying at the same altitude in the same hex.  The rules cover this eventuality. Both players roll 2d6 for a result 2-12 should both players roll the same a collision might occur. Tim rolled low (we can almost always trust him to do so) and the dice turned up 1 and 3. As luck would have it Graham rolled 2 and 2, also equalling 4. So there was a collision. It could just be a wing bump. Each player rolled 1d6 and took that number of red damage chits. This time Tim rolled a 6 and not to be out done so did Graham. Cutting a long story short, Tim's pilot was killed on the first chit and Graham had culmunitive damage which destroyed all his fuselage. Hardly any gun play and two birds crashed and burned.


 Those two started two new planes. Patrick was still a threat to me so I dropped altitude which fooled Pat for a turn and left him facing the wrong way too high above me to get a shot. So I dropped my bombs and started heading home. But Pat was not done yet, he closed in and let rip. My 2 gunners fired back and managed to hurt him, but two lucky red chits were placed on me. The first was a crew hit, randomnly determined to be the pilot (GULP) and the second was a spin check. I failed to control the plane and spun out of control.

I was very fortunate to recover from the spin next turn and ended up facing the right way so I limped towards the home trench lines. The De Haviland being quite slow only managed to get me in his sights when I was going back over the British trenches. Being very low I did take some ground fire (minor engine damage) and some fuselage hits which I could take.

Meanwhile the collision twins were trading blows and although Tim did not know it Grahams
pilot was seriously wounded. So he was limping home as well and desperately trying to stay out of combat.

As I flew over the trenches Patrick also at low level took one last desperate shot at my crate. He did hit me, but the manoeuvre was such that he had to lose altitude next turn. At level 1 that meant he had to try a forced landing. Not going into too many details he rolled badly and stacked it. His pilot was seriously injured and his gunner was killed. Like I said he stacked it!

Well we both made it. German success. I bombed the rail yard and got my plane of the board. Not desperately heroic, but efficient and for once I was not shot down which I usually am.

That was yesterday at the club, other games were played of course but Canvas eagles is an old favourite among the players and always leads to a good game.

More again on Wednesday. Thanks for reading and take care until then.  Best wishes Clint!