1918 Dog Fight

 Regular readers will realise that alternate Sundays is a club day for me. As we are trying to integrate a couple of new members (Ian and Matt) into the club we had a couple of very different games on offer. Tim, Pat, Graham, myself and Mat played a game of "Canvas Eagles" a WW1 aerial dog fight game. I am the first to admit that I have a love hate relationship with this game. I definitely have a reputation as one player who was absent today was texting Graham asking how many times I had been shot down! Graham showed me the texts! Yes I am rubbish at this game. Total Cack!

Anyway I started off in a Bristol FB2 "Brisfit" (the single Lewis gun option, so not quite totally awesome but still pretty good plane. We were 3 British planes against 2 Germans, my Brisfit and two Camels. While the Germans had an Attik and some kind of 2 seat contraption (I forget it's name). Lots of manoeuvring in the first few turns and then my tail gunner squeezes the trigger and gets a minor hit on Graham. A very good start for me. And then it started going wrong. I did get a couple more shots off then Tim seriously wounded my pilot and shot 90% of my tail away. So I limped of the board alive but barely flying.

I was then officered a Sopwith Triplane "Tripe". Patrick had been focused on Tim (his dad) and managed to riddle his fuselage sufficiently to make him leave the air as well and so he flew off of the board and prepared to bring on a Foker Dr7. Graham mostly with his tail gunner got enough hits on Matt to force him to more prudence. But with me back in the game and teamed up with Matt we were able to stop Grahams ambitions. The joy of the Tripe is that it could easily out climb the other planes on the table. This was a tactic that worked as I was able to put myself in a position for the German pilots to tail me and then put my foot to the flaw and climb so fast they could not follow. This allowed Patrick to fire a few times on Graham's "new" plane and (we found out at the end of the game) both wound the tail gunner so bed he could never reload his weapon and cause a fabric tear which reduced his planes manoeuvres. I should make it clear we do not tell our opponents what damage has exactly happened to the planes. They just know the number and type of (red or Blue) damage chits they have inflicted.
Tim's "New" DR7 lasted about 7 turns before he flew it from the board. A couple of lucky erhm I mean well placed shots ripped through the wings and made the plane unflyable in any meaningful way. So Tim bought on another plane.

Patrick managed to keep a single plane flying all day, but did eventually run out of fuel and left very much towards at the same time as my second plane. All the steep climbs burns up fuel very quickly! The last actions of  the day were Matt gliding off the table out of fuel with Patrick and myself on the British side. As the Germans also glided across their own lines.

Patrick did make his dad (Tim) play out the whole trip back as Tim was very low on fuel and at height 2 (see picture... that's Tim's 3rd plane btw.) This was because Tim's plane kept catching fire (hence the smoke) and at height two was subject to ground fire every time he crossed a trench hex! In the end he made it.

Although no planes were actually shot down we all ended up on 2nd planes (3rd for Tim,) This for me is a victory as I usually expect to be shot down twice often 3 times in a days play. Yay me!

 I have included 4 pictures of the "Dropship Commander" game that was also on at the club, just because it looks like a good game. I could be tempted into it, but not just quite yet. I do like the paper terrain though and think it would be excellent reused for other non dropship activities. Pendraken do some 10mm zombies, and that idea has immediate appeal. a Zombie meta game!

I will also say that my idea for the club Broadside game next year has been well received by other club members (well the ones that support us at shows anyway) and that to me is a big deal. I intend to start work on the two armies concerned as part of Curt's Analogue Painting challenge. Therefore over the winter months I will be painting some WW1 stuff!

Finally I shall be at a different club tomorrow night so there might be another game report on Wednesday or I might post up some more figures. Feel free to leave a comment it you have a strong preference.

All the best and thanks for reading todays update. Cheers Clint

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!