An incident over Kent in 1940 -- Check Your 6! session

Once again yours truly came up short against Game Store Tony, who is turning into a budding wargamer before our eyes.

The occasion today was a little dustup over England during the Battle of Britain in the fall of 1940.

The situation was a wayward ace-piloted J-87 being shepherded home by a pair of Me-110s (veteran and skilled) when the group is jumped by four Spitfires (veteran, two skilled and a green pilot) coming from 6 O'clock high. Coming to the rescue was an element of Me-109s piloted by another ace and a skilled wingman. The final participant in the aerial drama was a fifth Spitfire, this one also piloted by an ace. Game Store Tony took the Germans, I took the Brits.

The ace-piloted Stuka proved to be a difficult target for the Spitfires, who found their number cut by one almost immediately when the heavy trigger finger of one skilled pilot emptied his magazines. With no ability to hurt the enemy he dove out of the action, Unfortunately he was the element leader for the green pilot who ended up lurking around the edge of the furball -- unwilling to mix it up but also unable to tempt any Germans into chasing him.

The Me-110s bled off most of their speed performing a loop and spent most of the rest of the battle catching up. They did force the other skilled Spitfire to dive away out of the fight when they ended up behind him.

The Me-109s had more of an impact and were able to interfere with the Ace and veteran Spitfires as they popped away at the Stuka. The vet Spitfire was able to damage the Stuka but moments later fell to a well-placed shot by the Me-109 ace. The ace Spitfire found himself unable to line up a quick shot to finish off the Stuka and with four Messerschmidts stacked up behind him he also was forced to exercise the discretion to leave.

All-in-all a credible performance by Tony, although in my defense I'll note it's only my third or fourth game as well and I'm still learning the flying ropes. The final score was one downed Spitfire and a damaged Stuka.

The battle was played using Axis & Allies miniatures planes on a Hotz Mat and took a little over 2 hours to play 9 turns.

Check Your 6! Review

Check Your 6! is a popular set of rules for refighting World War II dogfights published by Skirmish Campaigns.

Let me start off by disclosing that my copy was a review copy sent to me by my friend Mark Fastoso, who designed the Flying Tigers mini-campaign included in the core rules as well as the Guadalcanal: Cactus Air Force expansion book.

The fundamental design principle in Check Your 6! is that it's the man who counts most, not the aircraft, so the game emphasizes the effect of pilot quality more than the attributes of the planes, although it doesn't ignore those characteristics, either.

Pilots are rated, in increasing order of effectiveness, green, skilled, veteran or ace. Better pilot quality provides at least a three-fold advantage.

Most importantly, the less-effective pilots are forced to move before the better pilots, for an obvious edge to the better men. In addition, the difference in pilot quality (green is 0, skilled is +1, veteran is +2 and ace is +3) becomes a combat modifier, both offensively and defensively. Finally, better quality pilots can modify their planned moves, which plays into the initiative advantage mentioned earlier.

The other interesting concept in Check Your 6! is that dogfights generally took place within a fairly restricted amount of airspace, with planes that left that box basically removing themselves from the fight. This sounds historically plausible and it's a good rule to keep scenarios well bounded.

The basic game mechanics are pretty straightforward, with planes plotting their moves ona hex grid from a menu of options depending upon agility and speed. Planes roll 2 d6 to hit, modified for geometry, pilot skill, distance and other factors. Once hit, damage is determined by rolling dice based on the type of weapon firing. Each machine gan, for example, rolls a D6 while each cannon rolls a D10. Finally, the toughness of the target may allow it to make a saving roll that cancels the damage.

It all moves smoothly and quickly enough that novice players can easily handle 3-4 aircraft each and experienced players can control dozens. Some of the scenarios are quite large, with 20+ aircraft.

There's a minimum of special equipment required. Special stands can be purchased to track speed and altitude, but because each is tracked on a 1-6 scale you can also use dice instead.

I like the rules because they're easily adapted for use with my aircraft from Axis & Allies Miniatures, but it also makes a good convention game. Like many other recent wargames, the Check Your 6! books are also interesting histories in their own right, illustrating many little-known aspects of World War II in the air.

Overall I highly recommend these rules.

Half a Havoc report

Too much to do in not enough time, so I had to skip the bookends of Havoc on Friday evening and Sunday anyway, and as it turns out I couldn't even make the morning session on Saturday!

The good news is that the two session I did get to play were great fun, a pair of the most enjoyable games I've played in years. Both GMs did a fine job, there were minimal rules problems, the games flowed at an enjoyable pace, all the players were gentlemen, the overall quality of play was good even though each table had newbies and both games were fought to a clear conclusion in the allotted time.

The first game I took part in was a game of Axis & Allies War at Sea naval miniatures using the new long-distance battle rules. The scenario was billed as a refight of the 1942 Battle of Coral Sea, but the GM made a few adjustments to the order of battle such as including a fair number of Commonwealth and Fletcher-class destroyers and the USS Baltimore! Both sides had 400-point navies, so the OB fiddling didn't matter much. The GM also incorporated some house rules to aid the submarines a little, although as it turns out they didn't have a big impact on the game. The only other notable house rule was that Subs and DDs were NOT crippled by taking a hit. Again, s this affected sides equally I don't think it had a big impact -- especially because most of the time the DDs were sunk in the same combat phase as their first hit and therefore would not have been crippled under the regular rules anyway.

Being one of the more experienced players, I took the lead for the Japanese fleet and primarily concentrated on managing the air battles. As is often the case between evenly matched air forces it took a while to finally eke out an advantage in the air battles, but by game's end the Japanese still have two carriers afloat with usable air groups while the US was down to one with just fighters.

Still, the battle game down to a huge brawl over the objectives between the rival cruiser and destroyer fleets. In ship losses the two sides were nearly even, with 207 VPs for the US compared to 214 VPs for the Japanese, but the Japanese were the only ones to capture an objective so the final score was 414 to 207. (The game was called for time, but it appeared the Japanese would have a good chance to claim one of the other objectives on the next move with a destroyer and no Allied ships in range to contest it and just one US air unit that could attack while the Japanese would be able to place two fighters with Expert Dogfight overhead as CAP.

The second game was an interesting fight using the Check Your 6! rules for World War II air combat. The scenario was March Mayhem from the Aces Over Hungary expansion. This was a battle on March 20, 1945, which the GM admitted was part of his reason for selecting this scenario was it's near anniversary.

The battle involved a dozen Soviet fighters (6 ea Yak-9 and La-7) escorting a dozen Soviet bombers (6 ea Il-2 Shturmoviks and Lend-Lease A-20G Boston). Intercepting them were just seven Hungarian-flown Bf-109G Messerschmidts.

The design philosophy in Check Your 6! is that it's the "man" and not the "crate" that really counts so the battle was less one-sided than it might appear. First of all, the 12 bombers were on a bomb run and would do no more than fly straight ahead (under GM control). The dozen Soviet fighter planes boasted a grand total of one "veteran" (+2) pilot, three "skilled"(+1) pilots and no fewer than eight "green" (0) fliers. The seven Hungarians includes two "aces" (+3), two veterans, two skilled and just one green pilot. In other words, the seven Hungarians had a dozen points of skill between them while the dozen Russians had just 5.

The two players playing the Hungarians split the force 3/4 between them, with each player taking one each of the ace, veteran and skilled pilots and the more experienced player taking the green guy as well. The GM controlled the 12 bombers so the four Soviet players each got three fighters. The most experienced player took the Veteran pilot in an La-7 along with a pair of green. Each of the rest of us had an element that comprised a skilled pilot and 2 greens. My section was the other three La-7.

The battle, as so many wargame battles do, broke out into a couple of separate battles based primarily on where the players sat. Against the IL-2s the 3 Hungarians of the smaller flight did poorly, misjudging the approach angle and only getting one plane (the ace) into a decent firing position before game end. While he was able to hit one IL-2 a couple of times, he wasn't able inflict any damage on them and this was significant because the Soviets received 10 points for each undamaged element of bombers that exited the map, so this gave the Soviets a boost of 20 VPs. Five of the La-7s tangled with the Bf-109s and while the Ace was able to evade them and get into a firing position, the skilled Hungarian was ganged up on and shot down (for 4 more VPs) and the Veteran Bf-109 was deterred from closing and eventually flew off. This Soviet group took no losses.

Things went much more poorly on the other flank as the four Bf-109s controlled by the more experienced player timed their attack on the A-20s perfectly and looped in behind them. One A-20 was aborted by a lucky hit and three more were shot down for a total of 25 VPs for the Hungarians. The Yak-9s misjudged their intercept of the Hungarians and most of them didn't get into the fight and those that did suffered badly, with one shot down and one badly damaged, for a total of 5 more VPs for the Axis players.

Things would have been grim for our heroes if it hadn't been for the unlikely succor provided by one green La-7 pilot (played by yours truly). That pilot may have been green, but he sensed that if he pulled a Split-S reversal and left his element there was a good chance he could slip in behind the Hungarian flight that was going after the Bostons and he might distract them from their prey. The Hungarians, for their part, decided to ignore the green La-7 pilot and go after the bombers. After all, how dangerous could he be?

As it turned out, dangerous enough. The green La-7 was able to line up a long range shot from the rear and roll good dice, getting a hit on one of the veteran Hungarian pilots. One nice feature of the La-7 is that it's armed with a pair of cannon, so if it hits a fighter there's a very good chance it will down that fighter and that's exactly what happened to the Bf-109. This gave the Soviets 6 Vps (4 for the fighter and 2 for the veteran pilot).

The remaining five Hungarians were all being pursued by Soviet fighters (10 functional) without sufficient time left in the 12-turn scenario to turn around and fight so they opted to continue off board and back to base.

The final tally in aircraft was losses was 2 Bf-109s downed for the loss of three A-20 ad a Yak-9 while another Yak and an A-20 were damaged.

Interestingly enough the VPs were exactly even at 30 apiece, so the battle ended up a draw!

Quick and Dirty Check Your 6 using A and A Miniatures and some D6

P-40 in a scoring position on a Zero

I've been wanting to try out Check Your 6 for months but other things kept getting in the way, but I finally had a chance to try out the rules in a solo session this evening. This not only allowed me to try out the Check Your 6! rules but also the Hotz Mat I purchased specifically for use with the game.

Disclaimer: I received my copy of Check Your 6 from my friend Mark Fastoso, who designed the Flying Tigers mini-campaign contained in the base game rule book.

I had long wanted to have some tactical aerial warfare rules I could use with my Axis & Allies Miniatures aircraft while still keeping the aircraft available for use with A&A minis. This required a rules set that did not require modifications to the aircraft, special stands and a big investment in extra materials. Check Your 6! fits the bill perfectly.

Now one only has to look at the BoardGame Geek listing or the publisher's Website to know there's lots of ways to enhance the game and add a lot of bling and that's great. But you actually don't need it. A photocopied Move Chart, an A&A miniatures plane model and a couple of D6 and other dice and you're in business.

For instructional purposes I tried a duel between a pair of P-40Bs and a couple of Zero. I decided to mix up the pilot quality a bit in order to explore that important part oft he rules, so I made one P-40 pilot a Veteran and the wingman a Green pilot. Both Zero pilots were Skilled.

I arranged a simple head-on encounter between elements at the same Tactical Altitude Level (4) assumed to be in the Medium Combat Altitude Band. The Hotz map has 2-inch hexes, so it's a little smaller than the standard assumed by the rules (27 hexes across instead of 30). I bought a 2-inch size because I wanted to be able to use the Hotz map with other games that use 2-inch hexes such as Heroscape, Tide of Iron and Lord of the Rings: Tradeable Miniatures Game.

Both sides climbed at first and were at TAL 6 when they pulled into range for a head-on pass. At the last minute the Veteran US pilot took advantage of his edge in skill to sideslip out of the line of fire of the lead Zero. Unfortunately his Green wingman has to follow to maintain formation and ended up in front of the lead Zero at a 2-hex (Close) range. Both planes blasted away and both got hits. The Green pilot managed an airframe hit on the Zero, which would have significance later, but the Zero was able to shoot down the P-40 due to the hitting power of its cannon.

This left the Veteran facing two enemy planes, although the damaged Zero was somewhat constrained in its maneuvers.

The next several turns were spent with wild maneuvering where the superior quality of the P-40 pilot made a big difference. He wasn't able to prevent the Zeros from getting shots, but he was able to prevent them from getting good shots, and eventually the P-40 was able to use a series of Special Maneuvers to get behind the undamaged Zero for a moment. A quick shot that wasn't all that solid still managed to bring down the Zero due to it's poor Robustness.

Faced with an undamaged Veteran P-40 the surviving Skilled but damaged Zero exited the map with a quick dive. Because the P-40 had a dive advantage this counted as exiting off an "Unfriendly" edge and the plane failed the subsequent aircrew check and was considered destroyed after all.

I'm looking forward to trying this with some live opponents. It's detailed enough that I think it's most likely to interest experienced wargamers, although other gamers might like it in a group setting. I think it will work a little better with slightly bigger dogfights. I notice that most of the provided scenarios involves 4-12 aircraft per side.

The Hotz Mat worked fine. laying flat and not being difficult to move the plane models on despite the cloth surface.