Bag the Hun-Blenheims at Dawn

We recently played a WWII Airwar game over North Africa using Bag the Hun rules. we played it over 2 nights as we were a little rusty with the rules. This was the first time, I hosted a Bag the Hun game so I was a little slow, but things went generally well with no problems using Discord.

We had 2 squads each: I took the Italians and had 7 CR-32 biplanes while P-Y had 8 Blenheim Mk I bombers. The scenario was quite simple with the Blenheims approaching from the east to bomb a small air field in the North African desert. The CR-32 appoached from the northwest in attempt to take them down. The pilots were all Sprogs aside from 2 Regulars for the RAF and 1 Regular for the RA. I took a few more photos then usual and will give a brief outline of the action.

The CR32's in the foreground ready to attack the approaching bombers.

The RA yellow squad are quickly spotted.

The RA pilots had more difficulty spotting the bombers as they are coming out of the sun.

Yep...it is a bombing run!

Now if we could only get in position to take a shot, in Bag the Hun to take a shot the pilot has to be directly lined up with the target, although close in the above photo no planes are on the same grid row. 

The bonus cards really worked out for the RAF as they quickly moved pass the Italians.

Bombing run

The Blenheims moderately damage 2 hangers.

The white RA squad get on the tail of the lagging green RAF squad.

The Italians get some shots off and damage the lead bombers causing the fuel line leak and a fire.

But they just can not finish him off.

Meanwhile the RAF red squad make their turn back to home (Egypt) with the yellow Italian squad giving chase. It is going to be tricky as the bombers are almost twice as fast as the CR-32's.

P-Y pull off an amazing manoeuvre getting all his planes in position so the Air Gunners have targets .

Fortunately the Italians aeronautic skills help them to avoid any damage but they are quite trigger happy and the white squad is running very low on ammo and White 2 has a jammed gun so has to retreat. Yellow 4 tries to take his place to catch the lone bomber.

The yellow Italian squad breaks formation

Yellow 1 remains on the tail of Red 1 but just can not take him down

The CR-32's all out of formation try to manoeuvre into position to take out the isolated Blenheim. The other 7 bombers have made it off the table.

Lady Luck is against the Italians though, they get 3 planes in position to fire at the Blenheim , the deck is shuffled and can you believe the RAF move card comes up first! Although no planes are lost on either side, the RAF have a victory after a successful bombing run. 

I should note that the scenario was taken from a brochure The Falcon and the Gladiator by Chris Stoesen. He has put out 2 pamphlets on the easy Airwar over North Africa. They are jammed with a lot of detail and also an outline for playing a campaign. A campaign itself is not really included like a TFL Pint Sized Campaign for CoC, but certainly one could write one from the detail that is provided. In retrospect, I think the game might have been a little boring for P-Y as there was no fighter escort for the Bleinhams and bombers in themselves are quite limited in what they can do. Certainly I would like to play more North African scenarios using Bag the Hun, but I will have to add to my collection to make the games more interesting. Certainly, I have quite a pile of unpainted planes for this theatre.

Catch the Pigeon

Focke-Wulf Fw189-A2

This past Monday, we got in our 10th Bag the Hun game by internet. Quite comfortable with the rules now with very few questions coming up. We are playing about 8-10 turns now in 3 hours which is really quite good when you think only one of us (P-Y) has to move all the planes. In this game we introduced a couple of new mechanisms namely flak and having to land a plane. This was also our first game where we played with some Russian aircraft while we introduces also some new German aircraft from Focke-Wulf.

Focke-Wulf Fw190/F8

This is another scenario by Jim Jackaman which can in found in the TFL specials. Here we have a lone Fw189-A2 reconnaissance fighter is returning from a mission during Operation Bagration (1944) and has to land at an airfield at the other end of the terrain, which is protected by 2 light flak positions. On turn 3, a zvenyo of La5-FN (6 Planes) enters from the same edge (east) trying to take down the Fw189-A2 before it can land. A schwarm of Fw190/F8 (4 planes) enter on turn 4 (north) to protect the lone reconnaissance plane from the pursuing Russians.

Lavochkin La-5FN

Victory to the Russians if they can take down the Fw189. As usual I will let P-Y's excellent photos tell the story.

We got in 9 turns before the Fw189 was shot down, it was midnight so time to stop. I suspect P-Y might have been able to take out another Russian plane if we played a 10th turn (our limit), this would have resulted in a draw. But a good Russian victory none the less.

Next Monday we are going to change things up a little with a Naval WWII game.