New Planes

I am expecting a delivery of French planes from Tumbling Dice at some stage, and that will keep me more than busy for a while once they arrive. But inspired by how well my scratchbuilt Farman Shorthorns turned out the other week, I had a go at some more planes the other day. I decided to put together some of the very earliest aircraft to be used by either side - for the French the Bleriot XI and for the Germans the Etrich Taube.  

And here they are, with the Farmans I made as well. I bought a new batch of acrylic bases from Back 2 Base-ix, so could finally get them all flying. 

The Farmans finally take to the skies. 

The Etrich Taube. This had a distinctive swept-wing design, and used wing-warping to shape the wing in a similar way to a bird. For all its looks it was slow and clumsy, although very stable as an observation aircraft. As the first properly armed aircraft took to the skies in the spring of 1915, they were withdrawn from active service. They were unarmed, naturally. In a game you'd give the observer a rifle. In Spandau & Lewis terms they'd be: Speed 3, Manuever E, Hits 5, Power 0 and have a rifle for the observer firing 2*,4*,8*,10* (all arcs restricted).

The Taube was Germany's first mass-produced military aircraft. The Bleriot was France's. Based on teh design Bleriot used to cross the channel, there seem to have been several variants of this type, including single-seat and two-seat military versions. I made two-seaters - the single seater would be slightly smaller, but probably not to a level where you'd care at this scale. Like the Taube they were quickly withdrawn from front-line service as they were also slow and too stable for air combat. They'd have the same stats as the Taube in Spandau & Lewis, but I'd give the rifle arcs of 4,6* and 8, since they had an observer in the rear seat. There are also suggestions that some carried a Hotchkiss machine gun, firing forward well over the propeller arc. I'd probably just count that as a pivot gun firing into the 12 arc only, and maybe limit the ammo to 4 instead of the usual 8. 

These new additions have limited application for games, but since you all know that I like a bit of early-war air action I'm sure I will have them out on the table from time to time.

Ten Years Ago - September 2016

Ten years ago I did a trip Out West to go to the Priscilla Festival in Broken Hill. It was a lot of fun and as well as the festival itself we did some tourism. As part of this I collected some photos about the infamous 1915 attack on the Broken Hill Picnic Train, which is often regarded as the first terrorist attack on modern Australia. 

So for this look back in time you get a little bit of history and a few nice frocks. 

The Picnic Train And Priscilla

Memoir '44

We had a very quiet club night last night, with only three of us turning up. We played Memoir '44. Caesar has played in the past, but Daniel was new to the game, so I just took the basic set with me reasoning that the scenarios in it are pretty simple to pick up.

Daniel spectated to pick up the game whilst Caesar and I played the first game. We did the St Mere Eglise scenario, with Caesar taking the Americans whilst I took the Germans. This is is a fun one because the Americans get to drop figures on the board to simulate a paradrop. Caesar ended up with four units in my right-flank sector, some in cover.

Fortunately I had plenty of cards for that sector, despite only having a four-card hand, and I was able to mount a strong attack. That's where I picked up most of the kills for my 4-2 win. 

Daniel then stepped up to the plate and we reran the scenario. He took the Americans as well. His paradrop was in front of my left-flank reinforcements and initially he had me trapped in a corner. But I rallied and used a Their Finest Hour card to open up the flank and get my armour into play. This then hunted down paratroopers in the centre. Daniel cam back using a Behind Enemy Lines to take out a single-figure unit I had on my baseline, to put him one medal from victory, but I used a Counter-Attack to return the favour and knock out one of his weak units for the win. 

Daniel and Caesar then played each other. They chose the Operation Luttich scenario because it had tanks on both sides as well as some artillery. Caesar took the Americans, who are in a decent defensive position. Daniel's Germans have lots of armour, including heavy tanks, but armour's not brilliant against units in towns and bocage. 

Here's the setup.

Daniel attacked on his left, away from the US artillery, and his armour was able to overwhelm the first US position, then burst into the rear of their lines. Two more units fell as the Panzer Grenadiers came up in support, and a quick move onto the objective in that part of the board saw a lightning German victory. 

Great fun as always, and Daniel wants to play again next week!

Mission De Bombardment

I have ordered the newish collection of WW1 French planes from Tumbling Dice, along with more bases to put them on, so sometime in the next ten years I will have a substantial French force to go with my British and German planes. It will also give the bases on which to mount my new Farman Shorthorns.

However I do have a few French planes, so whilst I was in the mood I gave them an outing yesterday. I ran a bombing mission set around September 1915. The French had two Farman F20s and providing cover for them was a Morane L fitted with a machine-gun and some Garros wedges. The Farmans had bombs and a front-mounted machine-gun. Each had one load of bombs. There were two targets and they could hit either of both of them. 

Originally I was going to have teh Germans appear randomly according to teh threat generation system I've used elsewhere, but in the end I simply randomly placed them so that they came on in the centre of the three edges that weren't the French baseline. The Germans had one Fokker monoplane, and an Albatros C with a rear machine-gun. 

The bombers failed to spot any Germans for a good while, but the Morane and Fokker saw each other and angled in on each other. 

The Fokker got the jump on the Morane and scored some damage. 

The Morane actually maneuvers OK, but is slow. Whilst it turned around - slowly - the Fokker got in on the tail of the Farmans. They had actually spotted the Germans by now, but were doggedly aiming for the target. The rear bomber took some hits, and its pilot was wounded. 

As the first bomber lined up on the target the Albatros entered the fight, ranging up alongside a Farman and firing an ineffective burst from its gun. 

The Fokker suffered a gun jam!

The observer of teh lead Farman had time for one burst before having to line up his bomb run. It was a good one. The Albatros's engine started spouting thick black smoke, and down it went. 

The first Farman got its bombs on target. The second Farman was now in trouble again, as teh Fokker cleared its gun jam and came in for the kill. Trying to bomb the target would be fatal at this stage, so the Farman started to turn hoping that the Morane would come up in support. There was always the other target, after all. 

The Morane finally came back into the fight as the damaged Farman had to turn away from the second target, unable to approach it due to the Fokker's unwelcome attentions. The other Farman was doing a wide turn beyond the targets and trying to bring its gun to bear on the Fokker.

Once again the Fokker dodged the Morane. The damaged Farman started for home.

The Fokker sped off in pursuit. It's faster than the Morane and a lot faster than the Farmans. 

The Farman dodged as best it could. And, in doing so, it forced the Fokker to slow, giving the other French planes a chance to catch up. At least the other Farman. Once again the Morane was making a meal of the simple process of turning around. 

However it couldn't dodge forever.

It fell apart in the air.

But the Fokker's victory was short-lived. The second Farman was in range, and a quick burst from its gun destroyed the German monoplane. 

So it was a bloody fight, with three out of five planes destroyed. The crew of the surviving Farman had two kills to their credit, including an Eindecker, whilst the pilot of the Morane had contributed little to the action. The French had got one load of bombs on target as well, so on the whole could claim a win here. 

I tried out a few rules changes, which I will do some more with going forward.

The first is a mechanism change. I'm still not sure criticals come up enough (deadly though they generally are). So instead of just rolls of 6 counting towards the critical number, any hit on the red dice will count when testing for criticals. Only rolls of 6 will count on the white dice.

The second change was to try and represent the limitations of the Garros wedges. Not in terms of teh propensity for shooting off your propellor; that would just be an extra test I didn't want to deal with. But it wasn't as efficient in terms of gunnery as synchronisation or interrupter gear. Whilst there's not a lot of granularity in my firing mechanism, I thought something might be possible. So whilst it still counts as a fixed gun for firing, it can only count one roll of 5 as a it. Other dice must hit on a 6. This makes it slightly better than a pivot fun, but not as effective as proper fixed guns. This system could be applied to early improvised gun mounts and also to planes with a top-win Lewis as their main weapon, such as teh Nieuport 11. 

The third change was to bombing, which I wanted to make more random. When a plane is over the target it can declare that it is dropping bombs. If you have a dedicated observer doing this and they are doing nothing else then you get 1 dice. If you have an observer and they are busy then no bombing run can be made. You get one additional dice for each of being at speed 3 or less and flying in a straight line (no turns or sideslips). Roll the dice and take the highest score. If it's a 5 then the bombs score a partial hit. If the highest roll is a 6 then it's a direct hit. Direct hits score more points if you're counting such things. Note that a plane bombing without an observer, such as a Camel with bombs, gets the one or two dice for speed and being straight and level. 

And finally, I need to look at planes, such as the Farman F20, that have a top-speed of 3. There is a maneuver modifier of -1 if a plane chooses a speed of 3 or less. Since these aircraft already have a low maneuver value, it seems odd to give them and additional penalty as well. So my thought is that they only get the -1 modifier if they move less than 3. Other planes, with a speed of 4 or more, are still penalised for going at 3 or less. I just need to work out some clear wording for it. 

I tried this scenario again later in the day, but didn't take any pictures. This time the French failed to get any bombs on target, but the Morane did better, shooting down the Albatros, whilst the Fokker fell to a Farman again. The French had planes damaged, but all got home. 

Farman Shorthorn

Somehow I convinced myself that what I really needed to add to my 1/600th WW1 air collection was a Farman MF11 Shorthorn. I have no idea why, since I already have three Farman F20s, which are similar, but there it is. So I spent far more of my weekend than was healthy designing and building a couple. 

The booms were really fiddly to do, since they are both angled, one set from the top-wing down and another from the bottom wing up. I had to glue them to the wings and then carefully bend them to meet where the tailplane would be. The first one took me over an our of frustrating trial and error.

I spent some of yesterday painting them. 

They're not on flight stands because I'm currently out of the clear acrylic bases I use. I have more on order, as well as the entire 1/600th French WW1 collection from Tumbling Dice. So expect some French-themed action at some time in the future.