Balloon Busting In 'Spandau & Lewis'

I have been asked a couple of times to write up my ideas for balloon busting in Spandau & Lewis. It's only taken me two years to do it.

 
They are inspired by THIS THREAD on the Wings Of Glory Aerodrome, which whilst set up for a specific set of rules has some great bits and pieces for WW1 air gamers. Anyway, fire up your engines, put on your goggles and check that the rockets are strapped to your wings. We're going balloon busting!

Setup

Position 2-3 balloons within 12” or so of the opposite baseline. There should be about 12” between each balloon.

If the attackers are Allied and will be using Le Prieur rockets then you need to determine the facing of the balloons which is dictated by the wind. The balloons start the game facing the Allied baseline (the west, from which the prevailing wind blows). Then roll 4D6. Each roll of 1 or 2 rotates the balloons 45 degrees anticlockwise. Each 5 or 6 rotates them 45 degrees clockwise. Obviously each roll of 1 or 2 negates a roll of 5 or 6 (and vice versa).

(If the Germans are attacking and you need to know the facing of the Allied balloons then they should start facing the Allied baseline. But the Germans didn’t use rockets.)

Place 4 altitude markers next to each balloon.

Attacking Balloons

Balloons are static and can take 24 hits. They generally have two crew and count as a large target. Test for criticals as normal. Crew hits will affect the observers in the basket. Engine hits will automatically cause the balloon to catch fire.

In addition, after any attack on a balloon roll 2D6. If the hits came from a machine gun firing regular bullets take the highest score. If the hits came from Le Prieur rockets or from a machine gun firing incendiary ammunition take the lowest score. If the score of the selected dice is equal to or lower than the number of hits inflicted by the attack then the balloon catches fire.

As soon as a balloon catches fire and at the start of each subsequent firing phase roll a D6 for each balloon that is on fire. On a 4+ it explodes and is destroyed. Any plane within 2” of an exploding balloon takes a 3D6 attack, with a 6 scoring a hit.

Lowering Balloons

At the end of any turn in which a balloon has an enemy aircraft within 6", the ground-crew will try and pull it down. Roll a D6 on the table below; if the score for the year is achieved then one altitude marker is removed. When all four markers are removed then the balloon has reached the ground and can no longer be attacked. The rolls are:

1914-15 - 6
1916 - 5+
1917 - 4+
1918 - 3+

(The technology for lowering balloons progressed throughout the war, with the balloons being pulled down by hand at first, then teams of horses, then steam-engines and finally by petrol-driven winches. By the end of the war the balloon could be pulled down in minutes)

Anti-Aircraft Fire

If a plane (regardless of nationality) is within 6" of a balloon it is subject to AA fire, which takes place before regular shooting. This consists of a 2 dice attack on the aircraft, with a 6 scoring a hit. Criticals are tested as normal, but structural hits score an additional 1D6 damage. The attack is reduced to a 1 dice shot if the target is within 2” of the balloon or is a friendly aircraft.

Le Prieur Rockets

Certain Allied aircraft carry these weapons on their outer wing struts.

Rockets fire at close range only (up to 3"). They are treated as normal gunnery, and get the regular deflection modifiers for shooting into the balloon's front or rear arc. A plane has two volleys of rockets; you can fire one of them or both. The red dice for a single volley hits on a 5+, whilst that for a double volley hits on a 4+. White dice shoot with a -1. 

Scenario Ideas 

If you just want a simple solo game then you can fly one or two planes against balloons. Make it more challenging by having one or two enemy planes turn up at random. I'd limit their willingness to chase the attackers home though. If the attackers break off from attacking balloons (or shoot them all down) and are flying for home, end the scenario once they have got a certain distance away from the scene of the action.

Jutland Battlecruisers

Thursday's club theme was naval, so four of us played Broadsides: Empires Of Steel. The game was some phase of Jutland involving battlecruisers. Ralph and I were the British with six fairly good ones under our command, whilst Caesar and Stuart played the Germans who had five less good ones, but some supporting light cruisers as well. 

The Royal Navy, looking very organised. 

The Royal Navy looking less organised as we decided how to deal with the approaching light cruisers and their torpedoes.  

Ralph used his big guns to pound the German battlecruisers, and caused a couple of fires on the German flagship. 

We took very little damage back, but  those dastardly light cruiser started to move into torpedo range. This one missed with its first shot. 

It didn't survive long enogh for a second. 

We had to finish the game at that point, with a second wave of cruisers descending on the British, who were checking the rules for firing secondary guns.

I had a couple of older battlecruisers at the back of the line, so got to fire pot-shots at the cruisers. But I didn't get a single shot on target. Still, it wasn't for lack of trying.

The First Kill

On 5th October 1914 French Corporal Louis Quenault and Sergeant Joseph Frantz became the first aircrew to shoot down an enemy aircraft.

The pair were returning from a mission to bomb the German lines in a Voisin III. As they were returning home and heading towards Chemin De Dames they encountered a German Aviatik B  piloted by Sergeant Wilhelm Schlichting, accompanied by his observer, lieutenant Fritz von Zangen.

Quenault and Frantz had a Hotchkiss machine-gun fitted to their plane. The Voison III was a pusher, and the gun was fitted on a tripod firing forward over the head of the pilot (the observer sat behind the pilot in this type). Frantz engaged the German plane, which tried to escape, being armed only with a carbine carried by the observer. The action lasted around 15 minutes and, as the Hotchkiss jammed, the French crew saw the German aircraft flip over and crash. Both occupants died.

For this feat of arms, Louis Quenault received the Military Medal and Joseph Frantz was made a knight of the Legion of Honour.

This first certified victory confirmed the usefulness of arming aircraft and rekindled the interest of the French general staff in developing machine gun systems.

I thought that it would be fun to play this action through as a quick lunchtime game using Spandau & Lewis.

The Voisin was rated as 3C5 with an observer fired pivot gun shooting into the 12 arc. 

The Aviatik was rated 3C+6, with the observer having a rifle.

I tasked the Aviatik with observing a village across the board. The Germans would win if they could scout the village and then return home. The French plane appeared randomly along one of the side edges. The French win by shooting down the German aircraft. I just used a 16" board for this game as the planes are so slow. 

The German plane headed straight for the target. With nothing to do until they got there the observer fired a couple of shots at the French aircraft to no effect. The French fired a burst from their machine-gun, also with no effect.

The Germans scouted the village, whilst the French, unlucky with their movement rolls, struggled to turn into their rear (which had been the plan).

The only chance the French now had was to latch on to the German as it flew for home. However the wily Germans managed to slip past the French plane and left it behind. 

So a quick game, and possibly one that's a little too easy for the Germans. I may make them roll to spot the target, meaning that they might have to make multiple passes and spend more time vulnerable to the French aircraft. Still, it passed the time, and it was good to get my aircraft out again, even if just for a short game.

Mephisto (Again)

Last week we had a few days up in Brisbane. One of the entries on my list of Things To Do was to go to the Queensland Museum and see the only surviving German WW1 A7V tank, Mephisto, in its 'natural habitat'. Several years ago I got to see it in Canberra, where it had been loaned to the War Memorial, nominally for the centenary of WW1, but apparently mostly because the gallery in which it was displayed in Queensland had flooded, damaging the tank. 

Anyway, here it is in all it's glory in a new gallery built especially for it. My thinks to the lovely museum guide who not only took a couple of pictures of me next to the tank, but took some time out to chat about it as well.

Here's my younger offspring, Fraser, posing next to it for scale.

Rear view. It has six machine-guns pointing in all directions but the front. The front has a 6pdr gun.

In Front Of The Tank Selfie.

More loot. Australians were apparently very adept at looting German equipment, and brought loads of it back here. A special unit existed to distribute the trophies to towns and communities across the country, which is partially why so many of our RSLs have various pieces of artillery outside them.

At the top of the standard German MG08 machine0gun. Below it is the world's first dedicated anti-tank weapon - a German anti-tank rifle.

A trench-mortar. Apparently a lot of these found their way Down Under.

Back to Mephisto.

Mephisto scaled with a 5' 8" ageing transvestite who is on holiday.

Rear-view of the tank. That round plate under the angle is the escape-hatch.

And that's enough photos of the tank.

We did other stuff in the museum as well. My favourite was this horribly life-like and life-sized model of the extinct monitor lizard Megalania. Once again Fraser is there to provide scale, but so is my grandson, who very much likes to see dinosaurs and such-like.
 

Second best thing of the holiday was Bluey's World. I'll spare you the photos.

Battleships!

We played Broadside: Empires Of Steel on Thursday, so Caesar would be practiced for the competition at Cancon this weekend. A French force and a British force battled it out around a couple of islands.

Caesar and I took the French whilst Darren was the British admiral.

Both sides had some battleships (hence the post title), some cruisers and a destroyer flotilla. This seems to be a standard setup for a Broadsides pickup game.

The French ships. Great names and wonderfully bizarre-looking vessels.

Things start to hot up. The battleships in the top-left (British) and bottom right (French) corners are already exchanging fire. Caesar was sending his destroyers round the island at the bottom on an intercept course with the British battleships. The islands block fire to and from smaller ships, whilst the battleships can shoot at each other over them.

In the centre my lead cruiser was after the leader of Darren's destroyer flotilla; taking out the leader makes them harder to control as a group. I sank it but fell foul of its final action when it torpedoed me.

Destroyers were taking each other out near the British flagship, King George V. But you can see three splash markers on the battleship; the lead French battleship Danton had the range and was scoring a few hits. The King George V has tough armour, though.

Caesar was running our flagship, the mighty Jean Bart. It was badly damaged and on fire.

Anyway, we ran out of time before finishing the game, but had plenty of fun with the time we had. I think the French were close to losing their flag, but HMS Invincible wasn't living up to its name either and was one good volley of fire away from a trip to the sea-bed. 

We called it a draw.

Spandau & Lewis v1.3

Thanks to the posts I did last year I have noticed some interest in my free 'Spandau & Lewis' WW1 air rules. I had a look and realised that the version that was currently online is a much older one than the one I'm currently playing, and doesn't include a couple of important changes. So I have now uploaded the most recent version.

One of my goals for this year is to write up a few basic scenario set-up, including the special rules. I have tried to explain how the games work in various blog posts, so you should be able to put things together from them, but really it should be in the actual rules.

Anyway, here's the link (which has been updated on the Free Stuff section of this blog as well)*:

Spandau & Lewis v1.3

*If it opens an older version of the rules try clearing your cache or opening it in an incognito or private browser.

Coronel Plus

Last night Caesar put on a game of Broadsides in which we kind of refought the 1914 Battle of Coronel, one day earlier than it's 110th anniversary. I say 'kind of' because in order to even things up for the British, Caesar gave them the battleship Canopus as a late-arriving reinforcement.

Here's the setup, with the Germans in the foreground (Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, Dresden, Leipzig and Nurnberg), the British in the far right corner (Glasgow, Monmouth, Good Hope and Otranto) and tucked against the coast the entry-point of Canopus.

The Germans. The two ships in the foreground are the armoured cruisers and the others are light cruisers.

I should point out at this stage that a lot of the ships were depicted by stand-ins, some of which are not even the right nationality. They all had a label and were roughly the right type of ship even if the model wasn't a representation of the actual vessel.

The British are a mixed bag, with a light cruiser, and armed merchantman, and a couple of armoured cruisers.

I played the Germans and Stuart the British. With only two big guns on their side, the British advanced rapidly to close the range for their other armament. I should have hugged the coast and used the advantage the big guns of my armoured cruisers had, but I have no idea what I'm doing in this era and also closed with the British, albeit more cautiously. To be fair the coast was where the battleship was going to appear.

It appeared on turn two. Scharnhorst actually managed to plonk a broadside on it when it did, that took it to half damage straight away.

The German light cruisers were getting close enough to try some gunnery now, and even consider torpedoes.

But the British had torpedoes as well, and Glasgow put a spread into Scharnhorst, sinking it!

The German light cruisers also cam off badly in the fight with the other British ships, and a couple were sunk before I knew what was happening.

Nurnberg survived, and took out Monmouth.

I was down to two ships, but in the last couple of turns managed to finish off Canopus and take out Glasgow as well. Unfortunately Good Hope dealt with Nurnberg, so the battle ended with Gneisenau skulking off into the night. The British only had Good Hope left undamaged along with a badly damaged Otranto.

So we'll call it a draw. Adding in the Canopus was a bit of a game-changer as it prevented  Gneisenau and Scharnhorst from dominating things by keeping them distracted. Up close the four British ships were equal to the German light cruisers. And, of course, letting the Glasgow launch torpedoes at Scharnhorst was a bit of a blunder on my part.

Thanks to Caesar for putting on an entertaining game even if my handling of the Germans was somewhat inept.

Back Into The Skies

I've been away on holiday this past week and managed not to do any gaming of note (aside from the obligatory Love Letter that is). I didn't taken any gaming projects with me and didn't really go anywhere of gaming interest either. Still, I had a nice few days in Hobart (my first visit to Tasmania).

Anyway, whilst we were away I did mull over Spandau & Lewis a little, and my current quest to strike a balance between how many hits a plane should take and how likely critical hits should be. This was something I wanted to explore in my previous game, and something I was looking at when I played it again this morning.

I set out the same scenario as before, but reduced each side's force by one two-seater and one fighter. I randomised how each sides' fighter were split up and where they came on. The three German planes - two DVIIs and a Dr 1 - came on individually whilst the British Sopwith Camels came on as a pair and a single.

Early stages in the vicinity of the German two-seaters. Two Camels are on the attack, but the Dr 1 is coming up behind them. The DVII hasn't spotted anyone yet, but was about to get a rude surprise.

One of the German two-seaters went down with an engine hit.

On the other side of the lines a Camel was chasing a DVII, whilst the two FK8s observed their first target.

Long range fire from the triplane took down a Camel with structural hits.

The British had spotted one target, but the FK8s escorting Camel was currently out of contact and a couple of DVIIs were closing in on them.

The Triplane made another kill as a Camel went down with an engine fire.

The third Camel lost contact with the fight and was shot down by ground-fire (left the table and rolled badly to come back on).

The FK8s were now on their own against two Fokker DVIIs and a Triplane. One DVII had a wounded pilot, though, and he struggled to bring the plane into the fight. The other two Germans attacked, putting plenty of holes in the British two-seaters. In return the observer in one of the FK8s scored engine damage on the DVII, forcing it to break off.

The Dr1 was also badly shot up and running low on ammo as well, so did a final pass of the two-seaters (no significant damage) and headed for home. 

The final DVII, with the wounded pilot, now finally came up. Time was running out for him to get home, but if he could down one of the FK8s the points would favour the Germans. It was worth the risk. His shot failed to score a hit on the escaping two-seater

But the British observer was having a good day, and his return fire caused a lucky structural hit on the German plane, that caused its wings to come off. Down it went!

(The British scored a critical that meant that the target rolled 2D6, took the lowest score and inflicted that many hits. They then proceeded to roll a 5 and a 6).

So the British lost three Camels, but got both two-seaters home with a full set of observations. They also shot down two German aircraft. The Germans got their two-seater home as well, and shot down three British planes. However the VPs are weighted towards successfully completing a mission, so the British were the victors despite their losses.

I played with aircraft taking slightly fewer hits than in the previous game, which made things a little more dangerous for them, especially with so many planes having powerful twin-guns. But it seemed to work out OK.