2025 Review - Rolling Dice

I set out at the start of the year with the objective to focus on the First World War and, to be fair to myself, I think I have achieved that goal, albeit only from the air. In fact, the vast majority of the games I've played this year have been solo play testing ones for Algernon Pulls It Off!, which has clearly been my principal focus from very early on. I have played a few club games, one Knights of the Sky WW1 air game, a multiplayer Napoleonic 10mm Waterloo game and a single game of Armoured Storm, but otherwise I've stayed away from the club and stuck to solo wargaming. I did also play a couple of try out games of Fly Fight Win: Honcho, which were good fun, but haven't revisited it since the summer. One big change has been the absence of any naval wargaming but this will return next year for sure, in some firm or other. Overall, I've enjoyed my year of wargaming, despite most of it being solo and limited in scope, so I'll be doing more solo wargaming in 2026.

Fly Flight Win: Honcho First Game

I tried out Fly Fight Win: Honcho today, which was interesting and a bit unusual in terms of game mechanics. It's different in that you plot speed and altitude at the start of a turn, then perform movement and manoeuvres in the next phase, most of which have no effect on speed or altitude, all in initiative order based on standard playing cards (very much like the Fistful of Lead approach). 

I enjoyed the game but there were some question marks over exactly when you can make a manoeuvre following forward movement, how hits stack or not when criticals are involved and what happens when two aircraft end up on the same hex at the same height? The rules are a bit ambiguous on these points but I'm sure there is an obvious answer, not that I want to wing it and get it wrong.

In the game I played two of the pilots went at it and caused each other four damage points each, one short of the five required for a shoot down, while the other two more experienced pilots didn't do much at all. In the end, the two MiG's collided in mid-air after a fluffed jet move, which brought the game to an early end after about six or seven turns. I'll give it another go later in the holidays when I have the answers to the questions and a better idea of what I'm doing!

Fly Fight Win: Honcho Game

I'm having a break from air wargaming today, after the Algernon Pulls It Off! play testing, but have set up a learning game of Fly Fight Win: Honcho for tomorrow. This will be a simple fighter sweep game based on the MiG Alley scenario from the rules but with half the aircraft to keep it from being too much of a steep learning curve. The USAF will have two F-86F Sabres with a Veteran and a Driver pilot, while the North Korean get two MiG-15bis with a Russian Honcho and a Veteran pilot. I'll keep a track of what happens and write an after action report once the dust settles. 

Danger Zone Alto Cenepa

I'm thinking of taking the Fly Fight Win - Danger Zone rules with me in holiday next week, as a step up from the Korean War rules once I've got a grip on the system. I have a couple of options here, either my Falklands War aircraft or my Alto Cenepa collection, the latter one of my favourite projects from way back in the past. It will be very interesting to see if I can get my head around the air to air missile rules, which add another layer of complexity to air wargaming, but I'm pretty hopeful having played other modern rules before without too much head scratching!

Summer Holidays Air Wargaming

 

This summer I'm off to Brittany again for the annual holiday during which I always play some solo miniature wargames, either naval or air depending on my current projects. This year I'm going to use the time to complete the play testing of the Jasta 18 'Raben's Ravens' scenarios for Algernon Pulls It Off!, of which only three remain to be taken for a spin, although I may also replay a couple of the solo friendly smaller ones just for fun. As I will have my hex cloth, flight stands and dice with me, I also thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and have a crack at Fly Fight Win - Honcho, the Korean War variant of the rules, using my pretty comprehensive collection of 1/600th scale models. I won't be taking the whole lot with me, however, just the USAF, RN and North Korean stuff, as I'll already have a lot of kit to pack for the trip over to France. Tally Ho!

Fly Fight Win Suez

This expansion for Fly Fight Win Honcho is now available as a download from Board Game Geek, including some scenarios and data for aircraft not covered in the Korean War version. It opens up a whole other conflict for air wargaming in the pre-missile era, so worth a look. It's a shame that the system is hex based otherwise I could deploy my severely underused desert aerial mat, which would be perfect for 1/600th and 1/285th scale models.

Fly Fight Win - Honcho

 

A week or so after I printed off all the sheets for the Fly Fight Win series of air wargaming rules, lo and behold, a completely revised edition is released for all three versions of the rules. Not that I'm complaining as they are all still free to download from Wargame Vault and the new editions have been streamlined for faster play, all of which is a bonus. I am pretty enthused by this system, which has shades of Bag the Hun and Fistful of Lead, two sets of rules I really enjoy. I'm going to give the Korean War rules a try out over the holiday and see how they play solo, then think about doing the same with the Cold War / Modern equivalent. It's great that I don't have anything to prepare for this, apart from some printing, as I already have an extensive collection of Korean War aircraft in 1/600th scale, flight stands and a hex mat, so I'm good to go!

Fly Fight Win

I read a very positive review of these rules for miniature air combat yesterday, so thought I'd take a closer look, especially as the rules are free to download on Wargame Vault. The system is common to all three iterations of the rules - WW2, Korean War and Cold War - which makes the learning curve a little less steep. They're hex based and use a standard deck of playing cards for initiative, movement and firing, all of which ticks my boxes. There are the usual rules for manoeuvres, targeting, air to air firing, as well as multi-engine aircraft, bombing and ground attack. There's even a simple campaign system to link games together as a narrative. 

The aircraft and missile sheets take up quite a lot of space, with the rules being only about 25 to 30 pages, depending upon which version you are using. It's all presented very professionally and could easily be printed on demand to create a glossy rule book that wouldn't look out of place on a commercial site. The only reservation that I have is will it work for solo play but that's something that I've managed to do before with other, similar sets of air wargaming and naval rules, so the answer is probably a qualified Yes? It certainly fills a gap in my air wargaming rules requirements, having given up on Target Locked On! (too glitchy) and Wings at War (not well received at the club), leaving AirWar:C21 as the only real alternative for modern and Cold War era air combat.