Not bad from a standing start only two months ago. It's great to see so much interest in a 'vintage' set of rules and an aerial wargaming one at that, especially as it's card based, a bit niche and not exactly cutting edge in design terms. It's great set of rules and also completely free, so why not take a closer look? I'm sure the Red Baron would agree!
A few weeks ago I received a very nice collection of 1/600th scale or 3mm WW1 aircraft from a very good wargaming friend, quite unexpectedly and in a most generous way. I already had a couple of packs of these that I bought from Magister Militum ages ago to use with the Tumbling Dice range, but they were completely incompatible, being much more like 1/700th scale in comparison.
They're lovely models though and I've been trying to think of ways that I could use them to good effect, the current idea being to paint up the French late war aircraft, which Tumbling Dice don't yet include in their range. The good news is that Oddzial Osmy now have an online shop from which I will be able to top up what I've got with some missing models, getting them delivered to our French address to avoid the dreaded customs duty!
I've been thinking about a better way to represent aircraft with mixed armament i.e. an upper wing, drum fed Lewis gun on a Foster mount and a cowling mounted Vickers machine gun, as fitted to the iconic SE5a scout and a handful of other RFC or RNAS types.
In the rules this is done by giving an initial FF of 3 dropping to 2 after the first burst, after which the drum needs to be reloaded before it can fire again. Not only does the Lewis only have a FF of 1, it also is a one shot weapon before reloading, despite having eight rounds per drum. This is an easy way to do it but doesn't seem very realistic or very fair, especially when up against a twin Spandau equipped Albatros or Fokker?
I'm suggesting that the upper wing mounted Lewis gun gets a FF of 2, as it does when it is the only armament mounted, as on the Nieuport 17, or when it is fired by an observer when mounted on a Scarff ring. It would also operate as a normal machine gun for firing, giving the player three possible options. When calculating burst length you would:
a) choose just to fire the Lewis
b) choose just to fire the Vickers
c) fire both but split seconds of fire between the two. If even split 50/50, if odd split with the majority on the Vickers.
For gun jams, you would dice off to determine which gun has jammed. The Lewis can be reloaded when it runs out of ammo as before but it gets its full effect when firing. I reckon this would be a much better way to represent the capability and tactical use of the SE5a in particular but will wait and see what other ideas or suggestions pop up on the Algernon Pulls It Off! group.
A couple of weeks ago I posted an idea on the Algernon Pulls It Off Facebook group, to use the Bag the Hun Finest Hour campaign as a template for a 1917 Western Front campaign. This sounds a bit bonkers at first but, with some simple adaptation and use of imagination, I think it could work quite well.
The idea would be either to run a campaign over a single month of 'Bloody April' or to divide most of the year into four sections - March to April, May to June, July to August and September to October. There would be a mechanism to create a fictional scout squadron of the RFC / RNAS including pilots, aircraft and airfields, then track it over a series of missions, day by day.
It also got me thinking of the Battle of Britain solo campaign I did the spade work for a couple of years ago. I may have another crack at that this summer, if I can find the time, as it would be great fun and not too much trouble to set up, assuming I can speed paint the models to a decent standard. Tally Ho!
The first two Tumbling Dice 1/600th scale Fokker DrI models for Jasta 11 are finished. The first one is Rittm.Manfred Von Richtofen's red and green triplane c.March 1918, while the second belongs to Ltn.Verner Steinhauser c.April 1918. That's half of pack ISA112 and I have four more packs to go...so plenty of colourful Fokkers will be on the workbench this month!
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.
