Bag the Hun Scenario G Playtest Report

That was a right humdinger of a game! 

It all started out with very disciplined and professional formation flying and ended up with only one or two intact formations and a swirling, frenetic dogfight, with both sides performing some impressive manoeuvres and pulling every trick out of the bag at some point in the game. The end result was a decisive Soviet victory, as they managed to shoot down three Japanese fighters for the loss of only one I-16, which literally exploded under the guns of Junior Ace Sgt Maj Saito in Turn 2. 

The Japanese lost two aircraft to the Soviet Top Ace, Major Gritsavets, including their very unfortunate squadron leader Captain Kani, whose Ki-27 had a catastrophic structural failure late in the game, after he'd already run out of ammunition and had a gun jam. However, man of the match must go to the irrepressible Major Smirnov, the Junior Ace and Zveno Two leader, who was wounded, then blacked out and went into an uncontrolled dive, almost crashed but recovered and shot down one of the Japanese fighters. He also effectively neutralised the lethal Sgt Maj Saito by smashing his cockpit, which meant a crippling -3D6 dice penalty for the Japanese Junior Ace. 

It was all very exciting stuff, although the turns were quite long as I was playing solo and had twenty five cards to cycle through each time. In the end it went to eight turns, after which the surviving Japanese aircraft flew off the table in defeat. It's another scenario that I can tick off the playtest list, however, so I'm now onto the last one for the moment, which is Scenario H. I'm surprised at how smoothly all of the scenarios have played so far, with a minimal amount of post game tweaking required, if any at all in some cases. It's also pleasing that they've all turned out to give a historically resonant result, in this case a pasting for the Japanese!