Blue Falcon Hobbies Soccer War Decals

I've just discovered these 1/200th scale decals from Blue Falcon Hobbies in the US. Although they are not 1/300th or 1/600th, my usual scales for air wargaming, I'm sorely tempted to order both sets for some Bag the Hun action, using the old Football War article from the Specials to set up some games. Very nifty!

Corsairs and Cavaliers Fine Tuning

 

Fellow Football War enthusiast and all round nice chap, Tom Ballou, has cast his expert eye over the latest draft of Corsairs and Cavaliers, making a handful of really good suggestions for fine tuning the end result. I've built these into the rules as I thought they were very valid points, with an example being the turning performance of cannon-armed F4U-5N Corsairs and tip tank equipped Mustang Cavaliers, amongst other things. I've also updated the list of Tumbling Dice codes at the end of the rule booklet to build in the new models that Paul has sculpted including the C-54 / DC-4, the aforementioned Mustang Cavalier and various light aircraft. I'll see what Tom thinks about my amendments then shoot the document over to Paul to get his feedback and an update on where were at in terms of publication.

Football War - The Re-Match 1979

I've been playing around with some 'What If?' ideas for a Wings at War Corsairs and Cavaliers project extension, with a fictional war between El Salvador and Honduras c1979. This would make use of the 1/600th scale jets that I painted up for the project way back when, but with the rules adapted from Thud Ridge to take account of the new technology involved. I've been tweaking the Thud Ridge rules to work up some stats for the aircraft involved and have come up with this so far:

Honduras                  E @ 2-4               E @ 1 / Load             Max Alt

Super Mystere               6                             4                                4

Canadair Sabre              5                            4                                 4

El Salvador

Dassault Ouragan          4                             3                                 3

Fouga Magister             3                              2                                2

Armament

Dassault Super Mystere         FF cannon / 2 AA HS missiles / bombs

Canadair Sabre                       FF machine guns / 2 AA HS missiles / bombs

Dassault Ouragan                   FF cannon / bombs

Fouga Magister                      FF machine guns / bombs

Air to Air Combat Table

HS Missiles              0-1            2-3          4          5          6

Rear Aspect               W               -            D         S         S

Front Aspect              W               -            -           -         S

Cannon                     1               2              3           4           5          6

Rear Aspect               W            W             -            D          S         S

Machine Guns

Rear Aspect              W              -               -          D           D        S

All Guns

Other Aspect            W              -                -            -            -        S     

Notes

HS Missiles can only fire at jet aircraft. Firer must be in homing zone of the target. The HS missiles are ripple fired in pairs, so are a single shot weapon for all intents and purposes (unless I allow them to be fired as single missiles, which might be more realistic)

W = Missile Malfunction / Misfire or Cannon / Gun jam.

D = Target damaged (I may add some tweaks to this for different aircraft)

S = Target shot down.

Bingo Fuel rules apply (from Thud Ridge)

The Ouragans may get AA missile capability (I think they were wired for this in the 80's?)

I am still working on the flight limitations of the various aircraft, specifically turning and altitude performance. The Fouga Magister may well get a +1 for low altitude turning. 

I may also work out some rules for ejecting when hit and for different ground attack weapons. I may even get the B-26 and C-47 gunships worked out for this as well.

Corsairs and Cavaliers Continued

 

I'd sort of forgotten about this set of rules that I'd written based on the Wings at War Desert Spitfires rules, until I got a note from Paul at Tumbling Dice today, saying that he'd like to feature some of his new models for the Football War in a magazine advert and wondered if the rules were play tested enough for publishing. I have play tested the latest version (3.1) a few months ago and it all seemed to go smoothly, although it was a while back and I had to check my notes, so it's a green light from me. 

I have also suggested that they should be a free download, as they are not a full blown set of rules like Thud Ridge and MiG Alley but an adaptation of an existing free set, so it seemed more appropriate to go that way. I think it would be a more attractive option as a freebie anyway, especially as the aircraft that you'd need are not exactly mainstream and might not sell so well without a bit of a nudge? I'll wait and see what he thinks but it makes sense to me.

IAF Leader

The New Years Resolution to play more board wargames is still going strong, with the latest being DVG's Israeli Air Force Leader, as a follow on from my very enjoyable Phantom Leader Vietnam campaigns last month. There's an obvious cross over with my miniatures gaming projects too, specifically the Desert Spitfires project that I've been meaning to finish for a while now, having made a promising start and then been side tracked onto the Corsair and Cavaliers Football War project instead. Anyway, if you are interested, there are some on-going campaign after action reports on the other blog:

Tea and a Wad Wargaming: IAF Leader

Corsairs and Cavaliers Latest

I had an email from Paul at Tumbling Dice today with a list of all the new modern and post war aircraft he's going to be releasing at some point soon, with several designed to complement the Corsairs and Cavaliers Football War rules that I've written (quantities and price may be subject to changes):

ISA 271 C54 Skymaster x2 £3.00

ISA 272 C45 Beechcraft x3 £2.00

ISA 803 Cavalier/Mustang (wing tanks) x6 £2.00

ISA 825 U17a Cessna/Stinson x4 £2.00

ISA 842 T28 Trojan x6 £2.00

ISA 842a T28 Trojan (rockets) x6 £2.00

ISA 848 Cessna 310 x4 £2.00

ISA 849 PA 28 Piper Cherokee x4 £2.00

ISA 850 T41 Cessna Mescalero x4 £2.00

ISA 857 T34 T34 Beechcraft Mentor x6 £2.00

ISA 858 O2 Cessna 331 x4 £2.00

He also suggested a small amendment to the set up for transport aircraft that I've now edited into the rules, with transport planes like the C-54 / DC-4 and C-47 / DC-3 now crossing the table from the enemy to friendly long edges, rather than flying a diagonal course across the table. I think this will work fine but I've also reduced the VP's for doing a successful transport run from 2 to 1 in order to reflect the shorter distance travelled and the lesser chance of an interception by enemy fighters.  

More Corsairs and Cavaliers Play Testing

 

This was another ground attack bombing game, with the Hondurans having three U-17 Cessna's with bombs, a C-47 with bombs and two gun pod equipped SNJ-4's as an escort, while the Salvadorans had three FG1-D Corsairs on CAP. At the start if the game, I decided to only deploy targets for the Hondurans to bomb, rolling up two and placing them according to the rules. Normally, you can't bomb before Turn 3 but as I was only using the small kitchen table I decided to modify the restriction to after Turn 2 to make up for the shorter distances involved. The Cessna's began at Level 1, the C-47 and SNJ-4's at Level 2, with the FG1-D Corsairs at Level 3.

The game played out well, with the Corsairs zooming in and diving to take on the C-47, which pulled a fast one and dived to Level 1 before they could intercept. The SNJ-4's meanwhile moved to head off the Corsairs and managed a hairy head on pass but with neither side managing to hit anything. The Cessna's were pootling along at Level 1 being ignored by everyone and eventually ended up in line astern over one of the targets. The C-47 also lined up for its bombing run on the other target but failed to hit anything, while two of the three Cessna's got themselves shot down, handing a victory to the Salvadoran army AAA gunners. They didn't have long to celebrate, however, as the third Cessna dropped its homemade bombs slap bang on the target and blew them sky high!

The game was quite short but that was primarily down to the table size and the tactics of the Hondurans, who now realise that bombing from Level 1 in a light aircraft is probably not a good idea, even if you have a better chance of a hit. There wasn't much air to air action but that's to be expected in a game where half of the aircraft don't have any guns. The Salvadoran pilots didn't achieve much but were out manoeuvred by the Hondurans on at least two occasions, so probably deserve to go home empty handed. I enjoyed the game anyway and didn't find anything that needed to be tweaked or amended, so it's another tick in the play testing box for me.

(Apologies for the terrible photos as my camera died and I'm having to use my phone instead)

Corsairs and Cavaliers Play Testing

I played another game of Corsairs and Cavaliers today, mainly to test drive the transport aircraft rules but also to give the game a proper run through. In the end I realised that the Victory Points needed a complete overhaul, so I have made the necessary tweaks to fix the problem of games ending too quickly. The end result, using the revised VP's, was a narrow win for El Salvador, with one Salvadoran Mustang Cavalier shot down but the damaged C-47 transport successfully crossing the table. The Hondurans lost a Corsair and the other two both ended up with gun jams, so made a run for home rather than get shot down by the remaining Cavalier. It was a really enjoyable game despite the marginal end result and I'm planning to run another one tomorrow, this time with a mix of trainer aircraft and fighters for some more ground attack play testing.

Football War Flight Stands Finished

EL Salvador (FAS)

Honduras (FAH)

I finished off the extra tropical themed flight stands for the Wings at War project today, so now have an additional six sets of normal fighter stands and two sets of larger ones for the bombers. To try them out, I thought I'd do a mass Football War fly-by of the Honduran and Salvadoran air forces to see how they looked with some actual model aircraft. If you look closely, you'll also spot a few later jets flown by both sides in the 1970's.

Wings at War Flight Stand Factory

 

I've now started to make a whole load of additional jungle themed bases for the Wings at War rules, which I can use for both Corsairs and Cavaliers and Thud Ridge. These are divided into 40mm x 40mm bases for the larger aircraft like the C-47's and 30mm x 30mm bases for the fighters and light aircraft. I've drilled the bases to accept panel pin flight stands, with the new 50mm ones for Level 4, 40mm for Level 3 and so on down to 20mm for Level 1. This is a much better system than my original panel pin heights and makes it more obvious which altitude is which, so I'm cracking ahead and have converted some of my old stands to the new system as well.

Tarting Up The Tiddly Trees

 

The lad pointed out that my jungle bases for Wings at War and Target Locked On! looked okay but would be better if I added a bit of colour to them. He's not right very often, being a chip off the old block, but this time he had a good point, so I've given them a wet and drybrush with an old pot of Humbrol Lime Green, which seems to have done the trick. I need to make some more of these to play some decent sized games of Corsairs and Cavaliers but this is a good start. 

Corsairs and Cavaliers Continued

I had a message from Paul Sulley at Tumbling Dice earlier this week, with an update on the models for the Wings at War Corsairs and Cavaliers rules. He's working on about half a dozen various aircraft and plans to get them finished over the next month or so. This means that I need to get some more games organised to make sure the system is solid and to spot anything that needs a tweak, although I'm pretty sure it's all water tight having already run a couple of games with no problems at all. I'm going to set up some games over the next couple of weeks, when I have the time, so there will be some more reports and photos to whet your appetite for the rules.

Corsairs and Cavaliers News

I had an email from Paul at Tumbling Dice the other day about the Corsairs and Cavaliers variant of Wings at War. He's now bought the rights for the Wings at War series as the author, Chris Russel, unfortunately passed away earlier in the year. Paul is now looking to publish the rules at some point either later this year or in early 2022, with some new aircraft being sculpted to fill some of the gaps. It's early days yet but the Football War ball is rolling again. It also means I'll have to find time to get some more play testing done, although I'm pretty sure it's a fully working set of rules.

MiG Alley Weekend

I'm planning to run a couple more games of MiG Alley over the weekend, as I've only just scratched the surface of the rules and really enjoyed the previous games I played a few weeks ago. This time, I thought I'd try some US Navy jets and piston fighter bombers against the North Korean MiG-15's, which should be an interesting variation on my earlier games. I haven't sorted out any sea terrain yet but that doesn't really affect the set up that much, so I'll just crack on regardless. If I have time, I may also try to get another playtest game of Corsairs and Cavaliers as well, now that I have some civilian bombers to deploy.

Football War Finally Finished

I've finally completed the Corsairs and Cavaliers project, with the final aircraft painted up for the Honduran and Salvadoran Air Forces. The last things to be completed were four, reduced to three due to a mid-painting muck up, C-47 Dakotas for the FAS and FAH. These were a total and utter pain in the bum to paint and came out okay but not nearly as tidy as I'd have liked. I ended up rushing them a bit to get them shifted and I think you can see the end result. I'm really pleased to have wrapped up the project in less than a month, however, and it means I can now tick it off the to 'do list' to move on to other, less obscure and more exciting things. Just remind me never to paint civilian aircraft ever again!