A selection of photos from today's play test of the Black Thursday scenario, which is now three turns in and packed full of action. To cut a long story short, No.29; Squadron is one down to Jasta 18 but it could all change in the next few turns, so far from over yet. I'm cutting down the scenario time limit from ten to six turns, as it's moving very quickly and the large card deck would be neatly balanced by a shorter number of turns. Tally Ho!
A couple of very interesting magazines from the local newsagent today, two of my favourite publications to grab when I'm in France. The current issue of Los! is particularly good, with an article on X Craft, the Malta aircraft carrier runs and the naval attack on the Dardanelles being all right up my street. I'll add some more magazines to my holiday reading pile later but these will be more than enough for the next week or so!
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| Biggles and the Black Raven |
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| Black Thursday |
I'm going to start the play testing for the last three 'Raben Raven's' scenarios this week, including 'Biggles and the Black Raven', which features No.55 Squadron DH4 bombers trying to avoid being shot down by a kette of Fokker DVII's of Jasta 18. Before I can tackle that, however, I'll be taking 'Black Thursday' up for a spin, as I have all the cards and aircraft record sheets ready to go.
http://jimswargamesworkbench.blogspot.com/2025/02/black-thursday.html
Chocks Away!
I'm planning ahead for the imminent publication of the AK-47 People's Edition, which is due out in August, so have been looking for a new terrain cloth with a 6'' / 15cm grid. The two front runners are both from the Big Red Bat range, the first a Savannah cloth and the second an Iberian Plains cloth, both of which look suitable for sub- Saharan Africa. I better make up my mind soon as I'm sure they will sell like hot cakes when the rules are out!
This arrived in the post yesterday and I've already been dipping in to find additional detail for the two Jasta 18 scenarios featuring the Independent Air Force. The first scenario doesn't really correlate with the account in the book, with a different date and aircrew, which is a bit weird but not something that I can't resolve. I may go back and rewrite it, at the risk of having to fix something that isn't actually broken as a scenario.
The second scenario, however, is pretty much spot on with only slight discrepancies and minor details requiring a bit of fettling. not that anyone will notice. In fact, I may well just go with the information from the Osprey book on Jasta 18, as that's a consistent source and a more recent publication, as well as being the basis for the scenarios I've devised.
Regardless, it's a good book and has loads of potential as a source of scenarios involving the RAF bombing campaign of 1918.
I painted up a Tumbling Dice Fokker Triplane in Jasta 11 colours for the latest Algernon Pulls It Off! scenario, 'A Test of Nerve', over that last couple of days. This was flown by Ernst Udet while briefly with the 'Flying Circus' but there's no record of it's exact markings or insignia, so a generic Jasta 11 scheme will do, even though it's a bit boring. I'm hoping to find time before the weekend to a replay of the scenario, so this will come in handy instead of a proxy model.
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!
A Test of Nerve
A very fast game this morning, played al fresco on the garden table, no less.
Turn 1
Both pilots made their frontal attacks, Ltn.Udet firing first to no effect, shortly followed by Lt.Maasdorp with equally useless results.
Turn 2
Ltn.Udet made a snap turn to try to get behind his opponent, but Lt Maasdorp then pulled a nifty brake turn to get a rear deflection shot on the Jasta 11 machine at close range, narrowly failing to hit due to ropey dice rolls.
Ltn.Udet swiftly pulled another snap turn left to get behind the South African but not enough for his guns to bear. Lt.Maasdorp now did a swift wing over to line up a front deflection shot at range two.
Turn 3
Lt.Maasdorp's Fire card came up on the initial turn of the deck. Once again, however, his dice rolling let him down, even though he had a two second bonus for firing, scoring only one 5/6 against Ltn.Udets two.
Ltn.Udet now hacked a hard left turn to place him at dead close range for a rear deflection shot on the Sopwith Camel. With eleven D6 for firing, the Junior Ace scored 6 hits, while Lt.Maasdorp rolled only 1 save on his 8D6 roll.
Five hits against the Sopwith Camel's robustness of two gave a 2C critical hit. Now, Ltn.Udet pulled a blinder, rolling an 11 on the 2D6 critical chart.
Boom!
The Sopwith Camel exploded in mid-air, the pilot being thrown clear to fall to his death below.
Victory number 22 for the Ace!
Good fun and a fairly historical outcome. Lt.Maasdorp was very unlucky with his dice rolling compared to Ltn.Udet, so I'm going to re-run the scenario to see if he can last longer and even shoot down the Jasta 11 pilot before being shot down himself.
I am once again thinking of tackling a Lake Tanganyika mini-project for my holidays, based on the Steamer Wars campaign system and Tumbling Dice 1/600th scale models. These have been stockpiled for a couple of years and would be assembled over the holidays while I am in Brittany, including some conversions to make models that are required but not included in the range.
This idea has been floating around for a few years now but, as my overall focus this year is the First World War, it makes a lot of sense as a holiday project, so much so that I've been in touch with David Manley to ask if he'd design some of the missing boats.
In fact, it turns out he's already been working on STL files for the Belgian armed barge Dix Tonnes and the launch Netta, not to mention some shore batteries in the distinctive armoured covers, which may or may not appear in the range at some point. It would be great to see some dhows and even the Baron Dhanis added to his 'to do' list as well.
I even suggested that these might scale up to 1/300th, to appeal to the Cruel Seas fan base, or even 1/200th to complement Rod Langton's excellent coastal forces range but I think that might be a big ask, as it would require all of the other vessels involved to be modelled too.
