Ground Attack

The Next Chapter of the Drake's Dragon's Campaign

The Dragons receive orders to destroy an enemy ground convoy. Drake, Hartley, and Palmer go on the mission, flying Goshawks.

The Mission

With Hartley and Palmer flying cover, Drake makes a pass at the convoy. He misses.

No photo of turn 1.

As Drake pulls up from his attack run, an enemy Cobra appears out of the heavy cloud cover and gets on his tail. Palmer also finds himself tailed. Fortunately, the enemy gunnery is bad. Our heroes are unscathed.

But the Cobra stays on Palmer's tail and damages him. Hartley rushes to help Drake. In the cloud cover, neither Hartley or his target can get a good shot.

Palmer escapes. With a little tricky flying, Drake ends up on his erstwhile pursuer's tail.

Drake damages his foe. Hartley now has a bogie on his tail.

But he shakes him and makes an unsuccessful pass at the convoy.

Pulling up, Hartley is exposed to a Cobra attack. Bullets rattle his Goshawk but do no significant damage. I fished out some yellow tokens to use a rattle markers. Drake unsuccessfully chases his quarry.

By this time, the convoy gets away. Drake orders a return to base.

Aftermath

• Each side had one damaged aircraft. But, the Dragons failed to do any damage to the convoy. Count this as a defeat.
• This means that the Dragons are 1-2 in the campaign.
• I added some rules for cloud cover.
• Roll a D3 for number of clouds.
• Before firing, an attacker needs to roll to see if clouds obscure the shot. Roll greater than the number of clouds to get a clear shot. Otherwise, there is a -1 penalty to the attack.

Winging It

The Next Chapter of the Drake's Dragon's Campaign

The Dragons return to the air. This time, three pilots are on patrol in Goshawk fighters (average quality).

The pilots are veteran Al Hartley, and novices Randy Palmer and Josh Jenkins. Jenkins is brand new to the squadron.

Note: I randomly roll to determine who and how many fly.

Encounter!

While on patrol, they encounter 3 Cobras and an Adder (3 average and 1 obsolete fighters).

Hartley (green 1 - left) gets on the tail of the Adder. His shots rattle the enemy pilot. Meanwhile, 2 Cobras separate Jenkins. Bullets rip into his plane, damaging it. Jenkins flees the fight.

Hartley stays on the Adders tail and shoots it down. Meanwhile, Palmer (green 2) scores a hit.

Palmer finds himself in a bind. Evasive maneuvers! Whew, they missed!

But it gets worse for Palmer while Hartley tracks down another target.

With some nifty flying, Palmer turns the tables. His shots miss. Hartley manages to damage another Cobra.

With 2 planes damaged, the Imperial pilots decide to break off.

Final Tally

• The Dragons damage 2 fighters and destroy another while only having 1 damaged aircraft. They win this scenario.
• The campaign score stands at 1-1.
• Some Dragon milestones:
• Hartley gets his first kill, 
• With his third mission complete, Palmer rises to veteran status.
• Jenkins survives his first mission.

Drake's Dragons

Spurred by the dogfight I posted yesterday, I decided to start an aerial campaign. I resurrected a character and setting from my old blog.

The Lucranian War

The campaign is set in an imaginary world, where a diesel-era evil empire invades the democratic nation of Lucrania.

During this war, Devin Drake leads a squadron of brave aviators fighting against the might of the Empire.

Previously

The Dragons were marginally victorious in their last campaign, but suffered heavy casualties in the last two missions. They pulled out for some rest, but are now back in action.

I actually started a second campaign but it fizzled out. I'm considering that mission a one-off and am now starting a new campaign.

Mission: Intercept!

At the Dragons' airbase, the warning klaxons blare. Incoming air raid!

Only 2 Dragons, the commander Devin Drake and young Dewey Hobbes manage to get in the air.

Drake (green 1) flies a standard Goshawk fighter while Hobbes (green 2) pilots an obsolete Chick fighter. They face 2 Cobra fighters, an old Adder, and 3 Vulture medium bombers.

Using the heavy cloud cover, our heroes get a jump on the bombers. Hobbes damages one.

Then shoots it down. But the enemy fighters converge.

One gets on Drake's tail, damaging him. Hobbes takes damage in a crossfire.

Two fighters gang up on Hobbes and bring him down. Drake escapes into the clouds.

The cloud cover throws off the remaining bombers' aim. They do minimal damage.

They score 1 hit out of 4

The Lucranians are lucky the damage is not worse, but this goes down as a defeat for the Dragons.

Sadly, Hobbes did not survive the crash.

GAME NOTES

• Campaign Score - 0-1
• I determined the sides randomly. I think it was weighted a little heavily against the defenders. I will think about tweaking the randomizer.
• I use fictional planes for my fictional universe. There are 3 classes - obsolete, average, and advanced. I gave names for each class per nation.
• Lucrania - Chick (obsolete), Goshawk, and Peregrine (advanced)
• Empire - Adder, Cobra, and Viper fighters. Condor (light), Vulture (medium), and Buzzard (heavy) bombers.

A Nameless Battle with Nameless Foes

A few things have stimulated a desire to do a little aerial gaming:

• I watched a Crusty Colonel replay of an aerial game (Algernon Pulls it Off?)
• I pre-ordered Voidfighter. Although it is ostensibly a space combat game, I presume it will have many similarities to aerial combat.
• While de-consolidating, I had my aerial combat box out.

So now I take you over the fields of Flanders, as two nameless Allied pilots (green) run into a patrol of two equally nameless German pilots. All fly average planes.

The Allies spot the Germans first.

In game terms, the Allies had the advantage and got a bonus on their initial maneuver rolls.

But the Germans recover quickly and turn the tables on the allies. One plane is damaged.

A German gets on the tail of the second Allied plane, damaging it.

That plane decides to flee, and escapes into some clouds.

I initially placed the terrain down just for looks. But when the Allied pilot fled, I figured he'd head for the clouds.

The Germans gang up on the remaining Allied plane and shoot it down.

A decisive victory for the Germans!

Sky Skirmish

I played this scenario a little while ago. I am just getting around to posting it.

At the time I played this, I did not have figures for a land skirmish. However, I could do an aerial skirmish.

Set Up

A squadron of the good guys (green) encounter 2 squadrons of the enemy.

The planes with rounded wing tips (such as the bottom green plane) are older, less effective fighters.

The Dogfight

Amongst the swirling dogfight, an older fighter damages his enemy counterpart (bottom)

Green team in trouble as the enemy gets on their tails! One plane is damaged.

The damaged green fighter gets double-teamed and shot down.

The older green fighter damages another enemy. But his comrade (middle) takes damage.

Another green plane goes down.

Despite his success on the day, the older green fighter realizes he is no match for the remaining enemy. Time to flee!

Notes

I was just killing some time before the day's LARP event. I decided to do a quick scenario. I chose an aerial skirmish because it is much easier and quicker to set up.

Aerial Experiments

Here are a couple of games using my MicroBattle air combat rules. I'll post about the rules at a later date

Escort

A fighter escorts a medium bomber on a raid into enemy territory.

The defenders (green) approach in antiquated pursuit planes.

Notes: 

• The attacker is using two mid-century airplanes while the defender has early-century fighters to represent lower quality planes.
• The clouds are just for decoration.

The escort shoots down one fighter but misses two chances to take out the second. The bomber takes some damage but manages to shoot down the last defender. It then drops its bombs on the target.

Success for the attackers!

Battle Over Britain

I decided to do a test run of my air combat rules using a bunch of planes. I set the dogfight during the Battle of Britain.

• The British have 4 Spitfires, one piloted by a novice (represented with the early-century airplane because I ran out of prepared mid-century fighters)
• The Germans have 4 Me 109s and 2 Me 110s (I'm using my gray bomber counters to represent the 110s). One 109 (#4) is a novice.

The Germans (right) approach the coast!

A 110 goes down!

A lot of damage done before the next plane goes down. It's the Spitfire novice.

The 109 novice does down.

At this point, I tested morale of the Germans. They continued to fight, but the handwriting was on the wall. The Spitfires took out the remaining attackers without further loss.

A resounding victory for the British. 

It was also a victory for my approach.

• The rules worked well despite the larger than usual number of planes.
• My generic plane counters worked fine as well. It is nice being able to throw together a scenario on the fly without worrying about having the correct figures.