Two Short AARs

Yesterday a few of us gathered at a comic book shop to play a couple of Wings games. The owners were nice enough to allow us to the use the "Dungeon Room" free of charge (and had they known the nefarious nature of our group placing us there was apropos). I forgot to take many pictures, so only a few here to illustrate the action.

The Albatros's fiddled with Dan, while I was sneakily diving down for recon.

Later in the game The G Dog closed in...luckily he also jammed!

Passing ships in the night...

I keep tinkering with all sorts of house rules and so in both games we used my diving modifications (see previous post). The first game featured two Belgian aircraft against a pair of Albatros D.IIIs. The Belgians had to recon a predetermined position with a B.E.2c, and for some reason that task fell to me, being escorted by camelbeagle (Dan)  in a Sopwith Pup. I gave the Pup pilot an Ace skill while one of the Albatros players (Bill - Old Guy) had Frommherz with two skills, and The G Dog (Ray) received one Ace skill. I was expecting another player to attend and give him a Nieuport 23 to balance things out, but he could not make it so the Belgians, outgunned and out skilled as they were, had quite the challenge.

Starting at three pegs, the maximum altitude for the B.E.2c, and seeing the Germans starting at four pegs, I immediately went into a dive to create more vertical space between myself and the Bosche. I was now at two pegs and four climb counters (see the House Rules file to the right). The next turn I plotted yet another dive to drop down to two pegs, no climb counters. It took the Germans a couple of turns to realize that to get to me they had to come down to play. Frommherz stayed high to tangle with the Pup, while The G Dog cam after me. By this time I was closing in on the target. Successfully taking a series of pictures of the target (a brothel I believe), and seeing G Dog starting to close, it was time to bugger out. I fooled him into thinking I was going to continue on a right turn, but instead I reversed and lade a series of left turns and headed back to friendly lines. I continued to dive until dropping to one peg. The pesky Albatros finally closed in, and layered a total of four damage points on the B.E.2c, with my gunner inflicting a bit of damage in return. But it was too late for the Hun, I was off the board!

Dan had a bit of a tougher time of it, dueling it out with Bill and taking some decent damage along the way, but he was also able to get off the board without losing his Pup. 

Nice looking Nieuport...be a shame if something happened to it...

Leaving The G Dog behind to go join the other fight

Yep, something is happening to that Nieuport...

And something indeed did happen!

The second game was a variation of my Hat in the Ring's First scenario - a pair of Nieuport 28s facing off against a rookie in a Pfalz D.IIIa and me taking an Albatros D.Va, the planes all starting at one peg. The G Dog maneuvered away from me, which was fine because I turned towards Bill as Dan and he were exchanging moves and damage. Dan hit Bill with smoke, and then I hit him with a fire result, and Bill kept taking a beating from the fire damage cards. Dan used some modified cards for the Pfalz, reflecting its ability to spin to the left (as evidenced by the remembrances of German pilot Max Holtzem), which helped him against the nimble Nieuport. With Bill shot down, Ray choose to maneuver off the board. I took a few damage cards, but they all zeros.

It has been awhile since I have had a couple of really good games like that, and again the rules changes seem to work well.