Check Your 6! for the Great War

Like many older gamers, years ago I used to play the Blue Max board game (the GDW version), but using CinC 1/285 scale miniatures on a hex mat instead of counters. From what I can gather from my feeble memory, I enjoyed the system for the most part, but seemingly there was a part of the rules that seemed "off" - that might have been the ease in which certain parts of the plane became damaged, or was it a random chit pull and I seemed to draw the worst results more frequently than I cared for? Regardless of my own hangups, the group seemed to move away from Blue Max for whatever reason.

For the last few years I have used Wings of Glory for my Great War gaming fix. However, while there are elements I enjoy, there are several gaps in the rules, and trying to get the local group to adopt house rule changes has been tough. Also, the haughtiness of a reply I received to a post on the Wings of Glory Aerodrome has turned me off a bit.

Check Your 6! has its roots in Blue Max, at least from a turn and maneuver perspective. And the concepts of Blue Max have been expanded into Canvas Eagles, still available as a free download. Add to that the Check Your 6! modifications from Brian DeWitt and his series of three Colorful Skies scenario books, and one has a couple of Check Your 6! style options for gaming the fight in the skies during the Great War.

One concept I have is to take the maneuver charts of Canvas Eagles and use them in place of the standard maneuver charts offered in Check Your 6! that Colorful Skies utilizes. Seemingly the Canvas Eagles maneuver charts reflect the historical performance of the widely varying aircraft of the Great War more accurately than the standard charts, but also add a great deal of depth when it comes to climbing and diving. For example, we have the chart for the ubiquitous Fokker Dr.I:

The speed bands are there, and taking, say maneuver 4S3 (in Speed Band 3), one can stay at level, can dive, or can setup into a restricted maneuver the following turn. That equates fairly well with Check Your 6! in which one, using a forward maneuver, can stay level or dive at varying changes in altitude, but can also climb with a possible detriment to speed the following turn. Simple enough, but what about a maneuver like 9R2? A fierce right turn, but one that allows a dive in the current turn, or a required dive in the following turn. The E Chart in Colorful Skies does have a similar maneuver, R14, which is an extreme turn. It does not require a dive, but can allow a climb, level flight, or a dive, depending on current speed. There are some maneuvers available on the chart above that do not exist on Chart E, such as 11R2 or 11L2, so there are some differences between the charts, and these differences add a different element to aircraft performance.

There is also a question of what miniatures to use - I have a slew of the Wings of Glory and Reduced Aircraft Factory color printed aircraft, in 1/144 scale. Within my collection I also have a few planes I have painted from Shapeways and Table Top Flights. However, the standard Check Your 6! playing surface is 1.5" hexes on a six by four feet mat, and I already have three gaming mats with these parameters. The stands for the Wings of Glory planes are a little over 2.5". This leaves a bit of a conundrum. Do I use the 1/144 planes on a mat with 2.5" hexes with a larger mat? If so, to use the scenarios in Colorful Skies, the mat would have to be ten by seven feet! That is going to be problematic - Deep Cut Studio, where I go for custom mats, doesn't make a mat of that size (and if they did, it would be cost prohibitive). Second, finding tables at the local game stores for that size is most likely not happening. 

Of course, I could start collecting aircraft in a smaller scale which solves the mat issue. Table Top Flights make both 1/200 and 1/285 scale aircraft for the Great War, however, in speaking with Mike at Table Top Flights, the smaller scale leads to some quality concerns - the frailty of some of the struts at that scale causes breakage. Mike is going to run some test prints for me on certain aircraft to see how they turn out. 

Going to 1/200 would be a possible option as most WWI planes are smaller than their WWII counterparts. I could still use the mats and the flight stands I currently use for the other Check Your 6! eras I game. Here are a couple of shots of a 1/200 scale Roland D.II (I buggered up the nose a bit when I removed the propeller blades).

The quality is quite good, regardless of how a digital camera captures the tiniest of details.

Decals can be an issue in 1/200 - there are some available, but mostly as part of 1/285 or 1/144 sheets, and very little squadron or personal markings in that scale. In 1/285 there are much better options, using 1/300 as well. And of course, if I do go to a different scale, then I am going to have a lot of painting in my future! World War One aircraft can be very colorful, an I cannot imagine trying to paint German lozenge on such tiny planes. I have some decisions to make....