Additional Sources for Miniatures

In an effort to track down 1/285 scale Great War aircraft, I have come across a couple of companies offering 3D prints. Paint and Glue Miniatures, which I had come across before when looking about for 1/144 scale aircraft for Wings of Glory, also provides the same Great War aircraft in 1/285 (seventy-nine different planes). I have placed an order and will post pictures of the printed product once it arrives as I am eager to do the Werner Voss fight in 1/285, using my Check Your 6! Great War modifications. 

The second shop is The Miniatures Marketplace, which has 444 aircraft of various periods available in a slew of scales. While many of these prints can be found at other retailers, The Miniatures Marketplace also has many prints that others do not offer, like the Rogozarski IK-3 and the Messerschmitt Bf-109D for example. Price points are a bit high compared to Flight Deck Decals or Table Top Flights, with medium and heavy bombers at stupid costs, but for smaller aircraft, ones that others do not have, they make a good alternative. They also offer price breaks when ordering larger amounts of aircraft along with free shipping so that does help offset the higher costs per plane. I am placing a small order and will also post pictures to provide some ideas of their print quality.

Deep Cut Mat!

The latest addition to my growing collection of gaming mats for Check You 6! - another fine effort from Deep Cut Studio. I placed my order on July 14th, and it arrived from Lithuania on July 27th - thirteen days - which I feel is a pretty good turnaround for a custom mat. I needed (wanted) a desert/arid looking mat, and as I have been super happy with my previous orders from Deep Cut, I decided to go with their aerial desert offering, with an overlay of 1.75" hexes in dark brown. This mat will see service for my Darwin and 1948 Arab-Israeli games - while probably a little too arid for the Australian terrain, this now should be - I say partially knowing it might not be true - the last mat I will need.

A couple of pictures from a recent Darwin game:

Genda's Blade

Website image - not great

I am trying to fill in gaps in my World War II gaming -the challenge being the number of theaters that makes this an impossible task to go along with my interest in just about everything. Regardless of my lack of focus, recently I have been looking at late war action in the Pacific, and to that end purchased the "Genda's Blade" pack from I-94. The pack features either eight or sixteen Kawanishi N1K2-J Shiden-Kai (Violet Lightning-Improved) fighters (Raiden Miniatures) along with a decal sheet for the 407th Hikotai (made by the now defunct Dom's Decals) which is not available for separate purchase (and because I have a bit of an addiction, I have also ordered the same planes from Flight Deck Decals, for a future comparison post). The N1K2-J, known to the Allies as "George", was a beast - fairly fast, decently maneuverable, and armed with four 20mm cannons, albeit I believe the same type found on the A6M series (and hence meriting only LVC in Check Your 6!). 

My image, a little better

The term Genda's Blade comes from the formation of the 343rd Kōkūtai, an elite unit created in late 1944 by Minoru Genda, himself an extremely experienced pilot, although one with no victories during the war. Genda recruited the best Japanese Navy pilots he could gather, which included several aces. The following chart lists some of them and their number of kills before joining the 343rd (if Japanese records can be believed). Bear in mind I use the same convention for rating aircrews as found in the Battles Above series of scenario books with experts having fifty kills or more given a +4 rating and the ability to adjust up to three turn codes left or right of the originally plotted turn code (although I still need to test that last tweak a bit). Aces then have twenty to forty-nine kills, veteran aircrews are either highly experienced and/or have five to nineteen kills, skilled pilots are well trained and/or have one to four kills, and green are just that. 

Several other pilots became aces while serving with the 343rd Kōkūtai. Overall, aircrew quality for the kōkūtai should be similar to early war Japanese ratings, with little to no green aircrews, a bulk of skilled, and as you see from the above table, numerous veterans.

Raiden version - needs some cleanup but the casting is crisp

When American pilots encountered this unit, they realized they were not facing the remaining dregs of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Force, but pilots with skill as great if not better than their own, flying an aircraft as good if not better than their own. 

There is an exceptional book titled...wait for it...Genda's Blade! This detailed offering provides an insight, through several first person accounts. However, the book is out of print and is expensive on the aftermarket sites. But if one wants a deep dive into The N1K and/or the 343rd Kōkūtai, it is a must have title. Using Genda's Blade and AI I will be woking up some scenarios in the future.

Scenario Booklet Sales

I am very surprised, in a pleasant way, to see how many of the scenario booklets I have sold. The pdf option generated more traffic than I expected, so I will continue to offer future booklets in that format. 

Here is a recap after two months of sales:

Links to purchase print or pdf format are to the left.

Heading to Darwin

projected cover image

Well, not physically, but I believe the next scenario booklet will feature the American experience in the skies over and near Darwin during 1942. I have thirteen scenarios completely written, and perhaps will create a few more. My decision to do Darwin next is because today I received a VERY generous offer to have some planes painted gratis, and with my Blue Falcon Hobbies 49th Fighter Group decals just waiting to be used (admittedly I have to obtain the planes to use them on), this seems like the best direction for the next scenario booklet. It will still be a few months before the booklet will be ready for publication as I have to order the planes, ship them off to be painted, then play some scenarios as well as take some pictures of the scenarios in progress. The good news is I already have nine carrier based A6M2s painted, and I have five P-40Es painted for the 33rd Pursuit Squadron, both of which will be featured in the first two scenarios. The bad news is I need to paint a dozen G4M2s (after purchasing them) or use a dozen G3Ms I already have for my Wake Atoll booklet (and also need painting). Realistically I should buy nine more A6M2s and paint them properly in the 3rd Kōkūtai colors (and which I have decals for, also from Blue Falcon)....decisions, decisions!

Soooo, I went forward and ordered the P-40s and the A6M2s (yeah, like I really need nine in the proper green scheme) from Flight Deck, and while I was on my mad shopping spree ordered a desert aerial mat from Deep Cut Studio. The desert mat isn't perfect for the outback, but it will find use in many other scenarios and eras. And now...the A6M2s were painted in ame-iro...I did not need to order nine more, but at least then I can do these nine in proper 3rd Kōkūtai decals.

Back to the booklet - I have the background also written, and I just need to add my usual rules modifications, color schemes, miniatures and publication sources, and then paste the scenarios in. Sounds like a lot of work, but most of it is relatively easy. The booklet will be titled Eagles Over the Top End. UPDATE (7/31/26): this will be the largest booklet thus far, coming in at nearly thirty pages.

The Caudron-Renault CR.714 Ratings

How bad is it truly? While within my previous post on this less than desirable fighter I provided some Check Your 6! stats for the Cyclone, I did a deeper dive on its performance and used the Bf 109, Bf 110, and M.S.406 stats for baseline comparisons. The results are not great. And I still do not agree with the speed that good old AI came up with, as my research indicated a top speed of less than 300 miles per hour, but let's give the Caudron something to hold onto! Well, it does have a decent dive rating.

As the Caudron was not engaged at high altitude in the scenarios I am generating, I did not go through the exercise of determining its stats above 20,000 feet. I cannot imagine they would be very good.

In the CY6! format:

Caudron-Renault CR.714

Let's just get this out of the way first - while it looks kinda ugly cool, it's a pig. Unlike several other French fighters that could hold their own against the Bf 109E, the Caudron-Renault CR.714 Cyclone was a fairly unsuccessful effort to take French racing plane designs and militarize them, with wooden construction. As a light fighter it was supposed to supplement the lack of fighter aircraft in the French stable without having a negative impact on French fighter plane production. One might think that a "light fighter" design would result in a speedy and maneuverable aircraft, but with a top speed of just 290 miles per hour (keeping in mind that the aforementioned Messerschmitt had a top speed of 355 miles per hour), the 500 horsepower Renault engine just could not deliver. Surely being a light fighter then would at least yield a superior climb rate? Alas, no, as the Caudron could only manage twenty-three feet per second, with the German fighter coming in eleven feet per second higher. Okay, then it has to be more maneuverable and more agile, yes? No. Based on the Bf 109's rating in Check Your 6! the Caudron would use the C turn chart, with an agility of just +1. And let's not talk about robustness - without any self sealing fuel tanks, pilot armor, or even a radial engine, it warrants an R0 rating. Sign me up!

The CR.714 was first delivered to French squadrons in January 1940. However, it was such a shite plane that it was withdrawn from service - the following month! And the Finns, those crafty Finns who could make a fight with just about any plane discarded in their direction, said ei when it came to the wooden fighter (winter conditions and wooden plane - not a great combination). Ah, just who is deserving of this failure of a plane - I know, let's give it to the Poles, they won't know any better! And to the Poles it went.

Groupe de Chasse polonais I/145, the Polish Warsaw Squadron, received thirty-five Cyclones in mid-May, 1940. But even the Poles were leery of such an airframe, and one week after delivery and many complaints, the French Minister of War said pas plus and ordered the Caudron withdrawn from service. But the Poles, desperate to fight the Huns, and not having any other aircraft available to them, ignored the withdrawal order and used the Cyclones fairly effectively over a four day span in June. A dozen confirmed kills against Bf 109s, Bf 110s, and Dornier Do 17s were recorded, along with three additional unconfirmed claims. In return the Poles lost nine Caudrons in the air and an equal number on the ground. Hmmm, maybe it IS the man and not the machine....

Oh Bernhard, I need this in 1/285, pretty please!

Of course, those who know me also know that I like the obscure, and as long as I have some wonderfully painted (heaven no, not be me) Germans of the types mentioned, why not get a few Caudrons to recreate those scenarios. Wait, does anyone even make this pig in miniature? Why yes, yes they do - my friends at Flight Deck Decals and Table Top Flights both offer the Cyclone as a 3D print. Hmmm, decals, that will be my roadblock. A quick check at my favorite resources yielded a sheet of decals for the Caudron, for the Groupe de Chasse polonais I/145, over at Sieben Schwaben Spiele Decals! This MUST be fate!

Check out the YouTube video made about this plane over at Showtime112's channel and keep an eye open for a few upcoming scenarios. Now, don't tell my wife but I am going to go order some shite planes! Oh, and then decals. And darn it, I have NO French paint colors! Oh, and I need a book on this plane (there happens to be one in the Polish Wings series - and now ordered!).

Scenario Book Progress

A video showing draft copies of the upcoming scenario books - Slovak-Hungarian War, Wake Atoll, and Project Gun-Val for the Korean War.

Spanish Civil War Stats - Legion Condor Scenarios

I am not certain if everyone will agree with the results, but I have been working on stats for the aircraft that make an appearance in the Spanish Civil War scenarios I have created that feature the Legion Condor. As this conflict started over three years prior to the start of the Second World War, the aircraft are, for the most part, relics of the early 1930s and hence many fly at would be an excruciating speed on the tabletop, if one were to keep the same speed band parameters as defined in Check Your 6! I've played in some early war Italian scenarios where the top speed of the aircraft was a paltry three, and not only does it take some time for the forces to close, once the sides get within shooting range the resultant furball stays withing a one foot square. Recognizing that the slower speeds might lead to frustration on the part of the players, I have used a 75 mile per hour band, and have used maximum speeds for both fighters and bombers (there is a reason for not using cruising speeds for bombers - certain types during this conflict could pull away from older fighters and using cruising rates would not yield that ability on the tabletop). 

Oh Mickey, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind. Hey Mickey!

To that end, I offer my take on Check Your 6! stats for the Spanish Civil War:

Click on the image for a larger version

HERE is a download version.

Progress on the Wake Island Front

And for my next trick....

I've had this scenario booklet nearly ready for some time, dealing with the Japanese attempt to capture Wake Atoll in December 1941. Several scenarios are built, mostly historical ones, with a few what ifs as well, such as what if the USS Saratoga reinforced Wake with the Brewster Buffaloes that were tasked to increase the American fighter presence - that sort of thing. While I have thirteen scenarios created I decided to drop what I had into Gemini and let AI take a look. It wound up creating a few more encounters and making suggestions to my existing ones, but as always with AI one must double check the work as I think the new offerings might be duplicates of scenarios I already have in the booklet. But if not, the booklet will be expanded a bit.

Currently the booklet, like the other two previously mentioned, comes in a hair above twenty pages, Using lulu.com as my print on demand service, with premium color and 80# coated paper, the price points on these booklets are about $12.50 USD, which I have added in a slight margin for my time. If I go to standard color and normal weight paper, it shaves maybe a dollar. My goal is certainly not to make money, but to offer more scenarios for Check Your 6! and Check Your 6! Jet Age gamers, and I have had other works printed with the better quality options ad really like how they have turned out.

I still plan to create more scenario booklets that feature specific topics, like the 99th Fighter Squadron flying P-40s (over twenty-five scenarios), the 49th Pursuit Group near Darwin, a dozen scenarios oddly enough also featuring P-40s, and a Taiwan crisis booklet that would feature the P-47N model for the early scenarios and the later 1958 conflict that features the Sabre. This would see over forty scenarios if all make the cut.

My Take on Operation Vengeance

I know this scenario exists already, I believe in a file obtainable from the Check Your 6! discussion group, but I wanted to delve into the mission to shoot down Yamamoto on my own, without reviewing the existing scenario. I am pretty pleased by the result, after consulting various books and YouTube videos about the event. Then I used a little AI to mix the parts together, providing direction in terms of Check Your 6! formatting, and then did some adjusting, and now I have a pretty good scenario for Operation Vengeance. One could of course add in the other eight P-38s but that would make a huge scenario, and historically it was the "Killer Flight" that saw all the action (which begs the question, just where were the covering flights?).

Without further ado, Operation Vengeance.

First East African Scenario

And like that, I have four scenarios created already for East Africa. Here is one of the largest actions to have occurred during the campaign, featuring all bi-planes!

The Fall of Kassala

East Africa!

Vickers Wellesley by John Young

I have been working on the outlines for several scenarios for the Italian vs. British Commonwealth campaign in East Africa, 1940-41. These are, by the very nature of the campaign and the small numbers of aircraft deployed to the region, smallish in nature, some being one player per side. But it is an interesting campaign, featuring some odd aircraft such as the Junkers 86, Vickers Wellesley, and even the Hawker Hartbeest. It gives players the chance to use more biplanes as the Italians featured the CR.42 and CR.32, while the Commonwealth forces had the Gladiator and Hawker Fury. Later scenarios saw the introduction of the Hurricane and the FIAT G.50.

I have started reading a rather dry account concerning the air war (Air War in East Africa 1940-41: The RAF Versus the Italian Air Force by Cantwell and Sutherland) - dry in that it gives the dates and number of planes in the encounters, but does not use any first person accounts, nor details of how each action evolved. Granted, I am only a bit into the book, and it is well written, but the details on the actions are a bit slim. Luckily AI has been able to create scenario parameters for these missing details.

Here are the plane counts for the twenty-two scenarios I will be putting into Check Your 6! format:

P-40 Stats

P-40E of the 11st Fighter Squadron

One of the most iconic and commonly used aircraft during World War II was the Curtiss P-40. I keep coming across various iterations in the scenarios I am designing, whether set in the Aleutians, Pacific, Burma, or North Africa. To that end I have tried to come up with the stats for every commonly used model during the war:

Swiss Scenarios

From early May into early June, the Swiss Flugwaffe was engaged in several encounters with the German Luftwaffe as the latter consistently violated Swiss airspace, mostly as a result of raids against France. I have been able to cobble together ten scenarios for this period, and while most are rather small, they could make good introductory games for players new to the Check Your 6! system, or for times when only a couple of players can get together for a game.

The ten scenarios are are uploaded and can be found on the Downloads page. While they are mostly vetted, there may be some gaps in the information, so feedback is welcome!

Here are the plane counts. Numbers appearing in red represent aircraft in the Variable Rules.

The Messerschmitt ME 109 DB was the Swiss designation for the Messerschmitt Bf 109E-3. DB stood for Daimler-Benz, which is the engine the E-3 used. If you ever see Messerschmitt ME 109 Jumo, that is the D model, again named for the engine.

Spanish Civil War - Scenarios

Galland in his Heinkel He 51

It's back! The interest in the Spanish Civil War, as yet another obscure gaming project, has made a return. Part of the reason is I started playing, albeit very poorly, War Thunder, and have been using a Heinkel He 51. Yes, long time followers of this blog might have noticed that several years ago I had posted some wonderfully painted Spanish Civil War planes, but I had traded that collection for some Korean War aircraft (and yes, regret is a rearward looking trait) and sold off my research materials. But now, the urge, the itch as it were, has returned and Amazon is winging four books my way, and AI has helped me create a slew of potential scenario outlines featuring the Legion Condor.

Granted, several of the scenarios on the chart are HUGE, and I will need to scale them down significantly for gaming purposes. I will also be creating what I hope to be a very complete and accurate listing of aircraft data for Check Your 6! Most likely I will scale the speeds as SCW aircraft, for the most part, are slow and slow aircraft have a tendency to accumulate in about a one foot square of gaming surface.

For now, I have created one scenario featuring Adolf Galland, entitled Galland's Carpet, found on the Downloads page. 

DayCon

This weekend I attended my first DayCon - a multi-gaming convention held in Dayton, Ohio. I usually avoid conventions - it is daft for me to pay a fee to play games with the same guys I can game with for free at local shops - but I decided to give DayCon a try and by hosting a game I received a reduced fee badge (yes, I am a frugal git). Plus, I knew that I-94 would be present and having that sort of access to their wares might lead to a few impulse purchases.

I left work early on a Friday afternoon in order to arrive at the convention to play in two Check Your 6! games. The theme for the weekend seemed to be World War II, although there was an Indo-Pak game on Friday evening as well. My first game was set in the Pacific, a scenario from the Road to Rabaul book (Something New). I wasn't expecting to do well, having three early model Oscars, but I did not take a scratch and helped put a few Americans into the jungle.

Not going to end well for the Yanks

The second game moved to Malta, and the British players did not fare well (my sole Gladiator being blasted from the sky).

On Saturday I got into another Pacific game (Stopping the Tokyo Express from Battles Above 2) and once again the Japanese players were overwhelmingly successful. Hot dice from destroyer anti-aircraft guns did the trick.

In the afternoon I hosted my Neutrality Patrol scenario. As with most of the games over the weekend, we always seemed to be a player or two short, so I played in this one, while also reducing the amount of German Bf 110s to adjust to the number of available players. The Swiss Me 109 DBs had some issues with one player losing his rotte early and the other Swiss player having great success. It was the same on the German side with one German player losing his Messerschmitts in rapid succession. We allowed players to bring on additional planes just to get some playing time in, straying away from the scenario parameters. 

Swiss Me 109 DBs

Initial German setup

Strangers passing

A random blue on blue die roll here could have been interesting

This...

...led to this.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Germans putting the squeeze on the Swiss

But then the other pesky pair showed up

I think it's time we said goodbye

DayCon is a good game convention - a movie theater converted to a church with plenty of parking, food options onsite, food and brewery options nearby, large and small gaming rooms (the tabletop minis were usually in the small classrooms which worked great for lighting and noise control). Staffers stopped by several times to make sure the game hosts were good to go. It was a friendly environment overall.

Oh, and yes I spent some dollars with I-94, picking up three scenario books, a pair of painted F8F Bearcats (which I will add to my Balls of Fury scenario), and a half dozen Raiden P-40Fs, which for some reason I had no idea that these Merlin-engined miniatures existed! 

Operation Torch

Over the last few days I've been on a bit of an Operation Torch tear, creating scenarios, drooling over the Flight Deck Decals website, ordering books from Amazon, and updating aircraft stats and various listings needed for the scenarios I will be formatting and uploading. As it stands, I have sixteen scenarios to work up, with a wide variety of aircraft and ranging from two player to massive furballs. Most likely I will scale down the latter, simply as putting more then six or seven players around the gaming surface is not an ideal situation based on my own Check Your 6! gaming experiences. 

Here is the scenario list with plane counts:

Updated Italian Stats

I have been trying to fill in the gaps on my Italian Aircraft listing, creating data points for Check Your 6! stats. For now, I offer, what I hope is, the most complete data bank for the Italian aircraft used during World War Two:

Italian Stats

Yakkety Yak After Action

A pair of Yak-7s, nicely painted by Misc. Minis

Yesterday for the Check Your 6! Southwestern Ohio group I ran a strictly hypothetical encounter, which featured the Yak-7 vs. the Heinkel He 100 (and found on the Downloads page and entitled Yakkety Yak). 

The scenario calls for five players, but since this encounter is a figment of my imagination, one could remove two of the Yak-7s, or add a pair of Heinkels, just to have a little fun or to adjust to the number of available players (we usually give a pair of planes to each player).

It is a bit of a bounce on bounce scenario, with four Heinkels closing on a pair of Yaks. A few random turns later four Yaks drop down from the clouds practically on top of the Germans.

The first game's initial setup

We ran the scenario twice as the first game was a rather short affair. The aircrew quality really showed through, but also the poor robustness rolls led to the destruction of three Yaks within the first handful of turns. So we changed the aircrew qualities with random die rolls, which yielded a result of all crews being skilled. This, on top of the Soviet "rabbits" changing tactics in the second game from running to turning into his foe, made for a heck of a game. The German players really danced about the board, and they had to due to being outnumbered 3:2. One turn saw the Yaks clustered together, and I thought the Germans would have a tough time the next turn. I took my pair of Heinkels and dover through and below the reversing Soviets, which also brought the other pair of Heinkels into a pair of perfect firing solutions. Our dice were fairly meh, but it did scatter the Yaks, and caused some damage. After seventeen turns, with one Yak shot down and another suffering an airframe damage (and one other running out of ammo) we called the game. No damages to the Heinkels resulted in a German victory.

The "rabbits" - my pair of Heinkels, have dove through the Yaks...

...setting up a pair of nice opportunities for the remaining Heinkels

And then the dance really begins with a decent amount of separation

Jamie obtains another great firing solution, but Mr. Robusto (Matt) makes his rolls

I tweaked the aircrew ratings a bit and have uploaded the revised version of Yakkety Yak. It was a fun game (both games for me - I had three kills in the abbreviated first game).

Yak-7s - Raiden Miniatures painted by Misc Minis.

He 100s - Table Top Flights painted by me, decals are Scale Specialties.

Mat - Deep Cut Studio.