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....

Historical Board Gamer Decals

After a tip from one of the chaps on the Wings of Glory Aerodrome, I thought I had a solution to the 9mm American and Russian roundels I need to dress up some Shapeways RAF colored prints, but alas the decals sold by Historical Board Gaming are actually for 1/285 and smaller scales. If there was a company making quality 1/285 or 1/300 scale quality World War One planes (at reasonable prices), I would be tempted to paint up a slew, but there does not seem to be. CinC - fiddley to assemble, range is limited, and prices are now stupidly high. Hostile Aircraft fail from a quality point of view (and landing gear...yuck). Heroics & Ros, no pictures means no buying from this gamer. Anyway, my search for 9mm American and Russian roundels continues, although these HBG offerings look rather nice. There is a wide variety of decals to be had from HBG, and there are MANY roundels/insignia of various sizes on each sheet. The sheet I believe is one large decal, so one does have to trim around each roundel/insignia.

Hmmm, one option is still available - Mike at Table Top Flights will scale WWI planes at 1/285...maybe that is the ticket! At this point I could use all my Check Your Six "stuff" along with the Colorful Skies WWI mods for CY6. Then there is also Canvas Eagles, which could work. Seemingly when I used to play Blue Max, which is what Canvas Eagles is derived from, there was something about the rules I did not like. Might have to go download Canvas Eagles and give them a lookover.

Well, to further the story, in chatting with Mike at TTF, scaling his WWI aircraft to 1/285th can be done, but the frailty of such a small print, when doing biplanes, is a concern. So still a bit thwarted in my desire to use 1/285th scale aircraft.

Korean War AAR

 Well, maybe not so much an after action report as I simply cannot remember all the details, but today I hosted a four player Korean War game, the scenario being The Leatherneck "Checkerboards" from the Korean War scenario book - Marine Corsairs vs. People's Republic of China MiG-15s. As always with Check You 6, crew quality is often the deciding factor. I took a pair of MiGs while waiting for one player who we knew would be arriving a bit late. On the first turn I maneuvered the pair into a firing solution but the range, difference in skills, and the fact it was a deflection shot made the attempt futile. That sums up the Chinese players' day...when we could get into a firing position, the to hit modifiers were such that it was tough to bring cannon rounds onto the Corsairs. The Chinese had green pilots, the Americans had three skilled and one veteran.

The Corsairs are Raiden, and MiGs a mix of Raiden and CinC. 

The Marines drew first, and for that matter second, blood. The cannon-armed Corsair is a beauty with its good maneuverability and hitting power. A few turns in, after I handed off my pair of birds to the late arrivee, and BOOM, down goes a MiG. A turn or two later same thing happened. However, finally a MiG bears down and takes a tough shot with success and a Corsair shuddered then fell from the combination of 37mm and 20mm rounds. Pilot rolls were also not successful on either side for bailing out. Another Corsair took some airframe damage, but by this time both remaining MiGs were out of ammo and making time for the Yalu.

Over overwhelming American victory as they gained four additional victory points for each destroyed MiG in top of the normal Check Your Six scoring.

Some pictures from the game. The actual battle took place over the Yellow Sea, but I have yet to obtain a sea mat with hexes on it, so my standard Hotz map had to substitute today.

Corsairs in their starting position

Lined them up nicely, but the mods were against me

It became very interesting...

 ...and then there were three...well just two on the Chinese side

Mat - Hotz Mat

Air War Korea - Part VII: And Now, Back to the Air

As I get closer to running Check Your 6! events, I realize I need to add a few gaming items in order to do several of the scenarios in the Air War Korea scenario book. As it stands, once I receive my latest batch of planes from Chris G. at I-94, I will be able to recreate sixteen of the thirty-two scenarios published in Air War Korea. Realistically I could opt to do more, but as I am sticking with Raiden for all my miniatures (with a few CinC exceptions) some scenarios are still out of reach as Raiden does not yet produced the needed aircraft, plus I really refuse to buy nine B-29s! In looking in greater detail at some of the scenarios I can host forced me to rush over to the Fight's On! website and place an order for some goodies that I am still missing. I have ordered from Fight's On! one time previously, picking up some damage markers and a parachute marker, thinking that would be enough, but some of the scenarios that I have the full complement of aircraft for call for things like anti-aircraft positions and target markers. This evening I ordered the required items, along with some game markers that weren't needed but perhaps will be handy to use. Once the order comes in I will need to paint up the AA positions and target markers, but those will get knocked out quickly enough.

In the mail today I received a copy of Squadron/Signal's USN/USMC Over Korea. This is a classic work by Squadron/Signal, filled with black and white photographs along with color aircraft profiles. I can't believe I never bought this excellent work prior to now. As the F9F is my favorite Korean War aircraft, and the F4U one of my favorite World War II planes, this title, which of course brings these two and other fine aircraft into one publication, will always be a handy reference. And it was interesting to see the appearance in the Korean War of the TBF Avenger, used to evacuate Marines during the breakout at Chosin.

Air War Korea - Part II: Deciding on Scale and Rules

Scale

MiG-15s - GHQ above, Raiden below

Wow, there certainly are a lot of options when it comes to 1/285th and 1/300th scale aircraft for the Korean War, much more than I had initially expected. That is a grand thing, having a half dozen or so companies to choose from (that variety being the spice of life thing). It also has allowed me to decide that while these two scales are close in size and decently compatible on the table top, I can go with strictly 1/285th aircraft so that my aircraft match perfectly, as opposed to just closely.

Why else am I able to focus on just 1/285th aircraft? There are several reasons. First, the variety of U.S. and Soviet aircraft covered:

B-29 Superfortress - Raiden

F-84F Thunderjet - Raiden

F-86 Sabre - GHQ, Raiden

F4U Corsair - CinC, GHQ, Raiden

F9F-2 Panther - Raiden

MiG-15 - GHQ, Raiden

P-51D - Raiden

Yak-9 - GHQ

F-86s - GHQ Above, Raiden below

Next, the quality of those companies making 1/285th is on the higher end of the quality spectrum of the various companies in both 1/285th and 1/300th. The three companies listed above blend very well together.

Add in ease of ordering.  All of the above companies have online webshops and can also often be found on eBay, Noble Knight Games, and other online discounters.

And, looking over the Check Your 6! Korean War booklet, the above list of aircraft cover nearly every scenario in the book.

So, I am going to push forward with the 1/285th aircraft that are available. To that end I have removed the links for the 1/300th scale companies from both the right sidebar and the Air War page as, for me, they are no longer needed.

Rules

Rules, however, are still a bit of a bane to my existence. Now, Check Your 6! seems to play decently enough, but I have only experienced two games in a span of a decade, and running numerous aircraft isn't quite what I want to do. Most of the CY6 scenarios also call for quite a bit of aircraft, and even splitting the load among multiple players still means controlling several miniatures on the gaming table. On the other hand CY6 is also what my gaming buddies are using, so there are opportunities for continued exposure and experience.

I have given Clash of Sabres the most cursory of read-throughs, but it appears to be a decently written set of rules, and one that a player is more focused on controlling a single aircraft or at most a pair of aircraft. Where CY6 uses hexes for movement with each aircraft having certain maneuvers it can perform based on its historical performance, CoS uses turn templates, and the template used is based on airspeed, not individual aircraft capabilities.