Swiss Pictures

A couple of weekends ago I hosted a pair of games featuring the Swiss defending their airspace. Both scenarios are based on historical events. While I am not able to piece together enough details to make an after action report, here are the pictures from both games.

In both games the tail gun from the German bombers was able to cause damage on an attacking fighter with a paltry 1 result on a single die. And in both games a fighter went out of control for several turns. I had not experienced that sort of strange commonality in games before. Also, you will notice some blue tokens - I have decided to use a rule in which a plane that climbs may only fire at same or higher TAL while one that dives may only fire at same or lower TAL. The tokens are from a Litko set, and I had them make just "climbed" and "dived" tokens.

I also used a different ratings for the various models of Messerschmitts. The E-1, E-3, and E-4 were all being used by the Germans at this time so I use a random roll to determine the model for each Bf 109. In both games the German player wound up with one E-1 and one E-4 model. 

The first game featured a Dornier Do 17 on a recon mission. Jumped by a pair of Swiss Me 109 DBs, and then a pair of German Bf 109Es come to the rescue.

A recon Dornier is not where he should be

And the Swiss react

The Swiss fighters were painted by Chris at I-94

Stung by a lone LMG, the Swiss player failed the robustness roll

The Dornier finally goes down

To the rescue, perhaps a tad too late

Hoobestank lyric "I'm going out of control" comes to mind - I think it was five or six turns of failing!

Passing Messerschmitts

Still out of control...maybe that player should stop plotting F1 moves UNTIL he recovers?

And as soon as he regains control, Emil is there to mop up!

The second game saw a pair of French Dewoitine 520s chasing after a crippled Heinkel. A pair of Swiss Me 109s are guarding their border, while a pair of German Messerschmitts arrive to even things up. Had the French player crossed the Swiss border, the Swiss fighters were free to engage. The French player wisely choose not to violate Swiss airspace.

Don't get too close!

The cavalry is on its way

I told you not to get too close!

A fighter furball

Out of control? Really?

Planes - Raiden

Stands and tokens - Litko

Mat - Deep Cut Studio

Wings of Glory Resources

As I move away from using Wings of Glory for my Great War in the Air gaming (and in its place using Check Your 6! Great War), I deleted the page in which I listed a slew of Wings of Glory resources. So as to not lose these resources, but also to free up some page space, I am listing the resources as a blog post.

Facebook - billed as the "Official Wings of Glory" group.

Flight Deck Decals - 1/300th scale decals and now 1/144 aircraft.

I-94 Enterprises - High quality 1/144th and 1/300th scale decals and excellent service.

Litko Aerosystems - Ammo, jammed, smoke, fire, and other types of tokens to enhance your game.

Mako Models International - carries the Mark I 1/144th scale decals (eBay).

Miscellaneous Miniatures - 1/144th and 1/300th scale decals with great service.

Pro Painted Studios - modified range sticks that I use with my adjusted firing rules.

Rival Sky Games - officially approved Ares bases and fine service.

Table Top Flights - 1/144th scale aircraft of fantastic quality.

Transparent Vinyl Tape - for marking pegs.

Wings of Glory Aerodrome - Become a member...this is the place that is keeping the game alive.

A Revisit to the Basing Solution

My constant search for an ideal (for me) flight stand for Check Your 6! might be finally at an end.  My parameters, and hence my issue in finding the type of stand I desired was that I wanted something that visually indicates TAL on the playing surface, that isn't too tall and prone to knock overs, and that doesn't cause polarity issues with the magnets I have on my miniatures. Let me summarize my issues with existing base configurations:

• Official Check Your 6! bases - Do not visually indicate a plane's current TAL. Dial numbers are small, and the dials can be very tight or very loose. This causes players to constantly ask about altitude on enemy aircraft and is not visually appealing.
• Litko - Using the dice trays, one can make it a tad easier for players to see current speed and TAL, but again having a peg fixed to the base means the visually aspect of differing TALs are lost. 
• Antennas - Can be costly, and the ones I have found are far too large. Ideally this would be a great solution but I would need antennas that only extend an inch or so per segment as I do not want planes towering over the table top, making them susceptible to knock overs.

I had been looking at the flight stands from the Dockfighters: The Ale Wars as I like the fact that the system uses peg pieces in two sizes to indicate altitude, utilizing magnets to connect the pegs in combination to represent varying TALs. Smaller pieces can represent a single TAL, while the larger pieces can represent two TALs. I was worried that would cause polarity problems since my miniatures have magnets that do not all follow the same pole so I had held off on buying any until Bernhard at Sieben Schwaben Spiele Decals suggested I give them a try.

Image from Woodpecker Games site

The Dockfighters flight stands offers other very positive aspects - they have a moveable dial that one can use for speed (up to twelve), and have a series of colored rings that can be used for either aircrew quality or to make it easier to keep track of each plane (I usually have a player run two planes). One other possibility - since the peg pieces can be combined, one could represent multiple CABs, but I would not recommend this as the plane becomes wobbly and subject to knock overs. And, very important to my needs, the magnets in the Dockfighters peg pieces are round balls that adjust to the polarity of the next piece or the plane, solving my polarity issue.

An ace Me 110 (indicated by the red ring on the base), Speed 3 and TAL 2, chased down by a veteran (blue ring) Swiss Me 109 at Speed 4 and TAL 3

A consideration for those thinking about this basing system - larger metal miniatures, such as bombers, wobble a bit as well. My solution for this, as a four-engine metal bomber even has issues on an official CY6! stand, is to go to 3D printed miniatures for larger aircraft. They are much lighter and and hence work with both systems very well.

A bit of a video showing the flight stands: 

Price came out to be $72.00 USD, which included shipping from Deutschland. That comes out to be $3.60 or so per stand. The official CY6! stands are $32.50 (including shipping) from I-94, or $5.42 per flight stand.

I will be hosting a game soon, and will be using the Dockfighters flight stands in lieu of my official bases. If things work out, this means I will have a crap ton of stands for sale!

Mat - Hotz Mats

Possible Basing Solution - World War One

I am still in the decision making phase - do I keep the numerous 1/144 scale planes I have for Wings of Glory and find a different basing solution to use with what I call Check Your 6! Great War, or do I go to a smaller scale and use the numerous bases I already have? What I do not like about the Check Your 6! bases is the the lack of the visual - no matter what TAL a plane might be, on the tabletop it is the same height. What I like about the Wings basing system is the pegs used to denote different altitudes. Is there a way to combine these two aspects without having to do the antenna route? There just might be.

Litko sells flight stand peg toppers. These small rectangle-shaped pieces have two holes - one that fits the standard 3mm flight peg found on the Check Your 6! and Litko bases, and a smaller hole that fits a Wings of Glory peg. Using a standard Litko 1.375 inch base (the same size as the official Check You 6! bases), the question becomes how does one denote speed while also finding a way to use the peg topper, all on one base? Litko sells a flight stand dice tray that holds a 12mm six sided die which solves the issue of how to indicate speed.

Now I need a solution to tie all three pieces together. I could order flight pegs and then try to cut them, an exercise that sounds both time consuming and frustrating, or I could try to find a peg or cylinder that would be of the correct diameter (3mm) and length. The length would need to be 9mm as each part I need to connect (base, fight stand dice tray, and flight stand peg topper) is 3mm. Interweb searching was not getting me to a simple solution, so I tried looking at magnet suppliers as many have cylinder shaped magnets. Total Element makes a 3mm by 9mm cylinder, so I ordered 100 for not a lot of money. The good news is that they fit perfectly, aligning all three parts together. A spot of acrylic glue on the dice tray and another on the peg topper secures these pieces in place on the base.

Here is a video that should clarify how these stands would go together.

One can now use the Wings of Glory pegs along with a Check Your 6! basing style for Check Your 6! Great War. There are a few other considerations to ponder, but at least a basing solution, no matter what scale I choose, has been potentially sorted (if I go with a smaller scale, Table Top Flights can print airplanes with a peg already in place, or I can attach a steel disc to the top of a few pegs, and add a magnet to the bottom of a plane).

Jet Flight Stands - Sorted

Lower CAB, TAL 6, Speed 7

I now have a couple of options when it comes to flight stands for Check Your 6! Jet Age - the "official" flight stands with its dials and pointers, and the Litko ones I have assembled that use dice to indicate altitude and speed. The official stands can be a bit fiddly, and the numbers are small and hence more difficult to read (plus the pointers at times can be too loose or too tight, leading to some confusion as to what height or speed a plane truly is). The Litko ones are not as fancy, and suffer from some quality issues (some pegs are slightly warped, some do not fit snugly into the hole on the base, and others have to be sanded to obtain a level surface) but they do have a clear base which allows the gaming mat to be seen. And using a three tray dice holder, I can represent the faster jet speeds. I also understand there might be a dice tray that will hold one six-sided die and one eight-sided die.

Higher CAB, TAL 4, Speed 7

Check Your 6! - A Different Basing Solution

For years I have been using the "official" flight stands/bases for Check Your 6!, mostly purchased through I-94 or gathered from my departed friend's collection. And for years, knowing that both Bob and myself had some polarity issues when it came to the magnets on the bases and planes, I've had to play "match the plane to the base" when organization planes for a scenario. Recently some suggestions had been made during a gaming session to glue washers on the pegs (posts) of the stands so as to negate the polarity issue with the magnet on the plane. Brilliant! But, later seeing some overly large washers in action, and seeing how the planes were not really that secure on the stand, I decided to go a slightly different direction to solve the polarity issue.

At the same time, I wanted to represent altitude a little more realistically on the tabletop, something that the small pegs for the Wings of Glory system captures fairly well. Since the planes I use are 1/285 or 1/300, finding telescoping stands that were small enough to not overshadow the planes, while short enough to avoid too many knock overs, was an issue. My friend Bill uses clear Litko bases with dice trays, the dice used to denote speed and altitude, something that the official bases do well, except that the pointers on the dials can have problems - too loose or too tight, and also a bit too small to easily discern on the game table. While I do not necessarily like having dice on the stand from an aesthetic perspective, the clear base looks better and the dice are easier to read and use. Also, Litko makes the peg in a few different sizes, and as many of the scenarios I use have two altitude bands (CAB), using a shorter peg stand at the lower CAB and swapping for a taller base at the higher CAB seems to be a decent compromise (and I can get rid of the distracting red poker chip I use to mark a higher CAB). I ordered fifty flight bases to go with twenty-five 2" fight pegs and twenty-five 3" fight pegs, as well as several dice holders.

I have affixed several dice holders to the base, at first using little dabs of super glue, but since switching to acrylic glue. The Litko pegs, or maybe it is the holes in the bases, are a tad too loose in some cases, but adding the dice holder seems to help prevent leaning pegs. So from a base perspective, I think I have a decent solution. While the dice are a tad distracting, they are easier for gamers to use and easier for aging eyes to see. Now, how to attach the planes.

As mentioned, I was not enamored with the practical application of the washer solution, so I dig some searching on the interwebs and came up with something that might work. A company called Total Element (also called Element Magnets Inc.), which focuses mostly on magnets, also make small steel blank metal strike plates in varying sizes. The size I selected was 1/4 inch diameter and one millimeter thick. Ideally I wanted to find a 3/16 inch diameter piece to match the magnet diameter I use, but could not source those. I placed an order for three hundred of the discs, and they arrived in a few days. No, I do not need three hundred of them, but that was the quantity offered, and I can give the extras to fellow gamers.

I've glued a couple of the discs to the Litko flight pegs and overall I am pleased with the look. Here are some comparison shots showing the two basing systems.

The Macchi is on the new system, while the Spitfire is on the official stand. 

Both now on the new system, showing the two different flight pegs to denote two different CABS

The Battle of Lemnos? No, Elli!

Battle of Elli - ships engaged - from Age of Steel and Coal

A few years ago (see HERE) I picked up some Navwar ships from a chap who thought he had organized his purchase for the Battle of Lemnos (First Balkan War). However, in recently reviewing the ships that I purchased from him and the lack of enough destroyers for the Lemnos affair, it appears that really he collected the ships needed for the Battle of Elli. Makes perfect sense considering that at Lemnos the ironclad Asar-i-Tevfik was not present, yet I have a casting for it. Ahhhh, good, now I know what I have to work on for a future game!

Okay, what to do with this project, meaning what sort and size of bases to use, and what rules will offer a simple enough game, yet give that period feel I like? Here is a nice after action report using Majestic Twelve Games' Grand Fleets (never heard of them, although they seem to be available Stateside, and apparently they offer a scenario book that has the ships for Elli already rated). Thinking about some clear acrylic bases, but also worried that the glue might fog the bases, and with the tiny destroyers in this scale it will be difficult to not have excess glue along the waterline. And, my go to base supplier, Litko, does not make rectangular acrylic bases. But I do have some nice splash markers from them, and they also offer some firing arcs that will be useful.

Warbases make custom etched acrylic bases, which could be excellent to have each ship's name already etched on the base, but while nearly all the miniatures would fit on the largest rectangle base they offer, the Georgios Averof is just a tad too large. I think I will send them an email to see if they could make a larger etched base.

The rules and scenario book that covers the First Balkan War have been ordered. The neat thing about the scenario book is if I enjoy the rules I can also use my Spanish-American War fleets for Manila Bay!