Portable Air Wargame - Low Altitude Dogfight (Mission One)

Low Altitude Dogfight:

 Next mission in this series of using Bob Cordery's Portable Wargames rules for air combat scenarios from the Achtung! Spitfire boardgame is a low-altitude encounter between two Spitfires and five Bf109s.

In reality, this mission was for the Spitfires to protect a training aircraft which had landed in France to pick up a downed pilot.  The group was spotted and attacked by a group of five 109s.

Aircraft Stats:

Bf109E: Speed 7; Damage 4; Weapons 1 red (cannon) 3 white (MG)
Spitfire: Speed 7; Damage 4; Weapons 4 white (MG)

The bottom Spitfire has one energy chit whilst the other Spitfire (top-left) has four energy chits as do the 109s top-right.  The central 109 has none.

The RAF can choose whether to move first or second.

The Set-Up:

PO Allen's Spitfire is top-left, PO Deere's Spitfire is bottom, homing in on the lead 109.

The Combat:

PO Deere's Spitfire off the port side of the 109 leader...

PO Deere moves in and damages, but does not destroy the 109.

Allen and the leader of the 109s second group go for a head-on pass...

The 109s have two aircraft concentrate on Allen's Spit (top-left) whilst the other two go to the assistance of the 109 leader (bottom-right)

PO Allen's Spitfire dishes out and receives minor damage...

Deere is in deep trouble (bottom): he has only damaged the 109 leader and now the other 109s are putting big holes in his fuselage...

The Spitfires have received enough damage between them that they have to break off...Allen is hotly pursued but looks to have enough speed to escape the 109s...

Deere is trapped...

And down he goes.

Game Notes:
Good fun again and played nice and quickly.  The results are broadly the same as in more complicated games but it takes about 10% of the time to get there...

This mission inspired me to make a minor change to reflect pilot quality.  Aces, crack shots or otherwise killer pilots are allowed to re-roll misses (so an ace on the six o'clock line can reroll missed dice twice).

Portable Air Wargame - One Against Many (Missions One & Two)

One Against Many: the next Portable Air Wargame mission (like all in this present series of refights, taken from a scenario in the Achtung! Spitfire boardgame) involves a single Spitfire (piloted by Pilot Officer Johnny Allen) intercepting a squadron of Ju88A-5s.

The Set-Up:

PO Allen coming in on the port side of the Ju88s.

The Combat:

He moves in and engages the outside Ju88, causing some damage...

Allen makes a rookie mistake and in lining up for a better shot, exposes himself to the fire of several rear gunners and takes so much damage that he has to break off!

Mission Two:

Once again, PO Allen moves in on the port side of the Ju88 squadron...

He takes the same shot as the first time, agains causing some damage...

This time, Allen stays to the Port side and the dorsal gunner misses...

PO Allen closes in on the outside Ju88 again...

Game Notes: This game worked fine but led me to re-visit the way that damage works, specifically whether it should be possible for a fighter to take down a medium-sized bomber in a single turn.  The method for allowing this is follows: any dice which hits can be re-rolled to try and get an extra hit, and this continues until this dice misses.  So in the last mission, if PO Allen, rolled 5,6,1,2, he could re-roll the 5 & 6 and if he rolled 3 and 5, then this would count for 3 hits overall.  Now, the British in the first 9 months or so of the war were notoriously bad at bringing down German bombers and this was attributed to lack of harmonized guns.  So one could make this exploding damage dependent upon having harmonized guns...
The other change I have made is to allow missed dice to be re-rolled if the firer is on the six o'clock line of the target.  This reflects the reality that it was much easier to achieve hits from this position.
Although I am very wary of introducing complexity into the simplicity of the game, these mechanisms don't seem to slow down the game to any noticeable degree but encourage more realistic tactics.

Portable Air Wargame - Battle Escort Mission 2

Since these Portable Air Wargames are so quick, it is very easy to reload them and give them another go to test out rule changes!  In this case, I executed the change that I had thought of during the first mission, that is to make deflection front and side deflection shots only hits on throws of  '6' rather than '5-6'.  All other details remained the same.

The Set-Up:

Just as a reminder, the Hurricanes escorting the Battles on the left about to be intercepted by six Bf109s approaching from the right.

The Combat:

The aircraft approach...again the Germas are approaching in two groups (top and right)

The Hurricane leader goes straight in, guns blazing...

...as does his first wingman

...and so does his second...

One group of 109s breaks left behind the Battles...

The other group of 109s accept the head-on pass...

Then go head-on against the Battles...

The Hurricans break hard left to get on the rear of the 109s

And one of the 109s is hit and falls from the sky (centre-right)!  However, the 109s are right on the six of one of the Battles...

And the 109s send down a Battle in reply

A German pilot curses his luck as he is sent down by a combination of damage from Hurricanes...and the rear-gunner of a Battle!  The shame...

At this point the Germans had lost more than a third of their damage points, so they head for home...

Game Notes:
The change to the shooting rules worked as intended and encouraged the fighters of both sides to get on the rear of their opponents rather than taking on unlikley high deflection shots but without increasing complexity to any noticeable degree.  The use of morale rules in an air combat game still feels odd but the results seems to reflect reality very well: attacks were not pressed to the last man in the air anymore than on the ground.  I am working through in my mind whether the morale rules should only apply to fighters, or if they should apply to all aircraft.  Bombers did turn back, but they seemed to do so after heavier relative losses than fighters. Anyway, another successful test as I feel these rules are really beginning to get where I want them.

Portable Air Wargame - Battle Escort (Mission One)

 I posted these in slightly the wrong order, as this and the next mission (both the same scenario) were done before Galland's First Kills.  This mission is based on the outward leg of the (in)famous attack on the bridges over the Albert Canal in Belgium on 12 May 1940, again using Bob Cordery's air wargame rules from his Developing the Portable Wargame.

Aircraft:
Bf109E: Speed 7; Damage 4; Weapons 1 red (cannon) 3 white (MG)
Hurricane: Speed 6; Damage 4; Weapons 4 white (MG)
Battle: Speed 5; Damage 5; Weapons 1 white (MG) fixed forward, 1 white (MG) rear

The Hurricane start off with 4 energy chits each, the 109s each have 5.

The only rules change I was trying out in this game was limiting energy chit expenditure to a maximum of 3 per turn.

The Set-Up:

3 Hurricanes escorting a flight of 5 Battles.

6 109s are ready to intercept (note the trailing 109 bottom-right)

And the full starting picture

The Fight:

Both sides flying more or less straight forward...

109s and Hurricanes prepare for a head-on pass

A wider shot

The fighters merge: a couple of aircraft are damaged in the pass

Another Hurricane makes a head-on pass

The leading 109s break left after passing the Hurricanes (bottom)...

...trying to draw a bead on two Battles (bottom)

the leading Hurricane spies the hindmost 109 and makes for him...

Hurricane 3 slots in behind the 109s (centre)

Sometimes the Gods favour ones shooting!  The Hurricane destroys the 109...

The leading pair of 109s are closing in on the right-hand pair of Battles

The Battles pass through the 109s on  head-on course...

A 109 slots in right astern a Battle (centre)

The 109 leaders shoots down a Battle...

But a Hurricane puts another 109 down into the river!

And Hurricane 3 spies more prey (centre-bottom)

And a third German fighter goes down!

The remaining German fighter must break for home after suffering this minor disaster...

So the 109 leader ignores these fat juicy Battles!

The Hurricane leader manages to get onto the 109...

And another one goes down

Game Notes: Another good fun game and showed that the rules can handle a reasonable number of aircraft at  time (14) without slowing down the game.  The main issue that occurred to me during this game was the rules for deflection shooting, or lack thereof.  If shooting at high closing speeds from any angle is just as easy as sitting on a target's six, then reasonably accurate air tactics will never happen.  So my tentative solution to this was to say that shots at the front quarters of any aircraft will only hit on a '6', rather than a '5-6'.
I also started to think a little about damage, although I didn't resolve the issue at this stage.  The problem is that if an aircraft has a sufficiently high damage (here meaning "above 4") then a fighter cannot shoot that aircraft down in one turn.  Now, I do not consider this a problem in the original rules because in the scale of that game, aircraft probably represent a "unit" of aircraft rather than a single aircraft and I have no problem with the idea that a large group of bomber aircraft must be attacked at least twice to be eliminated as a useful tactical force.  This obviously does not apply to games when one is thinking about the aircraft as an individual machine, which I am doing.