Photo Bombing

This week’s wargaming was a game of Check Your Six. I’ve played this a few times before, but this time it was the Great War. We were playing the glorious Germans, who were out on a peaceful tourist flight to take some holiday photos. The French seemed to object to us taking photos of them, so they sent up a flight of aircraft to shoot us down.

The Germans had three recon aircraft, along with two flights of Focker D and a couple of Albatross. The French had SPAD S VIIs. The main differences between this era and the 1960s era I’ve played before is that the plane models are slightly larger (1/144) and look prettier, and the planes are much slower. Otherwise, the rules are pretty similar. You decide the manoeuvre orders for your planes, then everyone moves, then everyone shoots.

We started with our recon aircraft in the middle of the table, flying along the centre line taking photos, with the German fighter escort coming in from our side. At the start of the first turn, the French turned up and started behaving in a threatening manner.

The first turn was pretty much just moving closer to our recon aircraft – weapons ranges are short in this game.

By turn two, we had a little bit of ineffective shooting, and it was becoming apparent that there was going to be a big party in the middle of the table in short order. Whether anyone would end up crashing would remain to be seen.

Surprisingly, nobody crashed, however we were all at different altitudes. As it turned out, being at altitude 7 was too high for my two aircraft, so we did a maximum dive manoeuvre to drop ourselves down to altitude 3 so we could actually shoot at things. There was shooting, and one of our recon aircraft was hit, but not destroyed.

As it turned out, an extreme dive manoeuvre meant that I’d be making piloting checks next turn.

Turn four, and my Ace pilot aces his skill check, and flies through the middle of the combat without getting a chance to shoot at anyone. My more normally skilled pilot fails, and his aircraft goes into a spin, dropping another altitude level.

Several aircraft were damaged at this point, and trailing smoke, and one of our recon aircraft is shot down by the dastardly French.

My ace pilot did an Immelmann to bring himself around, and then my second pilot failed a skill check again, dropping to altitude 2. This was not looking good.

Meanwhile, one of the remaining recon aircraft breaks its airframe dodging incoming fire, and then breaks out in fire. It’s still flying though.

Turn six, and my pilot eventually pulls out of the spin. The Baron is gaining speed again, but is again too high for getting a good shot at the enemy French.

In turn 7, everything comes together nicely for the Germans, as three of our aircraft line up ready to shoot down one of the French. The first two shots damage the aircraft and the pilot, and then my Red Baron fires off his first shots of the battle, and gets a kill.

Turn 8 is similar, with all three aircraft lining up behind a second French fighter. This time the first shot takes it down, depriving the Baron of his kill. It’s at this point that some of the French decide to flee.

There is one final French aircraft still in the battle, and it decides to make a heroic last stand. It flies back the recon aircraft, does a hard turn straight into their forward guns. Brave, but dead.

It took a couple of turns to remember the rules, but I soon remembered. There were about half a dozen of us playing, which meant that a game of this size went quite quickly since everyone can plan and move simultaneously. It really does help for rules to allow simultaneous activity, especially when there is a large game.

I think I do prefer the earlier periods for this sort of game – the aircraft are more interesting, and the relative slowness and limitations of their capability make for a more fun game. But it’s nice to see that the basic rules work well across multiple periods of the 20th century.