Out-turning the opposition

When playing the Four-In-A -Day scenario in the last post, we tried out the new movement budget idea I have been thinking about. The goal is to eliminate the D4 from the rules - as part of BtH "Lite," I am looking to eliminate the oddly shaped dice (D10 and D4), and have a ruleset with exclusively D6. Originally, I intended to post this as part of the after action report, though it got completely out of hand, so here it is in a separate post...

Rather than roll D4 for movement budget, we rolled a D6 and interpreted the results as follows:

  

	D6 roll
	1-4	5-6
Sprog	Add indicated value	Choose 1-4. Easy maneuvers only.
Reg	Add indicated value	Choose 1-4
Vet	Add UP TO indicated value	Choose 1-4
JA/TA	Choose 1-4	Choose 1-4

This allows the lower experience levels to choose their own speed more often than the standard rules, yet retains a marked difference between them and the higher experience ranks. Sprogs are in trouble if they fall out of formation - no longer being able to watch the formation leader, they are prone to taking less extreme maneuvers. This matches accounts of dogfights I have read well - the classic example is the Battle of Britain Hurri vs. Spit vs. Emil. There are examples of pilots in all these aircraft who claimed to be able to out-turn the other two types, despite the fact that the Hurricane is able to out-turn both the Spit and Emil under controlled conditions. The Spit, however, had its fabulous wing design that gave the pilot more warning when the aircraft was about to stall, and that made the Spit easier to recover. This likely made pilots more willing to push the Spitfire further than they would have done with a Hurri.

As for the Emils - well, the Me109 pilots had earned their wings over Spain, Poland and France... There are accounts of German pilots easily out-turning Spitfires, though this should theoretically not be possible. One theory is that green Spitfire pilots failed to tighten their turns sufficiently, stopping when the first vibrations set in whereas they could have pulled an even tighter turn without actually stalling. The other probable cause comes down to experience – by adjusting the position of the  attacking aircraft (rather than trying to stick on someone’s tail), an experienced pilot can maneuver to get a shot on an aircraft with a lower wing loading.

Point-in-case: Low Yo-Yo . By using the low and high yo-yo, even a P47 Thunderbolt could "out-turn" a Spitfire.

Late in the war, this was formalized in the "Energy Management" approach to dogfighting, which is still being taught to fighter pilots worldwide today - the first four minutes of the video below should be of interest to anyone gaming aerial combat, regardless of historical period of choice:

Early in the war, none of this was formalised and taught, which meant that the experienced pilots could appearantly out-turn less experienced opponents, regardless of the rate of roll and wing loading of the aircraft involved. It truly is the man, not the machine!

 At any rate, I feel this argument justifies giving Sprogs a 1-in-3 chance of performing Easy maneuvers only - once they are out of formation with the (hopefully) more experienced section leader!

Below are two more links to articles that should be of interest if you want to read more about the subject. The first is written for modern (jet) air combat simulators - yet the principles remain true for piston-engined fighters as well. The second article might be more accessible, though I feel the first article is wider in scope.

http://www.combatsim.com/review.php?id=6
http://www.musketeers.org/?page_id=93

Two-In-A-Night

Last Sunday, I got together with Tor and decided to try out how well scenarios written for Check Your 6! would translate to Bag the Hun. The scenario chosen was "Four-In-A-Day" from the "Over the Channel" scenario book for the Battle of Britain. The scenario recreates a combat from August 18th 1940, where Oberleutnant Gerhard Schopfel's schwarm bounced a formation of Hurricanes of 501. Squadron. Schopfel shot down four of them within five minutes.

In hindsight, the choice was fortunate, as gaming space was limited - my experience is that once fighters have converged in a pure dogfight scenario, our combats have tended to evolve into twisting furballs that revolve slowly across the game mat. The one bomber chase we have done (http://persprojects.blogspot.com/2012/02/tally-ho.html) really stretched the game out.

This was also the first time we tried the altered movement budget that I have been thinking about. This sytem eliminates the last oddly shaped dice from the game, the D4 (the revised damage chart for BtH Lite already removed the D10). This is a subject that I will return to in my next post, as it threatened to de-rail this after action report completely.

Enough chatter, here's the report...

Initial set-up - forgot to take the picture! Schopfel was rated a Top Ace and led Gelb Rotte.

A while ago, I downloaded the free layout program Scribus (http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus), with the intention to use it for redesigning my Bag the Hun Lite cards and tables. This is the first time that I used it for image annotation, and I though it worked very well!

As you can see, I have made the mistake of writing Schwarm in the images rather than Rotte - though that is a mistake I (and you) will have to live with :)

Hurricanes of Blue Section move to spot Gelb Rotte as the Luftwaffe fighters successfully spot all the RAF sections.

As I had managed to forget the bogey markers at home, we used flying stands for bogeys and placed wingmen as the bogeys became spotted. This worked well with our limited formations, and as Tor pointed out the 3D-feel became much better than when using bogey tokens on the game mat. This means I will have to move the new bogey counter project up to the head of the queue...

 

Sprogs coming through from two o'clock, and Jerry on the six!

The RAF dropped in altitude to get a spotting bonus against the high-flying Emils, a gamble that turned out well as the last bogeys were identified. The Luftwaffe, not having the "Vic" penalty of the RAF, had no problems spotting the English bogeys.
Schopfel now maneuvered in to get on the tail of Red Leader, the RAF's only Veteran Pilot in this scenario. Red Leader pulled a quick reversal to shake the Messerschmitts, yet failed against the massive bonuses of the German Ace Pilot. Both English and German wingmen were on the ball and managed to stay in formation during the difficult maneuver.
Meanwhile, Blue Leader pulled a hard turn to get behind Grün Rotte. The inexperienced wingmen failed to keep up, and moved straight ahead, plowing through Red Section - though no collisions occurred.
Note that there is a mistake on this image that was corrected later - Blue Leader should be 1 ALT up and is not tailing Grün Leader.

Red Leader desperately tries to shake Schopfel, who efforlessly remains on the RAF Veteran's tail. They obviously did not teach tight chandelles in flight school, however, as the Vic breaks up and Red 2 and 3 fail to stay in fomation.

Got you, Engländer!

A fortunate string of activation and bonus cards now came up that allowed the German Ace three rounds of shooting at the RAF fighter before it got to move again. The shooting was not exactly flawless, and the Hurricane's legendary robustness keeps it in the air for the first burst - though on the second and third attempts, the Emil's 20mm cannon made its presence felt. First, a shell smashed the Hurricane's instrumentation - though the RAF pilot barely had time to worry about this before his aircraft was blown out of the sky in the next salvo!

Grün Rotte swings around and latches on the tail of Red 3, who has barely gotten his wings. Easy prey...

Looking to claim his second victory of the day, Schopfel tails Red 2. The Hurricane pilot has other plans though, and the wily bugger exploits a rulebook definition to escape!

What happened was that according to the rules, when two aircraft end the movement in the same hex, a roll for collision is made - then the aircraft that moved last into the hex is moved one step forward. As Schopfel was in the hex immediately behind Red 2, he would have had to roll for collision with Grün Leader, then move forward, roll with Red 2, then move forward--- straight into the Hurri's sights! Needless to say, the Emil remained where it was.

In hindsight, "playing the period, not the rules," we might have moved Schopfel to the no. 3 hex hehind Red 2 and allowed him to stay on the tail, though at the moment we were both to amused at this obvious exploitation of the rules to worry about this!

Auf Wiedersehen! Grün Leader places an accurate burst onto the hapless Sprog, and the 20 mm cannon does the rest.

In my "Lite" version of BtH, I do not really worry about what becomes of an aircraft once it is no longer combat worthy. Finding out whether little Billy manages to crash-land his stricken machine and pop in for a pint at the local pub while waiting for a lift to the airfield is really not the kind of detail I require of my games! Therefore, in the "Lite" rules, the  "Engine Destroyed" for a single engine fighter is counted as a shot down aircraft, and the model is removed from the game mat. It was desicions like this that allowed me to condense the damage table down from six to one column.

Red 2 opens the distance to Grün Rotte. Schopfel moves onto Blue Leader's tail, as Gelb 2 gets on the tail of the last RAF Sprog, Blue 3. At this point, we called the game due to time.

An exciting scrap, although I felt somewhat bad for Tor - at the end of the game, the Hurricane gun ports were still all sealed! After the early demise of the only Veteran RAF pilot, the agile Me109Es flew in circles around their opponents, easily getting on and staying on the tail as required. On the one occasion where an RAF fighter found itself in a position to shoot, the fire card failed to materialize before the Luftwaffe Ace pilot had activated and moved off. While Schopfel's ammo was running low, the Luftwaffe still had plenty of ammunition to spare and the next turn would likely have seen one or more RAF fighters badly damaged or destroyed.

The BtH Lite rules are certainly offering the right balance of speed and detail for my taste, and now another period of consolidation will take place as I attempt to improve on the design and layout of my quick reference sheets using Scribus.

Another pleasant surprise was that the Over the Channel scenario seemed to translate really well to BtH, giving an entertaining game. Skirmish Campaigns offer well-written books, and I would reccomend them to anyone starting to game in a new theater, as they offer a good historical overview, supplies a list of relevant aircraft types and quantities - and detail scenarios that seem to easily translate into good Bag the Hun games.

Skirmish Campaigns:

http://www.skirmishcampaigns.com/

Tally Ho!

Finally, an opportunity to playtest Bag the Hun 2 Lite: Battle of Britain presented itself! Packing all the required components, I drove over to one of my friends and played a simple scenario. This was a test of both the scenario and the revised "Lite" rules and game aids.

The scenario was set early in the morning, with the sun coming out of the upper left side of the hexes. Playing the Luftwaffe, Tor set up the red bogeys while I played the RAF with the blue bogeys.

The Do17z is starting the game with a damaged engine and trying to exit the far edge of the table.

Six Luftwaffe bogeys make up three rottes on the far end of the table. One of these rottes is made up out of dummies (the image is wrong, the red bogeys were rearranged into three rottes before game start).

Six RAF bogeys make up two Vics heading to locate and intercept the bomber. One of the Vics have lost a man due to "engine trouble" before game start, this formation has a dummy marker to complete the Vic.

On a bright, sunny morning over the green fields of south east England, five Hurricanes head east to locate and shoot down a Dornier that got separated from its squadron during a dawn raid. It should be a milk run. Unknown to the RAF pilots, however, the bomber is not alone - watch out for the "Hun in the Sun"...

   

After a rules introduction, the first turn went so smoothly that I forgot to take pictures! At the start of turn 3, we decided to auto-reveal the bomber and dummy bomber as chasing and spotting them turned out to be very hard for the RAF. In future versions of the scenario, the bomber will start revealed in the middle of the table.

The Dornier made a beeline for the table edge, with Red Section trying to catch up. Suddenly the radio crackled to life, as two Me109Es were spotted just before passing the section. "We've got company, boys!" Blue Section responded by going into an easy left turn, positioning it to intercept the just spotted German fighters. Gelb Rotte moved to retain its position in the sun and remained undetected by the RAF fighters.

"Red Leader to Red Two. Blue Section will handle enemy fighters. Stay on my wing - we are going for the bomber. Tally Ho!" As red section firewalled the throttle, they fell in on the Do17zs tail. Red leader opened up on the bomber, damaging one of its wings just as tracers shot over his canopy from the bogeys on his tail.

Meanwhile, the Grün Rotte leader called "Indianer!" over the radio and in a series of sharp turns got onto Blue Leader's tail. Realizing he was outmatched, Blue Leader pulled into a loop to shake the pursuers - unfortuneately, the only planes he managed to loose were his wingmen. Loosing sight of their leader, they moved straight ahead.

Red Leader panicked and overshot the bomber, while cannon fire from the tailing bogeys poured into his and his wingman's aircraft. Sparks and glass flew everywhere as the canopy and cockpit of Red Leader exploded around him, miraculously leaving him unhurt. As the tracers caught up with Red Two, smoke began to pour from its engine. The Dornier front gunner opened fire on the Hurricanes, only to have the machine gun jam.

In desperation, Blue Leader managed to complete his loop while the experienced Grün Rotte leader easily stayed on his tail and fired long bursts of accurate cannon fire into the Hurricane. A ruptured fuel line caused a fine mist to trail the aircraft as Blue Leader's luck finally ran out. Wounded by machine gun fire, the strain of the sustained gees from the loop became too much for him and he blacked out. Slumped over the stick, his unconcious body forced the plane into a diving turn.

Blue Leader's plane remained in its wobbling dive while Blue 2 belatedly attempted to engage the Huns. A hard turn moved him around the Germans. Grün Schwarm calmly let go of its prey and pulled into an extremely tight turn with slats deployed, turning the tables on Blue 2.

As Blue 3 moved to relieve the battered Red Section, things looked very bleak for the RAF fighters. The Dornier had gotten away. Blue Leader was dead or dying, his aircraft damaged and heading for the ground. Blue 2 was completely outclassed by the German veteran Rottenfürer of Grün Rotte, and barring a miracle it would only be a question of time before he was shot down too. Red Section was chased by an as-yet unseen enemy, which mercilessly poured cannon fire into their Hurricanes. Red 2's engine could seize at any moment, and Red Leader's aircraft was limping home with a shattered cockpit - easy prey.

Expecting the rookie pilot in Blue 3 to single-handedly get the RAF back into the fight against four able Luftwaffe pilots seemed a tall order. Yes, things looked very bleak for the RAF pilots - very bleak indeed!

At this point, we called the game due to time. A thoroughly enjoyable scrap! The game aids and revised Bag the Hun Lite: Battle of Britain-rules made the flow very smooth, despite Tor never having seen or read the rules before and this being only the second game of Bag the Hun i have ever played.

Tor is a delight to game with, and has extensive experience with both a multitude of board games and designing his own games. This made his feedback on the "Lite" rules invaluable. Several suggestions were recorded, many of them detailing the design of the game aids.

All in all, this game gave me both more input to refine the "Lite" version of BtH even further as well as the motivation to do so. Bag the Hun 2 seems to me fundamentally right in its mechanics, probabilities and feel, though as they stand I found them pretty hard to game with.

The difference between my first game (using the regular BtH2 rules) and this game (using BtH2 Lite: BoB) was enormous - the first game was very difficult to play at all, while in the second game the self-made game aids and revised shooting and damage mechanisms made playing the game a breeze.

 It would feel fabulous if my version and game aids can make this excellent game accesible to the more, er, casual crowd of miniature wargamers - and I will as previously suggested by Laffe certainly make sure to contact the game designers with this in mind once I feel game testing and refining of the "Lite" rules is complete.

Now I feel like I can safely invest some more time into the project, though the "Lite" rules certainly seem more than good enough to get some more games in as they currently stand.

Gearing up!

As last week, blog-wise this has been a tranquil week. Behind the scenes, however, a storm is brewing as I am gearing up to have the first go with the revised Bag the Hun 2-rules I have been working on. Since Friday last week (and my last post) not a night has gone by without some time being spent printing, cutting and sleeving game aids - mainly the cards that constitute the aircraft records and damage effects.

Now, with the game aids sorted, I suddenly find myself short of time. Still remaining are:

1. Assemble additional flight stands
2. Prepare bogey markers
3. Prepare tokens and markers, including pipe cleaner smoke trails and matched pairs of tailing markers

For the flight stands, all the material is available and assembly generally goes quickly. The bogey markers I plan to make out of a stack of old, disused poker chips collecting dust in the basement. Not only do they have the right size for the hex map, they are also red and blue and have an indentation in the middle where it would be ideal to attach a circular paper label with identification number and directional arrow. An idea is to label the white chips from the same set with numbers only, allowing them to be placed face down on the individual aircraft record cards - thus eliminating the need for a written record of the bogeys.

Hm, I might need more chips...

For the tokens, I have some gaming bits and pieces from discarded board games that I can label with matching numbers and other effects. Being an occasional pipe smoker, good-quality conical pipe cleaners is also something that is readily at hand. All I have to do now is secure some time to actually get these things ready - and time is getting short. The Luftwaffe are already over the Channel, and Hurricanes scramble from the green fields of Kent...

Before signing off, here is a peek at the cards I have made. Unfortuneately, the cards and other game aids contain rather a lot of gaming information, so I do not want to put them up for download before I have cleared that with the Lardies. Most of the cards assume BtH 2 Lite: BoB will be used, so the text is altered or incomplete compared to regular BtH 2 at any rate.

Regular deck: Fronts are standard printer paper, backs are some old, heavy, gloss photo paper selected to give the cards some substance. Cards are designed using Excel spreadsheet, images are collected using Google image search and decidedly used without permission. As you can see, I much prefer the original "Tally Ho!" and "Achtung Spitfire!" to the current generic bonus formation move card text...

Damage cards. Fronts are regular printing paper, back is 160 g card. Coloured differently to quickly separate them from the regular cards. Printing the fronts separately on inexpensive paper rather than costly card makes it far more affordable to reprint cards when necessary. The "Wing Damage" is a typical simplification made when I revised the BtH 2 rules into the "Lite" variant - the original text is "Aileron or wing damage".

Mulitples of each damage card have been made so that they can be placed with the aircraft record cards below as required.

Aircraft record cards: Although it is quite immodest, I will have to admit to liking these a lot! Each aircraft has a separate card. Identification panel is identical to the section move, fire and leader cards to aid in recognition. All aircraft stats and special rules are listed on the front. The reverse has a line drawing with fire arcs, on these cards straight ahead for the Hurricane, front and rear quarters for the Do17z. The Dornier, being a multi-engine design, also has numbered engine positions with two checkboxes on each to record damaged and destroyed engines. Pilot skill is recorded with a checkbox, and ammunition is also kept track of using boxes. The opportunity to record bogeys by placing a matched chip face down on each card I consider a bonus.

That is all for now. here is hoping the next update is an after action report...!

All quiet on the northern front...

Blog-wise, it has been a very quiet week (in case you did not notice). No painting. No modelling. No updates.
That does not mean I have been idle!

This week, I finished Leo McKinstry's impressive book on the Avro Lancaster, a review will likely be posted at some later date. Also, on the suggestion of a toofatlardies Yahoo group member who saw the "Stuka Pilot" review, I have gotten a hold of the very technical yet very interesting "Luftwaffe Combat Reports" and so far find it a very involving read. Well, I guess I must be something of a tech geek to be intrigued by this book - though I did find it interesting to get to know, amongst other things, that the Luftwaffe used either 84- or 100-octane aviation fuel. And that, no, they were not interchangeable. Again, a review is likely to follow once I'm done with the book.

When I posted last, I still had some work to do before being able to play:

• Getting on tail and staying on tail tables, if possible reducing these to one table (chapter 10)
• Cheat sheets covering deflection (chapter 10 end), firing (chapter 11), air gunner firing (chapter 12), crash landings (chapter 13 end)
• Aircraft record sheets for Hurricane, Spitfire and Bf109E
• Print and prep all game aids and cards

Since then, I have been able to finish the gettting on tail and staying on tail tables, and yes - they were reduced to one table. On the reverse side, I managed to squeeze in the entire shooting procedure on one page, which was no mean feat (if I may say so myself... Ah, modesty...)! Squeezing and shuffling the tables around, the page now holds - in sequence of use - a list of the firing procedure, fire arcs, deflection diagram, gunnery table (condensed into one table for both fighter aircraft and air gunners), dodge table, gun jams, ammunition depletion, and something I spent part of Christmas getting done: My one-column damage table, which is used by rolling 2d6 and adding modifiers from my revised hit effect table.

Last night, I wanted to make aircraft record diagrams yet ended up having trouble with the format. How does one conveniently squeeze in aircraft information and up to four fighters on a single A4-sheet, while having something that is still aesthetically pleasing? Finally, I got the idea to make aircraft record cards instead. After fiddling around with my standard format (using Excel), I wound up with the example below - and cannot say that I am displeased!

Feeling smug: Front and reverse of my first aircraft record card.

Feeling humbled: Well, blast, I just noticed that the pilot skill text boxes need adjustment, and I forgot to underline the MAN...

The card image and section identification is identical to the Section Move and Fire cards, making identification easier. There is no need to record damage on the card itself, as I have made cards for the damage effects that can be placed next to the record card. On multi-engine aircraft, the diagram will contain tick boxes over each engine to record damaged and destroyed engines, and on aircraft with gunners each fire arc will be drawn in with separate Fire Factors. My one sincere regret is that I did not get space to fit in a separate box detailing armaments - vain, I know, yet I already miss the line "Armament: 8 x .303 Browning MG in wings" on the card... Well, in my revised Bag the Hun 2, playablity always comes first - and anyone gaming with me will be only too familiar with the armament and other trivia of the involved aircraft by the time a game is done...

Tonight, if time allows (it's Friday after all), I will twiddle with the Excel format. I have found that I might be able to squeeze more cards onto a single A4 sheet, yet we shall see... I will also have to make cards for at the least two or three vics plus a schwarm or two before I can get gaming. Maybe I'll be able to print and cut out all the revised cards and material this weekend, and I could aim at getting a game in maybe this Sunday or next week!

Oh, and the crash landing rules? The reason I am working on my BtH2 Lite rules is that I want playability over details, so once I read over these rules a second time I realised that no, I really did not care whether Jonny managed to land his damaged and burning Hurricane safely in the field or not. As a result, these rules were dustbinned. At a later stage, I am considering typing up a table to determine what became of damaged and withdrawing fighters. For now, destroyed is destroyed, and that is that!

Have a nice week-end, or as the Lardies are fond of saying: Dakka, dakka, dakka...

Bag the Hun 2 revision status

Not quite there yet: A scrapped version of the "Out of Control" damage card.

Today's update is one I fear will be quite dreary for anyone but myself. Having started to prep the remaining Dorniers, I finally gave in to that nagging voice which has kept reminding me that I do in fact have everything I need to start playing BtH2, at the least when it comes to the miniatures. The flight stands are ready, game mat received and Hurricanes, Spitfires and Bf109Es are painted. All that remains is to finish revising the BtH2 rules and game aids.

The revision of the BtH2 rules is something I do with the intention of simplifying and speeding up gameplay. The "working title" for the project is Bag the Hun 2 Lite: Battle of Britain (BtH2 Lite: BoB in tags from now on) and contains simplified and streamlined tables, quick reference sheets and a dedicated card deck, as well as separate reference cards for damage effects. Most of the cards and game aids will be suitable for posting, although I will not post the quick reference sheets - they contain a condensed reference version of the game rules, which is hardly proper to distribute.

Anyway, last night I sat down and spent a while going over which elements were complete and which were missing before my revised BtH2 rules could be used to play. The goal is now to get gaming ASAP!

Complete:

• Card deck
• Damage cards
• Maneuver chart
• Revised hit effect table
• Cheat sheet 1: Bogeys, Spotting, Formation
• Cheat sheet 2: Pre-game and Movement

Remaining before gaming:

• Getting on tail and staying on tail tables, if possible reducing these to one table (chapter 10)
• Cheat sheets covering deflection (chapter 10 end), firing (chapter 11), air gunner firing (chapter 12), crash landings (chapter 13 end)
• Aircraft record sheets for Hurricane, Spitfire and Bf109E
• Print and prep all game aids and cards

Additionally remaining:

• Cheat sheets covering flak (chapter 15), ground targets, shipping, bombing and torpedoes (chapters 16-18)
• Aircraft record sheets for Do17z and other aircraft as they become available
• Assemble bomber flying stands
• Transport and storage solution for miniatures and game mat

Well, there you have it. It was a rotten post, yet someone had to post it. What is this blog coming to..?