What is our favorite mini in the first series (in terms of playability and looks)

mine is the Japanese Zero Tadashi Kaneko (Zero with green spots)

a close second is the F4F-3 wildcat/martlet Alan F. Black (greyish-blue one)

Not the strongest of the 3, not by a long shot but it still looks cool.

My only real gripe about the minis is that some planes are slightly more powerful than others, in a 1 on 1 situation why would you bring the weaker of the 3 minis?

The Sundance Kid said:

I'll go with Galland's Bf109 -- not only because I met him once, but because that mini will Annoy the Disney Corporation.... >

Why will it annoy Disney? Fill us in!

I like the F4F-4, of course the Spitfire with blue/grey cammo looks sweet as well.

E

Galland's Bf109 is also my favorite one...

And the Vybral's Spitfire.

ejacobs said:

Because of that :

Tuesday night my gaming group will start the WW II game after we fly our WW I aces. As before Im choosing based on the color scheme and for me Vybrals Spitfire is the one. Thats how I chose my Belgian Camel.

Its the groups first try at the system as we waited for the miniatures release. Have I picked wrong? As in did I not pick the Snipe or D VII again?

Necronis said:

One word of advice: DO NOT try head-on passes against Me109s, or anything else with C-rate damage.

The SO and I played _Dow_ once -- once. She had a Spitfire; I had a 109. We went head-on. My first damage draw: 8, 8, 1 -- exactly enough to kill the Spit.

I haven't been able to convince her to play again.

Merlin Dex said:

OK, I get the hatchet in his right hand, that's intimidating, but what the hell is in his left hand? A fog horn? Why is he wearing flippers? And what's up with his torso? Looks like it's made out of a flattened soccer ball.

Fog horns, flippers and a squashed soccer ball aren't exactly what I'd call fearsome. And that's either one helluva cigar band on his stoggie there, or he forgot to take the wrapper off altogether.

Well, I am not too sure why he is fat looking, but in his hand is an axe and a pistol.

In his mouth is a cigar. Galland loved smoking so he made Micky Maus smoke.

Thanks for the advice- how about Zeroes? Looks like the axis players all picked the yellow nosed 109 and the camo zero.

It will be interesting to see if we tend to have theater based dogfights once we get flying.

Necronis said:

Zeros are deadly.

Not has much armor, but they move preety **** good.

The Sundance Kid said:

A pistol, what!? Was it from a Spanish Conquistador? That thing looks like it'd fire ping-pong balls.

The Sundance Kid said:

I'm wondering if Galland wasn't one of the original writers for The Simpsons along with Conan O'Brien . 'Cause that mouse looks more like the mouse from The Simpsons Itchy & Scratchy.

What about Erich Hartman? Didn't he fly an Emil?

kaufschtick said:

Remember, it's a german attempt at an american cartoon. Whadarya gonna do? <shrug>

Hartmann didn't fly an Emil, at least not in combat with JG52, to which he was posted in October of 1942. We'll have to wait for a future expansion for his Gustavs.

bsmith13 said:

It's been a while since I've last read The Blond Knight of Germany. I couldn't remember when he got started, but that guy had talent in the air.

It is hard to actually balance the game when you have so few planes and the question is if the planes really should be balanced anyways?

The real war wasn't balanced. Me262 was a lot better plane than a P51 but the americans had a lot more P51 and therefor had the edge.

If they just releases planes that are similar they will just repeat the misstake from WW1 where they released the Snipe early even though it saw very little combat, planes like the Me 163 really had a lot more combat. The Snipe was a great plane but they should have balanced the Fokker EVII with the Spad XIII instead since they really were the arch rivals late in WW1.

Now it seems like they are trying to release much used planes that fits historcaly better together instead and that is good. There are other ways of balancing scenarios than to have planes that performs identical.

I agree. I would much rather play scenarios that are fun than have dogfights where every plane is equal. As much accuracy as possible is what I would like to see.

E

The Sundance Kid said:

Zeroes were deadly, but they had the nasty habit of exploding if hit in the right place....

csadn said:

You met Adolf Galland once??? When? Where? How? Tell us please!!!

Zeiss said:

Details are fuzzy there was some sort of gathering, and the organizers had brought in Jimmie Johnson (the WW2 RAF one, not the NASCAR one), a couple of American pilots (IIRC, one was George Gay...), and Mr. Galland. This was a while ago, in the '80s; and my memory fails past about '91 (and I'm only 36, for crying out loud... ).

csadn said:

He died in 96. Impressive still, I am 2 years older and the only ace I ever talked with was my commander in the airforce, Captain Järkeborn. One of the few swedish aces, flew a J-29 barrel in Congo and got his victories there. No, I wasn't a pilot, my mission was to secure temporary landing strips (swedish fighters can land on most roads actually so you can't strike out the whole airforce by bombing out the airfields. they are not VTOL but need 125-200m straight road just).

Funny enough, I did also work a while at a military airbase (well, we had mostly helicopters) and this rather senile fellow showed up every day. I asked one of the older guys there and they said he was shot down over the djungle and walked for 4 das to get home. Killed 3 enemys with a showel on the way home and never became the same man again.

In WW2 we had only one unit in war, F19 in Finland and no one got more than 3 russians there so we didn't get any WW2 aces whatsoever...

But I would love to meet some of the last living from WW2. Aviation just isn't the same after Korea, the guided missiles changed the rules of aircombat forever and computers so even more.