I have no idea how I will store all the planes but when I found SPAD XIII for £2:50 I just couldn't help myself (and not just Spads).

Just the store I ordered up some planes from had 60 planes,and that is just the german. And then they had a bunch of allied also. The prices were from £2:50-10 and they had odd and wonderful planes such as the Fokker DVI, Fokker EIV and many more. And this was just a small shop from somewhere in nothern sweden. Some of the planes where just variations like a Fokker DVII built by OAW or the Camel 2F1 (navy version with a lewis and a vickers gun instead of 2 vickers) however but it is still massive compared to the Wow planes and the other 1/144 sortiment out there.

1/144 is a really neat scale but there is just too few planes right now and the details are not nearly as good as 1/72. I guess I will have to get another bookshelf to store the planes. I will most likely also scan in all the Wow cards and double their size.

I will also be forced to use another altitude system. Maybe Ill go for the old antenna stand instead, I did use it for Blue max once. I bought a bunch of planes for £100, all planes that were in use 1918. I will post pictures when I get them for you guys.

Most likely will Ill keep the 1/144 for 1917 since I already have so many planes from then, both Wow and the other places have mostly 1917 so I already own most of the important planes from then. I am not sure about 1916, I have a bunch of Fokker EIII, DH2, Roland CII, Albatross DII and Nieuport 11 & 17, maybe that is enough at least for now.

But the way we are running our campaign demands a lot of planes. A huge sortiment with planes is just too tempting, particulary when you get 6 1/72 Spad XIII for the price of 1 in 1/144 even if I have to paint the bunch myself.

This is BTW the planes I bought:

3 Spad XIII €7:50 (€2:50 each)
1Bristol F.2B Fighter €8
1 RAF S.E.5a w Hispano Suiza Eng €8
1 Sopwith 2F.1 Camel "Ships Camel" €8:50
2 Sopwith Camel €5 (€2:50 each)
1 Albatros D.Va €5
1 Fokker D.VI €8
1 Fokker D.VIIF € 8:50
1 Fokker D.VII Albatros manufact €8
1 Fokker E.V/D.VIII €8
1 Junkers D.I (early) €8
1 Junkers J.I - PROFIPACK €12

I plan to only use them from June 1918 (or possibly may) to the armistice but the price was just too sweet to turn the deal down. They didn't have any Snipe. But 15 planes should be enough for my needs, we are usually 6-12 players and besides the Snipe I think I covered most of the interesting planes from the period (even though a Siemens-Shuckert DIV would be nice too).

Anyone already using 1/72? And how do you do with the manuever cards in that case? I am happy for tips about the stands too.

As noted elsewhere: I have the same problem with these as I had when the idiots at SJG decided to change _Car Wars_ to "_How Wheels_ scale" (3x bigger than the original) however much one scales up the minis by, one *reduces* available playing space by that much. In the case of _CW_, when the minis became 3x bigger, playing space was effectively /3; a basic arena which used to fit on a single folding table now took up a small room.

NO ES BUENO!

csadn said:

The playing area is not that much of a problem, we have a 1,5*2,5m table so twice the size should still work (I hope).

3 times however is a lot, I am not going for 1/36 here (well, I don't think that scale is used but both 1/32 and 1/48 are gigantik).

1/72 is just twice the size of the original wow planes, my problem now is that I need some good way to safely store them. For the Wow planes I use a box for screws (it fits 25 or so in a box) but 1/72 will demand another system.

Of course I might be really sorry that I bought the planes later and it might not work but I did run a Blue max game once at a RPG convention in 1/72. It used up a lot of space but not more than I have so I have at least some experience about it (I used 4 inch hexagons then).

I was wondering if you are planning to reprint the maneuver decks to twice as big so as to keep the scale intact.

bsmith13 said:

Yes, I think so. But I wont make the final decIsion until I have put the planes together and have made the stands. They will nost likely be too big for the cards right now but it wont be smart to actually decide anything until I have the planes, I ordered them yesterday and it will probably take a week until I have them.

But I have a scanner and a color laser printer so it shouldn't be a big problem.

Yes, there's a lot of nice 1/72 WW1 aircraft kits out there. There's even a Gotha (can't mind the manufacturer, but I think one of the eastern european companies do quite a large range).

Now all you need is at least 12' x8' of floor space. Think you might have trouble reaching the middle of a table that size

IRM said:

Uhm, we already have a Gotha, a AEG G4 and a Breuget B2 in 1/144 ( you can buy them here , they are rather cheap but hell to put together, see my post "Bob the builder builds a bomber) . There are several Gothas in 1/72 and a lot of other bombers too.

Our current game map is a hotz mats 6*4 feets, so I guess I might be forced to buy another one and put besides it (they are made so you can puzzle a bunch of them together), but I will work on that once I have everything else done.

Besides are we playing July 1917 right now, I don't need to get everything together until we play may or june 1918. I will also go down to Ikea this friday to get a good bookshelf to have all the planes in. If it works well I might go over totaly to 1/72, it all depends on what my players (and me) thinks.

I've seen kits of Eindeckers and Allied planes of that era, so it's certainly possible to use 1/72 for the whole air war.

A club I was with about 10 years back did something similar with 1/72 kits (all Airfix back then) and homegrown rules once a month. We ended up using the whole floor rather than a table since the move rate and model size made even large tables impractical if we didn't reduce the ground scale so much it looked odd compared to the models. You might end up needing to triple or quadruple the card sizes to get reasonable looking movement and firing ranges. Remember that the 1/144 scale kits are at least twice the scale that the card versions are.

Whatever way you end up doing it, I'd be interesting to get some pics posted up here of a game in progress.

IRM said:

Yes, there is a lot of planes from the entire war, but my collection of 1916-1917 is huge (1/144), I do however only have a few planes from 1918 making 1918 the perfect place to start. Right now is the plan to run all longer scenarios in 1/72, the random missions.

Also is Wows models from 1917 rather good but there is a lot fewer planes from 1918 and there they miss a lot of the more interesting planes. Now I just need a Snipe and a Dolphin (and possibly a Nieuport 28) to get things running.

As for the size, I really hope that twice is enough, but I havn't even got the models yet so it is still hard to guess. I havn't ordered any heavy bombers (yet) which would use a lot of space. But in worst case scenario I will get 2 more mats from Hotzmats and use the floor to play on.

The models I ordered is made by Roden and academy. Academy is really cheap while Roden have many rarer planes (like my favorite plane, Fokker DVI. It was mostly used on the easern front even if it was used to some extent on the western front late spring and summer 1918. I prefer rotary engines).

Is it just me, or does that "Skytrex" Gotha look like dog s**t. Maybe its just the picture. Is it more attractive in person?

SgtWaka said:

Somewhat. It could still have been better however, the AEG they also have actually looks pretty ok. They are both a nightmare to put together.

There are a few resin versions of bombers in 1/144, I am waiting on a Caparoni bomber and it should look a lot better but the waiting time and price is totally different.

The Gotha is worth it's price, with some paint it isn't too bad even though you will get a lot of more moneys worth from the AEG. Reviresco also have a few bombers and they are generally better but I only own the 1 engine Breuget there.

Let's face it, you will need some bombers if you do like me and run a campaign. The 2 seaters we have in Wow just isn't enough so you can choose from the cheap Skytrex, the slightly more expensive Reviresco or the really cheap resin models with months delivery time. Or you can wait until Wow give us some bombers but that will take forever.

Well i always thought that WOW was going overboard with the fighters, and no bombers or ZEPS. I suppose the initial design of the game led to that, and no on thought that alot of folks would want bombers and such or think along the lines of campaigns. Too bad really, and yes i suppose they'll get around to bombers and Zeps, but Damnit!, I'm 47 now and i'm not gonna live forever.

I 'd got a 1/144 C-47 kit off of e-bay i kind of bought on a wim and purchased it with a bunch of halftracks for TOI . Fact is i didn't even now it was a kit, thought it was diecast. Some outfit out of Hong-Kong. Well i put it together and it was a pretty simple kit that even a ten year old could do, easily. Problem was it was prepainted, which looked nice but to putty the joint lines and mold lines in i would have had to repaint. Nevertheless it turned out decent.

I guess i'll have to find that co. again and see if they 've got some WWI bombers and such. I shall check out the other companies you mentioned as well.

Cheers...Dave

SgtWaka said:

Here is a few links: www.tin-soldier.com/ Reviresco have Breguet 14B2, Friedrichshafen G-III and Junkers J-1.

http://www.skytrex.com/ : BM5 P-Type Zeppelin, Gotha G IV 1916, AEG G IV Bomber and Breguet BR 14 B.2

www.modelimex.com/aircraft-resin/1-144 have AEG G.IV, Caproni Ca-3, Friedrichshaffen G.III, Gotha G.I, Gotha G.IV, Handley Page 0/400, LVG C.V, Short Bomber and Zeppelin Staaken R.VI. Note that these are resin models. The waiting time on them are long, they are a lot of work to build and you will need to replace the struts with piano wire so they wont fall apart.

There might be other manufacturers also but Skytrex and Reviresco are 2 that I know well of and have many planes from. I am still waiting for my SRAM so I have no clue on how good they are. If someone else have a good link, don't hesitate to post it.

I am somewhat tempted of the Skytrex zepelin myself, good luck with the bombers.