What i thought i would do with this topic, is show you the campaign I'm currently involved with. I'm not planning on going into detail of how each mission when, more of a mission breif, and few photos and the overall outcome. (Spelling is not my strong point, so please bear with me!!!!)

I'm playing the Germans, and my mate is playing the British. Both sides have 3 fighters, but 4 diffent type of fighter aircraft, and they all start off with there most basic type. For example, my mate has 3 rookie pilots, and they all start off in the Mk1 Spitfire. After one of his pilots get 5 kills, he gets a skill and the next type of fighter aircraft, in this case the Hurricane Mk1. After his next 5 kills (Now total of 10), he gets another skill and the 3rd type of fighter aircraft. If he die's, he's dead. If he gets shot down, theres a good chance he'll survive unless he gets captured.......in which case for him, the war is over. If my mate has a pilot killed or captured, gets a new rookie posted into his squadron, to take him up to 3 pilots.

Mission 1 (Bomber Rescue)

After a roll of the dice, it was decided at i was doing the Bomber Rescue mission. One of my bombers (HE 111) was limping its way back from a bombing raid and it gets jumped on by 3 fighters (My mates 3 Rokkie Spitfire Mk 1's). The British mission is to distroy the German bomber. The German mission is to get the bomber from its starting point (By the British side of the table), and fly it off the German side. After turn 2, the Germans can scramble 3 fighters (My rookie BF 109 E3's) To intersept the British and protect the Bomber.

Here you can see the Spits getting the drop in the HE 111.

My BF 109 fly on, split S and get in behind the spirtfires. A glorious photo for the Luftwaffen, as i've just taken one of the Spits out.

With my bomber safely off the table, my 109s have a bit of fun and mop up the Spits.

I won this mission, which was unusual for me and somewhere along the line i normaly pull out a few explosions.

I ended up winning the mission and still having 3 109s and the HE 111 flying. My mate however, lost all 3 of his Spits.

Mission 2 (Bombing Raid)

In this mission, my mate (the British) has to bomb/distroy two targets with his 2 spirfire fighter escort and i (the Germans) have to stop him with my three BF 109 fighters. Simple enough, but the bombers are quite hard to knock out of the sky with the Lancaster having 50 points.

The British line up.

The German line up

One more turn and i can let the British have it!!!

After the first couple of strafs on the Lancaster, its still flying and my 109s have taken quite a lot of damage tokens. Just after this photo was taken my furthest away 109 was distroyed by a combined effort form the two spits, top and rear lancaster turrets.

A bit more flying around and i'm still trying kill something..........anything! Just after this photo was taken, i lost another 109.

At last i get to have a clear close range shot on the Bomber..... unfortunatly in the next turn i crashed into the Lancaster and my 109 was distroyed. As for the Lancaster it just carried on with it's mission. Distroyed the targets with no more fighter oppersition and flew home for tea and medals!!

Now thats how my missions normaly turn out. My mate shoots down all of my planes and wins the game, he's such a lucky git!!!

great job on the pics they look great

It sounds like they were fun games. The models are awesome, did you get the stands made for the bombers, or are they for another game?

The stands are "Home made". All i did was get a ariel diagram drawing of the required bomber off the internet, (hunt through google pictures and you'll eventualy find what your looking for) and enlarge it on a photo copier until it was the same size as the model (Aprox 1:144 scale). Then i cut out a base on a peace of clear plastic, 5cm (2inch) wide and about 3 cm (1 inch ish) longer than the photo-copied picture.

Place the plastic over the picture and draw your bomber outline with permant pen. I did a bit of research on the net with reguards to weapons and arc's of fire, then drew them on to the base in a different colour permant pen. For the bombers, we mark the range ruler from the gun/turret insted of the flying pegs, or the rear gunner does not get to shoot at much. (If this last bit dont make sence to you, let me know and i'll stick a picture up on the thread of what i mean, and that should clear it up)

The flying peg was a WOW 1 flying peg and it was positioned where it is, due to the balance of the aircraft.

All the models that have been pictured so far are pre-painted from verious companys. All i've done to them really is replace ariels, guns and flying pegs with brass rod. Apply decals, touch up paint (If needed) and paint on any squadron markings. I have got some that i've done the "Old fashioned way" (made from kits) but buying pre-painted is a considerably quicker way of getting them "up and flying" ASAP.

Mission 3 (Recon)

The Recon mission is another simple enough mission to do. It was my mission to fly my Recon BF 109 E5 (With the Red nose) over the enemy target and take 3 photos whilst flying at slow speed. Dont sound to hard, especialy since i get two BF 109 E3's (my basic aircraft) as fighter cover.... however, seeing the way i pull damage tokens out of the bag, its harder than you think!!! My mate on the other hand, has got his three basic spitfires (Mk1's) to shoot down my recon plane, before it can take any photos, to win the mission.

The Luftwaffe's finest! I set the red nosed Recon 109 at a higher altertude to try and keep it alive longer.......but it didnt work!!

Air Marshell Hugh Dowlings fighter command get ready to knock the hun out of the sky...............again!!!

After the first engagement, the Spits had knocked my Recon 109 out of the sky, so i could'nt complete the mission. (i did'nt even have time to take photos of it, let alone complete my mission) I thought i could extract some revenge on my mate (and rack up some kill point for my pilots) by distroying his Spits. Unfortunatly, is did an ilegal manouver (Forgot i had engine damage and tryed to do a split S), so i owned up to it and lost another aircraft. (I'm that bad a pilot, i dont even need my mate to shoot me down, i can do it on my own! ) I was, however, in a good postition to shoot up the Spits...............with my last remaining aircraft.

A few Immelman's and Split S's later, i was still targeting the Number 1 spitfire and trying to stay out of the way of the others. As my last remaining guy was the only pilot i had left that had any kill's on this books (4, one more and he's an ace) i thought it wise to retire and keep him alive for another day. And besides, he now had 13 damage points, so it seamed like a good time to fly off the table!!

Unfortuantly, my 109 and the Number 1 Spit collided, the Spit flew off home and my 109 crashed.

We play "Bail out" in our rules in our campaigns, so pilots have a chance of escaping the crash. Unless of course there plane explodes or they get two pilot wounded tokens. My guy bailed out ok, his chute opened good, and was promptly captured by the british home guard (Dads Army) with the taunting of "for you Fritz, the war is over!". Then marched off to the POW camp until the end of the war!

So next game, i start again with 3 rookie pilots and not one "kill point" amongst them!! I wonder if Hermann Göring ever had days like this??

WOW that is great stuff you have going on there. Love the pics and looks like great fun. The guys I play with are trying to come up with ideas for games like this and I have read some good ideas. We are talking hard about bomber hit points and things like speed and chances to lower speed of the bombers by taking out engines to help with such games. We are talking about numbers of escorts to attackers ratio and it is great to see someone playtesting it so please keep the great pics coming.

Mission 4 (Bomber Rescue)

It was my mates turn to do the Bomber Resuce mission this time. With the way my lucks been going, i was going to need a miracle to start a come back and get some much needed mission points. On paper the BF 109 looks more dangerous with its 2 x C and 1 x A tokens at close range, compared to the Spitfires 2 x B. However, 40% of the C tokens are "0", and the B tokens may may be less in damage, but you are more likely to acumalate damage points over a perlonged mission off a Spitifre, compared to a 109. So i was'nt feeling to lucky. But, with this mission, I did get the drop on his bomber (Lancaster) for the first few rounds untill he can engage his Spits. So i had to make the most of it, especialy as my entire flight were now "Rookies" again!!!

I set the 109's at different Altertudes just incase he droped the Bomber a peg to get away from getting shot up.

My 109s were with in firing range, Time to let rip!!

Fantastic!! The Spits may have entered the battle, but the Lancaster is now on fire. I know an extra A token per round may not sound like much, but with the way i play, i need all the help i can get!! Stright after this photo was taken, the lancaster picked up an explosion token from the A deck!! The mission is mine!!

With the Lancaster gone, and the mission mine. I was however, was wondering weather to stay around and play with the Spits, or not?

With some fancy formation flying, the 109s unloaded in to the middle Spit, then came the colisition......and i started to smoke!! Bloody tipical!!

Still formation flying and heading for the wrong table edge to exit the battle zone, so i've got to do a Immelmann/Split S to get back to my side....through the Spits!!!

The "Formation Flying" may look like a bit of an unrealistic fly-by flying, but it is athe easyist way of dammaging your enemy's planes if they fly stright into you. Therefore its a very good defencive manouvre. If your enemy takes between 6-9 tokens of damage on one plane, if its not distroyed, he'll soon retire it from battle or just fly it our of the way for a bit. Therefore giving you the strength in numbers game!

A couple more Semi-formation flybys and i'm starting to wear his aircraft down. The Spits are well and truly dispursed and just comemng in for random attacks. Unfortunatly the "Number 1" Spit gets shot up by the still smoking 109, and taken out by his wingman, now his second kill of the day!!!

Hunting the wounded Spit. Spit number 2 looked like it had a lot of damage tokens, so i delibratlay target it it as a "Susposed" easy kill

Ouch, that hurt me more than i think it did him!!

Spit number 2 took my 109 on fire out, but the true hero of the day is the left hand 109, who bag the wounded number 2 Spit for his third and final kill of battle. Just after this, Spit number 4, cut his losses and flew home insted of staying to fight it out.

A fantastic battle for the forces of the Third Rich, i just hope i have more to come!!

Mission 5 (Dog Fight)

It was my turn, and i rolled the "Dog fight" mission. Basicaly both teams have there 3 fighters on the battlefield, and the last one off is the winner. So it's a "To the death" battle. I was still feeling conferdent after my last engagement, but how could i get two in a row? Then my mate set his aircraft out, and i knew just what to do.

With my mate opting for the "Formation flying" apporach, i wanted to try and find a way to counter attack such and assualt. Anyone remember the Micheal Cane film "Zulu" and the Zulus battleplan of the "head and horns of the buffalo"? Well, i thought i'd give it a go. So i sent my left and right 109 out at angles and the center 109 apporaches at slow speed.

With the center 109 still going at slow speed to draw the Spits in (And being the head of the buffalo), the left and right flanking 109, start to make sharp turns in towards the Spits, and become the "Horns of the Buffalo"

The "Horns" turn in nice and shape and start to take chunks out of the Spits, with no retalation! The centre 109 (The Head) dives a level to escape from to much return fire as possable, from the spits. The decoy had worked and i was getting my mate to pick up more damage tokens than me!!

For the third turn in a row, the "Horns" are tearing up the spits with no shots fired in return! Fantastic! The "Head" is still making good his escape, just incase the Spits Immelmann/Split-s one him!

All the Spits and the "Head" immemlann/Split-s, but its to little to late, as the horns get another round of close quarters firing into the the Spits. My 3 kill veteran from the last game get his forth kill, but unfortunatly picks up an explosition counter off the centre spit! Now thats what i call bloody tipical!!! All that effort, and my mate takes my "Wanna be "Ace out with one burst!!

A bit more shooting and another Spit go's down. Whilst working on the last Spit, one of my 109's starts to smoke.

My mate decided to save this final plane, especily since he relises the pilot has racked up 5 kills over the campaign, making him and ace. So he makes a break for his table edge, to fly another day. Resulting in another mission win for me!!!

Mission 6 (Bombing Raid)

My mate was feeling a bit down hearted after losing two games in a row, and after getting the Bombing raid mission, his confidence did'nt seam to get any higher. He decided not to use his new "Ace" with his new Hurricane Mk 2B, giving him a valuable day off for some R&R. But later confirmed, he did'nt want me to solely target the new plane and aultumatly lose him in the first game of getting him. I have to admit, Spits are giving me hare hard enough time as it is. The last thing i wanted to do was go up against a 3 x b damage at close range!!

He opted for flying his Spits really close to the bomber. However, after the first couple of moves, he had to dive one of the Spits out ot the way to stop it coliding with the bomber. Not making it as an effective escort as it could be, seeing as it was stuck at a different altertude.

I went for a mix of the "Horns of the buffalo" and the "Flying formation" tactics to try and bring down the bomber before it distroyed the two targets. But as normal, it never quite works out the way you expected it will. The "Horn" comes in from the left, but is cut up by the the center "Formation flying" 109, who incidentaly start to smoke. The right hand 109 is just off his stand, as there was not enough to fit it in with the bomber....... seeing as they had just collided.

Another burst of fire from the bombers tail gun and my smoking 109, is now a flaming 109, and the lascaster starts its first bombing run.

My flaming 109, colidies with a Spit and crashs due to the damage. The Spit involved with the collision, pickes up an on fire token and is now flying around in flames. My 109's are still desperatly trying to shoot down the bomber as its starting its second bombing run. In the process, the top bomber turrut shoots the leading 109, as starts it smoking. Its a good job i've got plenty of smoke/flame wing clips, as i've been using them continualsy today!

The Lancaster completes its second bombing run, distroying the two targets and giving my mate the mission points. His flaming Spit sucome to the fire damage and crashed. The smoking 109 conided with the bomber, but managed to get away with it. My other 109 put the final burst into the bomber, sending it crashing to the deck. With the mission won, and not wishing to loose another Spit, my mate turned his last remaining Spit towards his table edge and out runs my 109 home.

nice pictures keep up the good work i cant wait to see more

oh and by the way i have a question about point values. most scenarios that came with the game always say that if you shoot down a plane you get 24 points and when you lose a plane you lose 12 points yet in another section of the rulebook it says when you shoot a plane down you get 2 points if an enemy plane leaves the gaming area you gain 1 point and when one of your planes is shot down you lose a point which values are correct? because the 24 and 12 points seems like a little too much

and one more question i noticed in one of your missions that your friends ace had got a new plane am i correct in assuming this is a house rule and if so could you elaborate? im curious as to how you go about that in your games cause i would like to try it.

thanks in advance

The campaign we're running is full of house rules that work along side the DOW rules. We originaly stuck to the DOW rules (And still do for most things) but with the way we wanted to progress through the missions, we had to make a lot of "Senciable" rules up. In other words, during our trial "Campaign missions", where we came across a problem that the DOW rule book did'nt cover, we talked it over, came up with a solution and wrote into the "Campaign Rules".

A great example of our "Campaign Rules" are when a pilot gets shot down. If they pick up the "Explosition" or 2 "Wounded pilot" tokens, then there dead, reguardless of how much winging/moaning the player come's up with. Thats clealy stated in the DOW rulebook. What the DOW rule book does'nt cover, is what happens to the pilot after that? With the advances in parachute technoligy between WW1 and WW2 the chances of a shot down pilot surving were better than his predersesors for WW1. So we came up with a set of rules that reflected this and covered all aspects of getting shot down.

We go into greater detail in other "Campaign rules" weither the pilot is captured by the enemy upon his safe landing, or how long he is hospitalised after getting his injury sorted out. This way, we feel it is a bit more realistic for your pilots to survive and become "Aces", and it makes no differance to the enemy pilot who shot you down, as they still get a "Confirmed Kill" either way. It also adds a bit of a laugh at the end of the game, especialy if if one player losses all of his pilots to explositions, hostitilised injuries or being captured by the enemy for landing in there terrotory!!

As for points values of the aircraft, we never bothered with them for our campaign. I've seen al lot of discussion on the old site about points values, but we decided we wanted a more historicaly accurate campaign......or at least as close as we could get it.

Each Campaign nation starts with 3 basic (Class 1) aircraft flown by "Rookie" pilots. When each pilot acheaves 5 kills, they become an "Ace". They then get an "Ace Skill" from our "Campaign Rule Book" (Both DOW skills and home made skills) of there choice, and they must progress to the next aircraft (In this case, class 2). After another 5 kills (Total of 10), they get another "Campaign Ace Skill" and progress to the next aircraft (Class 3). After 15 kills, again its a 3rd Ace Skill and onto the the final Class 4 aircraft. After that, for every 5 kills, they get a futher Ace Skill, but stay on the Class 4 aircraft. If they get shot down, then they jump into they replacement aircraft which is what ever class they are allowed to fly. If they die or get captured by the enemy, then thats bad luck. You then get a replacement "Rookie" pilot with no kills and a class 1 aircraft.

The aircraft we are using are,

British

Class Name Close range damage Long range Damage Hit points

1 Spitfire Mk 1 2 x B tokens 1 x B token 17

2 Hurricane Mk IIB 3 x B tokens 1 x A & 1 x B token 18

3 Spitfire Mk XIV 1 x B & 2 x C tokens 1 x A & 1 x C token 18

4 Tempest Mk V 4 x C tokens 2 x C tokens 18

German

Class Name Close range damage Long range Damage Hit points

1 BF 109 E3 1 x A & 2 x C tokens 1 x C token 17

2 BF 109 E4 1 x A & 2 x C tokens 1 x C token 18

3 FW 190 A8 1 x A & 4 x C tokens 1 x A & 2 x C tokens 18

4 ME 262 A-1A 4 x C tokens 2 x C tokens 18

Each Class is designed to be either better in speed, hit point or fire power than its predesissor, so you feel like you are progressing with your pilot. This may get in the way of being "Historicaly Accurate" as far is the "Time frame" go's, but its the best we could come up with. We spent ages working out a what each weapon is worth as far as A, B & C tokens and a lot of time on Wickedpedia and other sites, to get the right aircraft for what we wanted to acheave. We also did American and Japanise classes too, but no one wanted to play them this time around. But you never know, they may be photoed in the next campaign.

If anyone wants a list of our Unofficial "Campaign rules", just send me an email, and i'll send you a copy of them. They are however in "Word" format, so it may not be sutable to all.

ahh i see thanks for the reply

Mission 7 (Bomber Rescue)

It was acutually my mission, but I was lucky on the dice roll and forced my mate into playing the mission insted. (We added this "Swap-around" mission into the campaign as one of our 6 missions, just to spice it up). My mate then rolled another Bomber Rescue. I was feeling quite conferdent with the way my luck as running right now. Although the Lancaster has 50 hit points, i've got 3 BF 109's that can sit on its tail and fill it full of lead. So i thought is was quite pausable i would win this mission. The one thing my mate and i have noticed is that its actually very hard to win you own mission, so when your mate rolls the "Swap-around" mission, it means you are doing 3 missions back to back, instead of takeing it in turns, which can greatly affect the amount of mission points you are likly to earn over then next couple of games.

After my bad luck with pilots, I was starting the mission with the 2 kills spred amonst my flight, not a great start. My mate however, had his newly promoted ace waiting in the wings with his Hurricane, waiting to prove just how good he was.

The British Hurricane Ace and the two Mk1 Spits.

The German and bomber starting position. My middle 109 was a peg lower than the other two just incase the bomber droped alltertude early, which is a favourite trick for the bombers to do to try and avoid the close range fire.

Time to let the "Swine Hund" have it!!! The bomber and the two outer 109s have all droped to alltertude peg 3 , so the bomber unfortualy gets 2xC and 1xA off each of the 109s at close range.........unlucky!! But true to form, its still flying at the end of the shooting phase!!!

Both bomber and 109's all dive another peg as the british cavalry arrive (BOOO!!) Just after this photo was taken, the 109 with the British Roundal token shot the Lancaster out of the sky, gaining his second kill and winning me the mission. Unfortuantly, at the same time the top Lancasters top turet blow the same 109 up, killing the pilot!

With the bomber gone, the undamaged British aircraft piled into the badly damaged Germans with revenge on there mind, looking for some easy kills. In the previous turn the 109 with the red/white (Gerneric Successfull Mission) token received a damaged engine and was forced to limp its way out of battle with slow sharp turns........right into the path of a hungry Hurricane!. My other remaining 109 with the German WW1 Roundal was set alight. Not to happy at this stage as he was the other guy in the flight with a kill under his belt.

After a bit of dogfighting, my 109 that was on fire sucome to the flames and the pilot bailed out, only to be captured by the enemy forces. Never mind, at least my mate never got the the pleasure of "Chalking up another kill" with him. My rookie with the damaged engine limped his way back to friendly lines, but only just. Although he never had any kills under this belt, i though it wise to retire him for another day and not give my mate any easy kill points as he had 15 out of 17 damage.

The good news was I had won the mission and my mate had not added any of my squadron to his kill points for this game. (Bombers cant add up points and become aces, and the other 109 i lost was downed due to fire damage) The bad news was although i did win the mission, i was starting the next game with 3 rokkies, and not a kill between them. So infact, i was worse off going into the next mission than i was at the start of this one. Bugger!!

Mission 8 (Dog Fight)

It was my mates turn to roll for the mission, and he rolled a Dog fight. If you're going to roll a mission, the easist one to win is the Dog fight as its your fighters against the enenys. You dont have to keep the bombers/dive bombers or recon aircraft alive long enough to complete there mission, you just have to shoot the enemy out of the sky. The down side was, it was'nt my mission, i had 3 rookie pilots (With no kills amonst them) and my mate was dieing to try out his Hurricane ace, and this was just the mission for him to give it a go on.

Not a great photo I'm afraid ( it must of be my nerves for my impending doom!) But as you can see, he spread his fighters out and placed the Hurricane in the middle.

My line up was less subtle than his. My plan was to force my way through the center of his flight, aiming all guns at the Huricane, to try and knock it out as it was the most dangerous...........at least that was my plan!!

(The before photo) After a couple of high speed strights, we are all of a sudden in to close range fighting, time to target all of my 109s on to the hurricane.

(The after photo) Spit number 4 blow up my 109 with the british roundal token, killing the pilot. The Hurricane, set the red/white token 109 on fire and Spit number 1 gave the German token 109 two smoke counters, setting it on fire. How unlucky is that? (I hate this game! All my stuffs going on E-Bay, I've had enough!!!) All of my 109's fired on to the Hurricane at close range, but the damm things still flying. So in one turn, my mate pretty much has this game in the bag!

After a quick Split S, i'm still desperate to take out the Hurricane, although the Spits have something else on ther mind. Spit number 4 fires at the 109 with the red/white token, distroying the aircraft. When the pilot jumps out, his chute catches fire and he plumets to his death. The 109 with the german roundal and Spit number 1 trade shots, but nothing much happens.

Although i did'nt know it, the Hurricane had suffered engine damage from the previous concentrated fire, hence why he did not Immelmann with the Spits. Unfortuantly for him, it did put him squarely in my last remaining 109's sights.......just as long as i could keep the 109 up in the air.

My mate got himself confused with the cards, and insted of turning away from the 109, turned into it. I on the other hand was happy to have something to fire at whilst heading for my boarder. The down side was, We over laped bases and had a colision each to add to the firing. My previous damage, being on fire and taking a colision was to much for my kite and it was time to bail out..........and get captured by the enemy forces. (I swear to God, my mate must have a POW camp dedicated to my pilots, and right about now, it must be getting rather full!!!) the only good thing was the conbination of the colision and the close range firing was to much for the Hurricane. Unfortuantly, he bail out OK and escaped the German forces, but he wil miss the next mission due to the amout to time it takes him to be back to the UK.

So i lost the mission and all three pilots (2 dead and 1 captured) and i am again starting the next mission with three completly new pilots with not one hour of combat flying between them, let alone a kill. Oh lucky me!!!

Mission 9 (Dog Fight)

It was my turn for a mission and to be honist I was hopeing I would get the "Swop-around" mission giving me an easy game. I was'nt lucky enough to roll that, but i did get the Dog fight mision, and as my mates Hurricane ace was still making his way to the UK form the last mission, I stood a far chance of defeating the 3 Mk 1 Spits that were going to be lined up against me. Even if I did have complete Rookie pilots, oh well, everyones gotta get expreance from some where!!

I know we have had a lot of "Bomber Rescue" and "Dog Fight" missions, but i promise you there are more than that, its just dependent on the dice roll. I've got a Mosqueto (Brit Recon), Stuka (German Dive bomber) and a Typhoon (Brit Dive Bomber) i'm dieing to post pictures of on here, but its not what the dice gods want. (I know the Typhoon was not a Dive bomber, but it can acheave the same objective with strafing rockets, hence why its in the missions)

Ha Ha, wheres your Hurricane!!!! (Yes I know its childish to pick on people, but I may not get another chance!!) Although its nice to see a festive red and white striped candy cane in the background!!

As the Spits were close together, i went for the horns of the buffalo attack. (Dont worry about the Hurricane in the top left of the picture, he is still outlooking for his missing pilot! Were actualy a bit lazy at clearing up the table, so its generaly in a bit of a mess, as you can tell.

My mate counteracted my "Horns of the buffalo" tactic by sending his wingmen out to intersept the flanking 109's and stop then sleaking behind the Spits. But fortuantaly for me, i miscalculated the cards/distance and brought my 109s in to early, rending the 2 flanking Spits as useless. It doe'snt matter how often i play this game, i can never properly calculate where the planes will end up, however, it worked out for me in this case. I bet the middle Spit is feeling a bit worryed right about now!!

Still trying to out fly each other, and at the same time, still flying a bit of fancy formation flying!! The Spit in the Middle dived a peg to get away from being shot up, wise move.

The down side to not being able to judge where your aircraft will end up. The first damage on the British/German Roundal 109s is due to coliding with friendly forces.....how embariasing! To the more observent of you out there, yes my 3rd 109 is under the right hand 109. All a bit to close for comfort!!

And after all of that, were still formation flying!!! Any one got the Phone numbers for the Red Arrows/Blue Angles, I think we might apply to join them!!

After a bit more "Fancy Flying" the Spits managed to all but wind up on top of each, other were it not for a couple of sharp turns and dives! Unfortuantly, well done to my mate, although is would of been nice if he had colided them a couple of times..........it would of helped the Luftwaffe's overall cause!!

This is gonna hurt!!! My 109 with the Red/white (Generic Sussesful Mission) token has 12 of of 17 hit points damage. So here the choice I face. I can either turn right and make a break for freedom, or i can Split S after the Spit that i've just colided with at shot at (at altertude 3), but its going to leave my tail open to the rear spit at altertude 2. What would you do?

I (Being a true Hero!!) broke right and make a bid for freedom..... and then colided with a friendly 109! Bloody tipical!! Altough, both 109's picked up 0's for there colision damage, which was nice.

Spit number 4 feels the brunt as both 109's unload into it from close range....but he still flys on!

After a bit more manouvering, i broke formation flying as the 2 109's in the middle almost colided. I have enough problems with beating my mate, with out giving his easy kill points!

The deciding combat resaloution. Over the next couple of turns a varst amount of firing takes place, eventualy downing two planes off each side. The 109 with the red/white roundal token gets killed (For the second game in a row! Obvoulsly not a lucky plane because out of a total of 12 missions, the pilot of this kite has died 5 times and been captured once. 50% recored of living is not easy to live with). The 109 with the German roundal also gets shot down, only to get captured and squeezed into the at alreadly over crowded POW Camp! (Insidentaly, out of the 12 flown missions, the pilots of 109 number 8/German rondal has had 7 kills, been shot down 7 times, escaped twice and never died.) But unfortunatly, its ony the most recent victory/lose that counts, and the next pilot of this kite will be a rookie with no kills.

After this picture, the Spit makes a break for freedom as it has (unknown to me) engine damage and gets off the table, giving me the Mission points.At the end of that mission, i have 2 new rokkie pilots posted into my squadron to be lead by the brit roundel number 2 109 with 1 kill!!! I may have won 2 out of the 3 missions today, but I'm acutaly in a worse starting position that i was what i started mission number 7.

At this rate, I'll not only never get onto the the next level of aircraft, but never get to use some of those Ace skills, even if i am doing OK with the mission points.

aarondpjames said:

So next game, i start again with 3 rookie pilots and not one "kill point" amongst them!! I wonder if Hermann Göring ever had days like this??

Of course he did -- why do you think the Germans lost the Battle of Britain?

I hate to point this out mate, but the Luftwaffer were more experanced than the RAF due to the amount of "On the job training" they got with the Condor Legion during the Spanish civil war, a couple of years earlier.

Görings mistake was taking his attention off bombing airfeilds and concentrating of the citys, other wise he could of "Had it in the Bag" earlier, and I would of been speaking German. Still what do you expect from a bloke that wears pastal coloured uniforms!!

Even so, I bet he still had his bad days.......and had nothing but Rookies to fly.....just like me.

P.S. I'm not comparing myself to the Great Richmarshal himself..........I'd look stupid in Pastal coloured clothing!!!

Aarondpjames : can you take a picture of the stands that you made for your bombers as the group I play with are talking about how to do what you have done and I would like to show them your pictures. Thanks SHEP. BTW, I am enjoying your games and wonder why I am not seeing others showing their pics. HINT, HINT, Kaufy...... I would love to see the lastest models that Kaufy has done.... Also Aarondpjames can you give a link to the site that you used to copy on your bomber stands. Thanks again.

Shep,

Thanks for the interest in the bomber stands. Give me a few days to get over the effects of christmas and ill kids and I will get some photos/web links up on this thread for you mate.

Mission 10 (Dog Fight)

My first mission this week was the "Dog Fight" mission, and to win it, all i had to be was the last man flying!!! To be honist, I was not looking forward to it knowing my mates Hurricane Ace had made it back to his flying squadron, ready to fly this mission. The fact he is an Ace and is in a really deadly aircraft at close range, did'nt fill me with much hope of winning the mission.

Sorry about the crappy photo, but i think i was to busy celebrating the fact my mate had intentionaly left out his Ace from the starting line up!! Apparentaly, he was a bit concerned all of my fighters would target his Ace again, and he might not be so lucky this time. So he has pretty much sidelined him until he has a second to accomapany him. The odds have evened up again!! There is another method to my mates madness though, he has a few guys that are sitting on 2-3 kills each, so the more flying they do, the more likely there are going to be come Aces.

My usual starting aircraft. With only one pilot out of the three having a single kill under his belt, i was desprate to get some more. I opted for the seperated line up, to try and make my mate seperate his flight, and with a bit of luck, i might be able to put some "Concentrated fire" on to single targets and rack up some early kills.

After a couple of go's, the fighters are getting closer and it looks like we are both going for the "Concentration of fire" method.

The first shots are about to be exchanged......

Another crappy photo I'm affraid, but i was busy celebrating the first kill of the game!! My middle guys on fire, but hopefully he can pull through and stay flying.

After a couple of more turns, I'm still on fire and my mate has been well and truely scattered. Its just one of those lucky games where i've managed to spend more time getting shots on to my mate, than he has on me...... and his tokens are mounting!!

After shooting down his second Spitfire, and only getting smoke damage in return, i was feeling quite lucky. The German and Genreic Token 109s have just Split-s'ed, and the British token 109 is still trying to take out the final Spit before the fire gets rid of all the planes hit points. The next turn was the game decider. The Spit Split-s'ed and fired at the tailing 109. I the firefight, both planes went down, but i was not to worried as each of my pilots had gotten a kill each in this game. The real problem was when i moved both the German and Genreic Token 109s from there Split-s into turns, and not doing a long stright insted. So both planes crashed due to illegal moves.

The game only lasted about 15 mins, and in one turn, 4 planes went down and i went from having a decisice victory, to having to conded and draw. Oh well, i've got no one to blame for that buy my self. My pilot that went down in flames, got out of the doomed plane unscaved and even managed bo get back to the squadron in time for the next mission. But my two other pilots were both captured by the enemy and marched off to a POW camp. As for my mate, all of his pilots got back to there squadron in time for there next mission. Bloody Tipical!!!!

Mission 11 (Bomber Rescue)

Normaly i do well at the Bomber rescue missions because I mannage to stay out of close range of the chasing fighters, by droping altertude just about every turn. However, I felt my mate was wise to this trick, so i thought i'd try something different this time, just to try and keep him off ballance.

My cunning plan for this game was to stay at the top altertude for the entire game. I had hopped my mate would of droped altertude try and cut me off, and have to spend a few more turns trying to get back up a level, keeping me out of close range for as long as possable...... at least, that was the plan!!

He caught up with me pretty quick, and it was'nt long before i was on fire. Still, i was hopping he was going to drop a level....

He still has not droped a level, and unfortunatly nore have I. I'm now starting to take a lot of punnishment from both the Spits and the fire, and i dont know how long my 35 hit points will last out for.

Unfortunatly my bomber was distroyed before it could be rescued, so i lost the mission. I could however extract some revenge and soak up some easy kills on the Spits that have been shot at by the HE-111. Ha Ha Ha!!!!

Is'nt it funny how sometimes your plans just dont work out? I did put some dammage on to the Spits, but they blew up one of mine in return. Another dead pilot, oh well, better get on the phone to HQ and yet another rookie replacement pilot!!

Another straf on each other, and i'm still hunting for my first kill

We lost another plane each and by the time i could Immalmann/Split-s, the Spits were bugging out and i had no chance of catching them. To rub salt in my wounds after the game, my mate told me that is Spits were on 15 and 16 points of damage each, so no wonder be bugged out. He had already won the mission, with his planes being so badly dammaged, the only thing he was going to acheave was giving me 2 easy kills. The selfish git!!!

Sheppard1972 said:

No worrys mate, this should sort you out.

I'll start with Bombers, the German HE 111 to be exact.

1. Go to WWW.wikipedia.org and type in HE 111 to get an abundance of info about the types and different weapons carried by the bomber and there firing arc's. Also going to Google pictures and having a look at verious photos will give you some accurate ideas as to the firing arc's.

2. After that, go to http://richard.ferriere.free.fr/3vues/3vues.html and you can find just about any skeleton birds eye drawing of any aircraft you could want. Select which type of HE 111 you want and print it off.

You should have something that looks like this.

3. Mesure the lengh of your bomber (From nose to tail) and photo copy/enlarge the skeleton birds eye view picture until it matches your model bomber.

4. Cut a peice of clear plastic approx 5cm/2inch wide and about 4cm/1.5inch longer than your bomber. This will give you a 2 cm/ 3/4inch over hang for the nose and tail of the plane, important for working out the firing archs.

5. Put plastic over the skeleton drawing and copy it onto the plastic with permant pen.

On the picture above i've used black for the aircraft outline, red for the firing arcs and green for the beneath the plane firing arcs. (the ball turrets that have a 360 deg firing arc are the ones with the circle arould them) Blue was used for the direction of travel arrow. As you can see from the picture, i've not been perticualy carful when it came to the drawing onto the plastic, but at the end of the day, as long as it preresents your model, and the firing arcs are in the right place, then it's do's not really matter.

6. Cover the permant pen with Sticky plastic sheeting to prevent the pen getting smudged during gamming.

7. Find the centre of ballance for you plane and drill/insert and rod into it to hold the plane to the altertude pegs.

I did match the under belly colour to the rod, trying to blend in with each other, but after a few games, the brass rod began to come through again.

8. On the flying base, drill and hole and glue a altertude peg into in, just make sure it matches up with the location you have put the rod into you bomber.

Each bomber is likely to have a different altertude peg location and you well lose a peg per stand as you've just glued it into place. I did try to just have a loose hole to sit it in without using glue, but it just wobbled arould to much, so out came the glue.

9. And thats you done.

The only problem i had, and still do, is working out the speed and turning circle of the bomber. We had thought of making our own "Bomber flying deck" for movement cards, but it that seemed like a lot of hard work, and we wanted to get them up in the air ASAP. So what we did insted, was to move the blue direction of travel arrow and marker, closer to gether on the bomber bases and used a "D" deck for movement.

On the left is our HE 111 base and on the right is a flying base from the WW1 WOW which we use for our WW2 fighters. As you can see the direction of travel arrow and the line at the front of the base are both represented, but the bombers arrow is a lot more closer, making its morement shorter per turn. This enables the fighters to our run the bombers and keep it as realistic as possable.

The only problem we have with the flying base is figuring out the turns. If we do normal turns as per the movement deck, because we have slowed the distance traveled by the bomber, it almost looks like its turning on the spot. (And at no point in history, have i ever read about a bomber being able to out turn a fighter.) So for now, we are doing 1/2 turns with it, which kind of make it equal to a fighters turning circle, which is still not ideal. This is where its own bomber deck would come in handy, so i guess it wont be long before i have to bite the bullet and make the bomber deck and stop being lazy.

Other flying bases are made in the same way, but smaller amd with less detail.

On the left is a "Val" dive bomber, with firing arc's and a shorter flying base (about 1cm shorter than the standard WOW WW1 base to make it a little bit slower than the fighters). In middle is a P51 with the the standard WOW WW1 base (just for visual perpersentation). And on the right is a ME 262 with a 2cm longer flying base than the standard fighter due to it jet speed of 500mph +. The firing arc of 262 is narrower than the standard base which fits in nicely withthe fact is must be harder to line up your target the faster you are traveling.

The only problem with the 262 base is its hard to judge where the aircraft will end up after the end of its 2 movement turns. You kind of get used to flying the standard flying bases.

Just stuck this in for overall comparason for all the flying bases i've discused here.

Hope this helps Shep, got any problems/questions, just give me a shout.

Mission 12 (Bombing Raid)

It was my mates turn to complete the mission, and Bombing raid was the choice of the dice. Not a bad one for him, as the Lancaster has 50 hit points so he can stay in the combat longer than my 35 hit point HE-111. However, my BF 109's tend to do quite well at this mission, especialy when the combat gets into to close range. It doe's not matter what the damage is on the tokens, the prize is when your mate has to pick up 3 tokens for one burst of fire on his aircraft.........Pirceless!!! (Ofcourse, its always nice if its two 8's and a 4.........just for good measure!!)

True to previous form, my mate left his Ace out of the battle again..........maybe he knows something i dont?? I on the other hand, had my usual line up of 3 x BF 109s. I do have a pilot with two kills under his belt, but i gave him the day off, its good for there moral you know!! So i have 3 complete rookies, with not a single kill amongst them. This just means i can be more reckless with my decisions and not have to worry about loosing someone of value, and focus of winning the mission.

The first round of battle. My 109 apporach at full speed, ready to slow speed the next turn and be in close range for the next shot. At the same time, the centre 109 can colide with the bomber for that extra C token of damage (Well, i am despreate you know!!) and they can immalmann on the following turn........at least thats the plan, anyway!

The first round of shooting was looking good...............you never know, at this rate, i may even win!!

Still working on the colision/immelmann plan. The center 109 is still in line with the other two 109, but there is no space for it with the bomber being there, hence the card to the side, to mark where the plan should be.

Before the shooting, everythings still working to plan. The Bombers has taken a bit of damage but that Spitfire thats on fire, just wont go down!

After the shooting, its not looking to rosie now! The flaming Spits still up but the bomber is smoking. I now have just one plane to finish the mission and you just know the Spits are going to Split-s/Immelmanning in behind me in the next turn while if desperatly consuntrate on the bomber.

I was saved a good strafing from the number 4 Spit as he Immelmanned and went up a peg, so therefore could only give me a long range shot. Unfortunatly, that shot put me within 1 point of being distroyed, i just had to hope the bomber missed with its turret. And then it happened, the Patrion Saint of Wargamers smiled down on me. My mate elected not to shoot at me with the top turret. Rather kind you might think, but it was not charity that was on his mind, oh no, it was one of our house rules. If a bomber takes a "wouned pilot" token, the pilot/gunner nearest the attacking aircraft is then disabled. This makes it harder to shoot down the bomber, as i'm sure it was in reality and also brings a lighter side to the game. It was then that i found out that in the previous two turns, both the rear gunner ant top turret gunner had received "Wounded pilot" tokens, and were out of action. Now the lighter side began to kick in. I started to laugh my ass off as i was tucked into the side of the bomber, and it had no defences, easy pray!!!.........except for the Spitfires of course!!

The next move saw the two Spits carry out there prediceted move after the Immelmann and the bomber and be carried on turning towards the target card in the bottom left of the above picture. The Number 4 Spit over few me and the bomber was not on target to release its bombs...........so i finished it off and won the mission. The next moves after that saw me diving away from the number 4 Spit towards my table edge and the Spits trying to catch me up.

My final plane made it home, and the flames went out on the Spit that was on fire. Bloody tipical!!

Mission 13 (Recon)

It was my turn. I had not done a Recon mission for a while and i dont ever remember winning one either, so i did'nt have a good feeling about this one. The bad feeling subsided into sheer terror when my mate carmly announced at he now had his second ace and as a concquence was going to be feilding two huricanes in this mission...............Oh bugger!!!

The dreaded British line up with it's two aces

My line up...........not looking quite as hard as my mates!! I went for a wide set up, as i figured the only way i would survive the battle was to seperate his aircraft.

At the end of the first turn, i left my squadron looking line i was going for the "Horns of the Buffalo" attack. This was infact a bluff, as i know my mate hates this attack. If in the next turn i can get him to seperate his flight to intersept the flanking aircraft and at the same i move mine into close formation, i can punch a hole through the centre and hopefully dodge the Hurricanes.

A bad picture i'm affraid, but as you can see, my mate was not falling for it..............i'm in the poo now!!!!

Nerves must of got the better of me, as i managed to take a lot of bad photos during this game. My flanking 109 move into the centre of the pack and my Recon 109 drops a peg to avoide the pending damage.

Although my plan had'nt worked as i had hoped, i have still managed to avoid a close range burst form the Hurricanes and managed to perform a consontrated fire on the Spit...........who had Immelmenned too soon. Ha ha ha !!!

However, true to form it never went fully to plan. The Spit absorbed all of the fire and was still flying. And i had lost a 109 due to a colosion with the hurricane.

After the Hurricane immelmanned, it gave me something to shoot at, but at the same time, the number 1 Hurricane had me in his sights. My recon 109 was still tucked in behind the Spit, and as wearing away its defences.

I stoped fireing at the Spit with my Recon 109 just in time to take a photo of the target, 1 down 2 more to go. Unfortunatly the Hurricanes are closing in on me.

Just as I'm about to put in a high speed move, ready for an immelmann, the Hurricanes take my Recon 109 out and my mate wins the mission.

The Spit heads of the table to safety (Coward!!!) i decide to go for the Hurricanes for a bit of vengance.

Not wanting to take on a Hurricane "Face to face", i noticed the number 4 Hurricane had just compleded a number of slow speed moves. Hum? He's got a few counters, so maybe he has engine damage? Target number 4 before he limps off the table!!

I managed to avoid the Head to head with the number 1 Hurricane, only to do the same with Number 4!! He perdormed a Split-S (ruining my idea that he had engine damage) and shot me out of the sky.

My mate showed me afterwards the damage tokens for Number 4. Out of 7 tokens, 6 were zero's and one was a 3. Not an engine damage counter in site!! I don't know if he showed me out of fair play, or just to taunt me!!!!

Either way, another bad day for the Luftwaffer!!!