Flying the Blood Red Skies

Happy to say D6 got my copy of Blood Red Skies in this past week so we were able to give it a go on Saturday afternoon. Chuck M and I managed to get 2 games in and Raymond was in part of the first game but wasn’t able to play long.

The first basic rulebook is online at warlord games and you can download the PDF for free. The scenario book and the expanded rules really complete the set. I think it’s a bit of a bummer they have things spread out across 3 books. The cloud rules for instance are in the  scenario book.

For the first game, we put together a 6 ME-109 vs 6 Spitfires scrum.

We interactively placed the clouds and then rolled per plane for it’s state, disadvantaged, neutral and advantaged. Each side had 4 pilots rated skill 3, and 2 rookies at skill 2.

We flew on my Wings of War mat which really fits the bill. You don’t really need a huge space to play the game. Definitely have to finish painting my planes and get the decals on.

As part of the setup, the Germans had a Theatre card to play which was to add to their numerical advantage. (They got to add 2 more planes) Just like the real Battle of Britain, numerical advantage for the Germans.

Flying the Brits, I tried to keep close to the clouds, thinking I could duck in and out. The Jerries managed to outmaneuver and then shoot down the front spitfire.

I managed to get behind one of Chuck’s ME-109s but nothing more came of it as Chuck managed to shoot down another Spitfire and my boom chit count went above the number of planes I had so the Brits decided it was time to break off.

For the second game we did something a bit smaller, using one of the scenarios from the book. This one was 4 planes on 4 planes with a split into flights of 2 for deployment. We once again rolled randomly for the plane state.

For deployment planes still needed to be a certain distance from each other so there was a bit of a mechanism to deny portions of the table. With the 3 clouds I figured I’d have the ability to use the clouds for cover.

Chuck had as part of his theatre cards the ability to remove 2 clouds and did. (The theatre clouds are trying to recreate specific conditions from various times during WWII)

Since we had lots of space on the approach all the planes were able to climb to an advantaged state. We all needed to decide if we wanted to try the dangerous head on shot or start the out maneuvering to gain advantage.

Head on shots are dangerous in the game as not only do you get to shoot but your opponent does. Chuck and I both gave it a try and from our experiments kinda hard to say, seems like good reasons to try it as well as avoid it.

A swirl invariably started as planes tried to jockey for position. The game rewards pilots working together as well as having a wingman to watch out for me.

I tried to keep in groups of 2 and attack in waves.  It was very hard to do and resist temptation to fly off for that one fleeting opportunity.

When you tail in the game (presuming they have no wingman that takes away a level of advantage) This can setup a shot for another.

As this game went on, I was able to land hits (which awards a boom token that represents damage/loss of moral to one side), however while a hit might land and cause damage, if the target of the attack can successfully dodge, nothing further happens save the boom token. If they fail and they are in a disadvantaged state they are then shot down.

When you have more boom tokens then planes, then your side will disengage and flee the battlefield. For this second game, I managed to land 4 boom tokens on Chuck so that was that. I didn’t manage to shoot anyone down tho, just landed hits.

For the two games, just 2 spitfires shot down, and lots of boom tokens. Victory for the Germans in game 1 and victory for the Brits in game 2.

Definitely enjoying the rules. Lots of things to explore for next time. Meanwhile the Warlord guys have started to introduce their next wave of planes. Lots of twin engine planes thus far. There are additional fighters coming as the hints have been dropping left and right. The lure of wildcats, buffalos, and zeros in the Pacific are calling :-).