Death above the desert

The Collections, Part III:

 1960-1980: Middle East Air Combat

When I decided to have a go at air combat, choosing a setting was quite tough. I considered the Falklands War initially, but I decided against it as there was not a huge variety in aircraft or the missions that could be played. Vietnam struck me as a somewhat overdone period, and I have little interest in the history personally. Eventually I landed upon the idea of wargaming the conflicts between Israel and Egypt.

The collection has expanded from the originial 10-20 planes a side to more like 40-50 a side. On the Egyptian (standing in for Syrians, Jordanians etc. where needed) side have some Hawker Hunters, MiGs 15, 17, 19, 21s, Su-7s, Il-28s. The Israeli's have Mirages, Super Mysteres, Vautours, F-4 Phantoms, and (when I finish painting them) some F-15s and F-16s. Almost all the models are from Tumbling Dice. They're good models, nicely detailed for 1/600th and as of yet I've never had a model with any serious moulding issues.

I use the Check Your Six! Jet Age rules, which are fun and quick. They give a good feel, yet allow a single player, even a relative novice to handle at least two aircraft with ease. The games I've played have been quick and frequently brutal.

The most recent game I ran consisted of an Israeli fighter formation intercepting an Egyptian bomber force heading towards Tel Aviv during the Six Day War. The scenario was Hollywood "based on" an actual event in the war. The Egyptian bomber force had an escort of 10 fighters, mostly MiGs, while the Israeli's were attacking with 8 Mirages.

Israeli Mirages (anachronistically painted for the War of Attrition) sweeping in to the attack.

The Egyptian strike force.

 The Israeli's swept in to the attack in a broad formation, passing through the first escorts to engage them to attack the bombers at the heart of the formation. Unfortunately, the Egyptian top cover came into the engagement on the Israeli right flank, and a massive dogfight ensued. After initial successes downing a MiG, the Israelis found the battle turning against them.

The screams of jet engines fill the sky as a massive dogfight breaks out.

Israeli pilots plot their attack on the bombers.

Thanks to terrible dice rolling, several Mirages were soon sent spiraling into the desert, trading off with MiGs at a rough 1:1 ratio. One of the Il-28 bombers was brought down by a Mirage, before that Mirage was felled by defensive fire from a second bomber's rear turret.

Losses among the Israeli aircraft mount.

A bomber falls, and is avenged by another bomber.

 By the time the Israelis broke off and fled, they had lost 5 aircraft and three of their pilots, including one of their best. The Egyptians had lost one bomber and 3 MiG 21s, with two bombers breaking through to attack an airfield around Tel Aviv.

A dark day for the Israeli Air Force with heavy losses in aircraft and pilots.

 Overall this collection has proven popular with my wargaming mob, and I'm looking forward to putting many more of these planes into the sky, and sending them crashing back down again. I've painted up the Israeli's for the later War of Attrition, firstly because that colour scheme lasted longer than the silver with red flashing used during the Six Days War, and also because personally I think it looked better. The Egyptians are painted a mix of the various schemes in use at the time of the conflicts.

Honour and Death

The Collections, Part II:

1550-1615 Japan:


This collection arose, I can only assume, from a severe desire to punish myself with painting. The collection stands at about 70 or so 25mm figures, 6 mounted samurai, 18 or so foot samurai, 40 ish ashigaru, and then some odds and ends, ronin and ninja in the main. I've got the forces split into a handful of clans, two main large ones and a handful of small ones. I've got two rule sets for these models, firstly Naginata for larger scale skirmishes, and Osprey's Ronin rules, which work best for a handful of models apiece. The Naginata rules are streamlined and fun, allowing for larger scale outings but to my mind lacking flavour, particularly when elite samurai clash. The Ronin rules provide the flavour and make the actual combat that much more active for the players (choosing when to play your defense and attack chits and the like), but I would hate to try and play a game with more than 10 or so figures against each other as the game would last an eternity. One thing I have considered is using the Ronin combat system for clashes between samurai in an otherwise Naginata game, but there are various niggles that would need working out before that would be possible.

Samurai stalk through a village seeking the enemy.

This collection has had a couple of outings, once at a local wargames club as a Saga force (using the Norman battleboard) where they anachronistically fought the Vikings a couple of times. My cunning strategy of overloading my force with elite samurai backed up with a handful of missile units paid off once, with the massed arquebus fire weakening the Viking thralls enough to open a path to their warlord that two mounted samurai units could exploit, in a fine example of the courage expected of the samurai, my warlord cut down the enemy leader's bodyguard in one turn, then took the warlord's head the next. The second game resulted in a far different result, as bezerkers intercepted my warlord and cut him down.

Their other main outing has been at the boardgames night at work, where we played out a scenario of my own devising. An aging samurai lord had passed away and one of his sons had seized his father's favourite wife and will, declaring that the lord had left leadership of the clan to him. Another son, a half brother of the first, who felt he had been unfairly cheated gathered up a group of his loyal retainers and set off to ambush his brother while he was off celebrating his rise to power by hunting in a remote location, Unbeknownst to either side, a cousin had sent a small team of ninja (played by me) to eliminate both brothers, as the cousin viewed himself as the most logical next step in the succession.

The action took place around a small village with a group of buildings and fields just north of a walled off compound containing a mansion, with a wood running up the west edge of the board, from which the ambushers emerged, the sea to the north and an area of fields and broken ground to the south. The hunting party was entering from the east. The battle devolved into two actions as neither side was willing to clash inside the village. On the seaward flank, the ambushed force threw forward their cavalry under a barrage of arrows, the assault hitting a holding force of the ambushers who were rapidly pushed back, losing several ashigaru in the process. The cavalry charge eventually ended (when chucking out time came) with the three cavalry surrounded by low grade foot troops, holding their own, but liable to be annihilated at any moment.

In the centre, between the village buildings and the walled off compound, the main forces of both sides clashed, with samurai charging back and forth to get close to the lords (both sides' victory conditions being that the enemy lord should die and their own survive). In the background, the ninja were moving along the eastern edge of the compound walls, aiming to get in close enough to take out their targets. In the final turn, the lord leading the hunting party found himself pinned against the compound wall facing a mounted samurai, with the ninja launching an attack, cutting down two of his bodyguards in one turn. The lord faced off against the mounted man, was hit and pushed back, into the impassable obstacle of the wall, resulting in him being sqewered by a yari. Sadly, we didn't have enough time to see if the ninja would be able to complete their mission.

The final section of this collection is a small force of naga, half serpent half samurai mythical creatures. I've put together a small clan of them, with a chieftan, two shamans and a bunch of warriors. I based their snake skin colours on several venemous snakes, then modelled the armour colours after the chieftan's skin colours. I felt the "human" part of the naga shouldn't be too human, so I painted them with solid black eyeballs and pale blue skin, carrying weapons made of obsidian with bone handles (smelting metals being hard under the sea I suspect). Their gaming debut, including a rather spiffing Chinese/Japanese dragon as their overlord, went well, with a suitable level of shock on the part of the players. The set up was that an up and coming clan was invading the lands of its more prosperous neighbour. Both sides forces were approaching a village when both received reports the village was being destroyed, the attackers assuming the defenders were burning the much needed food supplies held there, the defenders assuming the attackers had got the jump on them and forced the nearby river.

Mortal forces, unaware in spite of the giant hand looming above them of the mystical events about to unleash themselves, clash around a small village.

Both sides bundled up and promptly got stuck in, with fighting swinging too and fro around the village and the open ground, while both sides avoided the various bits of rough terrain. After an appropriate number of turns, the mortals were rather put out by the arrival of the Naga and the dragon, who promptly fried a hut and the nearest three samurai. Unbeknownst to the players, some ninja (who had been picking off anyone who came too close to revealing their position) who served a local temple of a deity opposed to the Naga, had been skulking around waiting for the dragon, so rushed out to engage. Unfortunately they couldn't roll a dice to save their lives, whiffed their attacks and were rapidly smeared across the landscape. The players were just realising the full potential of the Naga warriors when chucking out time brought action to a halt. Although it may have been a close run thing in the end, the loss of the dragon hunting ninja would have made a mortal victory unlikely, though a few thoroughly traumitised survivors may have escaped.

The samurai mostly come from Dixons Miniatures, although the command units, banner bearers and casualty markers come from Perry. Dixons also do a Legends of Nippon range which is where the Naga are from. 

To further round out this collection, I have a large number of Choson Koreans awaiting painting, allowing for the portrayal of the Samurai invasions of Korea. More of that in the Projects posts.

A Day for Eagles 1

Recently I ran a game, based on the Flying Tigers mini-campaign from the back of the Check Your Six rulebook, adapted to fit the desert war. Subbing in for the P-40s of the Flying Tigers are Spitfires of the Western Desert Air Force's No 92 Squadron.

Tobruk, Libya, May 1942


Rommel's Afrika Korps has launched an assault to cut off and then sieze the vital port of Tobruk. In order to keep the Western Desert Air Force away from the advancing columns of Panzers and their supply columns, the Luftwaffe is launching a concerted air attack on the port and its garrison and air defences. The first game consisted of a large force of bombers hitting the El Adem airbase to smash the resistance.

Before each scenario the players (Rob and James for the Brits, Tom and Gordon for the Germans) have a series of choices to make determining how their aircraft would set up. The British went for an aggressive push, leaving the members of their flight who were late to scramble far behind and plunging into the German formation head first. The Germans meanwhile chose not to wait for their supporting flights who were late, maintaining a steady speed to allow the Bf-109 escort to catch up, but leaving a ground attack formation far behind.

The Germans deployed their bomber formation first some distance south from their bombing objective, the airfield, with Stukas forming a wing on either side of the central formation of Dornier Do-217s. Two RAF P-40s from another squadron set up behind the centre of the bomber formation, with a flight of four Bf-109s closing in on the formation in a broad line to the rear of the P-40s. The Spitfires came into the gaming area from the east and west of the German bombers, aiming to smash through the formation before the German fighters could make contact.

Early morning commute to downtown Tobruk

In the opening turn the two P-40s fired ineffectually on the rearmost of the Dornier Do-217s, before deciding to dive out of the engagement, though they did get one more volley of fire off, damaging the aircraft in the following turn as the Spitfires swept into range from both sides. The massed firepower of Rob's Spitfire Vcs blew two Stukas from the sky in their opening volley. James' pilots were less fortunate, hitting but not harming their targets. The next turn found British fighters in amongst the bombers, despite lead being fired in all directions by both sides, no more aircraft went down, though three German bombers took damage. This was a reasonable result for the Brits, as damaged bombers don't contribute to the outcoming of bombing on targets.

On turn 4, the eastern Bf-109s got into range to start taking pot shots at the British aircraft, though sadly for the Germans, the pilots forgot to check their line of fire, and the first victim of German fighter fire was a Do-217, fortunately causing no serious harm. The British performed much better, with Rob wiping out the last of the Stuka flight on the western flank after some fancy flying and James damaging a further Do-217.

The brutal dogfight starts to claim planes.

Over the next couple of turns, British fighters cut in and out of the German formation, damaging another bomber, but failing to stop them reaching their objective. As bombs began to rain down on the airfield, Spitfires began to run out of ammunition, with two diving away rapidly. The final two Spitfires damaged a further German bomber, not before it dropped its ordinance, before James' final aircraft suffered damage from the rear machine gun of a Stuka. Both of the remaining Spitfires dived away, leaving the remaining six German bombers to hit the airfield and the nine bombers still in the air to fly home.

The game had run well, though the British were consistently poor in their damage rolls (with most in the single digits out of a possible maximum of 24) which meant the very tough Dorniers usually had to make little more than 5-7 on 2d6 to avoid taking any damage. The Germans did much better, scoring the maximum damage on several occasions, but the bombers rarely had more than a single machine gun able to bear on any target, meaning the effects were minimal.

In the after action paper section, the German bombing of the airfield resulted in four Spitfires being reduced to burning wrecks, while one damaged bomber from the action fell foul of the late arrivals from the players' flight, two more of the damaged birds cracked up on landing, writing them off.

The second action of the day was an attack on the docks by an unescorted bomber formation. The Germans set up almost ontop of their target as the British chose to close in from the rear to maximise their chance in the attack, taking the time to sweep around. The Spitfires swept in to the formation, getting close in to maximise their chances of hits, as the previous game had taught Rob and James that they couldn't make high damage rolls to save their lives, which against the tough German bombers wasn't resulting in the necessary kills.

Achtung, Englander! British planes charge into the German formation.

Unfortunately for the Tom and Gordon, the bad dice plague had infected their robustness rolls, as German bombers began to plunge into the desert, including their only veteran pilot. This added further complications for the Germans as the loss of the flight leader caused their crews to become confused and change their targets, meaning their two formations had to then assault the other's target. This level of confusion gave a perfect opportunity for the British fighters as the formations swung slowly and predictably around. Careful flying allowed the British to minimise the retaliatory fire, while pouring close range fire into the German bombers. In the course of eight turns, six German bombers, including three of the previously untouchable Do-217s were hit. With their formation being slowed by heavy bomb loads and the slower Stukas, Tom and Gordon made the decision to ditch the bombs on the Stukas and use them to distract British fighters, allowing the last undamaged Do-217s to make their bombing runs and dash for home. Ultimately, the most damage done to a British fighter was the result of friendly fire as Rob provided "assistance" to James. Spitfires also started to run out of ammunition as another Stuka took damage. Ultimately though, not a single German aircraft survived unscathed to drop its bombs effectively. When the British finally broke off, with only one of their aircraft with ammunition remaining, 6 German bombers had fallen, 5 were damaged and 1 escaped having disposed of its ordinance and fled. As the sun set over the desert after a hard days fighting, many bunks in the German airfield remained empty, while the British sat down to congratulate themselves on inflicting heavy losses while losing none of their own in the air.

A dark day for the Luftwaffe as the stragglers are run down by the rampaging RAF

But both sides know the Germans will return, most likely in greater numbers, and with more fighters. For today the fighting is done, but tomorrow will bring more violence.