Looking at the Simpler Side of Things

Lately, I've been finding myself looking at rules where quick playability outweighs realism. Rules that I might have poo-pooed a few years ago greatly appeal to me. I think the main reason being that I have almost zero time to even exhale lately, let alone devote to hobby activities. There is a part of my brain that is constantly screaming, "I want to have a game!!!" but it is squelched by the powerful "must do's." There is a scene in Cinderella (the Disney cartoon) where the evil step-mother tells Cinderella that go to the ball but only if she does about 10 new chores, in addition to her regular chores. That is how I feel most of the time. What I am hoping for this new year is to be able to set up a game quickly and play it in a relatively short amount of time. Here are some rules that I am looking at:

Air Strike: Modern Air Combat for the Whole Family by T. Jensen
Boy, talk about your simple rules! Someone recommended them on the aerial wargames group on FaceBook. These are at the same level as the Battle of Britain rules that Just Jack has modified for his tiny air battles, only Air Strike is card based. I read them over and I really liked what I saw. The aircraft are very generic. A fighter is a fighter, and a missile is a missile. No variation in performance. When you think about it,  unless your match up is a jet from the 70s versus a jet from today, there isn't going to be huge differences; and to paraphrase Chuck Yeager, its the pilot not the plane that will determine the outcome of the dogfight. For a good review, see the Red in the Morning blog. You can get them on Wargames Vault for $4.50

Archduke Piccolo's Ultra Simple Naval Rules by Archduke Piccolo
As I mentioned in my previous post, my interest in WWII naval gaming has resurfaced. In particular, I've wanted to replay the various battles found in Hector Bywater's Great Pacific War. I've been looking at various rules including, Bob Cordery's Gridded Naval War-games, David Manley's Find, Fix and Strike, and recently Battleship Captain by Gary Graber. The Achduke's rules are fairly simple, and based on his after action reports, they are pretty fast games. I tend to give a big thumbs up to any game, simple or complex, if I can understand them after only one reading. These rules fit that criterion. They are only for battleships, however, and hex based. I do have a hex mat that I bought several years ago that has a seascape on one side. He provides the stats for a great number of battleships, but explains in detail how he derived them if there is a ship you want that is not on his list.

Aircraft Maneuver Ratings

I've been wanting to do this for quite some time, but Jim, over at Jim's Wargames Workbench has spurred me on. I am compiling ratings on all the aircraft that I use for my games. By ratings, I mean the numbers used in various rules for undergoing maneuvers. Then, I am figuring out the ratings for the two rules that I plan on using, Target Locked On, and Wings At War.

To me, maneuvering is the most esoteric of the various abilities that need to be modeled for a particular set of rules. Some rules use Thrust/Weight ratios, some use Wing Area/Weight ratios known as wing loading, and for others, I have no clue. The data is not as easy to come by as one thinks. There is a web site that has T/W for a number of aircraft, but when I do the calculations for some of the planes, they don't agree. So what I have done is to compile the ratings for maneuvering for a number of rules and then see what the consensus is among them. For example, Saab JAS-39 Gripen has a T/W = 0.93, Wingload = 532, and is rated at maximum maneuverability by both AirWar: C21 and Missile Threat. Therefore, I give the Gripen a maneuver rating of 5 for Target Locked On.

Wings At War is a different story as it uses power ratings, but I am trying to figure that one out too.

The really big challenge in this is for aircraft that are not found in any rules. For example, ratings for  the joint Chinese/Pakistan JF-17 Thunder is not found in any of the rule set I have. For these cases, I just have to compare T/W and wingload for those planes that are listed and estimate from these.

Wings At War: Thud Ridge Play Test and Evaluation

I managed to squeeze in another quick air combat game to test out another set of rules. This time it's Thud Ridge, part of the Wings at War series produced by Tumbling Dice.

Thud Ridge takes place during the Vietnam War. In addition to the rule book, you also get a bunch of Tumbling Dice 1/600 scale jets. A while back, I purchased their air rules covering the Falklands War. I hadn't read that set in a while, but they are identical in mechanics with some particulars to each game setting.

I did say in my previous AAR post that these games were going to pit the MIG 21 against the F5/F5A. When I first read through the rules, I didn't notice that F5 stats were included, so I instead decided to have a match between two opposing MIG 21 forces. Hey, it could happen! Two minor nations both equipped with MIG 21s, or the General tries to depose the Sultan of Northern Chalupistan resulting in a civil war. My friend Karl (a.k.a The General) threatened to do just that several times, but I've managed to hold him off.

Thud ridge has some MIG 21 models, so I painted them up, sort of:

One of these days, I'm going to figure out how to make roundels for 1/600 planes

I couldn't decide how I wanted to paint them, so I made a wash of Future Floor Wax with some India ink and slathered it on. It gave the planes a natural metal look and got into the cracks and panel lines. The photo doesn't do them justice. I was pleased with the result. They faced off against my MIGs that are painted in the official camouflage colors of Northern Chalupistan. For this game, there will be few pictures done in ComicLife. While entertaining, they take too long to make, and the learning curve seems a bit high.

The Battle
The game required aircraft to be on square bases of 30mm a side. All I had were 25mm steel bases, but I figured close enough. This time, I used cylindrical rare-earth magnets to attach the aircraft and to indicate altitude differences. These would prove to be something of a major inconvenience later in the game.

The opposing sides started off at different altitudes. A roll of the die determined that the silver MIGs were an altitude of 4 whereas the camouflage MIGs were at an altitude of 3. The die behind each plane represents its current power level. Different maneuvers cost different amounts of power, so the more power you have, the more you can do things. The die color also indicates which plane is which.

Turn 1
The rules have the Americans always go first, so again, I randomly chose the camo MIGs to go first. Not much happens on the first turn. Both camo MIGs move straight. The silver MIGs break to slow their speed. Both plan to dive the next turn. If they dived under full power, they run the risk of breaking up and crashing.

Turn 2
The camo MIG decide to climb. And climb they did, using up a good chunk of power to do so:

Camo MIGs climbing to meet their enemy. Big drop in power: from 5 to 2.

Seeing how the camo MIGs climbed to meet them, the Green MIG of the silver side flies straight at the black MIG of the camo side. Unfortunately, he stops just short of cannon range, and can't launch his IR missiles because he must be behind his target:

Yellow MIG does go ahead and dives thinking he can get behind white MIG:

Yellow MIG-21 just after his dive. One altitude level lower and back to full power.

With these rules, you don't get to move further on just a dive, but you do pick up power.

Turn 3
The camo MIGs really needed to get their power back up and you get more when you dive as oppose to using a Power action. Both executed a dive with the black MIG diving underneath the green MIG and then making a slight turn after the dive:

Now this is the start of my magnetic stand issues. The planes were getting close enough to each other to where they were pulling together! And these are pretty strong rare-earth magnets that make it even more of a pain.

Target Locked-On! Play Test and Rules Review

I have sort of came out of my funk. Part of crawling my way back to the top was to give myself permission/space to do something fun for me. A lot time ago, I had planned to play a series of short microarmor games using the same units but using different rules. This would be a way of playtesting various rules. I decided to do the same with modern jet combat rules. I think I have about 16 sets of rules including both hard copy and on pdf. I don't think I can play test all of them, but I'll give it my best shot. I've already played AirWar:C21 a few times, so I will put that one on the bottom of the playtest list.

First off is Target Locked-On! by Rory Crabb.

He has put out several rules including ones for both modern and pre-dreadnought naval. You can find them on Wargames Vault, but the supplements are free on his website.

For all of these test games, I will be using my two favorite protagonists, the MIG-21 and the F-5A/F-5E. They duked it out the first air combat game I played with my friend Karl and I've come to liked them. I played around with ComicLife app for the pictures. The captions within the pictures gave the narrative, whereas the text below each picture is the commentary on the picture.

The Battle
The battle took place on a 2' x 4' foam game mat:

The two sides were at opposite ends of the game mat. In hindsight, I probably could have used only a 2' x 2' playing area.

The colored die behind each plane serves to indicate which plane corresponds with its data sheet and to indicate the current altitude. The altitude range from one to six. The die in front indicates who goes first, second, etc. This is determined by the skill level of each pilot. I made all pilots the same skill level.

I rolled for altitudes. The F-5 group rolled low. This cost them a lot of fuel to gain altitude.

Turn 1

The F-5's, especially the black one, wasted a lot of fuel early in the game trying to reach the MIG-21's altitude. This would force them to really have to think about maneuvers later in the game as all maneuvers except dives use up a lot of fuel. On the other hand, the MIGs just cruised along until they were close enough to dive in and attack the F-5s.

Turn 2

Again, probably could have made the game board smaller. Oh well. A way to remedy that might be to increase the movement increments.

Your maneuver is a freebie, after that, you have to roll versus skill level to execute a maneuver. Planes have a set number of maneuvers. For example, the MIG-21 can execute three per turn; the F-5 can execute four. However, every time you try another maneuver, not only do you have to roll for success versus pilot skill, you subtract 1 from your roll. 

Radar locks are not required to launch missiles, but they improve the chance to hit. Unfortunately, there were a lot of radar lock failures.

I called it a night at the end of turn 2 and resumed the next evening. There was a lot of finger crossing that my son wouldn't get in and disrupt things.

Turn 3

Having four successful maneuvers paid off for the black F-5, or so he hoped. He pretty much left himself open to the white MIG-21 to swing around and attack him, and so he did...

What seemed to come up in the game was that most of the time the planes were too close to use their missiles. Missiles have a minimum range, and each time planes ended up too close to their opponent to use them. So, they resorted to their guns, which missed all the time.

Turn 4

By turn four, it seemed that there wasn't going to be a resolution. The F-5s were running out of fuel. The MIG-21 should have fired his missile at the yellow F-5, but missed the chance.

I thought I'd be fancy and try a split-s. The black F-5 had just enough fuel to pull it off. He did, and it have him some speed to escape.

The consequence of failing a maneuver. The white MIG-21 could have had a chance at firing a missile at the black F-5, but he failed a second turn and was out of the zone. 

I suppose that the yellow F-5 could have tried to attack the white MIG-21, but I gave a quick decision die roll and the yellow pilot decided instead to just leave off the board. He didn't have a whole lot of fuel left either.

Although the two MIG-21s had plenty of fuel, their speed had been greatly reduced. The green MIG tried to gain some speed to catch up to the fleeing black F5, but the pilot figured he wouldn't have gotten within missile range before the F5 left the table. This was because he had really lowered his speed early on but never sped up. Even with a dive, which adds to your speed, wasn't enough to catch up.

Critique of the Rules
OK, now for the critique of them. I have to preface this by saying that first, I only have played a few air combat games such as AirWar: C21, Panzer 8's air combat rules, and AH's Richtofen's War to compare with. I do not claim to be an expert on air warfare games. Second, it could be that I missed something when reading the rules so my criticisms could be invalid. If that is the case, please let me know.

Sequence of Play
Target Locked-On! states there are three phases to each turn:

1. Reaction
2. Activation
3. Morale

Reaction is just deciding when each plane gets to do something. Morale is whether or not a plane remains in play based on things like damage, etc. Activation is when all the action happens: movement, maneuvering, firing weapons and all that good stuff. The problem is that the rules don't say when to do what. Can you shoot first then move/maneuver? Or is it the other way around? Or does everyone move first, then shoot? Based on the order of the reading of the rules, I assumed that each plane moved and maneuvered first, then fired at an opponent. In some cases actions are rather vague.  Attempting a radar lock occurs after you fire guns and before you launch missiles,based on where they were in the rules. I made the decision to attempt a radar lock before a plane moved/maneuvered. That way the pilot can plan his moves better. Another example is that an opposing player can execute an evasive maneuver when it's the target of a missile attack. Does this mean the plane gets to move before it's supposed to? What if the plane already moved? A clarification of what happens when during the activation phase would really help.

I really liked the mechanics of movement and maneuvering themselves, especially the fuel loss and that the pilots have to roll to see if a maneuver succeeds. It made me really think long term, especially for the F-5 jets who wasted a lot of fuel trying to get to the same level as their opponents. It also gave a tactical advantage to the MIG-21s who were at a higher altitude. Having a one to six altitude range made book keeping very simple: just use a D6 to indicate current altitude.

Movement Increments
The movement is in centimeters. It seemed like that was a little too small of an increment. On the other hand, inches may be too large. A good compromise could be 2 cm increments. The maneuver templates seem about that size anyway.

Weapons
Missiles all have a minimum and a maximum range. The problem for the game that I played was that the planes ended up not being able to fire missiles due to the minimum range constraint. The maximum missile ranges for almost all missiles are the same as a gun range.  Missiles do double the damage that guns do, but I am not sure what the advantage missiles have beyond that. I think that making missile ranges longer or gun ranges shorter might might improve the usefulness of missiles. I'd make the minimum missile ranges a little more minimum.

A bigger issue I had was that it seemed awfully hard to either hit or do any damage. Both times, jets firing their guns missed their targets and they were not lousy die rolls; i.e., rolled a one. For fun I rolled a bunch of times on the F-5 firing on the MIG-21. It took four tries before I rolled a hit, but then the hit didn't damage the MIG even with the 4+ roll to do damage.

The last thing I have to say regarding weapons is the type of missile guidance. The missile chart shows the type of guidance each missile has, but it doesn't seem to make a difference in combat, or at least I didn't see it in the rules. In AirWar: C2, the type of guidance does make a difference. It's not a big deal, but why put it into the rules if they are not to be used.

Conclusion
I think Target Locked-On! is a good game. It's worth the money and is becoming more and more supported as the author puts out new aircraft stats. I think it took me about three hours to complete over two nights. Once I got used to how the rules worked, it moved pretty fast. If the author puts out a second edition, my main suggestion is to better clarify the order things take place during the activation phase. It also makes for a pretty good solo game. I didn't use morale, but the pilot data can help make decisions during a solo game.

Solo Air Battle Using Pz8 Rules

I've had little time for much of anything lately related to gaming. Last Wednesday, I did participate in a AD&D game. The characters were pre-made, which really sped things up. Also, several of the participants were new at roleplaying games. It was a great game. The DM really set us up for several possible adventures, However, who knows when we will be able to play again.

Part of my quest for solo-ness for my Gambusia campaign, I've been looking at various rules. In a previous post, I considered various land warfare rules. Recently, I've been turning to naval and air combat rules. I decided to check out the Panzer 8 family of rules. They cover everything from late 19th century to sci-fi. They are fairly simple and free. There are two rules for air combat. One is from 1935 to about 1965 and the other is from 1965 to 1975. Both rules are pretty similar in terms of mechanics except the later one includes missiles. I thought I'd try out the '35-'65 one just to get a feel for it plus I didn't have to concern myself with missiles.

A Scenario
I made up a scenario depicting the early stages of the First Chalupastani War that took place in the mid-1970s. The Communist North, backed by lots of not-quite-state-of-the-art Soviet weaponry, launched a massive invasion of the unprepared South, whose weapons were largely WW2 and early 1960s vintage. Early in the war, the North had yet to establish air superiority.  In the scenario, three members of the 4th fighter squadron of Southern Chalupastan are returning from a ground attack mission supporting retreating ground troops. They are flying vintage WW2 Corsair fighters.

They are jumped by three members of the 3rd squadron of the 2nd Air Group flying MIG-15s. Up to the war, Northern Chalupistan followed a camouflage pattern similar to that of WW2 Japanese aircraft:

Game Pieces
I decided to test the game using counters rather than miniatures. Like a lot of air combat games you need a hex board to play the Pz8 rules. The first thing I did was print up four sheets of hex paper using the Incompetec online hex generator. You tell it what you want, it spits out a pdf file for you. I chose 1" hexes. I wanted them large enough to put decent-sized counters on, but small enough to have lots of hexes for the planes to move around on. I taped together the four sheets of paper and voila, I had my playing surface.

Onto the counters. I made 1" counters from cardstock and used Adobe Illustrator. Probably any drawing program would work fine, but I prefer vector-base programs for things like this. For each plane, I put in all that stats needed.

When a plane is damaged in Pz8, it looses speed and its maximum altitude. So each plane counter has a front and back to represent the undamaged and damaged state:

I also made smaller counters representing a plane's current altitude:

The Games
I managed to squeeze in two games in between late-night diaper changings.  The first one was an one-on-one duel. It lasted all of four turns, three of which was moving the two planes close enough for the kill. Not too surprisingly, the MIG-15 shot the Corsair down. From this first game, I made a slight change in the rules where changing to a lower altitude will add one hex to the aircraft's speed. This would give a slightly increased chance for a plane to get away, or conversely to swoop in on a target.

I played out the scenario in the second game. Three Corsairs against three MIGs.  To determine which planes got activated, the Ace, Two, and Three of Hearts represented each of the three Northern MIGs; the Ace, Two, and Three of Clubs represented each of the three Southern Corsairs. No, the Ace did not mean it was an ace pilot, but there is are bonuses in the rules for aces. I mixed up the cards and turned them over one at a time. The card that turned up was the plane that got to go.  When all cards were used up, I reshuffled the deck and started over again. To try to be as impartial as I could, I tried to evaluate what maneuver or movement would be the most beneficial during each plane's turn. Not to go into details of the rules, but unlike Airwar: C21, there are only a few specialized maneuvers in addition to turning.

At start, I had the planes on each side move as one unit and could not break formation for either the first three turns, or within one and a half speed hexes away from their opponent, whichever came first. The Corsairs began at the bottom middle side, the North (yeah know, bottom should be South), of the hex sheet. I rolled for the MIGs to determine where they would start.  1 or 2, left side; 3 or 4, bottom side; 5 or 6, right side. They rolled the left side. I also decided that they were at their maximum altitude, 5, whereas the Corsairs were at altitude 3.

The MIGs quickly closed in. Being faster, they managed to get behind the Corsairs and by the fourth turn, one Corsair was shot down. However, several subsequent turns, the MIGs had terrible die rolls and either missed the remaining Corsairs, or failed to do any damage to them.  The Corsairs took advantage of that as well as the luck of the card draw to reverse the roles. Using the move forward one hex, climb one altitude level, change direction 180° maneuver, one Corsair got close behind a MIG and with really good die rolls shot it down. Another Corsair went nose-to-nose with a MIG, which resulted in mutual damage. During what was probably the key turn, The damaged MIG found itself the target of the two remaining Corsairs with no way to fire back. It went down in flames. I rolled an impromptu "discretion is the better part of valor" die (1-3 he fights on, 4-6 he leaves). The MIG pilot decided not to push his luck and drove off to exit the game. The Corsairs had no desire to pursue and they limped back home.

Evaluation of the Rules
The author of the rules state that they are not meant to be highly detailed, but rather rules for a quick game or to be used as part of a campaign. It was enjoyable. The games went pretty fast, and there were some tense moments. About the only issue was the method of activation, which seemed to make or break it for the poor MIGs several times in the game. I am not sure how to improve on this. I have no qualms with the method of resolving combat. The MIGs just kept getting a lot of bad die rolls. Also, it pays to really get in close to your target as it ups the odds of scoring a hit. This helped the Corsairs score hits on the MIGs several times. For another test drive, I plan to use the 1965 to 1975 rules to see how missiles are used. As I stated earlier, the '65 to '75 rules pretty much the same, but with the addition of missiles.

AirWar: C21 Second Test Run

I finally managed to squeeze a game with another human being! It was very much a last-minute thing. Late Friday night, my friend called said he had some time Sunday afternoon. I thought, OK, lets have a fantasy battle, but I was swamped with various activities Saturday, so I had no time to come up with any army lists. So today, I whipped out AirWar: C21 and some jets and we had two games. I don't have very large tables at home, so we used centimeters rather than inches for movement and weapon ranges. Sorry, no pictures, but I don't think it would have been all that exciting. They were practice games; not part of the Gambusian campaign.

For the first game, I took an Israeli C-7 Kfir, and he took a Saab Gripen. Once again, it sort of felt like I was playing for the first time. It was pretty fast. His first shot was an AIM-120 radar-guided missile at me. It missed. I tried to get around him, buy using a barrel roll and turn but failed and was turned in a very comprising position. He didn't have to do much maneuvering to get in a second second shot. He failed to lock on to me, but he rolled a natural 10 to hit me. BOOM! He rolled a 12 damage and I was blown to bits.

In the second game, we took two of each of the same jets. This time, one of my Kfirs managed to hit one of his Gripens with a Python 4 IR missile, but I only scored a 1 on damage! The my other plane and his were nose-to-nose and in gun range, but he had the initiative. Rather than using his guns, he fired another AIM-120....poof! My plane took 12 hits. So, I had one left. One the next turn, he managed to get back around me at least enough to let loose another of those radar guided missiles, whereas I couldn't launch one of my missiles at him. Once again, he couldn't lock onto me, but his missile still scored a hit! I took more than half damage. From then on, I did my best to try to avoid him and fly home. I managed to avoid him for three turns, but on the fourth, he had a clear shot lined up on my tail. Just for fun he used a Sidewinder missile. It finished me off no problem.

Some things that we questioned. First, its not clear when you launch a missile and when it hits. There is an implication that in the first phase you lock on the target and the second it hits the target. We were playing that both happens on the same phase. Does it matter? I would think it would matter particularly for any sort of radar-guided missiles. I am not sure. It could be that I overlooked this rule one way or another in the rule book. The second issue is about movement. Do we use full movement each phase or only half the movement each phase? I argued that you use full movement each phase because each phase has a prep segment. My friend felt that only half movement should be used because any loss of speed would be more effective in the second phase. He thought that speed penalties imposed by a doing special maneuvers really didn't have much of an effect on things when you could pretty regain them in the following phase. For the previous issue, the fiddly turning template, my friend thought of a novel solution. He suggested gluing a small circle at the bottom of the bases with the different turn radii on them (see previous link on bases for 1/600 planes). Since the planes are on magnets, you can turn the plane in the direction you want to go. I'll give it a try. It may not be perfect, but it might be better than the turning template I now use. Meanwhile, I still plan to order a hex mat to play on. Even if I don't use the mat for C21, there are other air combat rules that I want to test out and can use it for those.

I still think AirWar: C21 2nd ed. is a very good set of rules. However, I would make a few modifications. First, I would reorganize it some. It seems like I have to do a lot of hunting to find the rules. Second, I'd give more examples. There are some, but they are sort of brief, and only cover certain things. I would have a section where the authors run through a sample game, illustrating the various aspects, even those that might seem rather simple. I'm sure that would add more to the cost of the rule set, but it might be worth it.

Air Battle

While visiting family in Chicago, I had a jet fighter game using Wessex Games’ AirWar: C21, second edition.

It was my friend Karl vs. my nephew Kyle and me. The night before, Kyle and I had a practice game so that he could have some understanding of the rules. Karl and I had a game but about two years ago using the first edition rules.

The scenario had Karl escorting two, heavily loaded Super Etendard strike fighters with two Saab Gripens. He had to get his Super Etendards to the other side of the table. Our mission was to prevent that. One of his pilots was rated a veteran, the other regular. Kyle and I flew Kfir C7 jets. The jets were armed with the missile listed in the AW: C21 Data Annex. Kyle and I had four heat-seeking missiles apiece, whereas Karl had two heat seekers, plus four radar-guided missiles.

I didn’t take pictures of the game because many of the planes were not painted. It was a complete victory for Karl. He managed to shoot down both of our Kfirs and get his two Super Etendards off the table. A few times we lost opportunities to do some harm to Karl’s planes. For example, early in the game, I could have lined up a good shot at one of Karl’s Super Etendards, but I forgot to slow my speed and over shot the plane. Karl managed to stall one of his planes twice, but we failed to take advantage of that. Kyle managed to hit one of the Super Etendards, but scored only a single hit off of a D10 die roll! Also, I overlooked some things in the rules that might have made a difference. First, I failed to notice the a statement in the rules that says that jets that launch radar-guided missiles need to keep their target in sight once launched. Karl’s became fire-and-forget missiles. Second, we didn’t use the critical hits table, which might have made Kyle’s hit more of a success. Third, we didn’t take advantage of the tailing rule. That might have also made a difference.

It is hard to critique the rules since these are the only other air warfare rules I have played with (I won’t count the old AH Richthofen’s War board game). They are pretty well written, and fairly clear. Things that I missed were more my own fault than anything else. My only criticism is with the turning, and it’s not a biggie. In the first edition, you turned your plane in 60 degree increments (or is it 30? I can’t remember). The more maneuverable your plane, the more 60 degree increments you could turn in a phase. In the second edition, there is a compass-like template with the turn radii labeled. It was a little trickier to make the turns exact. For example, when you are making a 30-degree turn, is your model really turned 30 degrees, or is it 35 degrees, or is it 27 degrees? In other words, there was a little more “slop” to our turns. But, as I said, it was not a big deal...I am not a rules lawyer.

Despite our loss, it was a fun time all around. Next time, I will make up some rules crib sheets for the players that will highlight some of the critical aspects of some of the rules.