Balloon Busting

Clubbing last night after my lapse last week. There were three of us playing so I set up a balloon busting scenario, one defender and two attackers, the defender had three planes and a few machine guns on the ground while the attackers had two planes each. For the allies there was a Spad XIII and two Nieuport 17's while the Boche had two Pfalz DIII's and two Albatros DVa's, overall superior to the French  but the AA machine guns I hoped would even things up. I was the defender in the first game and off we went, it looked like a good start as I had my two N17's closing on a lone Albatros while the Spad went hairing through the two Pfalz's, it is very fast but needs almost the whole of Northern France to turn. As I threw my planes into Immelman's for get behind the Germans there was a catastrophic explosion and then no balloon, turn two game over.

Up goes the balloon.

 We swapped around and Simon took the French this time, I had the nice blue Jasta 15 Pfalz's, much good it did me. I concentrated on hitting the balloon, hoping it would catch fire, so to my peril I ignored the two Nieuport's which managed to get on my tail and commenced giving me jip. Meanwhile Andy was getting shot up by ground fire, and only managed one or two shots before breaking off, with one Albatross in flames. I kept to my plan but the dirigible refused to light up,  Andy had the incendiary bullets, one of my planes hit the deck while the other suffered from rudder jams and smoke coming from the engine, having had enough he limped off the table as did the remaining badly damaged Albatros. Dire stuff from the Luftstreitkrafte.

Vorwarts!

 

The flames edge towards the incendiary bullets.

Discretion is the better part of valour as I head for home.

We still had time for one more game, so it was a three way fight, winner take all. Simon and I had Fokker DVII's and Andy a Fokker DVIII. After much manouvering I got the bead on Andy and sent him spiralling to the floor but I had taken quite a bit of damage doing it, I was hindered in closing with Simon as my rudder jammed at a most inopportune time, my engine was also causing me problems. As we made a head on pass I took enough shots to send me earthwards.

And that was it, three games and some fun, elsewhere we had Saga with the large units, a Spear and Sword game but I am unsure of the armies, not a lot seems to happen in that game, some action on the flanks while the rest of the armies sit in a line staring at each other, but that is from the sidelines. There was also a large Frostgrave game under way and the boardgame this week was the English Civil War.

Winter is closing in as this was the first Tuesday that it was dark when I arrived at the club.