Come Fly With Me

A nice balmy night in Lancaster this Tuesday, ok, not balmy, cool with a hint of rain, but better than normal. I took my Wings of War stuff and would work something out depending on how many players I got. This week everyone had something on so it was just myself and Simon, I went for an artillery spotting scenario, a two seater observation aircraft has to stay over a target until the artillery fire destroys it.

The Germans were the 'defenders' so they had a two seat Rumpler with two Pfalz III's from Jasta 15 and a stray Albatros DIII from Jasta 27 for protection, the latter flown by a young, slim, Herman Goering. I went all Royal Naval Air Service and took some earlier aircraft which don't get out of the box very often, so I had two Sopwith Pup's from RNAS 3 and two Sopwith Triplanes from RNAS 10. I thought four scouts vs three was fair but I didn't take into account the superior firepower of the German fighters with two machine guns to the British one.

Looking good, for now.

My target.

My little squad flew into battle in a nice formation and at first headed for a confrontation with the Rumpler's escort, as we flew past each other my aircraft took extensive damage while dealing out very little, one cause of this was that I had not broken up my formation and most of my planes spent their time trying to miss ramming each other. There followed a frenetic dog fight which I began to lose, one Pup in particular took a heavy pounding, I now thought I had better get on to the spotter who had made a complete run on the target but the artillery had not yet hit. At this point I lost a triplane to a catastrophic hit and it blew up and spiralled earthwards.

They even managed to put this fire out.

I had now managed to chase the Rumpler away from the target and got some hits on it, I thought they were good hits but I think Simon was playing me by looking worried and shaking his head, needless to say the Rumpler got back on station. Things were looking very dodgy as I lost the two Pup's, one had managed to stay in the air by sheer willpower it seemed. I got my last triplane lined up on the Rumpler but it was in vain as he too fell to the ground with several German scouts on his tail.

Last gasp.

So, a nice leisurely game and very one sided, not all the fault of the poor British aircraft, my flying was dismal and I kept having to dodge my own aircraft and the odd Hun rather than shoot. I should have broken my formation sooner and spread over the battlefield forcing Simon to make choices on who to follow, but I didn't, overwhelming win for the Boche.

Elsewhere we had Star Wars Legion, two Bloodbowl games and a large Dark Age Saga game which looked very nice, as did the Star Wars game. I think it is Bolt Action next week.