So this week L and I played two quick games of Wings of Glory. I recently acquired two early war Stukas and some Hurricanes. So down a long, long table the Stukas went, unescorted to try things out against the Hurricanes.

The Hurricanes started their sweep slowly and were damaged pretty heavily by the Stukas, which surprised me. The Hurricanes did get behind the Stukas, who were weaving.

They managed to luckily down one Stuka. I say luckily, because the damage done was abnormally high.

Feeling confident that I could do it with more planes in the sky, I put my 2 ME 109s up as an escort and decided to play down the long side of the table against 2 Hurricanes and 2 Spits. That was a baaaaad idea.

The much faster Spits broke from the Hurricanes and began a long slow turn towards my force. I sent my 109s to meet them and managed to get a good amount of hits. Now, if you did not know, in the game, hits are represented by damage markers drawn by lot. “A” damage through to “D” damage. The cannons on the 109 are pretty deadly, dealing mostly “C” damage and the number of markers that L was drawing was making me smile (I later learned that he had drawn a lot of zeros).

The Stukas trucked on towards their goal, as the Spits and the 109s tangled. The Spits are so much more maneuverable though, and managed to get free and head towards the Stukas. My 109s broke in two directions, my thought being that one of my 109s could get behind the Spits, while the remaining 109 could get the Stukas through the weaker Hurricanes. Sadly no pictures of this, I was desperately trying to figure a way out of the mess that was rapidly developing in front of me.

Plans do not survive contact with the enemy, and soon one of the Spits was tailing the 109 heading towards the Hurricanes. That 109 soon caught fire as it tried to shake the Brit (my habit of drawing the highest damage markers possible continued for the entire fight). My Stukas survived the first pass of the Hurricanes, but the first damage marker I drew was engine damage for one of them. Now I was in real trouble. I had my Stukas weave to keep their rear gun arcs open as my non-flaming 109 slammed rounds into the Hurricanes as they turned tightly to get behind my bombers.

My flaming 109 went down, and then the slow Stuka. I took a little solace in blasting away one of the Hurricanes and sending it down. One Spit was smoking, one was lightly damaged, and the remaining Hurricane was limping but in the fight. I conceded the fight.

Overall, a fun enjoyable set of games. I know a bit more about how to handle Stukas, and I think the next time they fly, we’ll try some dive bombing rules (and make the opposition a little lighter)!