A (long) while ago, someone asked about Wings of Glory (WoG)and Blood Red Skies (BRS) and how their planes compare. Well, Lucius painted up some BRS planes and so here they are. They are both nominally 1:200 and frankly I think they work well together.
The quality of WoG planes is lower than BRS, but their painting is good enough and you could touch them up. I haven’t yet.
The BRS planes are a little more detailed and a little less bulky but again, they’ll work on the same table.
We’re going to rebase all of our planes and do a floor-based version of Bag the Hun as we have loads of 1:200 planes. I’ll let you know how that goes as we slowly paint up planes and get the hexes and floor mat ready!
Lucius and I played a quick game of Wings of Glory. It’s a short one, but was fun to play. I’m thinking of getting some more Wings of Glory planes to expand the range of missions we can run. The rules are simple and fun, and for a pick-up game are just the thing. The set-up we used was simple. It was 1940. A JU-87B had to make it across the 6′ table, escorted by 2 x BF109s. The opposition was made up of 2 x Spits from 610 Sqn. We laid out my Cigar Box Ocean Battle mat (which looks great in my humble opinion) and started to move. The battle is described in the pictures below! If you are reading this blog on email, this is pretty picture heavy and depending on your data plan I recommended going to the site itself :
610 Squadron’s Spits come out to play
The Little Stuka that Could (and supporting cast)
The Spits veer to the west, so the 109s move to meet them. The Little Stuka that Could keeps steady on course
Almost in gun range. What are the Brits thinking?
My 109s catch the closest Spit. While I tried to concentrate firepower here, sadly I only got half of my guns in. Still, a smoking, damaged enemy is a good start. The other Spit, named “Tapey” for the bit of tape on its base has broken off, probably to get behind the escort and attack the Stuka (that could)
The melee that followed was intense. The smoking Spit got behind Yellow 5 and hammered him hard. White 13 immelmanned and went to engage the other Spit that wasn’t able to get behind the Little Stuka that Could without presenting a juicy target to White 13. I had considered the strengths of the Stuka, and had decided that the best place for a Stuka to be was BEHIND a Spit – it would be very hard to shoot down. The Spit wouldn’t be able to out turn a slower aircraft, and who knows, the Stuka might do significant damage! As long as my escort downed 1 Spit, I figured I’d win. But then something bad happened.
The air became filled with a swirling fight. White 13 misjudged his pass and got hit and drew 2 damage markers. 6, ouch… and explode. The first kill and my undamaged escort is blown up. Yellow 5 has 14 damage (and only 17 health to draw down). Luckily, you can see the Little Stuka that Could hanging on behind that smoking Spit and pouring what little fire it could into her as the Spit hung on to Yellow 5 like a bulldog. Tapey Spit was having a hard time turning to get behind the Little Stuka that Could but I knew that it wouldn’t be long…
The smoking Spit stopped smoking and tailed Yellow 5, jinking with him and doing a lot of hurt. But the plucky Stuka that Could didn’t miss and shot down Spit! Turning tightly together towards Britain, the Luftwaffe outraced the remaining Tapey Spit to the table edge and victory!
MVP: The Stuka’s rear gun did some damage, but its forward facing armament hit many times. With only A category damage it didn’t do much, but over time it made all the difference in the world: 8 of the 18 damage that the Spit took was from the Stuka. Lesson learned – slow aircraft are not as vulnerable as we may think, and used in combination with other assets can really punch above their weight!
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.
Not a good place to be
They managed to luckily down one Stuka. I say luckily, because the damage done was abnormally high.
The RAF coming to meet the Hun
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)!
