Age of dogfights WWII -kickstarter preview gameplay part 6

Germany, autumn 1944. RAF bomber command is conducting night-time raids on German industry, in an effort to cripple the enemies war effort.

Target for tonight, a Krupp factory in Essen. The British have a squadron of 3 Lancaster bombers, and a Mosquito pathfinder flying ahead, at a lower altitude to mark their targets. The Germans are intercepting them with a pair of Me 262's, both flown by Aces.

We try out the bomber breakthrough variant instead of target bombing. We grossly misjudged the amount of time it will take the bombers to cross the map, even without lowering their altitude to gain more speed. In the future, we will have to experiment with diagonal flight paths across the map, or just use a double map instead.

We used the fuel counters for the jets, and estimated they used 4 fuel to find the bombers in the dark, and would need another 4 to return to base, leaving just 6 turns for their mission.

This was a good opportunity to try out the speed markers as well. These work with the same rules that were in the WWI game. Every turn, after finishing its move, each plane would place a marker with the number showing the number of movement steps it made. When a plane wants to shoot at its target, compare the two markers to the table, with the results being either "no change" if the speed difference is low enough, "lower the chances of hitting" if the difference is around 4-7, by switching from column A to column B (or suffering a -1 if already using column B, as we added for the defensive fire), or "unable to shoot" if the speed difference is 7+. This again has a similar table if the attacking plane is slower than the target as well.

We also added in night-time rules, as a simple -1 to hit for all participants. We might alter this in the future, to maybe be unable to shoot from 2d distance instead, or leave the -1 modifier just for the 2d distance. There could also be stuff like moonlight/cloudy night, searchlights, radar in planes like the Black widow etc.. The radar would most likely just ignore any penalties. But if the authors come out with official rules for nightfighters I will gladly use those as I'm sure those will be better.

Zoey's bombers forgot that flying in a formation would provide better protection with overlapping fields of fire. The Mosquito is also in a rush to avoid contact with the enemy. After turn 1 the British are almost at half of the board.

The jet aces both start on one side, at max altitude, zoom ahead, and try to position themselves for an easier attack run next turn.

This was easier said than done, as they started the game 4 levels higher than the bombers, they had to dive for 4, which made a mess of trying to approach the bombers.

After 2 turns the jets manage to get into favorable positions to strike. But our night-time -1 to hit, and the difference in speed, shifted their shooting from A column to B, caused both to miss. Luckily the return fire from the bombers was also all over the place, with -1 for the dark, and -1 from the speed difference (as defensive fire is already made with the B column, we thought it unfair that the bombers wouldn't be affected by the column shift, so we imposed a further -1 to hit instead).

Turn 3, the jets are unable to maintain their positions, so, even with the slowest die, must switch positions with one another, and unfortunately one misses again. His bomber's defensive fire misses as well. But the other finally hits.

Its damage roll is more than enough to bring the bomber down.

Turn 4, the Mosquito is already long gone off the map, and the 2 surviving bombers now fly off the map and are out of reach of the interceptors. The jets head back to base.

We noticed that we need to change how we use the jets. Their speed and starting altitude difference only hindered them. Since the to hit modifiers already make enough of a difference when shooting, we might even skip using the rules for speed difference, or just use it for the bombers.

The mission should have been played diagonally across the board, that might have given a turn or two more for the bombers to get across. And the interceptors could arrive from a 90 degree angle, instead of the opposite board edge. That way it wouldn't have been as punishing for the interceptors to miss. But in retrospect we should have taken the Me 410 instead of the jets.