One of the things I bought at Historicon was the Check Your Six! rules, which is a game of air combat with miniature planes (1/600 or 1/285 or even larger). I watched it being played a couple times, and it is fast paced, and seemed pretty fun, with accurate dog fighting.
Last night, I decided that I would give it a try solo. Its not necessarily made for solo play, but I figured I could put aside my differences with the Nazis long enough to give them a fair shake! The first game I played was a scenario called 'Thunderbolts Over Normandy', a scenario around the end of June, 1944, that pitted (I altered a bit) 3 BF 109Gs and 3 P47D Thunderbolts. There was one veteran pilot, one skilled pilot, and one green pilot for each side (Pilot skill comes in handy - at the beginning of each turn, a pilot plots his course. The higher skilled pilots go last, and can alter their moves slightly).
A BF109G (i havent 'completed' these planes yet - the painting is all done - im just waiting on some1/600 decals to arrive to finish up)
The squad of 3 BF109s
The game started at two opposite ends of the table.
The first three moves were spent with each side just trying to maneuver into place. At the end of turn 3, the German Veteran pilot took a pot shot at the rookie American pilot and missed. The Vet on the American side, in turn, shot back at the German Skilled pilot with his 8 heavy machine guns and connected with 7 of em. The damage roll was unlocky for the Kraut - it blew is plane out of the sky. (Normally, I think this is pretty difficult - the game is set up so that planes can take damage, but these shots were considered 'critical'). The Nazis and Americans dice rolls would continue to follow that pattern for the rest of the game.
The remaining Nazis flew through the middle of the American formation, singling out the Skilled pilot. At the bottom of this picture, the German Vet is in close range to the American. He fired, and managed to hit the American, but the shots caused no significant damage. However, after only his second shot, the German ran out of ammo!
Not much left for the German Vet to do now, so I made him make a break for the table edge, back to the German airfields, hoping to not lose any more 'victory points' (you get points for shooting down and damaging planes - the most points wins the game). Here, he breaks off, and makes a run for it, the USA in hot pursuit.
He did manage to get away.
That left only the rookie German pilot vs 3 US pilots. I figured I could maybe at least damage an American plane, and if I was lucky, maybe shoot one down before I had to head back to the Fatherland. A fur ball...
The American Veteran pilot who had chased the German vet off the map, came back into the picture (the one in the bottom right with the blue marker). After a couple turns of angling for a shot, he managed again to fire his 8 HMGs, connecting with all 8. Another critical hit, and another destroyed German, before the rookie could even get a shot off.
US wins 8 victory points to none for the Germans.
I think Im going to give this a try again tonight. There were several factors that really limited the Germans - A) losing one of their number after only turn 3 B) losing the Veteran pilot to no ammo after only turn 4 C) and the terrible luck of the dice to the perfect rolls of the Americans. Also, it appears that the P47s are the better plane (which surprised me a little), especially when it came to firing from a stable platform (planes have 'agility' which allows them to bank, roll, and keep planes on target). The BF 109s were faster, and had better turning, but considering the German's bad luck, I never really got a chance to try that out.
