Midway

Remember a few months ago I posted about creating a CY6! scenario for the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Midway? Well, I started building the ship and buying the planes ages ago, but I got bored of it and started painting other things like the supers. I didn't forget about this project, though, as it was booked into a First Tuesday slot at the Phoenix club. So, over the past couple of weeks I knuckled down and got everything finished just in time and the game was played tonight. We had about 12 or so players evenly divided between Japanese and American pilots. I refereed the game and moved the bombers. The scenario was based on the Japanese counterstrike against the Yorktown, but with some concessions to playability and decision making.

Historically, the dive bombers hit the Yorktown about an hour and a half before the torpedo bombers arrived. They hit it with 3 bombs and caused some fires to breakout, such that they thought they had crippled her. However, American firefighting and damage control techniques were up to the task and an hour later the fires were out and she was back under way. The repairs were so effective that the torpedo bombers actually thought they were attacking a second, fresh carrier. So, as far as the scenario goes, I decided to compress time and have both the dive and torpedo bombers attacking at roughly the same time. The dive bombers (D3A1'Val') were placed closer to the target, though, to ensure that they would arrive a few turns ahead of the torpedo bombers (B5N 'Kate'). The numbers were:

6 Vals

6 Kates (3 in the clouds)

6 Zeros 

12 Wildcats

The bombers were placed on the table and then the Wildcats were placed around the carrier. Finally, the Zero fighter support was placed. Three Kates began off table and appeared from a cloud bank to the north of the carrier on turn 3 (roughly as it occurred on the day).  The Vals were placed in a wide arc to the south, basically all coming in individually. The American players decided to weight their forces against the closer dive bombers and left only 4 Wildcats to take on the 3 visible Kates. The Japanese players then decided to escort the Kates with all 6 Zeros.

The Wildcats mob the Vals while a deadly wedge of Kates and Zeros approach from the north.

The initial pass of the Wildcats bagged 3 of the Vals, but their head on tactics meant that they lost too much speed turning and only one more Val was shot down, leaving 2 to dive on the exposed carrier.

Two of the 2 Vals slips past the Wildcats. The rearmost is shot down by the tailing Wildcat, but the furthest begins it's run amidst the flak.

The first Val to dive misses. The second can be seen off the starboard of the island about to tip over. It  is pursued by a trail of flak, but the Wildcats are too far away.

The last Val sores a direct hit!

Meanwhile, the 4 Wildcats to the north engaged the Kates in another head on pass, but the resulting furball only sees one carrier attack plane in the Pacific. The Zeros pounced from behind the formation and summarily destroyed over half the enemy fighters, but not before they emptied their magazines at the Japanese torpedo bombers. Somehow the airframes were up to the pounding, though and they slipped past the defenders and on to the target with their deadly Type 91 torpedoes. 

As the Vals begin their dives the Kates press on past the Wildcats and through the ever  present flak.

The critical point of the game! The first Kate delivers it's torpedo and the Yorktown  is heavily damaged.

After the first torpedo struck home a second Kate managed to drop its payload, but that missed the carrier by a whisker. A third plane was also inbound and may have managed to drop it's ordinance, but we had to call it a day as we'd run out of time. I called this a Japanese victory due to the torpedo attack. As per the history, the Yorktown was damaged enough to remove her from the fight, but not finish her off and I think that was probably all that could be hoped for. The Japanese carrier fleet was soon to be finished off and the Yorktown would meet her demise in a couple of days at the hands of a Japanese submarine.

Final thoughts! I think this was a really good game. The players all seemed to have fun and the focal point of the carrier gave a real excitement as the Japanese planes started to break through. The flak was simplified for the size of the scenario, to speed things up a bit. Rather than rolling for every battery I made some flak markers (mostly for the aesthetic of the puffs of black) and if any plane flew through them they would roll to be hit. Throughout the game, though, not a single Japanese aircraft was hit. There were plenty of rolls to hit, but even when the 1" guns came into action no hits occurred. I think this was slightly down to bad rolls, but when I run this game again I think I'll adjust the rolls to make the flak a bit more effective. Overall, though, I was very satisfied with the scenario design and look forward to trying again at some point!

Would the real Yorktown please stand up!

Well, after visiting Jamieson's Models it seems that Yorktown is, in fact, harder to find than hens teeth! So, I picked up a model of Hornet instead. Not perfect, but who cares, really? It's a big Yankee carrier to sit on a wargames table. I will probably paint it up in the colours of Yorktown for the game and then repaint as the Hornet if it's good enough to put on display. I must confess, though, I'm really enjoying building the model. Brings back lots of memories of building kits as a kid. I recall my ceiling was almost completely hidden behind a veritable armada of model planes hanging from it!

Countdown to Midway

Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu! For me, these are some of the most evocative names from the Second World War. They roll off the tongue with a kind of mysterious beauty; the distillation of raw Japanese aggression - the Samurai spirit. As a youth I recall watching the film Midway again and again, enthralled by the drama that unfolded before me each time. This was a battle full of mistakes, luck, bravery and myth and for those reasons it has always stayed a favourite, much like Rorke's Drift and Waterloo (due in no small part to their respective films, too!).

On the first Tuesday of every month my club puts on large multiplayer game that is open to anyone that turns up and in 2010 I ran a series of five Check Your 6! Battle of Britain games to commemorate the 70th anniversary. These were pretty successful and one of those nights holds the joint record for participants at a whopping 17 players. Since it has been more than a year since I organised a First Tuesday Game (or FTG as they are known), I was thinking about putting a one-off CY6! game together and the decision was instantly made when I realised that June would see the 70th anniversary of Midway. I also thought it might make an interesting series of posts to follow the assembly of the forces and the scenario design leading up to the game and an AAR once the dust settles.

So, let's start with the battle itself and some reading suggestions. I'm not going to go into detail as most people will probably be familiar already, but for those few that aren't, the Battle of Midway was fought on June 4th in the Central Pacific between the First Mobile Strike Force (Kido Butai) of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) under Vice Admiral Nagumo Chuichi and two American carrier task forces under Admirals Frank J Fletcher and Raymond A Spruance. The Japanese committed all four fleet carriers available after the Coral Sea debacle against three American carriers and the aircraft available on the Midway atoll itself. The end result of the ensuing chaos was the loss of all four Japanese flight decks to just one American, the USS Yorktown. If you would like more information on the forces involved and the events that unfolded then you could check the Wikipedia entry and the BBC websites, although both are understandable quite thin on detail and, in fact, a bit wrong in some places. For a more detailed overview, then you can't go far wrong with the Osprey Campaign volume on Midway. However, by far the best book I've ever read on the subject is Shattered Sword, by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully. This book goes into great detail and focuses primarily on the Japanese side of things, which is really the most interesting, as it was they who made all the mistakes and suffered from a real malaise in their operational and strategic planning. It also goes to great pains to dispel the 'overwhelming odds' and other myths associated with the battle.

As for the game, my first issue was exactly what to try and recreate in a single game. Clearly the number of ships and planes involved and the distances covered are not in the scope of a single game of CY6!, so I had to figure out what slice of the battle is appropriate. My initial, gut reaction was to game the final American attack on Hiryu, but the problem with that is that only the American SBD-3 Dauntless dive bombers attacked the ship and I think that this provides a limited amount of tactical scope to the players. All we end up with is a simple 'stop the bombers' scenario, with the Zeros trying to shoot down the bombers while avoiding the US Wildcats. What I think will work better is to have an attack by both high level dive bombers and low level torpedo bombers, so that the players need to consider splitting their forces and losing height to defend against the ultimately more deadly torpedoes. Well...that's where we fall flat on our face with American naval aviation at Midway. Of the 50 odd TBD Devastators that attacked the Japanese carrier group, almost all were shot down and not a single torpedo struck any ship, never mind a carrier!

So I think we need to turn our attention to the Yorktown. The Hiryu's counterstrike against the Americans isn't really perfect, either, as there was about an hour or so between the first dive-bomber attacks and the follow-up torpedo bomber attacks, but I think that I think having the two waves in the one game, one slightly later than the other, will be acceptable. I also think that this will make a slightly better scenario for the simple fact that the Japanese Type 91 torpedo was an excellent weapon and poses a much more deadly threat than it's American counterpart. In all honesty, if we were to do the American attacks on the Japanese carriers then I'd be compelled to impose such severe penalties on the torpedo attacks that the Japanese players would probably leave the Devastators to it! However, on the day, Yorktown was struck by two Japanese torpedoes which was the crippling blow to her, so gaming this attack makes more sense. Also, Yorktown was the only carrier that wasn't out-and-out destroyed on the 4th of June. In fact, she was being escorted back to Pearl Harbor a couple of days later, with hopes of repairing her, when she was struck by torpedoes from a Japanese submarine which finished her off. So, the damage to Yorktown had little effect on the battle as the Japanese fate was already sealed, so it seems a bit more fitting to see if the American players can save this tough old warhorse! The only downside is that I don't get to paint up any Dauntlesses, which is one of my all time favourite WWII aircraft!

The next step is to gather the models necessary and paint them up. Rather than going for the usual 1/300 planes I will use 1/600 models instead, as there are a few options for 1/700 models of the Yorktown. At that size, the difference in scale should be negligible and looking at smaller models on a big flat, blue surface should lend a slightly more panoramic feel to the game. Hopefully I should get my hands on a suitable model from the nice folk at Jamieson's Models in Glasgow and I will post some pics when I do and my progress in building it.

That's all for now! :)

The Battle ends as the Blitz begins

Last night saw the final instalment of the Battle of Britain campaign I've been running at the club. The first Tuesday of the month is traditionally given over to a multiplayer campaign game in which all club members are free to turn up and participate and, as it is the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain it seemed a good time to run a Check Your 6! campaign. The campaign lasted 5 months from July to November, covered the major stages of the battle and had 17 players in one game at its peak. I think all the players had a good time and there were some memorable dogfights.

Although I didn't blog all the game reports I felt that the last one was deserving if for no other reason than the sheer number of aircraft on the table. For the start of the Blitz we managed to gather a mighty armada of 15 Heinkel He-111s and 6 Junkers Ju-88s being escorted by 8 Bf-109s grouped into rottes (2 planes). The RAF mustered 2 flights of 4 Hurricanes each and one of 4 Spitfires. The bombers were placed on table and then the players were invited to place their flights one after another alternating from German to British (or I should say Allied...we mustn't forget the Poles, Czechs, Commonwealth  and all the other pilots that gave everything and without them...well...who knows!). This lead to a very fluid situation from the outset with the RAF mingling with the Luftwaffe from the very start, which is what I desired due to the numbers of planes on table. Even a couple of turns of maneouvring would have eaten up time. I'll not give an accurate description of the game as I pretty much can't! With that many planes it's almost impossible to keep track of everything so I'll let the pictures tell the story (with the help of some captions!) :



The inital positions. You can see the RAF are mostly bouncing the bomber formation from behind.




The RAF make their first pass at the bombers as the fighter escort tries to get into position to make their kills.



Closer view of the action. A Heinkel has suffered engine damage  and has turned for home.

On the other side the fighter escort has tangled with the RAF allowing the bombers to slip away. There are two opposing aces in this dogfight and they each really wanted to chalk up the other as a victory!

More and more bombers suffer damage and are forced to ditch their bombs and turn for home, but RAF casualties are mounting.

A large portion of bombers have got away as the dogfight develops. A plucky green pilot sets off after them in his damaged Hurricane. Despite getting hit another couple of times his airframe avoids any more damage and he would damage 2 of the bombers forcing them to abandon their mission. This pilot was awarded the DFC.

The results of the game were 1 Heinkel shot down and 7 damaged for the loss of 4 RAF fighters and 1 damaged. One Bf-109 was shot down and another damaged. Two inexperienced Luftwaffe pilots were drawn too far into the enemy territory and would not make it back to France due to lack of fuel. So, all in it was an RAF victory, but not a big enough one to take the campaign which the Luftwaffe players shaded.

I had a good time running the campaign and coming up with the scenarios and I really hope that the players enjoyed the games and perhaps you enjoyed reading about them!

Adlertag

Last night saw the second game in the club's Battle of Britain campaign and this time my camera worked, so I thought I'd post a report here.

For this game I took a couple of scenarios from the BoB sourcebook and had 2 flights of Luftwaffe bombers, each of 6 aircraft. One flight consisted of Ju-88s and the other He-111s. Escorting these were two schwarms of escorts, one of Bf-109s and one of Bf-110s, each of which was assigned to a bomber flight and had to start and stay within 5 hexes of any bomber until attacked or any bomber was fired on. The ranking German player was given the option of holding 2 aircraft of his choice off table as hunters. He opted to keep 2 of the Bf-110s off with orders that they could deploy the turn after any bomber was attacked, but must not start within 5 hexes of any enemy fighter.

The RAF players had three flights of 3 aircraft each, 2 flights of Hurricanes and 1 of Spitfires. The ranking British player rolled a die for each flight to determine the table edge they would appear on. Fortune favoured the RAF here and the Spits appeared directly ahead of the Heinkels and both Hurricane flights off their starboard side. It was going to be a tough day in the office for the Heinkel pilots!

The Hurricanes came at the Heinkels through the far cloud bank in the picture above and split their fire amongst the escorts and bombers. They very quickly damaged one bomber and drew the Bf-109 escorts away, leaving some of the RAF fighters to get amongst the bombers.

The very next turn saw the hunters descend into the fray and attempt to bounce the attacking Hurricanes (this elicited the classic quote of the day from Michael - 'Where did they come from?!').

Unfortunately for the Luftwaffe, the hunters didn't press their advantage well enough and failed to bag any of the RAF aircraft. More disastrously, 2 of the 109 escorts were shot down in very quick succession and a third suffered a lucky hit that saw the pilot lose control and spin out. This pilot only managed to salvage the situation after dropping from TAL 5 to TAL 1 so was effectively out of the combat. By now the concentrated fire had sent the damaged Heinkel into the Channel and damaged a second. Meanwhile, the Spitfires had looped around the front of the Heinkel formation to take them on from the far side (you can just see the bases past the nearest clouds in the following picture).

In the last few turns the Spitfires attacked and the damaged Heinkel was shot down, quickly followed by a third. A fourth Heinkel was damaged late on, too, effectively destroying the striking power of that half of the bomber formation. Two Hurricanes had to disengage after expending all their ammo, too. The Ju-88s all managed to slip into the clouds and proceed to their target, but the RAF had done their job. The British actually only lost one green pilot when he decided to attempt to take on the Ju-88s himself and was pounced on by the escorting Bf-110s. The last photo really tells the tale of this game. You can clearly see how the Heinkels escorts were separated from their wards and kept out of the fight while the RAF managed to keep very concentrated.

All in, this was a very fun game to run and I think everyone really enjoyed the game. The clouds added a nice dimension to the game and the random RAF deployment and Luftwaffe hunters added some spice to the proceedings.

On patrol

Last Friday saw a couple of cracking games take place at my brothers. The first was a Nuts! game which saw a patrol of British clashing with a patrol of Fallschirmjaeger and the second was a Check Your 6! scenario plucked out of my newly acquired copy of 'Over the Channel' (a scenario and campaign book from the publishers of the rules).

On patrol with Tommy and Jerry
First up was the Nuts! game. This was the first time that either Carl or James had played Nuts!, so I just officiated. It's also the first time James has ever played a skirmish level game, and probably the first time Carl has since we played WH40K in the dim and distant past. The table was prepared with plenty of hedges and walls for cover and a single hovel in the middle. Both sides had orders to send out a patrol and check the area out, so they were just going to 'bump' into each other. Carl sent his Tommies straight towards the building while James split his squad and approached frontally with his star leading the MG-34 team and a couple of riflemen, while his Cpl led the rest around the flank.

This led to a flanking shot at the advancing British from the NCO's MP-40 which sent them scurrying back to cover. The rest of the game was a bit strange as both sides concentrated their forces around the building and a straight up fire-fight began. The Germans already had the upper hand, though, with some Tommies ducked back from the SMG fire, so there was only ever going to be one outcome - grenades! James' Cpl readied his grenade and bravely charged forward to lob it over the hedge, stunning his victims. He promptly charged forward and dispatched a poor soul with his knife - those Fallschirmjaeger are a dastardly bunch!

However, revenge was taken as Carl's Bren team managed to set up and hose bullet's in the German's direction, killing him outright! The game was up, though! More 'potato-mashers' began landing amongst the British troops and soon enough the casualties began to mount and their morale waver, such that Carl conceded the game and the British section was captured by the enemy patrol.

Come fly with me...!
The next game took the fight into the air with a pure fighter based scenario set during the Battle of Britain. As we'd all played CY6! before, I didn't need to umpire so we all played. James had a schwarm of 4 Bf-109s (led by an ace - the scenario is based on Adolf Galland, I think) which were bouncing two flights of 3 Hurricanes.
Phase1 - Although the Luftwaffe were outnumbered 6:4 they had the tactical advantage of starting above and behind and at faster speeds so the game started very quickly. James' lead aircraft had a pass at us, but fortunately missed with everything and the 2 Hurricane flights split right and left. James' lead rotte tailed Carl's flight, while his second scythed across the first's path, causing the ace pilot to rely on his cat-like reactions and avoid a collision. I imagine that there would be a dressing down if they both survived the mission!

Phase 2 - The second phase of the engagement saw Carl ducking and weaving like a madman to avoid the guns of the enemy, and true enough, James just could not get a good enough firing solution to hit anything. I split my flight, sending my Vet and Green pilots after James' lead rotte, leaving my Skilled pilot to bravely engage his two other fighters on his own. A very well timed and unsuspected Immelman saw my pilot loop over and appear on the left quarter of one of the 109s at point blank range. The burst of rounds resulted in black smoke streaming from the German fighter, which duly twisted and dived away. This let my other two Hurricanes slip away from that tussle and set off after the fighters that were chasing Carl down.

Phase 3 - End game! Carl's acrobatics had inevitably cost him altitude in order to retain speed, which had dragged James lead rotte down with them. This let my two planes get the advantage and with a spectacular long range shot, the ace pilot's wingman was shot down in a single burst. At the same time, his other two planes were actually on the defensive against the lone Skilled Hurricane! It didn't look too good for the Luftwaffe at this point. One pilot was downed and one was struggling with engine damage. It was time for the Ace to act and he finally managed to get a tailing shot against Carl's Hurricanes as they bottomed out at TAL 1. The fearsome cannon claimed their first victim of the engagement and the trailing Green Hurricane of Carl's flight fell out of the sky and into the Channel. But in his concentration, the Ace neglected to watch out for my Hurricanes who pounced from above and amazingly it was my Green pilot who landed the telling shot, causing the Ace's engine to smoke. The game was up! James conceded defeat and we left it there. His Ace probably was going to end up in the drink and his other two would probably manage to fight their way home! VP wise it was an RAF victory, but if James first pass at us had been better, then who knows how this might have panned out.

Chocks away!

Last night I put on a pretty big game of Check Your 6! at the club. I brought along my fighters and Ron brought some more. Paul donated his 9 Heinkels to the fray and we were all set to go. The turnout was better than I expected and from the start we had 12 players with an extra player added later on for a total of 13. On the German side we had 6 players flying 12 Messerschmitt Bf-109E (2 each) and on the British we had 7 players flying 4 Sptifires and 10 Hurricanes. I randomised pilot skill by providing a bag of little stickers with the skills written on them for each side (2 Ace, 4 Veteran, 8 Skilled and 4 Green) . The stickers could then just be stuck on the aircraft roster sheet!

I didn't try anything fancy with regards to the scenario due to the amount of players so I just plonked the bombers in the middle and allowed the Germans to set up around them and the British then came at them head-on. The British pilots executed a pincer attack on the middle flight of bombers quickly damaging all of them, although the Spitfires got a little tangled up with the fighter escort and had a couple shot down by the destructive power of the low velocity cannon (including an ace who was bagged by a lowly green pilot!). After the inital pass at the bombers a confused melee began and I honestly began to lose track of all that was happening, but that was OK as by then most players had a good enough grasp of the rules to continue themselves allowing me to just move around and advise the players and answer questions.

Eventually we ran out of time and had to call it a night with the final score as follows :-

Luftwaffe

• Downed - 2 He-111, 1 Bf-109E
• Damaged - 2 He-111, 2 Bf-109E

RAF

• Downed - 2 Spitfire (1 Ace pilot), 1 Hurricane
• Damaged - 2 Hurricane

The result was a resounding victory for the RAF, despite having 5 planes damaged or destroyed and a further 2 planes run out of ammo. The lead flight of bombers was the only flight to getthrough unscathed with the middle one being all but destroyed, so it's fair to say the RAF did their job.

So what's Check Your 6! all about and why do I like it? First of all...it's a game! It's not an air combat simulator, but then, wargames are not really the complex maths exercises they once were. I think that the rules' strength is a simplicity that belies a real sophistication in it's representation of the 3-dimensional aspect of air combat. But that's not all; the key factor in the game is the aircrew skill rating. The turn sequence is pretty straightforward - all players plot moves for their aircraft first. A move consists of a turn code that is chosen from a set for the aircraft's speed which details the hexes that are to be moved across combined with a vertical maneouver, such as climb, dive, level flight, etc. There is also a set of special moves such as Immelmans and Split-S that can be chosen. Then the aircraft all move in order of skill with all green aircrews moving, followed by skilled and so on. This is where the key concept and mechanic kicks in, though. The more skilled aircrews are allowed to execute what's called 'pilot reaction'. This allows the player to change the chosen turn code to some extent in reaction to planes that have moved in a segment before them, or maybe to attempt to shake a tailing aircraft. This very simple mechanic creates a very satisfying ebb and flow to the move sequence and really makes the rules shine. Finally, shooting is performed simultaneously.

That's it! OK, there are a couple of caveats that make the life of a miniature fighter pilot quite interesting, such as tailing. A tailing plane gets to plot after the tailed plane has plotted and indicated the intention of the move, as well as getting to move directly after it regardless of skill level. Overall, the movement mechanism is really quite easy to get to grips with but nicely gives a feel for aerial combat. On the approach everything seems fine and dandy, but as soon as a dogfight develops it becomes very hard to maintain both airspeed and altitude as you try to outmanouever your opponents.

Shooting is pretty simple, though there is maybe one too many dice rolls for some people. The 'to hit' score is determined initially by range and is adjusted by about 4 modifiers at most. It is then rolled against on 2D6 with doubles potentially leaving the luckless pilot out of ammo! If a hit is scored then a die is rolled for each weapon being fired (the actual dice vary per weapon) and the result is cross-referenced against a robustness table to determine the save. A failed save results in engine or airframe damage, but fail it by a big enough margin and you can be destroyed outright. Again, this is all very straightforward, but the key to the success of this is in the stats of the weapons and airframes. The 8 MGs on a Spitfire perform very consistently across all the range bands (those bombers are really hard to destroy, though), but the 2 cannon on a Bf-109 can be devastating at close range.

I would thoroughly recommend anyone interested in WW2 air combat to check out Check Your 6! It's quick and easy to pick up (my 12 year old nephew had the game nailed in 5 minutes!) and gives a fun game that really does give the flavour of the type of combat. Are there any negatives? Well, I've tried hard to think of some to give the review some balance as I'm aware I'm sounding a bit like a fanboy, but there really is not much that I dislike about Check Your 6! and almost everyone I have introduced it to has enjoyed it. It is very easy to break a tail using the special manouevers, but as long as you realise the granularity of the moves then it is still largely right as you're probably going to be able to reacquire the tail in a couple of moves, or your opponent is going to end up losing speed or altitude, or both, allowing you to retain the initiative. Other than that, there's nothing else that really niggles me. The rule book is only soft cover and is black and white and is not the prettiest thing you've ever seen, but the rules themselves are laid out in a sensible order following the turn sequence and there are some diagram sequences to help you grasp the rules. Once the rules are absorbed the game can be played from the 2 page QRS, which seems crammed to begin with, but you really only need a few of the tables or charts for the majority of the game. The rules themselves only take up about 20 or so pages of the book, with the rest taken up by various scenarios and a small narrative campaign, but that's not something that bothers me. I see the cost of the rules as a fair price for the effort and research undertaken by the author.

To sum up, the rulebook quite prominently quotes Chuck Yaeger - "it's the man, not the machine" - and Check Your 6! delivers a game that pivots on the aircrew skill rating. Aces really do manage to run rings around green pilots, but luck can play a factor. It's quick and cheap to get started too. The rules are relatively inexpensive and planes are cheap. I purchased a battle set from Raiden Miniatures (who I can't praise highly enough on the quality of their castings) of 12 fighters and 6 bombers for about £20 complete with stands (not those shown, though). The only other thing you need is a hex mat, but these are readily available online.

Ready to fly

After a bit of a chaotic fortnight involving tiny nappies and cleaning up baby sick, I managed to find the time to finish off a couple of the easier items on my to-do list. These were the 1:285 Battle of Britain fighters I got a wee while ago. They bring my count up to 10 Bf-109, 6 Hurricanes and 4 Spitfires (I also have 6 He-111, 2 Bf-110 and 4 Ju-88, the latter unpainted yet). I'm now fully prepped to put on a pretty large Check Your 6! game at the club. With 2 planes each, I can support 10 players and I believe that others may be bringing some fighters, too!! I intend to write a short appraisal of the rules when I report on the game, so, for now, here's some photos of the assembled fighter forces...