The Return of Ace of Aces!

Many moons ago (i.e., the 1980s) I was a fan of Ace of Aces, a World War I air combat game.  It eventually went out of print, I moved on to other games, and forgot about it for a few decades.  When I found out the Mr B Games launched a kickstarter to reissue the game, I jumped on board, and I have just received my copy of the new version of the game!

This game has a very neat concept.  Two players (German and Entente) each get a specific game book full of pages showing the view from the cockpit.  The books are paired so that a given page in the German book corresponds to the reciprocal view from the Entente cockpit.

At the bottom of each page, there's a series of arrows representing a variety of maneuvers that the pilot can select.  Each player chooses an arrow, and then gives the number under it to the other player.  Both players turn to that page number, cross reference their selected arrow, and go to the page number.  If no mistakes are made, both players should magically end up on the same page.  The game designers put a great deal of effort into making sure that it works.  It's all very clever and makes for a fun and fast paced game.

Back to the new edition - the original game had some nice black and white line drawings showing the view from the cockpit.  The new version has full colour, photorealistic images, immediately more immersive.  The game comes in a nice slipcover, which also has a drawer for a number of game aids.  Here you can see the slipcase, the two main books (the black books with silver print, one for each player), as well as the rulebook and a book of charts.

There's also a little drawer to hold a whole schwack of counters.  These include damage counters, ammunition counters, special counters to track when one of the pilots is tailing the other (gaining a tactical advantage) and some others that I am still to learn about as I progress to the advanced game.  There's even a pair of dice with national rondels in place of the '6'.  To be honest, I have never been a fan of this practice, I'd rather the 6 be a 6, so there's no question of what it represents.

This version of the game is called 'Powerhouse Series', and represents the German Fokker D.VII and the French SPAD XIII, with the idea that it could also represent similar aircraft including Albatros DIII or DVA, Pfalz DXII, SE5A, SPAD VII or more.  Mr B Games is working on followup series including the Rotary Series that will include the Sopwith Camel and the Fokker Dr.1 Triplane.

I'm looking forward to getting back to playing Ace of Aces again.

02h00 - Capture!

It turns out that Lisa will also be hosting a game of 02 Hundred Hours at Salute, so we got together on Friday to play through a scenario.  I chose the Capture scenario, where the partisans have been tasked with capturing a German officer.

Here is the table.  The German officer is in one of the buildings around the central square. 

I took the German defenders.  Numbered flag markers were set at each of three buildings within 8" of the centre of the board.  The target location is identified by flag number 3. Here is the German sergeant next to the church location, accompanied by one of the patrolling sentries.

Here is the dog handler sentry next to the marker by the other church.  The dog was already too noisy, as shown by the eyeball marker next to the pair.

And finally the remaining pair of sentries.

The partisan leader advances past the cemetery.

German sergeant is suspicious and advances across the square.

Meanwhile the partisans have played one of their plan cards:  they've set a package of sausages to distract the dog!  The dog and handler move to the '!' marker, until they find it's only a ruse.

The German sergeant moves back to the church to check on the pair of sentries.  Actually, the random movement of the sergeant's patrol checks took him directly away from the approaching partisans.

German sentry in the arcade of the main admin building overlooking the plaza.

Partisan fighters sneak up on the sentry,

and try to take him out quietly.  Unfortunately for them, the sentry was made of stern stuff, and survived the attack.  The sentry immediately raised the alarm!

The dog handler moves to support his Kamerad.

As the Germans were distracted by the action across the plaza, the partisan leader was able to break into the German officer's office, and force him to accompany her off into captivity.

The German reinforcements arrive, led by their officer.  He orders the searchlights switched on, revealing a pair of partisan fighters.

But they manage to sneak back into cover and evade the Germans!

German reinforcements rush onto the table, but the partisans are already scattering.

Partisan fighter slips away!

Even Noor Inayat Khan slips away unnoticed.

It was a great game, and a great runthrough of the rules.  A victory for the partisans as they achieved their main objective of capturing the officer, and also their secondary objective of losing fewer than half their fighters.

Hans and Sophie

A big hello to German pacifists and leaders of the non-violent White Rose resistance group, Hans and Sophie Scholl.  Hans and Sophie were siblings, who were arrested and executed by the Nazis for distributing anti-war and anti-regime pamphlets.  Rather than focus on their tragic end, Annie instead has had the pair involved in some playful hijinks.  

I assume that Sophie is holding copies of one of the pamphlets for which the group was famous.

Focus on Sophie's face.

And here is Hans' face.

As I painted this pair, I listened to university students reading English translations of the pamphlets out loud.  You can skip ahead around the 20 minute mark to the start of the first pamphlet.

The pamphlets are very moving, and as a fan of the Star Wars series, Andor, the inspiration for Nemik's manifesto is clear.

Odette

Et maintenant, voici Odette Samson.  Odette was a French member of the SOE.  She was captured by the Nazis while working undercover in France - she managed to survive her imprisonment and after the war, she was the first woman ever to be awarded the George Cross.

Helga

Much as I love Annie's Women of the Resistance, it's also necessary to provide them with some opposition!  So from Grey for Now Games, here is Helga from the Guards of Facility 9 expansion set.  To be honest, GfN simply call her 'the Adjutant', but I decided to name after Private Helga Geerhart from 'Allo, 'Allo.

German Wehrmachthelferinnen or 'armed forces helper corps' were barred from combat roles, so rifle-armed Helga here is a bit more fantasy than reality.  Her skirt should really be the same colour as her tunic, but I gave her a grey skirt to match the grey trousers of the Wehrmacht soldiers I've already painted.

I also painted some German casualties - what one might call 'good Nazis' - along with a sleepy soldier pulling on his tunic as he moves to respond to a late-night alarm.

In the Last Ditch Again

Last night Doug and Legion came by to try out Through the Mud and the Blood.  Doug recently  finished converting some Renegade Miniatures early war French into Belgians and wanted to try them out.  So I looked up Too Fat Lardies' 'Play the Game' compendium of WWI gaming resources, and picked out a scenario entitled 'In the Last Ditch Again' featuring an allied delaying action against the German onslaught.

This is a fairly simple scenario - as written a British platoon has deployed around a farm, as a German force advances along the road toward them.  We substituted the Belgians for the British and got on with things.

The table is pretty flat and open.  As it turns out, a bit too open.  If we try this again I will add more hedges to break up line of sight, and rate the crops to make it a bit harder to spot the troops on blinds.  Note the blinds on either side.  The German flags are fine, but since I didn't have any Belgian blinds available, I provided the Russian blinds instead.  I figured these would be ok as Russia and Belgium were allies in WWI!

In addition to his Belgian infantry, Doug also brought this fancy truck to transport their ammunition!

German infantry appear after the Belgians spot their blinds.

Having identified the Germans, the Belgians opened fire, revealing their location in the process.

German forces take hits, and their numbers are quickly depleted.  Note that this group started with 19 soldiers!

Behind the Belgians, you can see Doug's shock marker.  Depending on which edge is aligned with the section, it signals how many shock that unit is carrying, from one to six.

More Belgians deploy and rain rifle fire on the Germans!

I needed a way to show that one of the Belgian sections had quickly dug in, so these gabions represent that.

Meanwhile, Legion's Germans shelter behind the hedgeline as they return fire.

The central German section was forced to fall back, as the number of shock points exceeded the number of remaining soldiers!

Shock also accumulates on Germans behind the hedge.

Another couple of glamour shots of the Belgian truck!

The game ended up a bit one-sided, as the Belgians easily spotted the Germans, taking them off blinds right away.  This meant that the Germans started taking shock, which ended up stopping them and allowing the Belgians to continuing whittling them down.  One of the reasons for this is that I'd made a mistake when I assigned Legion his command - each of the four German sections was meant to be 2 groups of 9 plus an NCO, but instead they deployed as 18 men plus an NCO.  Probably would have been better if they could have deployed with separate 9-man units, so that the Belgians would have had to slow down each of the half sections. Sorry Legion!  Another factor was the tiffin card that kept showing up very early each turn, keeping many of the German sections from activating.  As units that didn't activate could still shoot, this meant that the Belgians had no trouble pouring fire onto the stalled Germans, while the Germans were not able to rally or reorganise.  

At any rate, it was nice that Doug was able to field the Belgians, and that they were successful in their first outing!