I think that the technical term for this is “KABOOM!!” Or “Read ‘em and weep!” The D6 rolls above equal 7 successes which equals the target Vital Armour meaning an instant kill.
Yesterday evening saw your truly taking to the skies against Mr Fox, using Mr Huband’s quite lovely looking Warlord Games Blood Red Skies 1:200th scale Sabres and Mig15s. We were also using Mr Huband’s Korean War variant for Axis and Allies: Angels 20 - so he was wearing his umpiring hat for the occasion - along with Mr Fox’s rather lovely gaming mat.
We each had a pair of aircraft - Mr Fox was driving the Migs while I took the Sabres. We rolled for pilot quality with the result that Mr Fox had a veteran and a rookie whilst my two were both plain vanilla, beige and average. As is usual for this type of action - the aerial equivalent of a ‘meeting engagment’, it was, after all, a bit of a try out - we set up on opposite sides of the board, rolled for altitude (Migs at 6 and the Sabres at 5), rolled for initiative and set about the serious business of trying to shoot each out of the sky.
I am unable to give a turn by turn account of the action but suffice to say it was at high speed and largely fought more or less ‘on the flat’ - no great ‘boom and zoom’ climbing and diving - so plenty of turning was the order of the day. One of the Sabres took point of damage, as did the rookie Mig but the veteran Mig pilot’s day was ended in no uncertain terms by virtue of a pretty emphatic set of dice rolls. To be honest, Mr Fox was singularly unfortunate throughout the action - he maintains that his dice hate him - in that aside from the point of damage he inflicted on one of the Sabres, he was on the wrong end of the initiative rolls throughout. In any type of aerial game having the initiative can be a crucial advantage - ever was it thus as far as the Sabres were concerned!
At the end of the action the remaining Mig ‘bugged out’, leaving the skies to the Sabres.
It was great fun to play and the scale of the models used seemed more appropriate for the jets rather than the larger 1:100th models from the Angels 20 base game. It is certainly a period I would be keen to revisit but for now I cannot see myself building up a Korean War collection - too many other aerial things on the go! Mention of which leads me nicely into one of the aerial projects I am looking to tackle - the Battle of Britain.
A new book for the collection, courtesy of the fantastic Mr. Fox and with my grateful thanks!
Mr Fox was having a sort out at Maison Renaud when he came across a duplicate copy of the title you see above. He very generously passed this over to me and as this is my first Osprey Air Campaign title I was delighted to welcome it to the library. It has opened a bit of a rabbit hole as a quick look at the other titles in the series (how on earth did I miss these?) has thrown up several that would be of interest….
The Nakajima Ki-44 “Tojo” fighter/interceptor.
It was no all one way traffic in that I presented Mr Fox with a Japanese ‘Tojo’ fighter - if you recall he passed over a surplus P51B/C so it was the least I could do to return the favour. He now has a brace of these and I am quite sure we may be seeing them in action at some point. I also confidently predict that Mr Fox will gain a measure of revenge in due course, when we next take to the air!
My thanks to Mr Fox for his generosity and for supplying the mat and a cheeky beer (to be repaid soonest) and to Mr Huband for his inspired set up and those rather lovely aircraft - methinks that other models may well follow into his collection for this period but of course, he couldn’t possibly comment….
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