Continuing Flights of Fancy

The Avalon Hill ‘Smithsonian’ board game Mustangs - the successor to Air Force/Dauntless and the Expansion Kit, all designed by S Craig Taylor Jr

Although the base game was quite limited in scope there are some official expansions and a whole pile of fan made unofficial material - including using the core system for WW1, the Korean War and even Vietnam

 

The feeling of lethargy I mentioned previously continues to nibble away at me - for longer than usual this time - and so I have carried on meandering across various ideas and projects in play or yet to be in play. It is at times like this that I often make what seems to be snap and occasionally ill-considered decisions - and this current bout of inertia has been no exception.

Gone is the relatively recently acquired Wings of War/Glory WW1 1:144th collection - all 48 aircraft, 4 gaming mats and an observation balloon - due to a rethink about how I want to game WW1 in the skies. the scale is lovely, as are the models, but I could not see a future with it due to the cost of the available models, the ability to tailor the collection how I would have liked (lots of painting potentially involved), and, to be honest, the game system itself. 

It is a fun game for sure but there are elements that I find a little clumsy - needing a specific deck of cards per aircraft for movement and then using a damage deck for combat for example - but to each their own. It is a popular game for sure but I suppose having fought most of my air wargames over the years I feel more comfortable in a grid based environment!

So what to do then? Well, I want to fight WW1 and WW2 aerial battles using models - essentially swapping cardboard for metal/plastic/resin so the big (or small) question is what scale to use. 

I tried 1:100th via Axis and Allies: Angels 20 - again, great fun as a game but the randomness of the whole ‘collectible’ part of the process (with the attendant price scalping for the rarer models - the same with Wings of War/Glory) is a little tedious -  and also the painting required in order to build a cohesive collection. The models are also on the large side, especially when one starts using bombers.

1:200th via Blood Red Skies was a viable scale but try as I might I could not get on with the rules - again, to each their own - and so the embryonic collection I was building has also been moved on.

That leaves 1:300th and 1:600th as the remaining contenders. I have some history with 1:300th going back to the early 1980s when I painted up a pile of late war German aircraft for ground support using Heroics and Ros. They were surprisingly easy to make a reasonable job of and given that my copy of Mustangs that I got from Mr Fox had a selection of late war US and German aircraft it makes sense to use them. I added a few models to the selection - mainly to ensure that the flights were all of four aircraft and primarily for use with Mustangs.

The Heroics and Ros WW2 models, some of which were included in the game. The US have P38s, P47s and P51s whilst the Germans have 109Gs, FW190As, FW190Ds and Me262s - bear in mind that Mustangs was designed for small numbers - usually two to four models a side.

Mention of Mustangs (designed by S Craig Taylor Jr and in my opinion a worthy successor to the excellent Air Force/Dauntless/Expansion Kit trilogy) brings me to what was is an exciting development. I have scored another copy of the game along with the very rare expansion set and also some additional aircraft counters produced to go with an as yet identified magazine. Also included in the bundle is a copy of the Avalon Hill General magazine covering the game at its launch - I have the digital version of this but it is nice to have the hard copy. I also have the ‘miniatures’ expanded version fan based rules available from WarFlags under the Sky Pirates label - at the time of writing the website appears to be down - for WW2 and WW1 along with Mig Alley for the Korean War so in effect it is one rules system to cover the three periods. 

In addition to Mustangs, I also have plenty of other rule sets - all hex based - Check Your Six, Bag the Hun, Algernon Pulls it off to name but a few. I am rather liking the idea of a single rule set to cover them all (and in the darkness, bind them….) though, keeps things simple for me!

I rather like the idea of WW1 in 1:300th although I have it good authority the Heroics and Ros range are a little uneven in terms of quality and are also fiendishly fiddly to put together.I may buy a couple of models to see for myself but I am thinking that I will have to look further afield methinks. As I recall Davco produced a small range of WW1 types ‘back in the day’ so I will take a look and see what I can find.

In respect of 1:600th there is a pretty good range of WW1, WW2 and modern types available from Tumbling Dice. I am in two minds about this as from a cost, storage and price perspective they would seem ideal but they are small - perhaps too small for my eyesight!

So there it is then, the deliberations etc about what I am going to do and how I am going to do it or even when I am going to do it. For now though, this is all a ‘project or projects in being’ kind of thing.