I Mustang Around in the Sky

I recall being interested in this game when it was released in the 1990s but believe it or not was put off by the limited range of aircraft featured….How times have changed!

The underside of the box

I was always a huge fan of the board game Air Force designed by the late S. Craig Taylor. Air Force, along with the standalone Pacific theatre game Dauntless and the expansion kit that rounded out the existing nationalities as well as introducing the Russian, French and Italian air forces, were a constant part of my gaming during the the late 1970s and early 1980s. Unfortunately the rules for these required written turns for each aircraft which made solo games a little tricky. Systems wise they were very much of their time but I really enjoyed using them.

Anyways, in the early 1990s, Avalon Hill launched a series of games in what was known as their Smithsonian range. One of the range was the game to see above. Mustangs. Now this is game of fighter combat designed for up to four aircraft a side and was designed by none other than the aforementioned S. Craig Taylor.

This game is air combat stripped back to the bone. Fighter combat only - none of that bomber interception or ground attack malarkey - this is plane to plane, mano a mano. In other words, probably what most aerial gamers enjoy the most! 

One of the game counters - in this case a German FW190 A-8. Coincidentally this is my preferred fighter when flying for the Luftwaffe….

When I say stripped back I mean it is very light on aircraft types - the RAF do not feature in the base game - and does not feature written orders of any kind. All the aircraft information features on the counter and each aircraft has a control card for recording hits, altitude etc (of which there are only 6 levels). A closer look at the aircraft counter kind of reveals the links back to Air Force but this is a whole new and much faster game. 

The counter contains everything you need to know about the aircraft but it would easy enough to transfer this information into a spreadsheet if using models rather than the counters provided. There is a whole raft of order counters which again, could be readily produced in something rather more durable than those provided with the game.

A selection of 1944 aircraft, European theatre.

The copy I have acquired came to me courtesy of Mr Fox who now’s of my weakness for his type of game. He acquired t from a bring and buy some years back. An additional bonus was that contained in the box is a selection on unpainted 1:300th scale aircraft, presumably the original owner planned to use these instead of the counters, and these include three Mustangs, three P47 Thunderbolts (both of these the later version ‘bubble’ canopy), a pair of Me 262s and three FW190s. I have no idea who these were produced by and they are a little on the crude side to be honest. I am thinking possibly early Heroic and Ros but who knows?

My thanks to Mr Fox for allowing me to take this off this hands!

Gaming the Old West: A Personal History

A classic game and with figures!

The board, figures and rules.

Aside from watching the TV series the Virginian and the High Chaparral, as well the inevitable John Wayne films - the Spaghetti Westerns came much later - my earliest gaming experience of the Old West was via, you’ve guessed it, a board game. In this case it was The Battle of the Little Big Horn produced by Waddingtons. I can remember playing this game loads of times in the very early 1970s along with Campaign from the same publisher. I never really took this any further but the next step was a fairly big one when a gaming friend of mind acquired the original Old West Skirmish rules which introduced us to such exotic things as decimal dice. We gamed in 54mm and I have fond memories of painting and converting Timpo figures for use with the rules. All good fun but again, I never really pursued it with any degree of conviction.

When I moved to London in 1978 and started attending the Newham Wargames Club based at Eric Knowles’s shop in Manor Park, East London I took part in a number of games which were all highly entertaining and then a new set of rules came out that kind of took the edge off the genre for me. These were called Once Upon A Time in the West and seemed by comparison to be rather more complex than the original Old West Skirmish rules. This was the time when ever more complex rules seemed to be the way forwards but were inevitably at the cost of playability. As a result my interest withered on the vine somewhat although I did rather enjoy anything US Cavalry related - Pony Wars or B Troop Ain’t coming back were a club favourite and I am pleased that a new version has recently been released by Baccus, the 6mm people.

The latest version of Pony Wars in hardback

My recent and rather splendid acquisition of a complete 26 volume set of the Time Life series The Old West has certainly given me plenty of material to think about. There are now vast ranges of Old West figures depicting all manner of types from the period and in a variety of scales. Whilst it does not necessarily mean I shall be reaching for figure catalogues, a few figures for a skirmish style game would certainly not be a problem. 

Time to watch some old Westerns again methinks - perhaps the Cavalry trilogy along with Rio Bravo and of course, the Spaghetti sequence.

Purely for research of course….

An ‘Old West’ Result

Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show

Freecycle - at least the Rayleigh chapter - is proving to be a real success for me! Laurel was checking her emails and saw a full set of the the above being given away. Was I interested? Absolutely! An enthusiastic nod of the head from me, a quick exchange of emails and a ten minute car drive later - I became the proud owner of a complete set of the Time Life series ‘The Old West’! There was even the introductory free poster neatly folded inside one of the volumes!

It was free - that’s right - free!

“Gonna need a bigger bookcase!”

This was very much a target of opportunity and certainly was not something I was looking out for but, when life gives you lemons and all that! Seriously though, this is a cracking set and will give plenty of inspiration for not only Western gunfights but also such things as US Cavalry actions as well as Guerrilla style combat during the American Civil War, even the Mexican War. 

The set consists of 26 volumes and the titles of these are as follows:

The Pioneers

The Gamblers

The Railroaders

The Gunfighters

The Texans

The Frontiersmen

The Rivermen

The Forty-Niners

The Cowboys

The Mexican War

The Alaskans

The Loggers

The Ranchers

The Townsmen

The Miners

The Chroniclers

The Scouts

The Soldiers

The Women

The Great Chiefs

The Indians

The Expressmen

The Trailblazers

The Canadians

The Spanish West

The End and the Myth

The above two volumes are duplicates so should anyone want them - The Indians and The Great Chiefs - let me know. I do not want anything for them, just cover any shipping.

You may recall mentioning that I had previously missed out on a full set of the American Civil War series a couple of years ago from the same source. Whilst this is no substitute it certainly a great collection to own and one that I am sure I will make use of.

Now to source a couple of dozen gunfight figures - luckily I have rules aplenty to choose from!

Korean War and ACW Ironclads?

A little dated now (published in 1998) but covers all the aerial combat I am likely to be interested in!  A great primer on the subject.

I hope everyone had a good Easter!

Indulge me, it is a moment of whimsy to be sure, but a welcome one! As part of my recent haul of aviation books offered up on Freecycle there was one in particular that caught my eye, the title you see above by Ivan Rendall. I have mentioned before that I have played a lot of aerial games although these have mostly been of the board variety and even then the palette is rather modest. For jet combat my experience was solely down to the SPI game Air War which was complex but a lot of fun at the time - especially as most of our early games involved non missile carrying types and so inevitably the Korean War featured.

I never really studied the war in great detail but the chapter devoted to Korea has been something of a revelation. Plenty of late WW2 propeller driven types and a basket of early jets makes for a truly diverse range of match ups, all of which means some interesting games. A mixture of old and new technology with the older stuff being very much at the pinnacle of piston engined aircraft development.

Rather like the naval side of the American Civil War….

There you had sailing ships that were pretty much at the technological summit of their development mixing it with steam power and those newfangled ironclads. The two struck me as having this in common!

Essential research material and there are few other titles produced by Osprey that would be handy to add to the collection

Anyways, enthused by the revelations of the Rendall book - incidentally I should mention that this title is by no means the definitive word on the subject, as some of the more pithier reviews on Amazon pointed out - and remembering that the well known aerial gamer, blogger and prince of the project list, Jim Jackaman, had covered this particular war using 1:600th Tumbling Dice models and the Mig Alley rules, I decide to take a further look. Naturally this involved a modest degree of expenditure in terms of research but it will be fulfilling a need I didn’t know I had - actually that is not entirely accurate, I had planned a small aerial project but had gotten no further than the Battle of Britain. The first step was to secure a copy of the rather timely written book you see above.

In an exchange with the aforementioned Mr Jackaman he suggested that the Mig Alley pack plus a couple of extra packs would be more than sufficient for a nifty little set up which will be fun to do. 

Anyhow, planning for this and the various other bits and pieces I have on the go will keep me occupied whilst Laurel and I both deal with the bout of Covid we now have - her first and my second!

Samurai Cavalry

Zvezda Samurai Cavalry looking suitably ferocious and soon to be joining the contents of the Shogun board game 

The relentless domestic round continues this week but the end is in sight. Essentially we had our downstairs cloakroom refurbished to make it more accessible for Laurel. Aside from the physical work required in the cloakroom itself we also decided to decorate the utility room which involved new flooring, new sockets and switches (luckily my son is a ‘sparky’) and lots of white paint as well as a new washing machine and freezer (7 and 18 years old respectively). In both cases it meant much moving of ‘stuff’ around the house and a tip run. I have also given the lawn its first mow of the year and have jet washed the patio.

Anyways, enough of my labours and on with the good stuff!

Aside from finishing the four ironclads I have also been thinking about the Samurai project and so took the plunge and have ordered two boxes of the above which will give me 34 cavalry - more than enough for my needs. Once they arrive I will post some pictures but I already have it on very good authority that they fit in well with the Shogun board game figures.

I also need to finish the write up for my refight of Operation Market Garden which was a lot of fun to do and has given me a few other things to think about.

Like I need anything else to do….. :-)

Updating Ironclads….Finished!

 

The refurbished ‘fab four’. C.S.S. Georgia (top), C.S.S. Huntsville (left), C.S.S.  Raleigh (right) and the C.S.S. Tuscaloosa (bottom).

A top down view of the Tuscaloosa (left) and the Raleigh (right) showing the offset gun ports on either beam of the casemate.

I am pleased to have gotten these four up to the current build standard and am greatly indebted to John Wallis for his help in identifying those ironclads that my original generic models could be most readily converted to. The Confederates will get a further pair of ironclads - the C.S.S. Tennessee and the C.S.S. Baltic.

The models above are not quite as ‘sleek’ in terms of finish as the others but given that three of them have been tweaked on a couple of occasions it is hardly surprising. Still the slightly ‘worked’ look is probably in keeping with the historical originals so I shall not worry too much.

For now though, it is back to the gunboats!

Updating Ironclads….Part 3

The next stage. The new, smaller gun ports are now in place, duly sealed and ready to paint. 

Despite a busy day today I managed to get the new gun ports added to the four ironclads currently being updated. I wanted to show the difference the smaller size of port makes and I think you can see what an improvement they make over the original, larger version.

All being well I should have these finished in the next day or so and then I can crack on with the half completed models I have on the workbench.

Moving along nicely methinks!