Scramble to defend!

Scrambling to defend Air Wargaming Air Combat!!

The scream of Daimler Benz 1100hp engines! The thumping of Hispano cannon! The blurring G forces that claw at the pilot as they perform 300 mph manoeuvres in sleek machines that are rich with history! Daring chases at treetop height! Surely Air Combat must be among the most popular genres in wargaming?

Well, Nope. It's a niche area of a niche genre of a niche hobby and accounts for , if I recall the huge W.I survey years ago, about 10% of historical wargamers. Perhaps less than ten thousand gamers globally?

That should be surprising. The machinery is, in my infallible opinion, far more interesting than tanks, and for those who love tanks, I say what could be cooler than a tank that flies miles above the ground, just with aluminium skin and little armour?

Whereas the  “Panzer Aces" are often just the work of propaganda, air combat aces have well documented historical accounts. Maybe it is the rarity of air combat? Well, again, that's unlikely. The USAAF conducted 2.3 million overseas sorties in WW2. Even the Soviet VVS, not known for its bombers, had 7500 machines.

It's safe to say that on any day in a theatre of operation, there were duels to the death in any patch of sky you could see from the ground.

Here’s my take on it. A lot of WW2 air combat games feel like driving a toy car, or perhaps a formation of toy cars. They wheel around the table in two dimensions, often moving forwards a bit, rotating a bit and then their opponent does the same. Igo-Ugo in air combat is anathema to the smooth chaos of air warfighting.  Wings of War avoids this by its clever use of manoeuvre decks, Bag the Hun abstracts the turn with random activation, but I am of the mind that only simultaneous activation and movement gives the players more of a “feel” of fighting in the air.

 To this turn sequence problem must be added an advantage for tailing the opponent and being better able to react to the dip of a wing or the rise of their nose.Air Wargaming must “feel” as if you are flying an aircraft, something very few of us have done, but we all have our common sense to understand what happens to a plane in flight. Too slow and dipping a wing? You will drop off in height. Pulling a High G turn? You bleed off airspeed. A split S manoeuvre will bring you 180 degrees around, at a lower altitude and higher speed.

Gaslands is a very popular car driving game because it has a physics model. Cars behave in understandable ways. Most of us have driven in a car and seen how it works. Not many of us have tested it by strapping a minigun to our hatchback and doing doughnuts in supermarket carparks.Any air combat wargame needs a similar working physics model. Something that makes sense and allows us a glimpse into what air combat was about.

An aircraft is an amazing feat of engineering and its myriad systems from hydraulics to coolant to undercarriage all factor in some way to its effectiveness. But what if one of those systems was blown to smithereens by a stream of high explosive cannon fire from a furious Zero fighter on your tail? Then this will need recreating in the damage model. “Hitpoints” are not enough! Many rules have some unique ways of tracking damage from Blood Red Skies abstracted “boom chits” to Bag the Huns detailed damage table.

I’ve thought for many years that if you are playing an air wargame, you need to be in the cockpit. You need to manage the throttle, have hands on a control column, keep your eyes on your airspeed and altitude, on your pitch and yaw. All that before you spot an enemy! But all of that needs to be done in a very natural and intuitive way. No harder than riding a bike, and putting an experienced miniature air wargamer right in the cockpit.

Many rules I think drift away from this level of detail and so zoom out to a “flight” of aircraft. This of course is perfect for a club game! This level of gaming is both popular within the genre and definitely has its place. But, as with a skirmish game of Sharpe and his mates, versus a recreation of Waterloo, the further from the mud and the blood you get as your responsibilities increase! 

WW2 air wargaming “feels” best I think when you are operating as much as possible right in the thick of the action, which is the most scary, thrilling, high tension place to be rather than a plotting table back at Dover!Blazing Skies aims to get players back into the cockpit.  

The cockpit is a “Kite Card” which represents the pilot's aircraft and contains a throttle track, the altimeter, air-speed indicator, control column, pitch controls and data needed to fly and fight.  The manoeuvre templates themselves give instructions as to how the speed, altitude and pitch are affected. A pilot chooses how far to throw the throttle open, which manoeuvre to do and then, when both players have chosen, they execute the manoeuvre and make adjustments on their kite card. Tailing an enemy gives an opportunity to adjust your manoeuvre to better follow theirs! Altitude is energy, energy is speed,speed is positioning,and positioning is victory. As in WW2 fights may start high, but end up low as machines burn off their advantages of speed and height.

Air wargaming has a wealth of choices of machines and in the 1932-1955 period of Blazing Skies from amongst the 600 plus aircraft listed, it's fun to pit the strangest combinations against each other. A Catalina vs a Hawker Hart? A Saber Jet against a TB3 monstrous Russian bomber carrying two IL16 parasite fighters?But each aircraft has its own particular idiosyncrasies. Your Manchester Bomber has undeveloped Vulture engines; These may overheat! Your Morane Saulnier 406 has a cannon that's prone to jamming. Your P47 can outdive most things in most situations. Knowing your machine is all part of the fascination of air combat history and of air wargames. It is also a key advantage in combat to know your strengths and the enemies.

Blazing Skies also includes rules for Nightfighting, Takeoffs and Landings, Navigation, bombing and ground attack, (which can be integrated easily into a combined arms game) Photo Reconnaissance, a full campaign and progression system. Other optional rules include G forces, fuel use, FLAK and bouncing rules and 6 scenarios.

3D printing has opened a whole new world of availability for unusual aircraft types and superb models such as 3D Plane Printer on Patreon make 1/200 and 1/144 scale perhaps the new standard scale for Air Wargames, which means aircraft are cheap!

Of course, If you have a Spitfire, you also need a Hurricane…and a Fairley Battle, and a Fulmar, and a Firefly. There is little chance of your wife being grateful you are into a cheap new genre, but a few hundred planes will fit inside a games case!

10 ME109’s out of the sun!

So after twenty years and many updates, I’m starting the Blazing Skies site up again. Im hoping to be able to support it better now from my retirement!

My intentions are that I can use this blog to add new scenarios, battle reports, take ideas for new Kites, answer questions etc.

After collecting around a hundred Die-cast aircraft in 1/72 scale, they were all thrown into a cardboard box as they were cluttering up the place…

The damage was pretty much complete, the squadrons looked like an airfield on the first day of Bodenplatz.

Rebuilding everything with the help of a 3D anycubic resin printer and files from the most excellent https://www.patreon.com/c/planeprinter/posts, I have finally polished and fine tuned the rules, and expanded the Kite lists to pretty much include any aircraft of the ww2 era.

I have recently had f some excellent playtesting games with Beard , Dave and other friends, so as with any project, lets get the chocks away and scramble!