Little Wars 2014!

This weekend was the annual wargame show Little Wars now in its new venue at the Kingston City Hall in Moorabbin. It was a great venue and I hope we are back there again next year.

I was running a public participation game called "The Twenty Minuters", a World War One dogfight game using the free Canvas Eagles rules with 1/72nd scale model planes. The star of the display was the Zeppelin which I scratchbuilt out of foamboard, dowel, balsa and paper card. A local television crew was doing a special on the show and they did a short segment on my game.

Here are some pictures of the event and my display game. Here is the hall before the masses arrive.

Here is my game in full flight (pardon the pun) with the zeppelin.

The Zeppelin game is set in the early war period around 1916. After that the Zeppelin became easy pickings for the faster more heavily armed fighters. The aircraft were british DH2 and Nieuport 11 fighters and the Germans had Fokker EIII and Pfalz EIV defending the Zep.

The Zep was brought crashing down in flames by a DH2 pilot who pumped a couple of long bursts into the envelope and scored particularly well on the damage chits.

I also had plenty of late war aircraft too.

The Red Baron despatching a Sopwith Camel flown by an Australian (note the bommerang symbol on the side). Historically the Australians had lots of fights with the Baron's Jasta 12 squadron and of course the latest theories suggest that the Baron was killed by an Australian machine gunner in the trenches.

October WWI dogfight

Here are some pictures of our October game for our WWI Canvas Eagles campaign. 6 players took part flying Camels, DR1 and DVII with the night's honours going well and truly to the Germans winning 3:1

The highlight of the night was a mid air collision between a Camel (flown by me) and a DVII. The DVII player drew his first red damage chit and scored a "fuel tank hit, plane explodes". I put the chit back in the box and gave it a good shake and then pulled out my first chit. It was the same result! Both planes exploded in a flash of flame and littered confetti down over no mans land!

I am really not having much luck lately with my last three games ending with me getting killed!

For this game we tried clouds for the first time. Clouds add a nice terrain element to the games and made the games more interesting. We have enough players now that have played several games so we now can have tailing and clouds to really make great exciting games.

After the game I took some of the photos and photoshoped them to make some nice pictures.

 

  

 

Cheers
Neil

Canvas Eagles dogfight latest.

Hello all,

Here are some pictures of the last game played in our NWA Canvas Eagles campaign. The game was a Fighter sweep mission with three Germans ( Fokker DR1, Fokker DVII, and Roland CII two seater) versus 3 Brit Sopwith Camels.

The game was quite bizarre. The British had an early set back with the first Sopwith Camel shot down by the Roland on turn 4. I was flying a camel and suffered some nasty damage in two separate head on encounters with the Dr1 and DVII. I tried to make a run for home but my son flying the DVII chased me down and put me into the dirt. 2 down for the Brits.

At the same time as I was shot down the Fokker Dr1 and Roland had a mid air collision in their eagerness to shoot down the last camel.The Roland survived but the Dr1 fell apart and crashed to the ground.My son in the DVII was flying back to his own line being very low on fuel but managed to get a burst off at the last remaining camel sending it into a spin from high altitude from which it never recovered.

With the British wiped out the Roland limped home. My son flying the DVII and out of fuel, fell one hex short of making it back to his own lines and crash landed in no mans land suffering a minor injury.Unfortunately for him he was taken prisoner! So out of the 6 players on the night 4 were dead and 1 POW!!

My son is leading the campaign with 4 kills, but his plans to become the first ace of the campaign has been dealt a savage blow as he faces a long stretch in a English POW camp hoping for a prisoner exchange.

The game was a lot of fun.

Cheers

Neil

Canvas Eagles campaign at NWA.

On Friday night the Canvas Eagles WWI dogfight campaign kicked off with a mass dogfight featuring 12 aircraft (6 allied vs 6 German).

Aircraft flown on the night included, Sopwith Camel, Sopwith Dolphin, Spad XIII, Fokker DVII, Fokker DR1 and Albatross DIII.

The night started well for the Germans with very quickly one british camel being seriously damaged and forced to retire and then another camel was shot up by Manfred Voss’ Dr1 and then finished off by Victor Von rumple in his Fokker DVII. His brother Manfred Von Rumple flying another DVII was badly damaged and was forced to leave the battle. As the fight progressed other aircraft joined the fray. A collision between Barker’s Camel and Von Wise’s DVII left the Fokker’s tail smashed and the plane plummeted to the ground. Charlie Barker’s plane survived the collision and made it back to allied lines securing the young pilot his first kill. We hope next time he employs more orthodox methods to destroy the enemy.

Manfred Voss found himself surrounded by Allied planes and Lt Lewis flying the lone Dolphin sent Voss’ Dr1 crashing to the ground.

The lone American pilot Lt Chuck Budwiser spent the night flying back and forth in his Spad using his speed to evade the enemy but caused the Germans little damage.

Over enthusiastic, Budwiser forgot about his fuel and had to glide back to allied lines, just making it home despite being harrassed by two Albatross. Indeed if not for the presence of Lewis’ Dolphin to draw fire, Budwiser may well have come a cropper. As it turned out he will have some explaining to do to the CO as to why his plane is stuck in a field out of gas rather than back in the hangar.

The Remaining Dolphin turned for home leaving the two German Albatross controlling the air but the day belonged to the allies.

pictures to follow shortly.

Cheers
Neil