CY6 Jet Age at Drums at the Rapids 5/21/11

     On May 21^st at the convention Drums at the Rapids, I had the pleasure of playing two games run by Dan Joyce.  The 1^st was a CY6 Jet Age game and the 2^nd was Cold War Commander.   I have always wanted to play Cold War Commander, but that will be in a post in the future. 

     The game was Egyptians and Syrians flying MiG-21s and MiG-19s, for a total of three MiG-19s and two MiG-21s (armed with Atolls).  I was flying two MiG-19s.  The Arabs had one +1 pilot and  he was flying a MiG-19 (my pilot).  We were flying against 3 Israeli Mirages armed with Shafirs, piloted by two +1 pilots and a +2 pilot.    Before I go on and I did not take a photo of  Dan’s maneuver sheets.  He made some in Publisher and they were really easy to use and very good looking.  I do have a partial photo of one and I will point it out.

      The 1st shot came from the Israeli +2 pilot ant long range and he hit. The MiG-21 pilot blew his robustness and it became a critical  hit.  It blew up his canopy and the pilot became unconscious and never regained consciousness.   In three turns he made a slow turning egress from the playing table. Then came some maneuvering.  The MiGs are trying to get into a slow turning fight  with two Mirages.  These are the +1 Isreali pilots, the +2 pilot is chasing the unconscious MiG-21 pilot and fails.  He is very far away from the action by now.  My +1 MiG-19 finally get a shot and I shred  one of the Mirages. The Mirage pilot fails to eject and goes down with his plane.

The lone remaining MiG-21 gets a shot with it's Atolls (sorry no photo).  Neither one malfunctions they are both near misses and of course the Mirage makes both robustness roll.  More maneuvering ensues and in two turns this is what transpires (next photo)

The outcome from the previous photo is one less MiG19 I have to pilot and he does mange to eject safely.

You can see Dan's maneuver sheets beside the erasable pen.  I wish I had taken a photo of those, oh well maybe next time.

In the end the Arabs lost two MiG-19s and one MiG-21 withdrawn. The Israeli lost one Mirage  The other Arab planes bugged out, so it was an Israeli victory.  Now what was interesting, the outcome of this game affected the Cold War Commander Game in the second session.  With the Israeli victory they received 3 Mysteres  fighter bombers as support.    If the Egyptians would have won, they would have had artillery support.  I will tell you more about both of those in the next post.

Mike

Reliving Military History through Gaming

   I know personally and I think our hobby as whole has a hard time explaining to people what we like about miniature gaming. I know for me, I do not want to get a negative reaction or worst of all be thought of as a Nazi.  I was afforded the opportunity to help explain our hobby in a good light.

     A very good friend of mine, Jim Wonacott, was asked to give a presentation about historical miniature war gaming at the Schultz-Holmes Memorial Library in Blissfield Michigan.  He was kind enough to ask if I wanted to assist him.  I thought it was a great idea and jumped at the opportunity to assist Jim. 

     Jim made up four tables with examples of AWI, ACW, WWII and Modern Conflicts.  I brought a bunch of 1/300 scale airplanes, 1/285 tanks painted and unpainted.  I also brought along some 3mm miniatures to demonstrate how small miniatures could be.  I brought a bunch of paper buildings too.  One emphasis of his presentation was on how to get into the hobby cheap.  As we all know this hobby can quickly spiral out of control once one is hooked on those damn little men.

     Jim’s presentation started out with how he got into the hobby and then he went onto each table in chronological order.  He explained the scale and how he painted the troops.  He also had a table with tools of the trade. We brought several kinds of paint, including craft paints, to emphasis the inexpensive end of the hobby.  Jim and I then entertained questions from the audience.  We had 16 people attend, this included Jim, Laura (his wife) and myself.  There were several artists and they totally understood why we liked painting the miniatures.  One visitor brought his grandson; he was going to be graduating college and attending ROTC there.  He understood it and paid particular attention to the modern table.  Another guest was a computer gamer, as he was leaving, he hoped his wife understood that she was now going to loose her quilting room.  I know we had one convert.

     It was interesting, that once the hobby was explained, that people really understood it. They appreciated the time and effort that went into being able to field units so they could go on a table.  

Jim being introduced by the Library Director.

 

 

 

   

Gathered around the AWI table.

The AWI table

ACW table

WWII table

Modern Table

Modern Table part two

 

1/285 & paper buildings

1/300 airplanes & various other miniatures

Answer and question period.

AWI conversion of Gettysburg Soldiers American Civil War Rule set

http://www.gettysburgsoldiers.com/rules.do

   Three people in our gaming group help play test the a fore mentioned rule set.  They really like the rile set and I tend to agree with them.  I think that it is a great game for a convention.  It is easy to play, giving players a fun couple of hours instead of a couple of hours of frustration.  We believe it gives reasonable results after a three hour gaming session, as opposed to getting four turns done in that time period.

     As an extension of this rule set we enjoy AWI, so we decided to do a conversion.  We changed some of the pluses and minuses on the to-hit table.  These had to do with rifled muskets and artillery to name a couple.  I do not have the charts.  We played a game that had militia, Indians, French, Hessian and regulars.  It was the battle of East Nowhere.   The British held the field at the end of the game, due to the outstanding die rolling of the British player.  If he needed to beat a roll, he rolled it.   I did not take notes, but here are some photos of the game.

The first photo shows me on the left, I played 1/2 of the Americans.  The fellow with a large portion of his head missing is Jim Wonacott, he of the hot dice and Ted Bender (the other American) is taking all the photos.