Bombers Over Germany

Last Saturday Ken ran a Check Your 6! game, it was a medium sized scenario as he wanted to tryout a few house rules. One was combining the pilot and plane agility modifiers, simplifying bomber defensive fire and using two CABs.  Below is his write up of how the game went.

Somewhere Over Germany, February 1944.
The American raid consisted of 16x B-17s (F’s and G’s) escorted at first by 4x P-51C’s and later by 4x P-47D Razorbacks. The Luftwaffe sent up to intercepted the bombers 4x ME-109G-6, 2x ME-110G-2/R3 and 2x FW-190A-8/R2.  Chris piloted the Allies while John and Ken flew the Defenders of the Reich.

Only the lead bomber of each group tracked altitude. 

 The P-51s preceded the bombers and dove to meet the incoming fighters aiming for the lumbering ME-110’s. The ME-109s maneuvered to protect the 110’s and 190’s.

The Dogfight Begins!

After a turn or two of maneuvering planes where in a position of open fire.

John’s ace ME-109 quickly dispatched three of the four P-51s, while heavy bomber fire damaged the ME-110s and FW-190s (despite the latter’s heavy armor).

The green ME-110 pilot scored the first bomber kill with a hail of cannon fire. The lone P-51 circled the periphery of the battle while the P-47s lead by Ace Robert Johnson closed with the German attackers.  John was able to maneuver his Ace ME-109 pilot behind a wounded bomber.  Needing to roll a 4 or higher on 2d6 to score an “aimed” hit, the pilot flinched at the wrong moment and John rolled a 3, just missing.

This pictorial evidence needs to be destroyed :)

Unfortunately for the bombers, both ME-110s maneuvered into trailing positions and opened up. Two turns in a row the Germans downed at least one bomber.  However the defensive fire from the remaining B-17's finally downed the slow moving 110’s.

After 12 turns the bombers had reached their drop point and we ended the game (the Luftwaffe had nothing to stop them at this point!). We then calculated victory points, though we had forgot to check crew survival at the moment of destruction, so the totals are swayed to the favor of the Germans initially but after all the victory points were tallied, the US gained a slight victory.
 
The butcher’s bill:
8 B-17s, 3 P-51s, 2 ME-110s, 2 FW-190 and 2 ME-109, 1 German Ace, 2 German Veteran pilots, 1 US Ace and 1 US Veteran pilot.

Not seen are two damaged ME-109's, one at a max speed of one!

Notes from the game
We used a modification to the bomber defensive fire rules in an attempt to speed up play. Basically the closet bomber to a fight was designated as the primary firer for base To_hit #, while other nearby bombers added in  To-Hit modifiers (Edit: it worked ok IMO). We also simplified the modifier by combing the pilot and plane modifiers together. We used the differential between the attack and defender and a chart for the range categories, then cross indexed with deflecting or tailing to locate To-hit #. It is simpler than it sounds. (Edit: this work really well and would take it a step further, use one range chart with To-Hit numbers increased by two. Then To-Hit roll is Range # = 2d6 + Attacker - Defender +2 Tailing. The usual cannon modifiers would apply if appropriate.)

Cannon fire is very deadly.  After playing some Pacific Theater games with Zeroes rolling 2d4 and 2d10s and Wildcats rolling 4d6 for damage, FW-190A-8/R2s rolling 2d20s and 2d10s results in more outright destructions over damaging.  This was also the first time in our playing of CY6! that an Ace pilot was shot down.

Next up Jets over Germany!