CY6! Jet age - Falklands test play

After a shameful amount of time, I finally got my painted jet minis out for a game. At the local game store I was joined by Joel and Tommy for a dust up between 2 harriers and 2 mirage III's.

The barriers to play were my uncertainty about my basing scheme working, and unfamiliarity with the ruleset. Luckily the two suckers brave gentlemen agreed to try the game out.

The bases are indeed leg, and each block represents an altitude level. Jet age tends to use a lot more than the regular ww2 era CY6, as jets have a lot more power.

The mirages race along at high altitude from the sun towards the low flying harriers. The sun is important b/c being 'up sun' from your opponent makes it harder to hit with infrared guided missiles. 

Closing took about 3 turns which gave us a chance to get used to changing altitude, maneuvering and the turn flow.

The harriers struggled to gain altitude without losing too much speed as the mirages raced towards them.

More after the break....

2014 Retrospective: CY6! Jet age. Falklands

I've been trolling through my photo archives, which I tend to separate by month and year and was trying to figure out how much I've actually painted this year. Funnily enough, I didn't take pictures of a lot of what I worked on (which is unusual), but I do find hints of what I was working and interested in at various times in the year.






Beginning of last year I had just finished up a batch of jets for check your six! (CY6!). I chose to do the falklands war purely based on the limited number of planes needed, and the couple of scenarios available. After hunting for various pics of 'correct' paint jobs, and getting confused (as there was changes through the quite short war), I painted up these fellows.

mirage 3 (i think)

Daggers are slightly smaller than the mirage 3 to the topleft and the right

These are all 1:600 tumbling dice figures. They include harriers, mirage 3's, 14 skyhawk, and IAI daggers (which are almost indistinguishable from the mirages...and I think they are perhaps an earlier model).





















 Harriers in the two group colorations. They are noticeably smaller than most of the opposition.













 A4 skyhawks which are wee little planes compared to the mirage's and daggers.












Despite finishing these in Jan/Feb I haven't gotten around to playing yet. I have sourced a hex mat, but I'm still facing sound challenges with how I want to do the bases.

Ideally they will change height, and show the speed on them. The planes have a small ball bearing located on the bottom in order to pitch/roll/yaw on the magnet on the stand.


I originally toyed with the idea of having the ball bearing on the stem, and only placing a magnet inside the plan. The end result was wildly unstable and the nose or tail (depending on where I placed the magnet) would instantly track downwards. I then managed to embed some magnets within the base stem, and attached the ballbearing to the plane. This is improved....but they still yaw a bit too easy. I may just stick some 'blue stuff' inside the stem to increase the friction.  I'm hoping the whole basing scheme isn't kaput.

Meanwhile, I still need to decide how to represent plane speed. A dice and frame arrangement vs a arrow/dial/pointer thing. Decisions, decisions.....

I'm going to wait till I'm more inspired to fight with these problems.

Check your 6 basing by John

John W. runs games of check your 6 fairly regularly at trumpeter nights (once a night club games). There was a question about basing for check your 6 on TMP, so I thought it'd be good to get some pictures up that I can link too.

The planes all have small metal posts of what I think is brass wire. This is inserted into airplane servo arms (ball joints) which are stiff enough to all you to tilt the planes for cinematic effect during the game. The joints on the bottom end have the stiff wire which is of sufficient size to nest quite snugly into brass rod....the heart of the system.

The rods come in 6 lengths, and each one has a tiny number scrawled on them. The numbers are a bit worn from use, but you can usually figure it out by looking at the pile. Each length of rod corresponds to one of the altitude bands in the rules.

The rods then fit quite nicely onto the bases, which also have some of the stiff wire. The wire also acts as a pivot for a dial to indicate air speed. Possibly one of the greatest things about this system is that it breaks down to a very small size, and there is minimal prep work for each plane to make it compatible with the mounting.


 The first pic is a good shot of the upper assembly. You can see one of the downed planes lying on the mat with the servo ball joint thingy.
















The second shot gives a good sense of the height differences. The Italian planes have all just some step climb and turns as they come past the bombers to try and get on their tails. The Italian plane to the right closest to the picture  (not one of the british fighters in the foreground) is a bit loose in the brass rod, but it does give a sense of the fight of the brass stem into the rod.

All the pics are fairly high resolution and can be clicked on for a closer look.