Blood Red Skies AAR: First impressions

The elusive Doug in his element

Back in late February when the powers of darkness were still ascendant (hail to the spring!) Doug came over for a gaming weekend. Friday night we went over to Garrets house for some beer and pretzels gaming and to try out Blood Red Skies, by Warlord Games. In a shameful display of winter hibernation I'm only getting this pictures up to the blog now. Oh well.....

We started with Doug and I getting an orientation game with Garret counseling us.  3 vs 3 planes (Germans vs Americans I believe). The rules are simple enough to make sense within two or three turns. The end of the mission typically comes from loss of nerve/confidence/morale rather than shooting down all the fighters. This is a good thing as lots of games of swoopy planes can DRAGGGGGG. Morale is lost everytime the enemy gets a good line on you and manages to fire on you. The shooting resolution is via fists full of dice and looking for fairly high numbers (I think successes are on a 6). The early war planes have much lower offensive dice pools so it's actually pretty hard to splash your opponent.

The bases are pretty clever with a tilt built into the stem. Nose up is advantage, level is neutral, and down is disadvantage. Pilot skill tells you who moves first, followed by (dis)advantage, and then finally actual airplane max speed. It rarely gets to that point. 

As actions you can choose to gain advantage, maneuver (which tries to force your enemy within a certain range 'down' in advantage), or shoot. You can only shoot someone with less advantage than you. You can only take out a plane that is disadvantaged (I think otherwise it's forced lower still). So you end up with team work to hit the enemy by 'maneurvering' to lower it's advantage rating, and then a wingman to clean him up. I think this is the only mildly jarring aspect of the game to me: it makes sense for your high skill pilots to maneuver the enemy down, and then the lower skill (moving later) pilots to shoot them down. Who knows, maybe this is actually how it happens but it seems a bit odd. In terms of game mechanics though it works very very smoothly. 

Next up we fought a three way melee. Japanese vs British vs Russians. Another nice touch is upon the start of the game you make a skill roll for each pilot which dictates what advantage level they start at. You will notice my green plans in the bottom right are all disadvantaged.....the Red airforce believe in training by doing!

We all elected to hold some planes as 'high cover'. I think this is scenario dependent, but basically they can show up on the board edge within a certain distance of marker on whatever turn. If they don't show up you can move the marker along the edge a certain distance. It's like aerial flankers!

Happily I brought in my high cover, who happened to be the highest skill planes, very early. And very very right behind the British. Garret knows the game; it's best to thin our his planes early.

Clouds are very interesting as when you enter them your advantage goes neutral immediately. So they are a safe harbor for planes in trouble, but neutralize your advantage if you are doing well. 

Coming out of the cloud you have a choice to gain advantage, maneuver or shoot (like normal). This means that planes in advantage are pretty safe from things emerging from the clouds.

 The number of markers are very modest. It's important to mark who has and hasn't gone though. With so many planes, that change advantage, it's pretty easy to lose track of who has gone (we had a few times where we noted a plane we missed.....nothing that would have changed much). 

Firing ranges are fairly short, so despite playing on a 3x3 table with a lot of planes the opportunity for fire wasn't overwhelming (lots of planes aren't legal targets as they are at the same or higher advantage). By far maneuvering and gaining advantage are the most common actions taken.

 

 Planes have some character to them, with differences in offense/defense and, more notably, special abilities. These abilities give you some cards you can play to do a bit extra. Lose advantage to move extra far. Similarly, the aces (rare as they are) come with a special ability which is much more powerful. One of them could use maneuver AND shoot in a turn. Nasty bit of work that could solo enemies on his/her own (Russians had female pilots anyway).

 

As the enemy gains numbers on you there is a bit of a snowball effect. But skill is quite important. Since you move and do actions it makes sense to move first, and the first movers can often make their opponents lose the advantage they need to take their shots.

Overall I was quite surprised by how much I enjoyed the game. While I don't know that I'd select it as a primary choice for a game night, it makes for quick games: so on a short night, or while killing time for the main event it seems like a great option.

Enfilade 2019 pt 1 Friday - Cruel Seas

A rare shot of this years painting

My life so far this year has been consumed with a growing infant, multiple sicknesses (most probably arriving from the illness skunkworks that is daycare, and some requiring antibiotics). I was also prepping a large contingent of french for Dougs (dots of paint) annual big naps battle at enfilade. True to form, most of us were finishing the figs at the last moment. I was not the worst, but I finished flocking 20 minutes prior to the drop dead time for loading the car. I still haven't taken the glamour photos that will document the real work.

The addition of the wife and 20 month infant slowed the trip dramatically so I missed the early afternoon session and arrived for the evening session having checked in and loaded up on groceries.

I was booked to play 'cruel seas' a fairly new offering from Warlord games. I hadn't realized it had only been out since December. My side took the German S boats against 3 British freighters and a armed trawler and a host of small escorts. It was a flank chase and there was opportunity for lots of torpedos flying across the table and, my word, ships can suddenly disappear under fire (one of my boats was hit by two hits by 3inch artillery pieces on the freighters....under 5% chance (my attacker rolling two 1's to hit). All I could do was laugh hilariously as my ship took a crit, caught fire (1 roll of 6 on a d6 for a diesel boat) and disappeared just as it had closed the distance to fire.

The figures are beautiful, and the rules were.....okay. Hilariously there was a steady stream of folks dropping by to check the game out who all voiced their dislike for the rules. It sounds as though the two key problems are: 1 - rushed into production there was insufficient playtesting and balance and the hardcopy rules have been revised into uselessness already. 2 - ships turn based on their speed. Moving faster gives MORE moves (i.e. flank speed = 3 turns, slow = 1). A slow boat (like a cargo ship) can crank in HUGE turns over a short distance compared to a 'highly maneuverable' fast boat which has it's turns happen over a much longer range. While not much of a problem in this scenario I can see it was an obvious issue. Pretty easy to fix though.....

I only managed 2 pics of the cruel seas game. I think there was a fair amout of 'not that interesting to photo' going on. Picture dump of other games in the same time slot to follow.....

A 2 page home brew tank system. It seemed to play pretty fast and was pretty bloody. Great convention fare. I wished I'd had more time to peruse the rules. 

The host put on a great post apoc game last year. I forget the rule set, but the presence of the ufo suggests a 'historically inspired' scenario.

Indians vs colonists in North America. Musket era. Not sure the ruleset. Looked pretty. 

Fair number of big napoleonic battles. 

Good number of star wars inspired games over the weekend. Pod racing on a nice looking board. 

Doug's "retreat from Moscow" game. I think the Russians were rule directed and endlessly cycled on while the french attempted to escape of the board.....maybe with some treasure/rations/supplies? 





Dougs earlier writeup of the playtesting sounded pretty hilarious as the french engaged in some friendly fire at least once. I doubt it happened at the convention but I will admit to hoping for lightning to strike again.

Russian Dragoons & Officers - Perry miniatures

And now for a big change...more napoleonics! Russians at least. I was 'short' some Russian cav, so I ordered and painted up some more dragoons. The officers I believe were moldering away half finished for quite some time, so I finished them at the same time.

I suspect the officer with the sword high is actually a warlord figure, but I might be confused.

6MMRPC Week 12: Warlord Russian Napoleonic Artillery Battery

I finally finished a project that had been on pause for numerous weeks. Here we have 3 guns (batteries in Dougs General du Corp rules) of Russian Guns. Only the smallest gun, on the left, is actually Warlord, the other 2 guns I bought from Front Rank as I had other plans for the small 6lbs (4? lbs) guns. It's probably noticeable, as I forgot which greens I used, and the smallest gun is positively fluorescent compared to it's larger brethren.