Dragon Tales

The Continuing Adventures of the Dragon Squadron

Mission 3
Alarms began blaring at the aerodrome.

"All hands to your planes! Incoming air raid!"

Within minutes, Devin Drake had his entire squadron (himself, Howell Green, Taylor Hicks, and Ike Peters) in the air.

Not long after, the squadron spots the bomber formation, 3 Vulture medium bombers, plus 3 Cobra escorts.

Drake has a shot at one of the escorts, but he misses.

The same goes for Green.

A Cobra makes a pass at Hicks. Its bullets slash through Hicks's plane. He begins to spiral to the earth.

Hicks manages to pull out in time. He then tries to nurse his stricken craft back to base.
Note" Planes that are "shot down" get a save to survive. They are removed from the board with the assumption that they return to base. Hicks managed to pass his save roll.

Meanwhile, Drake gets a bead on a bomber. His shots do damage but he then gets hit by the bomber's defensive fire.

A Cobra makes a pass, damaging both Peters and Green.

But Peters gets revenge! Unfortunately, Drake gets hit by more defensive fire. His plane goes up in flames; he has to bail out!

Note: Drake failed his save so he definitely gets shot down. I then make a survival roll, which he passed.

All alone, Peters chases after a bomber. He damages it.

And then destroys it.

Although the remaining bombers make it to the target zone, their bomb run is woefully inaccurate.

Hicks manages to nurse his plane back to base. He lands successfully, but the plane is a wreck. Drake survives his bailout and is rescued by friendly troops. Likewise, he makes it back home.

Note: Given that the dogfight occurred over friendly airspace, I ruled that Drake made it back to base.

The pilots are all safe but two planes were lost. It was a rough day for the Dragons. Fortunately the enemy bombers failed to destroy the target. Technically, the Dragons' mission was a success!

Note: Out of curiosity, I rolled damage for the lost bomber. If it had managed to get to the target the bombers would have won the scenario. Peters's last minute heroics saved the day!

Mission 4
With Drake and Hicks out of action, the next mission falls on Howell Green and Ike Peters. For a rookie, Peters has shown great promise, already destroying 3 enemy aircraft.

Today's mission is to destroy enemy artillery positions.

Green and Peters approach. A sole Cobra fighter plane flies cover.

While Green circles around trying to get a bead on the Cobra, Peters makes a pass at the enemy artillery.

His first attack damages the target but he is hit by anti-aircraft fire!
Note: I treated the ground targets like medium bombers (2 hits to destroy) with all-around defensive fire, hitting on a 6.

His engine sputters; he cannot get away fast enough.
Note: His activation roll in this turn was very poor so Peters was unable to fly out of range.
This allows the AA to zero in on his plane. Shells smash into his stricken craft; it goes up in flames. Peters manages to escape from the cockpit and bail out. He parachutes safely, in the midst of enemy artillerymen.

Green follows Peters. His attack misses but the AA is again accurate! Now Green is damaged.

As the Cobra turns back into the fray, Green makes a pass at a second artillery emplacement. He manages to score some damage.

Then Green turns to attack the Cobra. Their guns blaze, but the Cobra strikes. Green's plane explodes!

The Peregrine fighter crashes to earth in a twisted pile of metal.

A disastrous outing for the Dragons. Two planes shot down, with 1 pilot killed and another captured.

Notes: 

• Once again I made a roll to determine the fate of planes that are eliminated. There is a 50% chance of the pilot escaping with a badly damaged craft. Obviously that did not happen in either case today. For planes shot down, I then make a pilot survival roll. Green failed but Peters succeeded. I ruled that he managed to bail out, but given that he was flying over an enemy position I figured that it made sense for him to get captured.
• Technically the Dragons have already won the campaign, being successful in the first 3 missions. I am still playing out the last two, just to see what happens to the pilots. Alas, it did not go well this time.

To the Stars!

As I press forward with my Renaissance-era fleets, my mind has wandered to another project I had in mind. The concept was to minimize my collection by putting together a fleet of spaceships that could do double duty for naval battles in space and space dogfights.

Initially I wanted some generic, classic sci-fi rocket ships. I scratch-built a few 2D counters, but they were a bit large for my 1" grid.

I've been looking around for small retro-rockets but have not been able to find any (I love the Hydra Miniatures rockets but think they are too large).

Recently I discovered Monday Knight Productions. Not really retro but I like the looks (note that all pics are from their website)

Terran fighters

Heavy fighters

A bomber

Entomolian fighter

I then add an odd thought. These alien scout vehicles from Irregular miniatures could substitute as rocket ships. At first I thought about adding some fins but I'm lazy so would probably use them as is,

 Looking at some more Irregular, I thought I could use this alien transport as a bomber.

And these APCs as heavy bombers.

I'm not sure of the size of any of these figures and I really need another project like a hole in my head. But I could not resist playing around so I ordered some samples. Stupid GADD.

Note: All pictures taken from the manufacturers' websites.

Navy Blues

I previously posted that I placed an order for some 16th century ships from Tumbling Dice. Well, they have arrived, and I have some mixed feelings about them.

First some pictures of the unpainted product (sitting on my new sea mat)

First up - caravels. The one on the left is tipped on its side so you can see the profile a little better.
Note that my mat has a 1 inch grid. That should give you an idea of the size of the minis.

Some small galleys. I did not remove the flash from the two on the ends.

Two large galleys. The one on the left is on its base while the one on the right shows the base separate from the galley, and the galley is tipped on its side.

Finally, a galleass (left) and galleon.

Note that the above pictures do not show the separate sails, which need to be glued on. The galleys include a selection of furled and unfurled sails.

Thoughts

So what do I think about these miniatures?

Pros
The ships themselves look nice. I expect they'll paint up well, even for a bad painter like myself. I am especially pleased by the size. The galleass is slightly bigger than 1" but all the rest will fit into my grid well.

Cons

• Flash - compared to Tumbling Dice planes, these seem to have more flash. I suspect that it is easier to mold planes than ships however. I just finished prepping the caravels and small galleys and it wasn't too onerous.
• The bases - the bases are just too bulky and long for my 1" grid mat. Before seeing the figures, my plan was to ditch the bases and mount the ships on clear Litko bases. Alas, some of the ships are molded directly onto the bases. On others, the galley oar banks are molded directly onto the metal base! If I dump the base I dump the oars, too!
• The sails - the last time I bought sailing ship minis (back in the early 90s I think), they had the sails molded to the masts and I just had to glue the masts to the hull. Well, TD minis have the masts molded to the hull with the sails separate. It seems a bit fiddly to glue the sails onto the masts.

The Plan
I decided to start with the easiest and work my way through the rest.

• Caravels - these require minimal prep work. The bases fit into a 1" square so I can leave them be. Everything is molded in one piece so no gluing required. I just cleaned up some flash and will paint them.
• Small Galleys. the bases are a bit long so I chopped off the ends (the middle ship in the picture above show one with the ends removed). The ship is molded to the base so no gluing there. The sails are separate, however, and will need some gluing. I may just ignore them. After all, galleys generally used oars rather than sails in battle.
• Large Galleys - generally the same strategy as with the small galleys. The bases are separate so some gluing is required.
• Galleass - the base definitely needs to be chopped down; right now it measures about 1.5" while the ship itself is only slightly larger than an inch. Sails are a bit bigger and therefore less fiddly than the galleys so I may add them.
• Galleon - the base will get chopped. I definitely want to add sails; the galleon just looks bare without them.

A New Aerial Campaign

A few months ago I finally put together enough supplies for a full-scale mission using the Tiny Air Combat / Battle of Britain rules. I promptly stopped playing the game. What happened?

Well, I think it just grew too much for me - too large, too many minis, and too much bookkeeping. I found that I wanted a more streamlined version. Recently, I started playing around with some changes:

Smaller Board
The first thing I did was to shrink the game. For the full-scale version of the game I used a 16 x 30 square grid but I preferred a game that could fit into a pencil box. I wanted to squeeze onto an 8 x 10 grid. The movement rules of the original game were problematic, however. It is possible for some planes to move 8 squares in a turn. For the smaller grid, halving movement distances seemed like a good solution. I could effectively do this by doubling the movement cost of each maneuver but that left some maneuvers to expensive. In the end, I just upped the cost for each maneuver by 1 point. It seems to work fine.

Smaller Forces
In order to reduce the board I also had to reduce the size of the forces involved. I now use a single squadron of bombers + 2-4 fighters per side.

New Campaign Rules
The original rules involve a bit of bookkeeping (especially considering that I game solo) as you have to track the fate of 18 squadrons. I wanted to reduce the record keeping so I decided to follow the fortunes of a single fighter squadron. It dawned on me that a fighter squadron could do more than escort bombers, so I came up with additional missions. Eventually, a new set of campaign rules evolved.

Campaign Rules Overview

• The campaign follows the fortunes of a single squadron of 4 pilots/planes
• A campaign will consist of 5 missions. The squadron wins the campaign if it succeeds in 3 of the 5 missions.
• Possible missions are patrol (fighter vs. fighter dogfight) escort (defend your side’s bombers), intercept (stop an enemy bombing raid) and attack (strafing run on ground targets)
• To reduce the death rate, planes that get “shot down” get a chance to escape instead. Also, I gave the player characters a bonus when determining damage – there will be less chance of them getting shot down in a single hit.

Introducing the New Campaign
During the Lucranian War (set in my 1930s-style imagi-nations), Capt. Devin Drake, veteran of multiple aerial campaigns, has been selected to lead a new squadron. Known as the Dragons, the squadron has been outfitted with the latest Peregrine fighters.

Drake has 3 pilots under him – the veteran Howell Green and two promising novices, Taylor Hicks and Ike Peters.

Notes:

• Player characters are rated as novice, veteran, or ace. The rating affects movement points, chance to hit, and chance to escape.
• I came up with the name Devin Drake on my own but the other names came from a name generator

Initially things are quiet in the Dragon’s sector of the front. Drake decides to take Hicks on a patrol over the front.

Notes:

• The campaign rules call for a random roll to determine the mission type. I decided that I am just going to do one of each mission, then roll randomly for the last.
• I rolled randomly for the force make-up for each side. The Dragons start with 2 planes; I decided that Drake and Hicks will be the pilots. We’ll see what the Dragons will be up against.

FIRST AFTER ACTION REPORT IS BELOW

First Blood

Missions 1-2 for the Dragon Squadron

Mission 1
Things have been quiet for the squadron since their arrival at the front. Captain Devin Drake, the squadron CO, decides to take one of the rookies for a routine patrol.

They spot a Viper, one of the latest state-of-the-art enemy fighters. Drake signals for the attack. He is unaware of 3 more enemy fighters hiding in and behind the clouds.

Drake and the Viper trade head-on shots. Drake's bullets rip into the Viper and send it down in flames.

Ambush! A Cobra fighter emerges from the clouds and sends a hail of bullets at Drake. He yanks his control stick and manages to elude the shots.

Note: Readers of my previous Aetherian AARs will note that I have renamed the enemy fighter plane.

After some circling, Drake and the rookie, Taylor Hicks, get a bead on a Cobra. Taylor delivers the killing blow, or so he thought.

Badly damaged, the Cobra dives into some clouds and escapes.
Note: To cut down on the kill ratio I now roll if an aircraft is eliminated. There is a chance that it escapes rather than gets shot down. Alas Hicks's victory was spoiled.

The other Viper also escapes and the remaining Cobra tries to flee. Drake pursues and finds himself in a good position. He squeezes the trigger. Miss!

The last enemy gets away.

Still, a good outing. One kill and one damage for no losses.
And a 1-0 record in the campaign!

Mission 2
Howell Green (a veteran) and Ike Peters (a novice) are now up. They have been tasked to escort a bombing mission.

Peters finds himself engaged with a Viper fighter (one of the enemy's best). He calls for help, and Green rushes to his aid. But Peters manages to take out the fighter on his own.

However, Green's "rescue" leaves the bombers open to an attack by 2 Cobras.

Buddy Haroldsen, gunner for the lead bomber, takes matters into his own hands. He knocks down an old Adder fighter plane.

And then he shoots down a Cobra!

Haroldsen's heroics frees the bombers to make a run. Their bombs fall accurately, doing extensive damage to the target. Success!

Notes:

• Other than the initial pass, the Dragon Squadron was notably ineffective. They made a few more firing passes but kept missing. Perhaps some target practice is in store!
• I didn't plan on naming anyone on the bombers, but after one bomber shot down 2 enemy fighters I had to give the gunner credit. Buddy was the star of the mission!
• Nevertheless, Dragon Squadron gets credit for a successful mission. They are now 2-0 in the campaign.

The Orlan War

An Armoria Campaign - Part I

In the ancient days of Armoria, two major powers developed - Azuria and Guleslan. They vied for domination of the islands scattered across the Armorian Sea. When Guleslan attempted to seize the island of Orlan, Azuria sent an expedition to challenge the occupation

Battle of Bruhauhau Bay
As Guleslan besieged the capital city of Oropolis, the Azurian navy sailed into Bruhauhau Bay in an attempt to break the siege. Taken unawares, Guleslan was not able to muster its entire fleet.

Game Note: I played this as a galley battle, although I did not have any galley miniatures. I used my Age of Sail counters as stand-ins.

The Azurian fleet (top) enters the sludgy waters of the bay (I need a new sea mat). The Guleslanians sally out.

An initial barrage manages to sink a Guleslanian galley.

A damaged Azurian escapes from battle while 3 more gang up on the second Guleslanian ship.

Vastly outnumbered, it strikes. The remaining Guleslan galley flees.

The Guleslanian army raises the siege and retreats into the interior. Azuria lands and marches into Oropolis. The Orlanians hail the Azurians as saviors, little knowing that they actually swapped one conqueror for another.

The Azurian army spreads out across the island, taking control over the Orlanian towns.

Battle of Orton
The Azurian conquest left them scattered across the island. Guleslan tries to take advantage with a surprise attack against the Azurian held town of Orton. Azuria learns of the attack and prepares a surprise.

The Guleslan force (heavy cavalry, archers, and 2 heavy infantry) march down the road toward Orton.

The Guleslan heavy infantry assaults the town, defended by heavy infantry and assisted with archers.
The Azurian reinforcements on the hill are surprisingly reluctant to advance. Only 1 heavy cavalry attacks, but it wipes out the Guleslan cavalry.

It then catches a heavy infantry unit in the flank and chases it from the field.

It then takes on the Guleslan archers. Meanwhile, Guleslan breaks into the town and puts the garrison to the sword.

The Azurian archers climb the city walls and from the top pour arrows into the Guleslan infantry. The infantry cannot withstand the volleys and breaks. Finally, the Azurian cavalry overruns the enemy archers.

Orton remains in Azurian hands.

Campaign Notes

• The first battle was just a straight up fight, with randomly determined forces. All ships were considered large galleys.
• The second battle was scenario 28 - Botched Relief from One Hour Wargames. Azuria was only allowed to activate one unit from the relief at a time. Fortunately for them, the activated cavalry was remarkably successful and the relief was a success.
• Azuria now has 1 land victory. They just need one more to win the war.
• MicroBattle gives very quick games. The two scenarios took about 45 minutes total to play.

Introducing Armoria

As my MicroBattle rules for land and sea progress, I've been thinking of ways to combine them into a unified campaign. I came up with a simple system, but thought that my current imagi-nations worlds would not do it justice. In particular, I wanted a world with two major powers vying for control of minor nations scattered across a sea. I thought this would provide the most options for both land and sea battles. With this in mind, I came up with a new world.

The Setting
Welcome to Armoria!

I called it Armoria because the nations are named after the armorial/heraldic terms for the various colors. The main powers are Blue (Azuria) and Red (Guleslan).

I can imagine a whole host of conflicts raging across the islands, from ancient to modern times. I have visions of galley battles and air raids swooping across the sea (not at the same time, of course).

The Campaign
The system is very simple. A campaign will represent a war for dominance over a single island. The war will consist of 6 battles - both land and sea, as noted below:

1. A Sea Battle - the victor will be considered the invader of the island while the loser defends
2. A Land Battle - using a One Hour Wargames scenario
3. A Sea Battle - the defender tries to sneak reinforcements to the island
4. A Land Battle - as # 2
5. A Sea Battle - the defender raids the invader's shipping
6. A Land Battle - as # 2

The side that wins the most land battles will win the war. Somehow I will make the results of the sea battles affect the land battles.

Stay tuned for the first Armorian campaign - the Orlan War.