Chocks Away!

I've been playing some flying games recently.

B-17 Queen of the Skies

I managed to get my hands on a copy of QotS at a reasonable price. It is missing the German fighter cards and the counters. I can substitute miniatures for the cards and never really needed the counters anyway.

I played a couple of missions.

1. Target: St. Omer. A short mission (Zone 2)
• Some desultory passes by German fighters but only minor damage and no wounds
• Bomb run on target with 30% accuracy
• A safe return home
2. Cherbourg (Zone 3)
• Escorts effectively drove off most enemy fighters
• Hit by flak over the target, which caused the bomb run to go off target (0%)
• A safe return home with only minor damage and no casualties

The rules are very intuitive. It's been more than 20 years since I played but I was up an running within minutes of scanning through the rules! That's a testament to the quality of the rules.

One issue is the number of charts you have to shuffle through. With time, you remember where to find the table you need, but it can be a little annoying.

B17 The Fight for Air Supremacy

I created a revised version of the rules to fix my issues with this game, but I ended up shelving the project for the time being.

I had hoped that FfAS would be a kind of quick-play QotS, but then I had other ideas.

Homebrew Bombing

I've been mulling ideas for quick-play games that I can easily set up and complete during lunch. I figured that a simple bombing run game would work, but I would need to reduce record keeping.

I then had an epiphany. Instead of tracking a sole bomber, why not run a squadron? OK, 12 planes is a bit much, but what about an element? Three planes seems feasible. I just won't track individual crew stats.

Then I decided not to keep track of zones, like both the B-17 games. Instead, I'll just roll to see if the element faces a wave of fighters, then keep rolling waves until no more appear. After that, drop the bombs and run for home!

I jotted down some rules on a sheet of paper, then played a couple of test games.

In the first mission, my bombers suffered no damage but heavy cloud cover caused them to miss the target.

Here are some pictures from my second mission.

My squadron gets bounced by a trio of enemy fighters. Alice with Malice, the lead bomber, takes damage.

Later, another fighter attacks Charming Charlotte but her gunners blow the attacker from the sky.

Flak over the target. Charlotte takes a hit. Her bombs are inaccurate, but the others pound the target.

The missions were quick, 5 to 10 minutes each, and do not require a lot of record-keeping. I only tracked 3 stats per plane - Enemies Killed, Bomb Hits, and Damage. I managed to record each mission on a 3 x 5 card!

I am encouraged by my experiments. These rules show promise.