Planes Part 2: Jets

When I started painting jets for our Mustang derivative, called Phantoms if my memory serves me, I just had a blast painting.  I actually had a couple of projects for the jet age.  My ffirst effort was a hypothetical based on an air strike in Cuba during the Missile Crisis in 1962.  I painted up a lot of MiG's models 15 to 21.  I put them in Cuban markings.  The more I read about the crisis, the more I'd like to revisit this topic.  There are also more planes available--really nice models from Raiden miniatures I'd love to paint up for both the Navy and USAF.

Scotia F-86s painted as Navy FJ-3 Furys.  These might have done some of the ground atack missions as the Navy was still adding the A-4 Skyhawk to its inventory.

SDD Miniatures, now Stronghold Miniatures, makes some very sturdy jets, including some FG.1 and FG.2 Phantoms that served with the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy.  I love the RN color schemes for their Phantoms, designated F-4K, and I painted a couple of these together with Buccaneers in markings celebrating the 1977 Silver Jubilee.  Just for fun.  No projects planned.

Crappy photo with bad color of the F4K.  Loved the deep blue with the nose flash.  Withing two years the Royal Navy would retire all remaining carriers and all their Phantoms too. SDD Phantom FG.2.

My really big project however was for my Taiwan Straits game.  I painted large numbers of Taiwan and Chinese planes as well as some stray U.S. planes just in case.  Daveshoe built an Arleigh Burke class destroyer we could build a scenario around and we ran our game at our final Fife Enfilade way back when.

Navis Miniatures Su-27.  The Chinese bought a fair number of the export model Flanker SK.  Nasty stuff.

The J-8 is a highly modified MiG 21.  This Navis miniature represents the same variant that collided with the Orion intelligence plane in 2001 near Hainan. 

Q-5 Fantan attack plane is modeled on an airframe at least thirty years old. Navis miniatures shot down in droves in our Enfilade game.

I still have piles of unpainted aircraft.  Many, many planes for the Spanish Civil War and a few odds and ends.  I have a bout a dozen unpainted jets-Super Etendards for the Falklands, some F-100 Super Sabers for Cuba, and some stray MiGs.  I see some of these being painted in the next twelve months.  Painting airplanes are a nice change of pace from figures.

GHQ Super Cobras

Navis Ching-Kuo indigenous fighters, built for the defense of Taiwan

  Mirage 2000 in Republic of China Colors

Tomcats.  When things get too nasty always call your local F-14 hotline.  My photo assistant, Malcom, helps with posing and lighting. He's easily distracted.

F-18A's by C in C. Much less fiddly than their F-14.  Big and clean

Planes: Part 1: Fleet Arm-Operation Goodwood

Scotia Firefly 1's

Grumman Hellcats in FAA colors.  Seems weird doesn't it.

Scotia Corsairs flying cover for the bombers

Scotia Wildcats masquerading as FAA Martlet IV's

After my long spiel on searching for new aircraft rules it was only right to share some of my own minis.  As I mentioned in my previous post, painted up quite a few figures for the operation against the German battleship Tirpitz at Altafjord in Norway.  The Royal Navy launched a series of furious air attacks against this menace called Goodwood 1-IV.

Bringing an Old Project Back to Life

Ten years ago I played a lot of air miniatures.  Our rules was Avalon Hill's Mustangs, a board game.  Unlike many board games, they weren't overly technical, in which players captured two minutes of real time in four hours of play.  They were more like a chess match in which players planned their maneuvers ahead of time to set up their best shot.    Though I was almost notoriously bad at Mustangs, I enjoyed planning for projects and all the fun that went into them.

They were fun and interesting and for Paul Hannah, Dave Schueler, Phil Bardsley and a few others, they became what we did.  I painted up some random planes and developed a few projects that weren't random at all. My biggest projects were the 45+ planes I painted up for a jet version of Mustangs.  Based on an encounter in the Taiwan Straits between elements of the Taiwan Self Defense Force, the Peoples Liberation Air Force and elements of the U.S. Navy, I put together a sizable number of planes for an Enfilade game.

My second big air project was a WWII game based on the effort to sink the Tirpitz at anchor in Norway.  Based on a Royal Navy operation, the Brits actually flew a great many American naval fighters in Fleet Air Arm colors.  So I painted about 36 planes in FAA Duck Egg Green camouflage, about two thirds of them included Hellcats, Martlets, and Corsairs to fly against German Me-109's and Focke Wolfes.  It was an interesting game and I enjoyed it a great deal.

It's been six or seven years since I last pulled my planes out their tubs in the garage.  Paul Hannah was our spiritual leader, and he's moved on to DBA.  Paul and Daveshoe are great friends to have because they are superb at seeing the possibilities in a project. Dave is the best scenario designer I've ever known because he is so good at providing choices to the players that will inevitably destroy them.  Paul is simply genius.  He brings energy and creativity to a genre and rules set that should inspire yawns, but Paul makes them new and fresh.  He did it with Mustangs and continues to do that with DBA.  When he took up DBA, however, Paul just walked away from the planes--mystery of mysteries.   Without Paul's leadership, and formidable collection of planes, the game just sort of died.  Sad, really.

Airplane games just sort of languished until a couple of years ago when Check Your 6 was published.  I've stayed away from CY6  for two reasons.  I've had lots of other irons in the fire and have been too busy to head down that road.  The rules, supplements and mats would be costly and a distraction from investments I've really wanted to make in the Hundred Years War and AWI.  My other reason is because CY6 seems to have attracted players with a certain intensity that I just don't share in air gaming.  I loved Mustangs because it was laid back, the experience was more important than winning, and it gave me an excuse to paint airplanes. 

Last weekend I broke down and tried Check Your 6-Jets.  When Chris Rivers offered to put on an Israeli/Syrian air combat, I jumped on it. At the Museum of Flight Daveshoe and I talked about the Wessex Rules for modern air combat he had, and this gave me an opportunity to compare the two.  The big stretch for me is that Chris's planes are all 1/600, and mine are 1/300.  In any case I looked forward to trying out one of the two sets of rules.

Arrived on Saturday morning ready to play, and we ran a four Syrian Su22 fighter bombers and four MiG-23's against two Israeli F-15A's and four F-4E's in fighter bomber mode.  Each side had the same objectives--destroy ground targets while protecting the ground attack planes.  It was fun.  Reminded me a bit of my experiences with Blue Max or even Wings of War in which the speed determines which maneuvers you can do.  The mechanics were easy, though it would take some playing to implant all of the choices in my memory.  The rules were fun, and I had a good time.

The outcome of the game isn't important (it rarely is with me,) but it turned out as you might expect.  F-15's had planes falling out of the sky all over the place.  I ran the Syrian bombers and I actually did do damage to the Israeli ground targets, but none of my planes returned to base to share the story with my comrades.  Of course, they were all dead, so, no matter.  The MiG's managed to plague the Phantoms, but the Eagles shot all of them down too. 

Due to the cost of all the goodies, I'll probably go with the Wessex AirWar: C21 rules.  I can use a standard mat without hexes and I can use my 1/300 planes with my Mustangs altitude sticks.  I downloaded the C21 rules from Wargames Vault including the data annex for less than fifteen bucks.  The base rules for CY6 Jets is $30, plus all the other stuff I'd need, so there is a practicality issue for me. That said, I may purchase a few 1/600 planes I can play with when we get together.  They are very cheap and easy to paint, though selection remains pretty limited at the present time.  Don't know quite what to do about my WW II planes though--I'll have to figure that out.

Wings of War before the Winds of E-Burg

Tomorrow I leave for Ellensburg and Central Washington University for eight days. It's the annual summer journalism activities and I really need to attend them. For half of the time I'll be focused on improving my meager understanding of the Adobe CS3 suite, and the other half I'll spend with my students attending what is called J-Camp. If it sounds like a drag, believe me it isn't. I attended last summer for the first time and it was incredibly helpful and fun.

I'm busy a lot of the time, but there is down time too. I'll get some reading in, and I'm bringing along my Replay Baseball game, so I hope to get some of that in too. It's going to be hot while I'm there--high 80's and 90's projected through the 9th. No painting, unfortunately, and probably no blog posts unless I am mindlessly bloviating about some trivial topic.

On Wednesday I made my way down to the cards and comics shop in Olympia to play Wings of War. I've certainly seen lots of folks with the planes and decks, and everybody seems to be having a good time when they are playing. Dale Mickel set up a game for Wednesday, so I drove down and had at it. First a word about the shop. What an amazing place. Lots of board games and RPG's, a few minis but no historicals except for the WoW planes. There was also tons of cards, collectibles and other stuff to look at-more than I had time for. I'll have to go back just for another looksee.

I'm not very good at air games. I admit it freely. I'm not a very good planner, and I'm just as likely to half-loop into a mountainside as I am to make a useful maneuver. In fact I have half-looped into a mountainside. (Ask any Air Pirate how Kevin puts out fires!!!) Wings of War is played with card sequences, and I think by the end of the night I was able to start figuring that out.

We played two games. In game one I ran a couple of Sopwith Camels, and teamed with Dale who ran a Snipe and a DH (we love to explode) 4. The two German players, Scott Murphy flying two DR 1's, and Jeff, flying two Fokker D VII's left Dale in the dust and headed immediately for me. My Italian Camel blew up rather quickly, and the second Camel was forced from the board with heavy damage-but it did survive. Dale eventually arrived with the cavalry only to find himself outnumbered. Surprisingly the DH 4 was the only Brit plane to make it off the board.

In the second game we each took one plane. I opted for a Spad XIII, which maneuvers a lot like a garbage truck. It's pretty fast and can take a lot of damage, but I managed to take more than a lot of damage falling out of the sky with all struts shot through and my top wing falling off. I did however manage to blow up Jeff's D VII first, which gave me a little satisfaction as my plane augured into No Man's Land. All in all it was a pretty fun night for my first time out. Good to make it down to Olympia too. The guys always make an effort to come up to Tacoma, and it's nice to be able to replay their effort.

I'll be back from Ellensburg on the 9th. I'll be heading back toward work the following week. Not every day and not all day, but I'll be getting started.