Saturday, December 31, 2016

Wings Of War: Bombing with Autopilot

This was basically a simple scenario where a British Airco DH.4 light bomber escorted by a Sopwith Camel scout would bomb a German infantry reserve camp protected by two Fokker D.VII scouts.

The British entered in the centre of their short board edge. The camp was placed one foot in from the centre of the German short board edge and the German scouts each rolled to determine if they entered at the right corner, centre or left corner of their short board edge.

We use the Wing Of War WW1 (now Wings Of Glory) rules.

The scenario was made interesting, when we chose to fly one D.VII each and let the British fly on the "autopilot" rules written by Herkybird. These rules are simple to use and surprisingly effective although they lack some features such as tailing which we added.

To determine what the "autopilot" plane does, use a combination of
a) the direction of the nearest threat (using the clock shown)
b) the distance to the nearest threat
c) the attitude of the nearest threat
d) a D6 die roll

For bombers even the direction and distance to the target is important.

Unfortunately there were no rules for tailing, so we added our own.
The DH.4 never made it to the target, it was shot down before it could get there.
We replaced the original target card with a camp of tents using Irregular Miniatures' 2mm models.

The result was a near run thing, which surprised us. The autopilot DH.4 was shot down, but it did so much damage to one D.VII that it limped off the table with one damage point remaining. The other D.VII and the autopilot Camel fought a duel which was just won by the D.VII. Fun rules, we will try them again.