Played some more Aeronautica at the weekend, and it was lots of fun. Bob came up with a simple scenario based on an event in WWII’s Pacific campaign. A lone, up-gunned Marauder bomber has to get the length of a 6 foot table, and 3 Ork Fightas have to stop it. It’s a variation on a scenario from the book.
We ended up playing this 5 times as it was nice and fast, but still left a few tactical options to consider. Honours were fairly even, but Bob had the upper hand in the end. The first pics show me closing in on Bob’s Marauder in the first game, firing one shot as I passed and then attempting to close up form behind. The second shot is me turning to pursue and the third is Bob being wriggly. Boy, he’s an erratic flyer. It’s a long way to get down the whole board (the Marauder has a max speed of 3 in this scenario), but he managed to escape with a single wound left.
My attempts at escaping went like this:
- Flew really high and was destroyed before I got half way 😦
- Flew in at minimum height. Confused the Orks who were waiting for me to be high again, and got away easily.
- Tried to copy Bob’s erratic climb and dive mix and got away again with some scratches, but convincingly.
- Final attempt to perfect the jink and dodge method, and nearly made it. With my nose almost touching freedom, Bob had one last shot to get me before I escaped and with this final dice destroyed the Marauder. I could have been a contender.
This final shot is me flying the Marauder, and managing to end up with all 4 planes on the back of a blister card (on a 6×4 table). Lucky for me this is my second run and I’m miles below them 🙂
All told a jolly little scenario and very simple. Bob did point out one oddity in the rules that we might House Rule, but I’ve not read them all yet and am loathe to change things before I have a proper go through the lot. I’m sure we’ll be playing it again though.
Quirkworthy 
Yeah, you were supposed to fly it home not drive it, you sneeky bugger!!!
Also in regards to my erratic flying, the way I figure it, if I don’t know what I’m gonna do next you’ve no chance!!! 😉
Yeah, altitude 1 did work rather well 🙂
Also if anyone is interested here is a link to the inspiration for the scenario:
Hyperbole anyone?
They don’t half overdo the narration on these things. Is it just me or is there a whole load of interesting stuff they could have said but didn’t cos they were too busy telling us things like 17 to 1 odds are “unimaginable”?
As someone said to me recently, those guys had such big balls that they had to build the planes that big just to fit em in!!!
Funny thing is: AI is to some degrees behind technological evolution though it is a game with future figthers ;).
The russian Su-37 and the european Typhoon II Upgr.2 will probably redefine the tactics of air combat with their vector thrusters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLoodzEsrWk
Yeah, but being behind the curve of 21st century combat fits in with the rest of the style. The tanks are barely post WWII and a Rhino is an M113 with skulls on.
The Sukhoi looks really clever, but I wonder how different the maneuverability is to something like the Harrier, whose vectored engines supposedly allow greatly enhanced dogfighting ability. For example, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectoring_nozzles
And the Harrier is a late 60s design 🙂
The maneuvers you see are even possible with Mach speed and they don´t guzzle fuel like the Harrier ;). A Harrier flies like a mixture between helicopter and slow jet, a Sukhoi and Typhoon fly more like space fighters when in combat action. i.e. lots of zero-G maneuvers and flipping and skidding. Even the JSF is slow compared to those two other fighters
Of course, but they’ve had another 50 years to develop the idea 🙂
It would be fun to try and do a game which allowed for all these wacky moves. Alternatively we could just wait to see what happens when the US invades Iran 😛