Great War - Air Action, North Sea

2/18/2017 was the date of Day Con, the first issue of what we hope will become an annual staple of the Dayton, Ohio gaming calendar. As part of the days events, I provided a Wings of Glory game titled "Clash over the North Sea". The game features two opposing combat patrols - one from the British Royal Air Force (formerly the Royal Naval Air Service) and the other from the German Imperial Navy's Marine-Fliegerabteilung.  The two forces - while on different missions - encounter each other over the North Sea and engage in combat. 

RAF naval Anti-Zeppelin patrol

• Felixstowe F.2A - "BN"
• 4 x DH-4

• Cotton/Betts
• Atkey
• RNAS "BI" x 2

Marine-Fliegerabteilung coastal approach patrol

•  Hansa-Brandenburg W.29 two seater float plane
•  Hansa-Brandenburg W.12  two seater float plane
•  Hansa-Brandenburg W.12 two seater float plane
•  Hansa-Brandenburg KDW float plane fighter
•  Hansa-Brandenburg KDW float plane fighter
• Friedrichshafen FF.49t wo seater float plane

Our Intrepid British players

The German players

Many of the models are products from Shapeways - for example, the entire German force in this game is represented with 1/144 models from Shapeways. You can see details on my experience getting the Felixstowe ready for action here  and on other posts throughout the blog. Bases for these planes came from The Aerodrome.  

The DH.4 are all stock Wings of War / Wings of Glory kits.

DH.4 engage the W.12 and KDW...

Scott's DH.4 take the left while Sean pilots the Felixstowe up the center.

Scott and Keith engage head to head.

The Felixstowe reaches the center of the battle

All the planes occupying a nice small space. The DH.4 in lower right have been mauled taking heavy fire and collision damage. 

Collisions! The KDW collides with the Felixstowe. The W.12 collide with each other! 

Keith did a good job keeping his planes together and fighting them effectively.

Even more collisions! That poor Felixstowe was a plane magnet in this game.

The Felixstowe is on fire! Remarkably, no planes have yet been destroyed...but it would not last.

Down goes the W>29, the FF.49, a W.12 and a DH.4...

...AND the Felixstowe.  The game falls apart. The F2A has burned up. A pair of DH.4 was destroyed. The FF.49, W.12 and W.29 fell into the sea.

At game end the Imperial Navy had scored a solid victory, still having three - relatively intact - planes on the table. The damage cards were unkind to the British. The Felixstowe drew three fire cards in succession sealing it's fate. A DH.4 drew the combination of a Fire card, followed by no left turn, no right turn and engine damage. Fortunately, it took enough damage we didn't have to worry about how to resolve the fire/illegal maneuvers that would have resulted from that mess.

A fun game - with the number of planes, I used double damage decks for both the A, B and C decks.