Crisis 2006

Last weekend we attended with the 'Schild and Vriend Demo Team' they annual Crisis convention in Antwerp, hosted by Tin Soldiers of Antwerp.

As usual, this convention is the highlight of the year for wargamers in the Low Countries and surroundings. The large hall was filled with traders and clubs. The SnV participation game was using a hexified version of the Wings of War boardgame. Dogfights in WW1 have a certain romantic feel, and we had quite some succes attracting players for short 10-15 minutes duels in the air.

Anyway, just go and see the pictures at http://www.tsoa.be/ .

Wings of War hex modifications

These are the basic modifications we used for our hex based version of Wings of War. Obviously, they lack the principal item -- the hex based cards themselves. This is for two reasons:

• The cards for the small tables are not done yet
• I'm not sure whether I can publish these cards, copyright wise -- but I'll check.

For now, here's the few modifications we used:

Movement

Movement is done using the new hex based maneuver cards. There are two sets of cards:

• A version for small tables (or tables with large hexes)
• A version for bigger tables

The two versions differ in the single fact that the small table cards have had the first hex of all movement arrows removed, so in a pinch the bigger table version can be used for a smaller table by ignoring the first red (or blue in the case of a Split S) hex.

Planes are always oriented towards hex sides, not vertices.

Firing range

Short range is 3 hexes, long range is 6 hexes.

Firing arc

The firing arc is found by drawing two lines from the center of the hex out through the vertices left and right of the hex side towards which the plane is facing. Hexes bisected by this line count as part of the firing arc.

The firing arc for rear gunners is the same from the rear of the hex, but excluding the hexes directly behind the plane.

__Update__: the up to date version of these rules now live on the main site [here](http://www.nirya.be/snv/rules/wings_of_war_hexified_1.html)

Dogfight over Flanders

We had another "Schild & Vriend Revivial Game" this month, this time organized by Bart Vetters, and hosted as usual at Phil's Gaming Attic. Again, Eddy Sterckx was so kind to provide us with a gaming report:

Wings of War at Phil's place

Last night, at what is already becoming a fine tradition, we had another game in Phil's attic.

Bart had adapted the Wings of War (WWI dogfighting) system to work on hexes and we were ready to try it out in a series of dogfights : Tommies versus Jerries. As the dogfights throughout the night unfolded it would mostly come down to 1-1 fights between a slow moving, highly maneuverable versus a fast moving, slow turning plane.

The system basically is about guessing where your opponent will be next turn, picking the right three maneuver cards and hope you can get a shot in. Damage done can go all the way from a tiny hole in the wing canvas (0 points damage) to a bullet through the pilot's head (game over)

The first round immediately taught us the important lesson that given the size-constraints of the terrain you better plan ahead ... carefully ... very carefully. Over the evening more planes were lost due to flying “out of bounds” then to enemy fire. This especially proved to be a disadvantage for the faster planes who were often reduced to: fly straight ahead - Immelmann - fly straight ahead in the other direction kind of tactics. A brilliant suggestion to reduce the distance flown by one hex managed to remedy this in one stroke: the third round felt correct with real dogfights going on across the boards. I think that everyone agreed that this single correction made the system 99% playable as is, no further tinkering required, though a bigger board and missions (photographing / bombing / strafing) would add to the variety.

Now as to the question of which plane is better : the slow movers / hard turners or the fast movers / slow turners opinion is still divided, we'll probably need another game-night like this to really get to grips with the system. So as Frank would say : Ze Red Baron vill fly again !