Air Combat in the Pacific

[Nathaniel Weber]

I am building up my air forces for use with Check Your Six. My first major project in 1/600 will be the south Pacific, using the CY6 scenario book Road to Rabaul. Here is the first batch of planes done.

Link to my blog with more pics
http://thedogsbrush.blogspot.com/2015/11/check-your-six.html

Sample pics

[kyoteblue]

Beautiful work !!!!!

[Anon User]

They look great Nat. WW2 Pacific war air combat has always been on my list to do, specifically Midway-type carrier force on carrier force.

Would Check Your Six be suitable rules for these types of scenarios?

Cheers

Stuart

[Nathaniel Weber]

Thanks!

Stuart/Old Faithful: Somebody on the Check Your 6 yahoo group did a whole big scenario pack for Midway, with tons of scenarios and more advanced rules for hitting ships with dive bomber/torpedo attacks. I think he did a scenario for practically every air-to-air encounter of that battle. I would suggest you join the yahoo group and find that scenario pack to download.  The main rules themselves have generic surface attack rules, with scenario packs featuring more detailed rules.  For instance, the Road to Rabaul book has rules for B-25s skip bombing.

In my opinion, CY6 is the best air combat rules set out there. It balances realism with playability quite well. I’ve found that once you understand the rules and have some experience playing, a single player can easily run a dozen fighter aircraft. The only grumbles I have with the rules are how it rates a few aircraft (the P-47 is soooo tough in the game, which may be historical but man it hurts when you’re the German player!) and how some of the scenario packs rate pilots. I think the authors are sometimes a bit too generous giving out the Veteran and Ace ratings to certain pilots and units and not to others. (In the game, you have Green, Skilled, Veteran, and Ace pilots. Veterans and aces are lethal killers in the game.)  In 20 years of gaming, my best gaming experience was playing one of the 8 or 9 game scenarios from the Breaking the Luftwaffe book (B-17s and escorts versus German fighters).

[Just Jack]

Nathaniel,

I’ve always been interested in Check Your 6!  But I’ve heard you have to pre-plot movement, and I’m a solo player.  Do you think it’s possible to play them solo?

V/R,
Jack

[Nathaniel Weber]

Jack: They would be meh solo. Movement is plotted in secret; you could fudge that and simply decide your move when its your planes’ turns to move, but that would take away some of the fun of the game as well as some of the game’s built-in advantages for superior pilots. I don’t know of any, but I am sure there are other, better rules out there for solo play.

You could do unescorted bomber missions without plotting, though, which would be a good way to learn the rules. Put a half dozen bombers on the board, who have to move with a constant facing, speed, and altitude, and attack them with 2 or 3 fighters which you control as normal. No need to mess with plotting, then.

[Just Jack]

Nathaniel,

Thanks man, that’s what I figured.

I like Bag the Hun, and it works well solo.  I only asked because I’ve seen quite a few folks that are fans of CY6.

V/R,
Jack

[Nathaniel Weber]

I’ve heard of people using a basic decision generator. Set a NPC plane as “aggressive” or “cautious” and then try to imagine the three most likely things the plane could do in a situation, and roll a D6 to randomly choose one. But that doesn’t really satisfy, for me at least. It is the weakness of CY6.  Pretty much all the other games I play are solo friendly.

I read Bag the Hun but have not played it. Some of the “bonus move” and other stuff in the game did not appeal to me; the “results” driven design of that game were not to my taste.  CY6 is a process-driven game and you get a lot of the flavor of diving, climbing, position, etc. Also strange, since I generally prefer results driven design rather than process driven.

Now that I think about it, CY6 is really different than most games I like!

[Just Jack]

Yeah, I see CY6 is popular and I like the idea, but don’t figure I can pull it off in a fun way.  And I know what you mean about Bag the Hun, but it doesn’t bother me; we all have our own tolerances for such things in rules.  The heart wants what the heart wants 😉

V/R,
Jack

[Anonymous]

Nice planes!  Good pictures.

 

I added to my PTO collection via EvilBay recently and have been trying to find time for air war games.

 

I wish Air War C21/Wessex games had WW2 rules set (I have their WW1 and post WW2) but Wings AT (not OF) War has some B.O.B. And 1943-1944 ETO rules.p which I might try.

[6mmwargaming]

Wow nice painting.

Glenn, I think there was a WW2 C21 set written, just never released.

My site https://wargaming.info/6mm/

[zippyfusenet]

So, those are 1/600 models? When I first saw them in your B-25 game thread I took them for 1/300. Very nice work, especially the canopy frames and ailerons.

You'll shoot your eye out, kid!

[darthfozzywig]

Those look great!

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