Wings Over Sinai

After Thursday's game of X-Wing I realised that I hadn't really had my WW1 planes out for a while, so this afternoon I set up a game of 'Spandau and Lewis'. I played the 'Guilfoyle, Wackett and Turner' scenario I ran a few years ago, which depicts Australia's first ever air-combat on 11th November 1916. The Germans have two Fokker EIIIs, whilst the Australians have a Martinsyde G100 and a Be2c with an improvised gun-mount.

Here are the Australians. The win if they can shoot down at least one of the German aircraft before the end of the game.

The Germans. They win by exiting one of their planes off the Australian board edge, and also shooting down at least one Australian aircraft.

Both sides closed quickly. All of the aircraft have forward-firing guns, except the Be2c which can only fire to the sides and rear. The first pass saw a few bullet-holes in planes, but nothing serious.

However the first time the BE2c fires the Germans suffer a turn of surprise which affects their initiative - a BE2 that shoots back is an unexpected event. The Germans failed to turn back into the fight, whilst the Australians lined themselves up for a second shot.

Guilfoyle, in the Martinsyde raked an EIII, and it went down, streaming smoke and flames.

This was an immediate win for the AFC.

I set the game up again.

This time the Germans went for a different strategy, sending their novice pilot straight for the Australian board-edge, whilst hoping that the other plane could take out one of the Australians before the end.

A few shots were exchanged, which left the fighting EIII slightly damaged.

The Martinsyde sped after the EIII, hoping to get in a nice tail shot before it left the board, but it was too late.

The planes were all spread out now. The BE2 was avoiding contact with the Germans, whilst the Martinsyde turned back towards them. Meanwhile the German pilot was making heavy weather of getting back into the action.

As the clocked ticked down, the EIII pilot pulled off a sharp turn that saw him and the Martinsyde exchange long-range shots as they closed on each other.

The Martynside failed to turn inside the EIII, whilst the EIII came in hard and close on the Australian. A burst from its guns saw canvas ripped away from the Martinsyde's wings. But this was the last turn; the two sides broke off, and the game ended in a draw.

This is a tough one for the Germans (who may be Turks), who have to be aggressive but who can lose the game to a single lucky shot. Even if the Australians lose a plane, the Germans still have to get one of theirs off the table to complete the victory. On the plus side, their aircraft do have a slight edge in quality, although not by much.