Last Saturday my group gathered at my place to test a Malta Air Raids cenario, that we may possibly play in Prague 2015.
The specific and detailed mission goals will be posted later on; for now the briefing is: It is September 1940 and The Italian team equipped with Ju 87 escorted by 2 Falcos is going to bomb Malta's specific targets (direct hit/non direct hit points respectively): The airfield (4/2 points), the harbour (6/3 points) or the city (1 point).
We used specific points on the official mats which made things easy (no target cards needed).
1 Ju 87 (Pichiatello!)was piloted by me (!) escorted by Darek and Andrzej R. Opposing force was composed of the famous Faith, Hope and Charity Gladiators (Sławek plus two kids of our Flight: Filip and Wiktor). The defenders had two AA gunsto place and they positioned them freely in the middle of the map...
The whole thing started...
Buton the very first encounter one of my escorts (Andrzej R.) exploded in the air (he took an XP token - the FIRST one in the game!).
Being chased by one of the Gladiators, my rear gunner managed to send down one of the defenders! 1 kill and 2 points for me
I turned to the left to hit the harbour and started a vertical divbombing run...
I released the bombload pefectly on the target scoring a direct hit (6 team points, 2 individual points), but a well planned Anti-A fire got me! D: 18 - Ouch...
On my way to the target I noticed that one of my escorts caught fire, but right on time managed to shoot at a Gladiator, sending it down in flames...
...and escaped to safety...
Right after that another Italian Ju 87 (my next plane) appeared and this time I decided to attack the AA gun nest, that would give the Italian team desperately needed 5 points for the destruction of the guns...and I scored that!
We wanted to give some prizes to the young ones for their involvement, so even they had not really scored, Filip got a book on planes and Wiktor a WWI Spielberg movie
The final score is down here: The Italian team won 15:10 this time after having a great gaming time and me the "Pichiatello Bomber" scored 3 individual points .
Raising young pilots is a lot of fun. Wiktor, Andrzej R.'s son proved to be a capable Gladiator pilot
It occured to us we had invented and tested a playable Malta scenario that may be played well by 6-8 players with easy to grasp rules of bomber waves and targets. Victory Points were really balanced and some tactical decisions were to be made by both teams.
Thanks for watching,
Andy.
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