AAR - Bombs Away- The Prequel Session 2 Origins 2011

[The Cowman]

OK... so this brings us to the second session of the WWI "Bombs Away" event, and this time we managed to gather up twelve players. This of course required that we add a few planes to the scenario, and a few chairs around the table.

The Entente attackers were given two bombers and four escorts, while the Central powers had six defending aircraft to cover the three possible factory targets. For the Entente to win they would have to destroy two targets. Each of their two-seaters carried only two bombs.

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On the left side of the table we find our Entente pilots. The gentleman in the red Ohio State Buckeye shirt is redcoon2 (http://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/member.php?1454-redcoon2)from the Cincinnati flight. The other five players were all new to the game. The two-seaters ended up going to the red-bearded gentleman and the young man in the pirate shirt at the end of the table.

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Our Central Powers players chose the right side of the table. As you can see, three of our players from the first session rejoined to play in this session, and we added three more players to even out the sides. The aircraft choices from a Fokker DVII all the way down to a Pfalz DIII.a.

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Two of our Central Powers players included the lovely Canadian Sheryl Nantus (http://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/member.php?2508-Sheryl-Nantus)from the PA squadron, and also Timothy Pray (http://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/member.php?486-Timothy-Pray) from the Columbus flight sitting to her right. I did manage to get Sheryl to sell me an autographed copy of her new Steam-punk Romance Novel, but she forgot to bring me cookies... (but I digress... as usual...)
:hmm:

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So our Entente forces begin their run, with Mr. Rickenbacker's Spad experiencing some control problems similar to what was seen in the first session. It must have been something about this particular game table. <wink> The Central Powers aircraft spread themselves out nicely and prepare for the hunt...


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Meanwhile the Entente bombers and their escorts appear to be headed for the southern most target... or is it a well planned ruse???

(Continued)

[The Cowman]

Our mission continues on. There was definitely a bit of aerial dancing going on during this particular mission, and Mr. Rickenbacker did eventually work out his control problems and get back into the fight. ;)

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I am not completely sure what happened here, but from the look on Sheryl's face, I believe she was contemplating some sort of revenge for a wrong done to her or her aircraft...

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Meanwhile, Timothy seems to have been distracted by a young lady in a chain-mail bikini... or something similar going by in the miniatures hall...

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Oh right... we were discussing the mission here... sorry! As you can see in this shot, our lead bomber narrowly avoids a collision with an Enemy Albatross... I am thinking that the rear gunner go a bit shook up by that particular bank... (and no we were not suing collision rules... thank goodness!)

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Our young pirate bomber pilot does finally manage to make it to a target, and unload a bomb on it. The bomb unfortunately misses, and is soon followed down by bits of flaming bomber as he manages to pull the explosion card while directly over the target. (No score for Kamikaze runs sorry!)


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As you can see in this point of view, our second Entente bomber has held back a bit and is now preparing to make his own run...

OK... so at this point in the mission, things must have gotten chaotic... or maybe it was the fact that it was getting late on Wednesday night and I had been awake for almost forty hours at that point. My point here is that I have no more pictures from this mission. (Sorry....) I can tell you that our second bomber did indeed make it to a target and manage to damage it, while totally missing with his second bomb, thus ending the scenario with a win for Central Powers.

It was discovered later that the targets the Entente had been attempting to destroy were not ammunition factories as they had originally been told, but were in fact pickle and sauerkraut factories... so all was not lost after all...

And so ended Wednesday night... allowing this tired Event Organizer to finally get a few hours sleep in a very comfortable Hotel bed.

Watch for our heroes to return again soon in our next exciting AAR entitled "Honey... The Cat's Got a Furball Again!!"

[Flying Officer Kyte]

thanks Ken. The comments really make this set of pictures come to life.
Rob.

[Albert Ross]

Nice work! How did you make those 3d targets?

[The Cowman]

I was wondering if someone would ask... I will try to get some close up pics of them when I get back from house sitting and put them up in the hobby Forum. The minis are from JR miniature's 1/285th scale range... they are inexpensive, and pretty rough... but sturdy and fit the bill for what I was looking for. CappyTom and I mostly threw those together at the last minute the night before the Con started. Tom did most of the painting while I was working on another project; the terrible color choices are mine (I have no sense of color at all) http://www.jrminiatures.net/1-285europeanbuildings.aspx (http://www.jrminiatures.net/1-285europeanbuildings.aspx)

[Albert Ross]

Well they are much more impressive than the flat card with a red dot in the middle! I used houses/hotels from various Monopoly sets for mine (you can pick them up for pennies at yard sales and I'm a real cheapskate); I stuck them on a piece of foam the same dimensions as the official game card and painted them off white with brown or gray roofs. Cut up with a Dremel tool they make pretty convincing ruins too..... for the AA Machine Gun cards I used 6mm figures from Heroics and Ros mounted in a similar fashion