Moderators – this is an After Action Report for the first WWII battle at Origins. If this is the wrong forum please move it to the correct one.
EDIT - I've tried to post the photos in order, but for some reason I can't post the last two photos in this post to their correct location, so they appear at the end of my post instead of the body of this AAR. I'm afraid you'll just have to bear with me on this. One of them (the one with me down in flames) should follow the comment "As I suspected, this wasn’t one of my brighter ideas." The other is a photo of me getting back in the fight.
This is my first post covering some of the action at Origins this past week/weekend (6/13 – 6/17). This was the first battle I was involved in at Origins. My intention was to try and chronicle each battle is was involved in on a turn-by-turn basis. I did pretty well with this on a couple of games, but other battles had too much going on or too many people around the table for me to do a very good job at this. A couple of times I just got too caught up in what was going on and then realized that I had missed taking photos.
However, on this battle I did manage to do a pretty good job of keeping track and recording what was going on. Note - this AAR pretty much follows my experience in the scenario - obviously there was plenty of action across the map, but this is from my point of view piloting my aircraft. So, without further ado, here’s my AAR on WW2 Jungle Furball.
I report to the aerodrome at 14:54 hours on Wednesday, Jun 13rh, 2018. I’m taken to the mission briefing, and view the map of where I will be assigned to a group making a fighter sweep over one of the endless and nameless islands in the south Pacific.
This scenario pitted Australian Air Force Spitfires (deceptively painted with British Roundels) versus Japanese Zeros. This is the first WWII battle at Origins, and – for the record - only my 8th game ever as a player.
Each side started at one side of the map, and began racing toward the other. It took 5 cards to get to where we are here.
At this point I decided I better come up with a more creative maneuver than just going straight. Looking at the nearest Zero I was coming in at an angle. I decided to do a wide sideslip to the right. My thought was to hopefully then make a left turn and hopefully catch him from the side. If I guessed wrong the slip might swing me wide enough to be able to escape and try something else.
It worked. He kept coming and I turned into him. I got off a long range shot with unknown effects.
I missed a photo here, but I made a slow left turn and got another shot; then (in this photo) another slow turn left – only for him to pull an Immelmann, and on the next card (I had played a stall) we wind up on top of each other. No shot.
I had seen the Zero in the left side of the photo coming earlier, and had plotted a slow straight, hoping he’d fly into my guns. It didn’t quite work – he had a shot on me, and I didn’t have one. Took a 3 damage, and rudder damage of no right turn. However, the Zero on the right had pulled an Immelmann and flew right into his teammate. He did wind up under my guns, and I got in a shot.
So far it’s gone well. Looking at the map as the battle progressed I had guessed right – or, at least, not wrong – on every card so far. It turned out on this card I had guessed right yet again, and had a slow left plotted. My opponent also turned left, and I was turning into his six. Close range, and I must have done well, because he winced when he looked at one of his chit draws. However, I was also having a tense moment at this point.
It’s well known that the Zero could turn incredibly fast, and historically they could out turn just about any plane in the world at this stage of the war. My next card was a slow left, so I was really concerned this wasn’t going to work out so well. However, I figured even if he did out turn me it would take a couple of cards to happen. I needed to get turned back around, and I didn’t want to straighten out and then do an Immelmann, so I decided to plot yet another slow left. This would get me back in the right direction, and I figured I would just try to deal with whatever happened at that point.
We both went slow left. I maintained my great firing position, so either everything I’ve ever read about the A6M is wrong, or the cards for the Zero are not completely accurate (After the battle I spoke with Peter Landry and he confirmed that its well-known in the game that the cards for the Zero do not reflect their historical agility in turns. He told me someone had created homebrew cards that more accurately modeled the Zero’s agility, and that with those an A6M would indeed have been able to easily turn inside of me). I fired again – and he went down on damage points. My first victory of the convention!
Down in flames.
I’m continuing to turn left. At this point a guy came in late to the game so there’s a Zero coming in from straight in front of me just outside of the photo. It was decided to do a total restart of the scenario to accommodate him.
We started closer to each other this time and closed rapidly. It worked once, so I decided to try it again. Wide slip to the right, and hopefully catch him on my left, and make a slow left turn into him. A great plan, but…
…unfortunately, he had the same plan, and made a wide slip to his left. Right on top of each other, and we exchange fire at point-blank range.
I missed a couple of photos here. To summarize, I had made a slow left after the wide slip, and he made a wide right turn. I played a fast left turn, and then a fast straight. I don’t recall his moves, but at this point we’re where you see us here.
I made an Immelmann, and he made a turn into me.
He continued to turn as I kept coming. Both of us had short range shots heading into the merge.
My second straight, and we’re tail-to-tail. This is my second consecutive fast straight, and I have an Immelmann up as my next maneuver.
He also played an Immelmann and we are again head to head. Fortunately my guns are better than his, and I have my second kill of the match. His plane is off to the edge because he started to pull it off the map before I Had the photo. I didn’t move it back because I figured everybody would see the plane down and get the idea even if it wasn’t exactly where it was supposed to be. You’ll note that there is another Zero coming right at me from the other side of the map. Do I engage – or evade?
Engage it is.
This is probably not a really good idea. I am pretty shot up at this point, but I wasn’t convinced I could get away from him, so might as well charge the guns.
As I suspected, this wasn’t one of my brighter ideas.
Back in the fight.
And the battle ends due to time.
I thought I had flown well in this battle, and really felt I was making good decisions on my card plays. I was a little disappointed to end the game getting shot down. I wanted to make a good showing at this convention, and even though I got two kills it was a bit of a downer to get shot down at the end. I had done so well in the first two-thirds or so of the battle, and would probably have finished first without getting splashed.
As it turned out, I did better than I had thought. It turned out I had done some serious damage to a couple of planes I had shot but not shot down. That turned out to be good enough to finish tied for first.
1st Place (tie) – 41 points.
It’s been about 9 months since my last game. It was so great to get to play again, and a good start to what I hope will be a fun 5 days of gaming and flying.
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