The Hunter(s) and the Hunted Part 3

[Biggles downunder]

Well, our small group (myself, Baxter, Windy Jack & Mark) have been zapping Zeps for 3 Tuesday nights now, with a brief interruption when our state went into temporary lock-down after another COVID cluster reared it's ugly head.

We have been using these sessions to play-test yet another iteration of our house rules set - now up to version 7.

Very early on in our gaming we decided that, without some sort of altitude and set firing arcs for the Zeppelin, the sky was decidedly hostile for attacking aircraft - particularly in head-on or front beam attacks.

Our first attempt to mitigate this was to implement a dice roll by the Zep driver to decide which gun was able to fire at the attacker. This was workable but meant that the pilots of the attacking aircraft had no control at all and the Zeppelin pilot was often frustrated by a dice-roll that resulted in no firing taking place. Debriefing after this game resulted in me doing some thinking and mucking around with altitude but, in a way that didn't seriously hamper the flow of the game (important to us as a group).

For last night's game, I proposed that the Zeppelin maintain the same altitude throughout the game and that aircraft could fly at one of 3 altitude bands - below the Zeppelin, level with the Zeppelin and above the Zeppelin. Of course we had to come up with a reasonably logical and sensible way of changing altitude without breaking any existing rules mechanisms.

Here is the relevant extract from our current rules set:

In this simplified rules set, an aircraft can fly at one of 3 levels relative to the zeppelin – above the zeppelin, level with the zeppelin or below the zeppelin.

All aircraft begin below the zeppelin.

To increase altitude by one level, the aircraft must play the following sequence of 3 cards: the climb card (short red), a straight, any other non-steep card.

To decrease altitude by one level, the aircraft plays the following sequence of three cards: the dive card (long red) plus 2 non-steep cards.

Each aircraft must display the appropriate level chit both on the base of the aircraft and on its cockpit.

Chits:



Altitude of aircraft and zeppelins will need to be taken into account when dealing with collisions between aircraft and collisions between aircraft and zeppelins. Collisions will only occur when the two aircraft and/or zeppelin are flying at the same altitude.

Altitude will also affect ‘line of site’ when firing is resolved. Any aircraft at ‘level’ will block the line of site when the attacker is above, and the target is below and also when the attacker is below, and the target is above. If all aircraft and zeppelin are at the same altitude the normal line of site rules apply.


I'll upload a series of photos from our game last night with some annotations to illustrate what happened.

If anyone is interested I'll also upload the rules and support materials I developed to the files section.

[Biggles downunder]

After reading my latest Osprey acquisition (Zeppelin vs British Home Defence) I was inspired to base the night's events on zeppelin vs DH.4 for 2 reasons: I was interested to see the results with 2-seaters and the table at the back of that volume credited Cadbury & Leckie with the destruction of L.70 on 5/8/18. As well as this there was a great graphic portraying this action in the same book - done and dusted!!

So the gaming table was set up with 3 DH.4s versus L.11.



As you can see, Cadbury & Leckie have already climbed above the Zep, The 50th Squadron DH.4 is below the Zep and Clayburn has climbed to the same level as the Zep. All of them obviously aiming to attack from the rear to avoid the front guns that have been so punishing in past games!



While this is happening, the Zep turns to starboard:



Which provides an opportunity for Cadbury to rapidly close and open up with incendiary ammunition (we had decided that all 3 aircarft would be carrying incendiary ammunition) and then pass over the top of the Zep - note the blue chit on the base.





On the way over, Leckie let loose with a burst and simultaneously Clayburn, who had also climbed above engaged.



The result was not good for the Zep:



And so the fight raged on, mainly around the rear of the Zep which was madly twisting and turning to enable more guns to be brought to bear, but to no avail:







The Zep crew were, by now, starting to worry just a tad!


It was just a matter of time and...



...the Zeppelin slowly fell from the sky with 12 out of the 16 gas cells ruptured and burning furiously.

[Windy Jack]

Thanks for all the work on the explanation and AAR, Wayne.

[flash]

Great job Wayne & co, good to see some gaming going on when allowed, especially with a Zep

[BodeGier]

Nice Modell of a Zep. Great Game.