More Balloon Busting

[CrashCraig]

Wrong Way and Baltic Bob missed the Gritty Goblin balloon game so when we got together at the Lastner Meadows airfield (Bob’s house) we repeated the same balloon scenario. We all picked our favorite aircraft and not necessary contemporary with each other. Wrong Way was flying Kissenberth’s German-marked Camel, Baltic was flying a Lithuanian Halberstadt CL.II two-seater and I was in a Lafayette Escadrille Nieuport 17.

Wrong Way is defending the Drachen balloon with the help of two B-firing machine gun trucks. The balloon takes 12 turns to safely land and avoid further attacks. Other factors include Boom card damage equal to half of the original plane’s damage value; no altitude rules; and planes nearing the edge of the terrain board were “course corrected” without penalty, a Lastner Meadows house rule.

Starting off, Wrong Way is on the left defending the Drachen and flanked by the machine gun trucks. Baltic is on the far side with his Halberstadt and I am in the foreground with the Nieuport.


Baltic Bob studying his opening moves and talking trash with Wrong Way.


The Nieuport engages one of the flanking machine guns.


Meanwhile Baltic Bob engages the other truck inflicting serious damage using his customized measurement ruler with Lithuanian insignia.


Things heat up as the Nieuport & Halberstadt fire into the balloon while the machine gun trucks do their best to defend it. Meanwhile Wrong Way is circling around to get a better attack angle, I think!


Both gun trucks go down but not before one of them scores a Boom card on the Nieuport. Fortunately for the Nieuport, this only counts as half of its original damage points and it has very little damage otherwise.


Finally the Camel engages the Halberstadt and the Lithuanian starts to smoke.


Slipping past the Camel, the attackers are back at it pouring more bullets into the gas bag.


The Camel finally gets on the Nieuport’s six but does minimal damage.


In the sixth round of the mission, the Nieuport scores a critical hit and the Drachen catches fire.


The Nieuport and Halberstadt continue to pour in the bullets and finally the Drachen succumbs.



Aside from the Boom card scoring half damage, the Nieuport is still airworthy.


The Lithuanian is also in decent shape.


And the Camel is relatively unscathed but will have trouble explaining to high command why this is the case!

[Hu Rhu]

Nice little AAR. It looked a fun scenario to play.

[Baxter]

Love those balloon shows. Nice choice of airplanes and livery too.

[RJG173]

Those '5's from the A firing aircraft certainly helped versus what we were drawing at Gritty Goblin Games.

[flash]

Nice job Craig & Co, the balloon lasted a lot longer without incendiaries in use..

[Biggles downunder]

Nice scenario! What models are the gun trucks?

[CrashCraig]

Nice scenario! What models are the gun trucks?

They are Red Eagle Miniatures. Their link is: http://www.redeaglemimiatures.co.uk
They are listed under 1/144WW1 Aircraft>AA Vehicles and include a 3-inch gun or a mobile twin machine gun separate from the truck itself. The truck is resin but the guns are metal. The winch truck is the same vehicle only comes with the separate gear box. I used some spare bits to make another AA machine gun setup to add to the winch truck for another firing platform.