The Cuckoo Tolls for Thee
Here’s a recap from our Wings of Glory game held on 23 July at the Dragon’s Guildhall in Dayton, Ohio.
It’s late 1918 and a German battleship is loose on the sea and attempting to raid Allied shipping. While the British Royal Navy struggles to sortie ships to intercept the raider, the RAF hatches a daring plan – use their newly formed squadron of Sopwith Cuckoo torpedo bombers to intercept and stop the raider!
Jerry is of course aware of the might of the Allied air forces and has provided a robust escort of first-rate fighters to defend the ship. The action focuses on a strait the ship must clear before breaking out into the open seas.
The game was presented and adjudicated by Karl (Jaeger)
Our players were;
Player Name (Aerodrome handle) – Plane
Ententewingsof
Chris – Red/Purpe D. VII
Darryl (Predhead) White D. VII
Matt (Adler64) Yellow D. VII
Bob – Candy stripe D. VII
Xander – All Red D. VII
Allied
Dan (CamelBeagle) – Cuckoo
Ray (The G Dog) - Cuckoo
Mike – Camo SE 5A
Bill W. (Old Guy) ( SE 5A “Z”
Glenn (Jago85) SE 5A “Red Star”
The game is a classic bomber escort mission, except that the torpedoes will run for 6 movement cards once dropped. The game opens with the British approaching from across a small island whilst the defenders charged forth to engage the enemy.
Things did not start well for the British. Ray’s Cuckoo was assaulted by Darryl’s D. VII. You know what I mean by assaulted? Darryl inflicted 16 or 18 damage on Ray’s bird. Ray’s tactics changed from closing with the warship to just getting the torpedo into the water before he crashed!
It was good work by the Germans as the prematurely dropped torpedo was a clean miss. Ray regrouped to exit the table and find another Cuckoo. Ray’s Cuckoo actually survived as Darryl’s guns jammed allowing the Cuckoo to limp away and escape. This became a theme for Darryl as almost every subsequent shot resulted in jammed guns for his plane.
The escorting fighters and defending fighters mixed it up while Dan worked to bring his Cuckoo into position. Mike caught on fire and crashed (becoming the first plane to actually crash in the game). Xander also caught on fire, but kept on flying. After a lot of work, he dropped the fish. 6 movement cards later the torpedo…. ran out of steam and quit running literally mere millimeters from the target! “Missed it by THAT much”, as Maxwell Smart would say.
The dogfight continued. Matt’s D. VII suffered an explosion card result and went “Boom”.
Ray brought another Cuckoo in and started his attack run while repeatedly muttering to himself “stay on target…almost there…stay on target”. His Cuckoo took fire from many of the Entente players, but dropped the torpedo which ran true and struck the warship. One hit down… FOUR MORE TO GO???
The dogfight continued. Planes are starting to fall out of the sky, less from accumulated damage than from repeatedly drawing the explosion card from the deck.
Dan brought yet another Cuckoo in on another run. This resulted in a second hit against the ship.
Scoring the match was a close-run thing. The hits were starting to accumulate on ship, but the losses of planes on both sides meant that the score was much closer than a damaged capital ship.
This was a fun and exciting game. The torpedo modification rules gave a solid, believable result and are a welcome addition to the game. The modifications for torpedoes adds opportunities to model the torpedo attacks at Gallipoli, the North Sea and the Adriatic.
A round of thanks to Karl for presenting the game, and to Glenn for driving over with Karl from northeast Ohio.
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