Balloon Away

[Baxter]

I found this in the files scenario section on the second page. The original concept was from Flying Officer Kyte.

An Observation balloon has escaped its handler's grips on a blustery day near the front. The Central Powers must attempt to keep it safe against a sortie of Allied planes that have witnessed this.

Players: 2-6

Gaming Surface: Length 152 cm or 5 ft by 92 cm or 3 ft.

Central Powers Player: Each player selects a single seat plane to fly from any year of service. Central Power planes enter play on right side of the playing area a half ruler distance from the edge at a point of their choosing.

Allied Player: Each player selects a single seat plane to fly from any year of service. Allied players enter on turn 2 on the left edge at a point of their choosing.

Winning Conditions: Allied players win by knocking down the balloon before their planes are eliminated.

Rules Needed: All basic rules and altitudes are in play. Allied players were already in flight and thus have no access to rockets or incendiary bullets.

Balloon Rules: The balloon has broken free and is floating in the wind. Shuffle the D Maneuver Deck and place the top card for movement by the balloon when its movement phase comes up. The balloon will move very quickly and can perform immelmann turns. Collision rules are in effect. If the balloon appears to be leaving the gaming surface it re-appears on the opposite side of the table (exits the right side, and re-enters on the left side at the same length down the table).

I know we have all played runaway or normal balloon attacks before but against a balloon that can move just like a plane using the D Deck!!! That just sounded plain impossible so we decided to give it a go last night. We only had 3 players so to compensate for a missing Windy Jack we used an unofficial rule where if the allied pilots downed the single German defender then the downed German would bring 6 AA guns into play. We figured that would focus the allies on their mission objective rather than a desire to dogfight. Having doubts about the ability to shoot down a balloon that moves twice as fast as the fastest plane we figured we would call it a night after an hour.

As it turned out, it was an impossible mission for the allies and proved just about impossible for the German defender to draw a bead on the enemy too because of the sheer unpredictability of the balloon movement. We did manage to cause 2 points of damage to the balloon through a collision but not one bullet was fired at the thing! I am not sure how this could have been played out more effectively. Anyone else had luck with it?















An interesting game.

[Biggles downunder]

Well, as the SE-5 pilot, ‘interesting’ is one word for it! But it did provide us with plenty of laughs!

[Windy Jack]

You said, "That just sounded plain impossible".
You won't know if you don't try.
It looked like it was pain impossible.

[zenlizard]

It looked like it was pain impossible.

Sounds more like the pain was quite achievable.

[camelbeagle]

Thanks for sharing!

[flash]

That sounds bonkers ! With the length of the base the balloon it would be travelling a hundreds of miles per hour. Maybe you could tone it down by just moving the front of the base to the arrow. It would still behave wildly in turns but just a tad slower.
I found the original thread posted by Rob in 2011:
https://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/sh...alloon-goes-up

[Baxter]

Thank you for that link Flash. It makes more sense now seeing as it was never intended for a serious game.