I purchased these rules last Fall after reading tons of info on this forum.
My next step was to build a group of players locally.
Central Maryland-Baltimore area.
I joined the CY6 Yahoo group, which has to be the most active group out there, judging by the amount of messages I read each day.
Through the Yahoo grop I met a local player, who not only has the rules, but plenty of aircraft, flight stands and game mats, with hexes on them.
That was back in early November, unfortunately everyones schedule was full until now, when I came back to the rules and had enough interest to get a group of guys together at our local game store-Renaissance Games in Fallston Maryland.
The other CY6-Yahoo Group Member (Len S.) lived close to the store, but had never been there.
He supplied the aircraft with flight stands and game mat.
I brought the rule book and multiple copies of the Move Charts and Quick Reference Charts.
Joining us were three other players, including Bruce the store owner.
All of us were new to the game.
Len and I were the only ones to actually have read more than a few pages.
Two of the other 3 players had no clue about the rules.
But we are all veteran gamers, so let's get on with the game.
We just did a simple game of two P-51Ds versus two FW-190Ds.
We rolled for the Combat Altitude and Aircrew Quality.
Len; decided not to actually play, but to watch and help out with the rules.
The two Mustangs were rated as Skilled as was one of the 190s.
The second FW-190D was a Veteran pilot.
The Aircraft were 1/144 scale and looked great.
The Germans were actual kits that Len assembled and painted.
The flight stands came from Topgun Marketing and were of the adjustable variety.
They really gave the game an even more 3-D feel.
There is a dial on the stands for Altitudes 1-6.
We used a small die for speed.
The game mat was from Hotz Mats and looked great.
So; we had the looks of a great game of Air Combat.
Quite a few other store patrons came by to look at the game.
The game started out slow at first, as everyone tried to figure out the move charts and Quick Reference Charts.
We did think that some of the rules were not intuitive.
But we quickly got used to them or where to look.
The first round of firing-a head to head pass with my P-51 and Indys FW-190D- was looking like a lot of work and there was much looking through the rules and reading aloud of the pertinent rules.
The result: my P-51 going down in flames thanks to Indy's great die rolls.
By the third or fourth bout of firing the rules were becoming simpler and each firing pass went faster and faster.
Of course; to hit anything in this game, you not only have to do a lot of manuvering, but you had better bring your hot dice with you.
More times than not; a great lined up shot was wasted because of bad die rolls.
You do need to get in close, like 3 hexes or less to get a good chance to hit.
The Move charts also started making more sense as we went through turns.
There are some other games where you need less "chart" work, but the move plotting went pretty smooth.
We had a lot of tense moments and "Furballs" between all four planes and that was a lot of fun.
Every time a plane was downed, we brought another one on the table.
Unfortunately; our P-51s came out on the short end of the stick and we lost four planes to 1 FW-190D.
We didn't fly the Mustang the way it should of been and we didn't take advantage of it's high acceleration ability.
Our combats; ended up with us going slower and slower and lower and lower.
But the the final vote here is that CY6 is a fun game, gave us novices a good feel of Air to Air Combat, the Veteran pilot did have a better time of it…"It's the Man and not the Machine" and I now have a group of 5 players to build a CY6 gaming group on.
Including the Store Owner:-)
Joep
I am really looking for to MY first game of CY6 