"Best WWII Air Combat Ruleset?" Topic

Which ruleset is the best?

I love Check your 6, but have not played anything else. Why re-invent the wheel?

Torn between CY6 and Bag the Hun… Love them both!

Just some out there

Luft' 46
Blazing Skies
Crimson Skies
Bombs over Berlin
Areodrome WW2

I really liked Warbirds, but the fellow who bought the rights has just let it die. Every year comes another promise to re-release an updated version, and every year passes with me continuing to play the 10 year old playtest copy that I still have from the original developer…

Add Sturmovik Commander as an option.

Red Sun, Blue Sky is another one.

Having just played Areodrome WW2 2.0 at Nashcon, I must say it's a fun set, which smoothly handles movement and altitude. I found the shooting a bit odd (why am I firing at empty air?), but that's a minor quibble; it was a lot of fun, and rather easy to pick up.

Of course, I really have nothing to compare it to besides Knights of the Air (ye gads!) and Wings of War, both of which are WWI, not WW2. It certainly beats out the former, and ties with the latter (very similar feel between the two).

Mustangs and Messerschmitts

"Best" in what aspect really? Level of play. Game mechanics? Ease of play? A combination of all? Other aspects? Robert

Duel of Eagles, if you want a playable set for 3-D combat using just a few planes per side.

Check Your 6!

Best set of air combat rules I've ever played. Simple enough that you can pick it up after a few turns, but complex that you are not bored with it after a few games.

I have played Mustangs & Messerschmitts a great deal (dozens of games, Triplane too), also a good set of rules, but you need a basketball court for space with 1/72 aircraft.

I've played Areodrome 2.0, ok set of rules in my view.

I really did not care for the Blue Sky series of rules. I thought they were terrible after 1/2 dozen games played. There were rules quirks that broke the game for me and I never played again.

Bag the Hun for me. I haven't tried CY6, but I've heard nothing but praise for it.

-Mike

They are new but consider Combat Wings 12 0'clock, just take a look at capitan-games.com/cw12

I agree with Kaoschallenged, best for what purpose?

Mustangs/Air Pirates is still my favorite for play with my 1/144 models. I'm getting into CY6 for 1/285, I like all the historical scenarios but many are too big for my little gaming clique, I must recruit more cronies (and I have an opening for a couple of minions). Blue Skies is good for really big games with just a few players. I'm still building the player aids for Blazing Skies, that looks interesting for my bigger models.

Then I have another dozen rule sets on the shelf that look interesting, but haven't been played because I have trouble learning rules from a book, and I have no one to demo them for me.

Another vote for Check Your Six. A fun, very playable rule set. I particularly like how the quality of the pilot and guns have a very realistic impact on combats. The early war games I've played have been fantastic in particular.

Warbirds in Miniature is quite good, and very similar (IMO) to Aerodrome 2.0 (which is also good).

Wings of War has a WWII set called Dawn of War, but I personally have found that I don't enjoy it as much as the WWI game, but that's a matter of personal taste.

Haven't played Bag the Hun, but have heard good things.

About your last comment of 1930 planes in Combat Wings 12 o'clock topic, please zippyfusenet , if you want to email us with a list of planes of the sino-Japanese war, we are studying to do a supplement of it, feel free to email us at info@capitan-games.com

Check Your Six

mjc

mcosta, thanks so much for that invitation. I'm making a list and checking it twice. I'll be in touch.

Thanks to you any help is welcome

I second what Oddball said. I am very pleased and happy playing Check Your 6! It captures the thrill of aerial combat without dragging it down with too much complexity.

Phil

Mass combats (bomber boxes over London/Berlin) – Blue
Sky

Duels – CY6 (very much like the old Battleline Air Force
game)

Down in the weeds – Mustangs/Messerschmitts

Check your 6, and for convention games Dawn of War.

CY6 without a doubt.

Bag the Hun.
I really like the fact that this is pitched at a higher level than most air rules; you are not playing one on one plane duels – formations are really important, along with pilot skill, altitude advantage, and the ability to sneak into position unspotted.
I find this much more fun that rules which emphasise individual plane characteristics; it also plays much faster.

BTH…playing first game of BTH2 tonight.

Hi

Actually, i did do a hex based version of M&M that was never published.

Did do a sort of version for modern jets as well, the USAF bought the run.

When I was approached about M&M…I offered that it was a stupid idea needing a large room and a a lot of money spent on miniatures, but that is the one the publisher wanted.

Rocky

Another vote for Check Your 6!

My vote for BTH II!

My current favorite is Check Your 6! I've also played a WWII variant of Blue Max that I enjoyed.

Bag the Hun without a doubt.

No Votes yet for Blazing Skies.

Be still my precious, Your time will come, then all forum polls will shout your name in triumph! Mwahahahha

'Bag The Hun 2'. I like the fact that you can fight Squadron actions not just one or two individual aircraft.

CY6 hands down.
VR
James Mattes

Plane vrs plane CY6
Flight vrs flight or larger BTH 2
Solitaire BTH 2

Joe

Fighting Wings
(Over the Reich, Achtung Spitfire!, Whistling Death)
Hex based, detailed flight mechanics, plenty of chrome. East front module nearly finished. A teaser game "Buffalo Wings" using very simplified rules will appear in Against the Odds magazine, Issue #29 featuring Finns and Russians.

We've been playing CY6 quite a bit lately and are really enjoying the game even more as we start using and understanding the full set of rules.
i.e Pilot reaction, tailing, ammo depletion and lucky hit, etc.
Just played the "Aeronavale" scenario, Vichy French D.520s versus British Blenheim Is and Australian P-40c's over Lebanon.
What a tense game…I had a blast:-)
Don't count out the Detwoine 520s.
Joe

Bag the Hun

Captures the feel and tactics without the rivet-counting and paperwork. Card activation is better than it sounds, and is superior to writing moves = guessing game.

+1 to the Lardies (Rich etc) who I have been very impressed with in their active dealings on forums, good service, etc.

On the basis of the game, I'm considering their other rulebooks for eras I haven't considered before (Napoleanic naval etc)

Wings of Fire

Rocky how about pdf publishing of your hex based M and M. I play Check your Six because it shows the tactics of larger formations really well, however, having played both M and M and Canvas Eagles I really like them for smaller games showing the differance between planes. But since I am doing 1/300 I have made my own hex stands for Check you six but would love to use M and M with hexes.
William

A link to photos of my stands.
link

Hi

We have been toying with the idea of this system plus the usual M&M/Tri/Canvas games on PDF.

The real problem is that I was doing the analysis pre-ibm on dedicated equipment that doesn't "talk" to IBMS. The page layout engine has recently produced a version for IBM, but the conversions take so much work that I haven't been able to justify the economic model behind doing the work

R

I personally would love to see a hex version of M&M and Canvas Falcons – I own both rule sets and they are incredible for getting the feeling of actually flying a plane in a war game! Since I'll never get to actually fly a biplane (although I have a degree in aerospace engineering so I'm pretty competent about flight), you really learn how the different planes really match up against one another.

Still remember the first time I saw M&M at a game convention in Denver about 16 years ago, being played on a hotel ballroom floor!

I like my home-brew rules, Lethal Pass. I run it often at the big HMGS East conventions and it always gets compliments from the players.

Jim

Hi

Cosmic, I was working with the chief aerodynamicist from Republic and we shared a hobby of using mainframe programs we wee writing to apply modern math to pre-modern airplanes.

Some of my wargameing friends were playing airwar games that didn't work and pestered me to do some work for THEM.

If you saw "Mig Killers" from Gamescience, you have seen a hex based version of the system, sort of.

But I never set out to design games, just having the math and running airplanes through the computer out of curiosity. At the time, I was supposed to be doing estimates on russian prototypes.

Rocky

Ahhhh….memories of my undergraduate work…..I think I had my lifetime fill of computer modeling wings and flow! Never seen Mig Killers?

Maybe it's the aerospace engineer in me that loves the detail in M&M and Canvas Falcons, and the feeling of actually flying an airplane on the game board? I find people either love those games or they hate them?

Hi

Well, part of my backstory was doing modeling based on early mainframe work in Fortran. Stuff by Murry Rubenstein. He and I shared a passion for looking at "pre-modern" aircraft. M&M was just a unintended cosequence.

With Mig Killers, I screwed up. I did a simplistic Jet game for Lou Zocchi with Mike Kurtic who did the basic "game design" stuff. Well, not thinking about the implications, I did analysis from public sources on aircraft that wern't supposed to have data out there. Next thing I know, the FBI is knocking on my door, interviewing everyone I knew all over the country and so on. They ASSUMED I must have someone in the USSR sending me secrets or something.

It was not amusing then, but is now. Explaining that the math has no secrets.

But as an AE, you know how easy it is to get all carried away!

One of the problems I have when I play my own games, is that, of course, I had to simplify everything for others to play. And SOMETIMES in a game, the numbers in my head conflict with the numbers in the rules.

But you have the essence of it. Our idea of fun is a little off!

I once explained that I would sit there with a slide rule back in the day, doing analysis out of my head to relax between tests during finals week. RELAX…do a little SEP math!

Sheesh.

Rocky

Ha, I remember having to learn to program in Fortran….

All my CS major friends asked why in the world they were teaching us to program in Fortran as it was more or less a dead language at the time in every other industry, it just so happened that so much aerospace industry code was written in that language you just couldn't get a way from it!

Yeah, I'll bet that was a shocker! Probably makes for a great story these days though….and yeah, I think most engineers idea of fun is a little out of the norm? But whoever thought normal was fun anyway?

Hi

Well, when I got my first PC, I had done mainframe programming starting in '66. So, I started trolling through the machine code of some of the "higher level" languages to see how they did math! I was surprised to discover how often things like Microsoft had Fortran bits embedded in it.

So, I took my friends programs and did a lot of re-write/converstion work to have it run, initially, in PCs in modules. Of course, pretty quickly all worked out, PCs quickly got bigger than anything we had back then (IBM 704, PDP11).

Went further, instead of doing raw plots…I then added modules to the program such that it would, if asked, just print out the specs for the games as well!

My real problem is that I also fly model airplanes, and at that reynolds number, there is so little data, that I cannot use what I know on a 13" rubber scale model!

Rocky

Most of these may be fun games – but they don't have much in common with air combat except that they use airplane models.

I stumbled on this thread because I heard about Mig Killers and thought what I saw at Boardgame Geek looked like it had a good level of both realism and playability. (When I want "real" realism, I play Speed of Heat or Birds of Prey.) I'd like to know more about the Mig Killers system.

Wow, as others have said, depends on what level of abstraction you want (3D versus 2D for example,) what your time restraints are, the amount of grit you want in the game, etc.

I don't you actually answer such a wide brush question with just the name of one rule set.

Gracias,

Glenn