"A question between rules Mustangs & Red Sun" Topic

After much deliberation, I've narrowed my rules to Mustangs/Air Pirates or the Red Sun/Blue Sky book(s)

My quandary is this….

It seems, after gazing through the Mustang rules, that it might be a tad harder to "control" 20+ planes on a board as it would be with Red Sun/Blue Sky?

Can anyone, who has tried both, confirm or deny this?

Also, from what I can gather, both rule sets seems to offer about the same level of detail/realism (as much as these games can offer)

Again, thanks to the TMP community

Does anyone have additional stats for aircraft NOT in the Red Sun/Blue Sky book?

I'm probably going to get the main book, but I'm not wanting to spend another $60 USD for just aircraft stats.

I thought I read here that there was a Yahoo group for these rules but it was taken down?

If anyone has files for aircraft stats for this series my email is

zasgard@hotmail.com

Thanks

The boardgame Mustangs was designed for two players to control two fighters each. Components were provided to play with up to four fighters on each side, either controlled by the original two players or by up to two additional players.

However, the 'passing the activation chit' mechanic that determines who is 'first player' vs. 'second player' makes it awkward to play with more than two players. Two players on the same side often have conflicting interests wrt who would prefer to be the 'first player', so you have to add an 'argument phase' to every game turn.

For this reason, I and many others play Mustangs/Air Pirates as a si-move game. This is a very easy conversion – just have all players secretly place their order chits at the same time. All actions in the game then occur simultaneously.

I think this adds a lot to the realistic feel of the game. I think air combat games *should* involve out-guessing your opponent. Two players can shoot each other down. With this conversion, it's easy to run games with six or more players. I limit each player to two or three fighters, sometimes paired with a small formation of three or four bombers. Ten fighters would be far too many for one player to maneuver, although large bomber formations are easier to run.

However. Since you want to play solo, you're probably not interested in converting Mustangs to si-move. I still think you'll find more than two or three fighters to be too many.

Thanks Zippy, you confirmed what I was thinking…..Red Sun/Blue Sky are the rules for my play style

Thanks

There is no compendium of aircraft statistics for the Blue Sky series. You have to buy a book or game to get the set of aircraft stats for that theater/campaign. That's how the product is structured.

I see someone selling on Ebay the 3 xpacs for $30. USD Might go that route.

Thanks again!

If I remember right, the biggest scenario in Red Sun/Blue Sky is 'The Death of Kido Butai', the American combined torpedo bomber + dive bomber assault with escort vs. CAP that sank the four big Japanese carriers at Midway. There are nearly 60 models in this scenario; Devastators, Dauntlesses, Wildcats, Zeros and the odd Claude. Don't be frightened though, I think you can handle it if you have enough models.

There are also small and mid-size scenarios in the book.

Yea, the Blue Sky series is the one you want.

Can't recall if Red Sun is a complete game, or if you need the original Squadrons rules, so you might want to check into that as well, first.

They have a new version of Blue Skies out, with flight stands and counters, etc., but it is pretty expensive.

The Blue Skies Yahoo Group is still up, and there might be some unofficial stats in the files section, since a lot of the mid-late war planes weren't included in Red Sky.

Red Sun/Blue Sky is the complete base set of the first edition rules. Squadrons was a precursor. The author made some changes for Blue Sky.

There definitely are some stats in the files section of the Blue Skies Yahoo group.

Is there a direct link to that Yahoo group? The one I did see is "locked"

The proper name of the Yahoo group is BlueSkies-L. It appears to be still in working order:

link

You have to subscribe and be approved to become a member. I think John Stanoch is the only moderator and I don't know how much attention he spends on administering the old list, but he should get around to approving you after a while.

Their email to join doesn't work. Oh well, I'm buying all 4 books so whatever aircraft missing, it shouldn't be much. I can just "house rules" the missing ones.