"Blood Red Skies" Topic

I would be interested to hear peoples views on the air miniature game by Warlord "Blood Red Skies"

In my opinion Blood Red Skies is a superb game and I reckon it is Andy Chambers' best work.
Not everyone gets the abstraction however and that's fair enough.
There will be some videos on youtube to give you an insight into the game.

It's a fun game and a good abstract design. If you are looking for a simulation of flying, this isn't really that. It captures the tactics of flying and effects of group tactics on battles nicely, but for some, the tilt forward/back visual on the table just doesn't work. I actually made some custom stands with a dial rather than the tilt system just for this reason.

I have to agree, I too think the games is excellent, but as has been said only if you can get your head around the abstraction.

But are not all wargames an abstraction to a greater or lesser extent?

There is a well written post about the advantage/neutral/disadvantage abstraction in BRS here
link
and yes all wargames are an abstraction to a greater or lesser extent.

Thanks for the link. I enjoyed reading that.

When the game came out, I watched and played a few games at a con. It was fun, but I noticed all our games became a scrum in the middle of the table with lots of crazy maneuvering. I'm not sure if this is common or us being bad players?

I play Ares' Wings of Glory and the Black Cross vein of games.

The scrum situation can happen. It can be offset to a degree by flying your models historically, i.e. as elements leader and wingman covering.If three elements flying you can have bait and another element swinging wide drawing off the enemy whilst your last element protects the bait. Of course, depends on the scenario.
Also use of clouds and or barrage balloons can cause more tactical play with disadvantaged aircraft heading for clouds to move their stance to neutral.

I love Blood Red Skies. I will note that I play it "historically" and just use the points system as a rough judge of how fair the fight is. I make it a goal when I go to conventions to try out many different rule sets and I've bought a few over the years but none grabbed me enough to really "buy into" any particular set. Until BRS…

Blood Red Skies "feels" more to me like what pilots describe and historical accounts back up. You can have a clear winner in a game of BRS and yet not have a single aircraft shot down. That alone to me was so different from any other air combat game I had played.

The "abstraction" factor is great, as there can be so many variables if you want to try to simulate every little detail but does that really make for a better game experience? So your plane got hit: maybe it's losing oil pressure, or the flaps are damaged, or the guns are jammed, maybe the pilot just got scared, either way they've decided it's time to run for home and that's the important bit.

I can play a decent sized engagement, actually have full squadrons going at it and not just 2v2, and be done in an hour. I have hosted games recreating historical engagements, plane for plane, with multiple players and it's completely manageable with credible and historically comparable results!

I feel a lot of grognards don't even want to give BRS a second look because they are mired in the idea that Complex=Better. Then they complain how it's "not realistic" and bury themselves in minutia to meticulously pre-plot their moves on a hex grid, playing out 30 seconds of air combat over 3 hours and fighting until there is one plane left…

I really enjoy the system: it's very approachable, plays fluidly, and delivers a believable narrative and result.

It plays much like a dogfighting scene in "Battle of Britain" or the other older war movies: you pick up the action just as the enemy is spotted, your focus shifts between each pilot to focus on the thick of the action, and the battle is over as quickly as it has begun. In fact, two experienced players with a flight or two each could probably get through a game at the same pace as one of those movie scenes.

As far as gameplay, the emphasis is on the player's ability to read the situation and use their limited actions to best effect. Advantage as a game resource is both valuable and fleeting: far easier to spend or lose than recover. This means that the tempo of gameplay surges and ebbs, which feels very immersive, and isn't interrupted by record-keeping.

Because of the tempo, tactics like wing pairs and high cover are both important and easily replicated. A fighter that maneuvers too aggressively in pursuing its target will quickly burn up its advantage and be vulnerable to another craft that intervenes, and players should often break off and recover before making another attack.

As for the technical information: aircraft do have different stats, but beyond their speed these stats function mostly as modifiers to the pilot's skill, which keeps the pilot prominent. The trait cards emphasize some of the aerodynamic and doctrinal differences between craft and training of the various air forces.

All-in-all, I'd strongly recommend trying it if you're interested in the genre at all.