"Thingummy/Blue Sky series" Topic
14 Posts
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Gronan of Simmerya | 09 Feb 2023 11:56 p.m. PST |
Red Sun/Blue Sky, White Star/Blue Sky,you get the idea. What are these games like? Any of you chaps and chapesses have reviews or opinions? |
doubleones | 10 Feb 2023 4:59 a.m. PST |
Only played once at a con a few years ago. It was a Midway battle and it was enjoyable enough for me to buy a rulebook as soon as I got home. I still look at it from time to time but just haven't made the investment in planes. It manages to locate and really work at the narrow junction of detail and playability. All the players were novices but had no trouble managing a handful of aircraft each. |
Gronan of Simmerya | 10 Feb 2023 11:07 p.m. PST |
Thanks! Any memories of how the game works? |
Ed Mohrmann | 11 Feb 2023 12:13 p.m. PST |
Gronan, I have all of the Blue Sky series and was involved in some of the play tests. The original concept was for large air battles Luftwaffe versus RAF in Battle of Britain. The game mechanics work well for those and for 8th USAAF strategic bombing of Germany '43-'45. Similarly, carrier-borne strike forces (torpedo and dive- bombing aircraft) in significant numbers can be handled fairly easily, but escorting fighters (and interceptors) are best handled with 2 to 4 aircraft per player. I myself have run games of Battle of Britain using 24-36 German bombers with 4-8 escorts versus 6-8 interceptors and double those numbers for USAAF versus Luftwaffe. Moving large numbers of bombers isn't necessary IF you can displace the escorts and interceptors a number of hexes or inches (you can use either) to represent the bomber formation(s) movement. Then it is only necessary to move the fighters their movement and engage, either bombers or escorts/interceptors as the case may be. There is no plotting of movement. Bombing aircraft always move first. then interceptors and escorts in alternating groups. There are rule books covering BoB, Mediterranean, Russia, USN versus IJN, late war Europe and the Desert Air Force. Gunnery is pretty straight forward, firing arcs are defined for wing and turret mounted weapons. The bombing rules are pretty straight forward, but don't plan on hitting moving targets from altitude. Bombing formations can boast firepower, but skillful fighter maneuvers can minimize damage. Critical hits are present and if you are attacking B-17/B-24 or Lancasters, necessary ! Altitude differential can play a part, since the difference in altitude adds to the range. Aircraft cannot occupy the same space UNLESS at a different altitude, otherwise collision will probably occur (die roll). I played AH's Air Force and Dauntless with expansions for many years. I tried CY6 but my opinion is it is AF/D with pretty much the same limitations on how many aircraft a player can handle. If you want to send a CAG against Halsey or a Heavy Bombardment Division against the Ruhr, Blue Sky is your best bet. If you want more info, post back. Been playing Blue Sky for a LONG time ! |
Gronan of Simmerya | 12 Feb 2023 6:12 p.m. PST |
How is it for smaller games, like 4 Wildcats vs 4 Zeroes? How's the complexity level? My local group is about half casual gamers; AF/Dautless would never fly. Har har |
Ed Mohrmann | 13 Feb 2023 5:35 p.m. PST |
Small groups of aircraft work a treat in Blue Sky. I'd say, too simple, not much of a challenge. Remember, the basic concept for these rules was large numbers of aircraft, mostly bombers, being escorted and/or intercepted by defending fighters. You'd be best to pair the cats and Zekes so you have 4 pairs. You could also just 'fly' 8 individuals, but that would make it a bit more cumbersome. You'd also probably want to look at gunnery results with an eye to modifying those to reflect the 'Zippo' tendency of the Zeros and the cannon-armament on the Zero's versus the cats, but remembering the limited ammo for the Zero's 20mm. |
Yellow Admiral | 13 Feb 2023 11:52 p.m. PST |
I've played Blue Sky games several times, but they just never quite caught my fancy. The mechanics are straightforward and easy to learn. Players are running most of their own plane operations after just a few turns. Successful bombing/torpedoing takes timing and planning (esp. dive bombing a moving target!), which is a nice contrast to other games where it is just an abstraction (a die roll, a VP score, etc.). It makes bombers into more than mere targets. I remember having a few quibbles with the game: - The one-plane-at-a-time movement system is a drag in multi-player games; the moving player is under pressure to hurry, and the non-moving players are milling around bored.
- The performance characteristics of the planes are very simply defined, but… a bit difficult to modify. It's not hard to see what you want to change, but in practice it's hard to adjust a plane's performance without going too far, or maybe throwing the game balance out of whack. I couldn't find a way to get my favorite matchups more even without making them too even, or vice versa.
As alluded to above: the Blue Sky system is really meant to be more of an "air battle" game than a "dogfight" game. If you're looking for an interesting maneuver contest where individual planes try to outfox one another, it will probably be unsatisfying; the level of abstraction is better for refighting the wave attacks in a carrier battle or trying to intercept a big air strike. That said, I thought it bogged down with a lot of planes in the sky, so I didn't find it satisfying for big games either. - Ix |
Dennis | 15 Feb 2023 10:39 a.m. PST |
Gronan: Although, unlike Ed, I was never a play tester for the original Blue Sky system, I did play in several convention games run by John Stanoch, the rules' author, and played in and ran quite a few games of Nick Yankowsky's unpublished WW 1 variant-so I've a fair bit of experience with the Blue Sky system. To begin with, the system is designed for play on a hex mat; conversion to an open, or non-hex, system should be possible, albeit it would require a fair bit of modification- John Stanoch used to sell plexiglass hexes and rows of hexes to be used for playing on non-hex surfaces, but I don't think he's sold them for decades-alternate sources for such hexes are probably available if you wanted to use the base system on plain game mats. Altitude is also very important in the system, so some sort of method of keeping track of altitude is necessary, as is some sort of method for keeping track of accumulated hexes the plane moves between maneuvers-this is the heart of John's system, he forces spacing between maneuvers by requiring the player to pay for each maneuver through the accumulation of what he calls "momentum" points (say 4 points for a turn, or 9 points for a half roll for a Bf-109E)-varying by aircraft-and resetting the point total to zero with each executed maneuver. So, for example, if you fly straight and level for 5 hexes (climbs and dives are movement, not maneuvers; the maneuvers are one-hex turn, slip, half roll and half loop) and so accumulate 5 points to be spent on maneuvering. You then "spend" points to turn-say 4 points for a one hex turn-all executed maneuvers "zero" your accumulated momentum points (you can't "carryover" unused points-the points are actually a spacing mechanism, preventing your plane from going immediately from one maneuver to another). This sounds fairly complicated in my explanation, but in practice I find it's very easy to master once you've played a turn or two. That's what I like very much about John's system-once you've mastered the concept, then the only info you need are your planes' speeds, maneuver numbers, gun factors and damage-this easily fits on about half of a 3x5 card for each class of aircraft (109E, 110c, Ju88A, etc.) With that said, I basically agree with both Ed and the Admiral. The system is intended to be a system for fighting largish miniature air battles. It lacks the granularity of systems designed for small dogfights, and so might be seen by some as too simple for miniature dogfights-BTW, any hex based system will suffer a bit on detail-for example, all turns will be in increments of about 16+ degrees-I like this feature as it gives certainty on things like distance to target, and whether the target is in the firing plane's firing arc. YMMV. And, as the Admiral says, the movement system can be a problem with individual movement of aircraft in a game with lots of players-but I find this to be a problem in most games with lots of maneuver elements and more than about 6 players in a game. The Blue Sky rules allow for (mandate actually) movement by formation until actual combat begins, but at some point (in Black Cross/Blue Sky-the successor Battle of Britain rules-for example) fighters can move individually as Hunter Fighters once they are in combat. So if there are lots of attacking and escort fights in the air, at some point there will be lots of fighter aircraft to be moved one by one-the bombers, if any, will still move as one or more groups at the beginning of the turn-sort of a slow-moving target. Although the Blue Sky system was designed to be an air battle or big game system, I found it to work very well as a simple and easily understood dogfight system for an occasional game at the club or a convention. I ran the WW 1 variant as a convention game instead of Blue Max/Canvas Eagles and it seemed to be popular. On the other hand, my local club mostly preferred Blue Max which they had played for years before I got them to try the WW 1 Blue Sky variant. So, in summary, I like the Blue Sky system very much as a sort of an easy beer and pretzels rules for dogfights, and I found it to be the best miniature's system for modeling large attacks on ships or bombers. But I also agree that games with lots of aircraft and players can drag due to moving fighter planes individually. Having a strong and pushy gamemaster and experienced players can help, but like most miniatures systems the Blue Shy rules have a size limit. Oh, and the essential aircraft maneuver numbers and other data for aircraft are specific to the different rules. So you will need to purchase the rules for the particular theater you want to play in order to get the relevant aircraft data. If you want to play Battle of Britain, then the "current" (maybe 15 years old) rules are Black Cross/Blue Sky. But BC/BS is expensive; John's original Blue Sky rules for the BoB was Squadrons; Squadrons was an early, simpler version of the successor Blue Sky rules (d6 instead of d10, and a few other minor differences IIRC) but if you can find a copy it should be cheaper than BC/BS and can be modified to match the current system. About a dozen years or so ago the Griffon Bookstore in South Bend, Indiana had 3 or 4 copies of Squadrons in its old rules bin-I've not been there in years, so I don't know whether or not they still have the rules, but if you are interested it might be worth an email or call to the Griffon. |
Gronan of Simmerya | 16 Feb 2023 7:55 p.m. PST |
Easy beer and pretzels sounds about right. Most of my crew would be happy with "+1 shooting at a Zero, -1 shooting at a P-47, +1 when a P-47 shoots" sort of thing. |
Dennis | 17 Feb 2023 12:10 a.m. PST |
Gronan: Although my explanation of movement above sounds a bit complex, in fact movement in the Blue Sky system is easy peasy once you understand the mechanism. I ran the game a few times at my son's college wargaming club, and the players-new to historical gaming and to air combat games-all picked it up in a turn or two. Shooting is even simpler. If the target is in the shooter's firing arc at end of turn (most fighters have only a front firing arc), then count hexes from shooter to target, apply a few simple modifiers (large or small target-bombers are large and so easier to hit-size is generally the biggest modifier, tailing, etc.; altitude differences between shooter and target increase the distance to target so you can't hit a small target at much difference in altitude), roll one d10 for each "gun" shooting and modified die results equal or higher than distance to target in hexes are hits-so if the modified distance to target is 8 hexes, then rolls of 8, 9 or 10 are hits. Any hits on same dice number (2 dice, both 9s for example) are critical hits. Fighters are smaller targets and so have small size modifiers; bombers are large, or very large, targets and so are much easier to hit-basically fighters can stay outside of bomber gun range and snipe at the bombers, but bombers can take a lot of damage (fighters can only take a handful of hits), so you need either lots and lots of hits from lots of fighters or some critical hits to shoot down a larger bomber. AS I said above, once you understand the Blue Sky rules mechanism you can play without referencing anything other than a few stats for your airplane written on a 3x5 card-oh, and the critical hits table whenever you get a critical hit, but that's all you need. Hope this helps… |
Gronan of Simmerya | 17 Feb 2023 11:09 p.m. PST |
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Gronan of Simmerya | 23 Feb 2023 7:14 p.m. PST |
How does it compare to Wings At War? I read "Desert Spitfires" and it looks to be about the complexity my group wants, but the aircraft selection is limited. |
Gronan of Simmerya | 24 Feb 2023 1:32 p.m. PST |
And what do folks think of Luftwaffe 1946? |
Swarmaster1 | 15 Feb 2024 3:25 p.m. PST |
Luftwaffe 1946 is similar in flow to Blue Skies. There are additional maneuvers, and you have to track ammunition usage. This doesn't slow the game down, but actually speeds it up since people don't take the 'gotta roll a 10' shots. Plus, there are free stats on over 200 different aircraft for Luftwaffe 1946, more than for any other game! |
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