Product Review & BatRep: Check Your 6! – Jet Age

Long time between posts and suddenly I got 3 already in 1 week!  WOW!

So, took a break from Beta Testing and Graham and I decided to try “Check Your 6! Jet Age”.  The rule book has been out for quite a while, gathering dust on my shelf.  So this is the first time we ever played this game.

The Rules:

Basically, this is the classic “Check Your 6!” WWII game, updated with higher speeds, multiple Combat Altitude Bands, Radar and Missiles.

All players plot their movement in secret.  Then moves are made, starting with Out-Of-Control aircraft, slow Aircraft (bombers, etc), Green Pilots (Skill Level 0), then progressing through the Skills up to Aces (Skill +4).

Now the 2 games change a bit.  Due to Radar and “Beyond Visual Range” missiles, you try to first spot the enemy (using either Radar or Visual Spotting.  If you spot, you can attempt a Radar Lock and fire a Radar Homing Missile (RHM), or attempt to launch an Infrared Guided Missile (IRM), or just shoot him with your guns IF your plane has any!  (Have to remember, there are periods where nations thought that guns were obsolete and didn’t include them!)

Not only do you roll to see if missiles hit, you also roll to see if they MALFUNCTION!  Older types have a greater chance of failing than newer types (Vietnam was notorious for this, which is one of the reasons why they re-introduced guns).  Missiles also have a Minimum and Maximum range – also a good reason to have guns for those knife-fights!

IF you happen to attack with a missile, there is a chance it missile launch be detected (your opponent rolls for this) and if spotted, he may perform Evasive Manoeuvres, making it harder to hit and causing him to do Extreme Manoeuvres next turn.

Missiles that do hit have a chance to either do a Proximity (near) hit or Direct hit – having different numbers of dice for each.

Damage, Lucky Hits, Guns etc, all perform the same as the original CY6!  So, let’s play!

Like the original, CY6! – JA already has a number of scenarios and Campaign Books to help you plan missions or campaigns!

The Mission:

First Kill: Phantom          (Star and Pyramid Campaign book)

(This mission is also in the Jet Age rule book, but has been update in the Campaign Book.  I chose this mission as it was fairly simple and not too many aircraft.)

Date: 9 December, 1969, 1800 hours

Egyptian Ground Control detected an Israeli Reconnaissance Plane (RF-4E) and are directing a flight of 4 Mig-21F-13 Fighters in for the intercept.  Two Israeli F4 Phantoms are waiting to escort the Recon Flight home…

Israeli Forces:

RF-4E Phantom II has a recon pod and 1 Aim-9B Sidewinder IRM, as well as Wing Tanks, making it “Half Loaded”.  The plane will enter on the west (short) edge of the table, Low CAB, TAL2, speed 5.

2 X F-4E Phantom IIs, each with 2 AIM-7E Sparrow RHM and 4 AIM-9B Sidewinder IRM, plus Wing Tanks (making them also at Half Load).  They are loitering in the North East table corner, Low CAB, TAL4, Speed 5.

All planes have Rotary Cannons & all planes have Skilled Crew (+1)

Israeli Mission:

Get more Victory Points!  Damaged Fighters are worth 1VP, Destroyed are worth 4VP.  Bonus points for shooting down Veterans.  A Bonus of 2 VPs if the RF-4 goes off the table within the 15 hexes of the North-East Corner (Sector F, Edge 6)

Egyptian Forces:

4 X Mig-21F-13 Fighters, each with 2 AA-2ATOLL IRM and a Long Range Heavy Cannon (LRHC).

3 Crew are “Green” Crew (0), one is a Veteran Pilot (+2)

Egyptian Mission:

Get More Victory Points!  (Sound familiar?)  Also, the Egyptians get a Bonus +1VP if the RF4 exits the table from any other edge than the Israeli’s.

Planes will start off “hidden” (I will use extra tokens to represent double possible locations until they are spotted), flying in the Western side of the map, Surface Low CAB (Ground Level), TAL3, Any speed.

The Game Begins!

First, both players roll a D10 to determine an “extra” special mission rule, just like the original CY6!

Israelis rolled that the RF-4E suffered “Mechanical Problems” – it would suffer double reduced Agility at top speeds.  Egyptians rolled “Open Formation”, allowing them to deploy 2 MIG-21s in the bottom South-East table corner.

Initial Deployment

MIGs are represented by 4 of 8 white squares

Turn 1:

The Egyptian MIG21s all started to climb, hoping to conserve energy as they approached the enemy.  This turned out to be a mistake!  The Israelis spotted all the hidden MIGs in the first turn!  Re-reading the rules, if I had stayed at TAL 3, the Israeli Radar performance would have been greatly reduced!

The 2 F4s managed to get Radar lock on the 2 MIGs in the South-East corner, but not able to get “Lock-And-Fire”, so they couldn’t shoot this turn.

Going on…

The MIGs all sped up and moved forward, one looking to get in the tail cone of the RF4, another aiming for an intercept angle while the 2 in the South-East went head-to-head with the F4s.  Turned out to be a good decision – the MIGS (Black & Red) flew in too close for the F4s to use their Radar Missiles!  The angle was wrong for Heat Seekers (this time period, they were only useful if launched at the target’s rear arc).  The Israelis, having spotted the MIGs dropped their tanks so they were no longer at “Half-Load”

Intercepting the RF4

Eastern Hairball about to begin...

The fight quickly developed into 2 separate dogfights.  In the West, MIGs Green & Yellow fought with the RF4.  In the East, the 2 F4s (Red & Green) got into a tight turning circle with Migs Black (the Vet) and Red (Green Skill!).  Due to the tight turnings, both Radar Locks were broken.

Breaking Radar Lock!

First shot of the game was F4 Red taking a gun shot at MIG Red in turn 4, but missed.

By Turn 5, all the planes on both sides were flying at CAB Surface Low, TAL6 – all good altitudes for a gun fight!  Eastern fight was a tight-turning counter-clockwise circle.

Turn 6 had the MIGs in the FR4’s rear arc, but having done Extreme Maneuvers, the missiles couldn’t be fired! 

"Almost got him!"

 The Eastern “Hairball broke apart as both sides attempted to break the stalemate at the same time.

Turn 8, both MIGs in the west finally got off AA2 Atoll (IRM) Missile launches on the RF4.  The RF4 managed to spot 1 launch and dodged it, but the missile from MIG Green got a direct hit!  Sadly, Graham failed is Robustness Roll by 1, so only suffered Airframe Damage instead of being destroyed. 

RF4 Takes a HIT!

Meanwhile, in the East, F4 Green managed to get a Radar Lock On & Fire at MIG Green at a range of 21 Hexes, but missed by 1!

Turn 9 had the RF4 spin out of control as a result of his Evasive Manoeuvres last turn, falling a TAL level in the process and rolling a random hex side for facing.  Sadly, the rules state you cannot fire on an aircraft that is out of control.  MIGs Green and Yellow circle the stricken RF4, just in case…

The Vultures circle the Out-Of-Control RF4!

Turn 10 and the RF4 recovered from his spin, darn!  In the East, the climbing, diving, turning hairball continued, but F4 Green failed to hit MIG Black with guns.

Turn 11, MIG Green got a Missile Shot at RF4, but missed.  RF4 doing another Evasive Manoeuvres next turn.  On the other side, MIG Black and F4 Green go Head-to-Head with guns, both missing!

Turn 12 and the RF4 tumbles Out-Of-Control again!  (Dropped to TAL2!  If he falls 2 more, he crashes!)  In the East, MIG Red snaps a shot off at F4 Green, missing by 1!

Turn 13 and the RF4 continues to tumble!  The Hairball of the East continues as MIG Red Runs out of Ammo!  MIG Black missed a shot at F4 Green.

Turn 14.  DARN!  The RF4 recovers at ALT1!  MIG Black missed another gun shot at F4 Green.

MIG 21 Vet Runs Out Of Ammo?!?!?

Turn 16 and the RF4 managed to get off the table, but on the wrong edge!  Automatic 1VP for the Egyptians!  Meanwhile, the MIG Black took another Gun Shot at F4 Red, but ran out of Ammo!  NOoooo!!!

We roll to see what happened to the RF4 and because of the damage and flying off the table into Enemy Territory, it crashed, counting as a KILL for another 4 Points!  5VP for the Egyptians!

Turn 17 had both the Black and Red MIGs breaking from the Hairball, heading South-West as Green and Yellow MIGs head towards the F4s, having chased the RF4 away.  F4 Red failed to do a Lock On.

Turn 18 and MIGs Black & Red do a 180, heading back towards the F4s while MIGs Green & Yellow close in with the F4s, Head-to-Head.

Turn 19 and MIG Black fired a missile at F4 Red, but the missile malfunctioned!

Turn 20, the F4s had had enough and kicked in Afterburners, heading for home.  MIG Yellow fired an AA2 Atoll at the departing F4s, missing by 1!

We realized the F4s would escape next turn and called the game!

Egyptian Victory!  5 – 0!

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WOW!  Good Game!  This was definitely a game of chance!  In the end, only one aircraft was hit and could have made it home successfully except for a bad dice roll!

If I kept records correctly, we fired off 6 Missiles of various types, and only 1 hit in the entire game.  Meanwhile, 9 gun shots resulted in NO hits!  Really bad rolling on both our parts!!!  My Dice are back!

Game Rules Impressions:

Having read many accounts of air combat in this era, the results of the missile reliability is pretty close to historical, so I would say the game is reasonably historic in its results.

The game system is pretty simplistic, allowing a short learning curve and quick, but fun games.  If you’re looking for a game that has lots of detailed Electronic Warfare, concerns of Fuel Consumption or lots of Beyond Visual Range fighting, this probably isn’t the game for you.  There’s not much detail here.  For example, while the MIG 21 has a different Maneuvering Chart than the F4, they both have the same +2 Agility Rating (Agility ranges from 0-3).  The Finesse points are all generalized for a more simple game play.  It’s Pilot Skill that usually wins the battles here – not performance factors of the aircraft.

While the game covers Jet Age from Korea through Falklands, the Aircraft Listings is not as complete as I would like.  They’ve concentrated on aircraft that are known to have participated in actual combat.  Some of the Cold War Warriors and weapon systems are not included.  (The CF100 “Canuck” for example or the Multi-Rocket Anti-Aircraft “Shotgun” Pods that were used for a very brief period.)  This makes it difficult to do “What If…” scenarios.  They even forgot to include the F18 Hornet in the 1^st Printing of the book, though they included the stats in the Errata. 

On the other hand, like the Original WWII books, all the campaign books for Jet Age seem to be complete.  All major aircraft for particular warzones and battles seem to be included.  At this time, there are books for Korea, Egypt – Israeli wars from 1966 – 1973. And the Pakistani – India wars.  The Rule book also contains mini-campaigns for Vietnam, Falklands and Angola.  Between them all, there are a wide variety of missions and time periods to choose from.

One thing we noted during game play, is that you need to be careful doing classic Zoom Climbs.  While you can plot a Jet Climb that will let you climb 4 TAL levels in a single move, this will stall most aircraft.  Even Afterburners don’t help most aircraft from reducing speeds to dangerously slow speeds under these conditions.  So forget the “Viking Takeoff” with an F16 or F15 and expecting to keep accelerating straight up, forget it.  Those of you hoping to do some “Specialized Manoeuvres” that are aircraft-specific, forget it – those manoeuvres just don’t exist.  On the other hand, you can do High-Speed Yo-Yos (over 2 turns or more) or multiple Scissors, etc.  You can even do that “Maverick Stall” from the movie Top Gun, but I wouldn’t recommend it… 

Overall, this is a good to great introductory Jet Air Combat System for those who don’t want to get too detailed or over your head.  I look forward to playing more games soon!

Hope you enjoyed the read!