I'm a little busy at the moment, but I think we need some material to add to the Blog.
This is a Battle Report for Check Your 6! - Graham Logan and I played the campaign Last Summer, and it was originally posted on Imagaine Games & Hobbies Forum in April, 2011.
I'll try to add more new stuff next time!
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So, I finally got things put together and assembled. It was time to play!
In case you’re not familiar with “Check your 6!”, it is an
Air Combat game that uses Pre-plotted, semi-simultaneous moves and simultaneous
fire. That is:
- Everyone plots their next move at the same time, but are
moved in Phases dependent on the skill level of the pilot, nationality,
tailing, etc... Better pilots move later
and have an opportunity to change their move codes (but not by much) dependent
on what they see developing before their move. All shooting is done simultaneous – you
don’t have to worry about losing your chance to shoot before you are shot down.
It is a Hex-based game – needs to be played on a map of some
sort with hexes. Preferred hex top is 45
hexes long by 30 hexes wide. 1.5” hexes
are about the right size for a 4’ X 6’ table.
Models can be any scale, but unless you have a larger surface, I would
stick to smaller models. 1/144 scale is
good for small games (2-4 planes per side), but larger battles should be on
1/300 scale. Bombers at 1/144 scale can
be quite large and overhang smaller hexes by quite a bit. You could user paper counters as well.
There is a 3D element to the game. Usually, a battle will take place in a single
Combat Altitude Band (CAB). This
determines things like Ground, Cloud Boundries and aircraft performance as you
go higher into the atmosphere. Most
planes suffer the higher they go unless designed for the higher bands. Each CAB is broken up into 6 Tactical
Altitude Bands. This can be represented
a number of ways, but basically, you can usually shoot one level up or down as
well as your own TAB (with some criteria).
Playing our 1st mission in the Guadalcanal Campaign
book. (“Taking the Measure” if you happen
to have the book!) Capt. Graham of the
Imperial Japanese Navy was leading an escort mission of 6 X A6M2 “Zeros” on a
carrier strike. They couldn’t find the
carriers, so proceeded to fly to Tulagi to find targets of opportunity. They ran into 4 X F4F “Wildcats” from the
newly arrived Marines of VMF 223 at Henderson Field.
Check your 6! gives little tweaks to the missions by rolling
a D10 and special narrative Campaign provides additional modifications. For this mission, Graham had 1 fighter that had
to add an Extra +1 to all his crew checks on 1 aircraft (his choice) and start
rolling for low fuel after Turn 12. If
he failed that roll, his planes had to break off and try to escape as quickly
as possible. His six planes were
deployed on the far Eastern edge of the board, having to fly to the North-West
corner (his “safe” edges), about 45 hexes away, in two 3-plane formations. The Japanese fighters were all “Skilled”
Pilots.
My fighters had to deploy in two formations of 2 fighters in
the South Eastern section of the map, one flight 15 hexes away from the other,
determined by random dice roll.
Fortunately, they were more or less Line-Abreast formations. Originally, I had 1 “Veteran”, 1 “Skilled”
and 2 “Green” pilots. However, the
random event table gave me a free upgrade for 1 “Green” pilot to become
“Skilled”. I had the Vet with the
remaining Green pilot on my left and the two Skilled pilots in the other 2-man
formation to the right.
On to the destruction…
Graham and I started off facing each other, Graham at
Altitude 5, me at Altitude 4. For the
first 3 turns, we more or less closed with each other at maximum speed (4 hexes
for both plane types), myself slowly climbing from Level 4 to 6, while Graham
maintained Altitude5. Suddenly, at turn
4, I pulled off my first “sneaky” move.
While Graham plotted to fly straight and close to within shooting range
with both flights, one on one, I suddenly dove from Altitude 6 to 5, gaining an
extra hex in movement, and turning my Right-hand flight to engage Graham’s
flight on the left – so both of my flights closed on one of his! Graham’s flight on my right couldn’t make the
turn quick enough (we made an error here, he should have had the opportunity to
try to modify his plot, but I mixed up the rules a bit here). Graham found his three fighters on my Left in
a partial cross fire, with both of us at “medium” range (4-6 hexes apart).
Not that it helped much…
It would take 2 more turns of shooting at each other before,
finally, my Veteran did an Immelmann turn (1/2 loop upwards) as a Zero passed by and hit the Zero as it
passed. The Zero took Airframe Damage
which reduced his Agility. One of my
Skilled pilots would finish off the job next turn. Doing mostly head-on-passes, both Graham
and I had to roll VERY well: usually 11+.
During this time of maneuver and shooting, Graham had also managed to
hit a few times.
We quickly discovered historical accuracy of the game at
this point: Historically, American
fighters would not engage in a 1-on-1 dogfight with the Japanese Zero as it
could out turn them. They would do
High-speed hit-and-runs.
Although the Zero was more maneuverable on paper, it had a
-1 agility penalty when flying at maximum speed (4 Hexes). This was causing a penalty to Graham’s ability
to hit me as we had been continuously flying at Speed 4 to close. When he realized this, Graham slowed his
Zeros from Max speed (4) to speed 3.
While doing this gave him a bonus on his to hit rolls, it let me keep my
speed advantage and allowed me to break away and maintain that important 4+ Hex
range that made his cannons difficult to hit with.
Also, Graham was hitting with his Light Machine Guns but
couldn’t damage the Wildcats with them – they were too tough! In order to use the Low Velocity Cannons that
were on the Zero, he had to close to be within 3 hexes as there was a -2
penalty to hit at medium range. At
Medium range (4 – 6 hexes), Zeros needed 11+ (2D6) to hit with the cannons (no
other penalties or advantages), but at Short Range, he would be able to hit on
a 7+ (2D6).
As long as I was able to keep my speed up and do
Hit-and-run, I was doing well. I was
able to keep the Zeros at the 4-5 hex range which was driving Graham nutz!
Finally, when Graham did hit with his cannon, his luck
failed him. Each weapon class does
damage based on a dice roll. Light
machine Guns on the Zero based their damage on a D4. Heavy Machine Guns on a Wildcat do damage on
a D6. Low Velocity Cannons on a Zero (it
has 2) do damage based on a D10. To
complicate matters – IF you roll maximum on any dice, it counts as having
missed!!! You DON’T want to roll
maximums! If you roll too high, you can
hit with the light machine guns and still miss with the cannons. When only Graham’s light machine guns were
hitting, they only did 2 X D4 damage.
When hitting with Everything, Graham’s Zeros caused 2 X D4 + 2 X D10
damage. When Graham finally hit with his
cannons, he rolled very low on the D10, wasting his hits. You add up the Damage roll, cross reference a
Robustness table and based on your damage and the planes Robustness, determine
what save you need to roll. Add in my
higher toughness, I was saving (on average) 5+ on 2D6. Same hit on a Zero would require a save of
7+, but I was hitting with 6 Heavy machine guns – 6 X D6 damage - his save was
typically 10+ or more.
After maneuvering around each other, all we were able to
accomplish were mostly head-on passes, requiring very-high numbers to hit. After the first Zero was shot down, Graham
was finally able to get a good shot with a cannon hit on a Wildcat, causing
engine damage. The Wildcat proceeded to
“Out-Fall” the Zeros out of the combat area (dropping below Tactical Air Band
1) and get away. The Vet Wildcat Pilot
managed to get on the tail of another Zero.
I rolled a decent shot and blew the Zero out of the sky in one
burst! (If you fail your saving throws
by too large a sum, you bypass damaged and go down to Destroyed.)
Around this point, Graham decided he better run away before
he ran out of fuel. About Turn 9, he
started to scatter and climb most of his aircraft in different directions. Unfortunately, Wildcats don’t climb as
quickly as Zeros. As I wasn’t expecting
the climb, he got out of my Altitude range on the turn 9 and kept on climbing
until Graham was able to get away with his remaining 4 Zeros.
Final Tally:
US Marines win the day!
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Based on the Campaign rules, I rolled for the Damaged
Wildcat. It would crash on landing. This meant the US would lose 2 planes for the
American Fighter Availability. I didn’t
gain any aircraft for destroying the Zeros (needed to roll a '6' on each of 2
dice). 28 Fighters left at Henderson
Field to defend the entire island campaign…
