Ground Attack

[leopard]

Player at the local club is somewhat disappointed to see a lack of ground attack options (if he cannot torpedo warships hes not interested).

Since its not the main focus of the game, being an air to air combat game I was wondering on ways to bring aspects like this in, in a suitably abstract way.

Thinking – define a target, this can be a point (e.g. a small ground installation), an area marker of some sort (e.g. an airfield, or a ship). To attack it the correct sort of aircraft (level bomber, dive bomber, torpedo bomber etc) has to line up on turn n-1, then on turn n flight straight and level (for torpedo and level bombers) or dive (for dive bombers), using advantage to do so (or starting disadvantaged for torpedo bombers) – it has then made its strike and the opponent gains a boom chit.

in effect we utterly ignore the effects of the ground attack, the defending player is meant to stop it in the first place, while the attacking player has craft that are somewhat exposed while making the attack run and especially on the turn they line up.

large level bombers use the rules in the book so fly straight until they drop bombs, smaller more agile bombers act as normal but can only evade on pilot skill not agility or speed due to the heavy ordinance carried.

Brings in a whole lot of scope for scenarios as we get a few more planes, e.g. dive bombers attacking shipping or radar installations, level bombers attacking airfields or columns of vehicles etc. All of which would be bread and butter for a campaign (e.g. your squadron is tasked to defend or stop an air raid – the bombers being part of the scenario not specifically your campaign force)

thoughts?

[Renko]

Andy is already working on it…..

[leopard]

Oh even better, its a painfully obvious expansion however its done, especially given how many ground attack aeroplanes there were.

may make it a bit easy to get one or two more playing locally if thats in the pipeline

[TheEldarGuy]

Now that there are bombers, there must be something to bomb, otherwise the bombers will be flying from point A to point B, and the Defender will have to knock as many out of the sky fast.

I imagine, there will be a ‘payload release’ token, or similar. The idea is that the bombers must make it to the assigned location in a disadvantaged position (as they are readying to drop their payload – this makes them vulnerable), then the bomber can deliver the payload (bombs are dropped or torpedoes released), the overall effect of success is irrelevant, the Attacking bombers must deliver the payload, and the defending fighters must stop the bombers. Afterall, the Dambuster runs were the precursor/inspiration to The Trench Run.

I’m surprised they went Junker over Heinkel, the Transport/Paratroop Ju-52 I get that, that’s reasonable. Seriously, if we’re talking Battle of Britain, it’s Heinkel we want.

[Renko]

“I’m surprised they went Junker over Heinkel, the Transport/Paratroop Ju-52 I get that, that’s reasonable. Seriously, if we’re talking Battle of Britain, it’s Heinkel we want.”

They didn’t get to choose, they went with what was available from Zvezda already. If Zvezda did a Heinkel, you would have got that.

I mused a bit about this on my blog here
https://twtrb.blogspot.com/2018/07/i-was-reading-blog-yesterday-about-some.html

but the TLDR version is simply that this isnt some cunning release plan from Warlord.

It takes them about a year for plastics from conception to product on shelves. The game was released in May and they didnt want to commit until they could see it works and will justify the expense. It is going to be 18 months at least before there is a comfortable scope of miniatures from Warlord. Until then you are stuck with the initial 5 fighters plus stop gaps like Zvezda, or third party models.

[invisible officer]

We can not expect that Warlord will tell us to buy stuff from other companies.
1/200 planes is a high risk scale to make profit because there are some other makers.

Many on continent even own the old Wiking models made since pre WW II for Wehrmacht as demo models and soon sold in enormous numbers as toys.

There is ever a high risk that gamers would buy the rules but jump to other companies for the models.

[leopard]

Produce decent models at a decent price, package them with the components for a decent game and they will sell.

buying stuff from elsewhere is generally a sign that the product is seen as poor value for money, but the rules are decent.

this “no rules without a product” mentality is a good way to stop a set of rules ever getting off the ground in the first place (pun intentional)

this is a decent little game, can think of a few improvements but thats for another discussion, can also think of several expansions hopefully leading to a “V2” hard backed rulebook that includes them, aircraft stats, scenarios, paint guides, guides to marking etc as a “one stop shop” that can itself be later expanded.

Using Zvezda models is interesting, have to say I’ve not been overly impressed in the past, however credit to Warlord for not doubling the price of them to cover the bits of card.

do think the transports should have had a single sheet of A4 with a transport scenario in though

[Renko]

“Produce decent models at a decent price, package them with the components for a decent game and they will sell.” QFT

A game system needs to compete on quality of product, particularly historical wargame. Warlord know this and have a quite good record of not attempting to restrict players to “their” models. The problem here isn’t a lack of desire to sell us models, it is simply a lack of immediate capacity.

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