Blood Red Skies - Ba Ba Black Sheep

Just back from Asgard Wargames in Middlesbrough where a bit of Blood Red Skies was going on. Not a lot out of the ordinary I know except Paul was trying out his new F4U Corsair Squadron VMF 214  VF17 aka - the Black Sheep Jolly Rogers using beta stats for the Corsairs. Flying against him today was James and his rather less famous A6M5 Zero Squadron. The game was 500 points and using full historical Doctrine and Theatre Cards.

Pauls Corsairs were 44 points each, and he  started with an Ace, two Skill 4s and a Skill 3 Pilot all flying F4Us, and chose High Altitude Performance for his Doctrine, and Numbers and Poorly Trained Opponents for his Theatre Cards. Numbers added 2 Skill 4 Corsairs (ouch). James took six A6M5 Zeroes with two Skill 4s Skill 3s,  Aggressive Tactics and Heavy Flak Presence (he didn't have any more Zeros so Numbers wouldn't work)

Very fast moving F4Us - hence the blurry pic :-)

More sedate Zeros

Set up was "interesting". Paul managed to leave a gap at the back of his formation into which a pair of Zeros appeared

Doh! said the Fighter Direction Officer

Starting positions

That initial screw up was not as expensive as it could have been as both the "sneaky" Zeroes rolled Disadvantage on their set up dice and were effectively out of the game for a turn or two. In fact most of James' Zeros were starting Neutral or Disadvantaged so it wasn't looking great.

Turn one was mainly a matter of the F4Us using their high speed (9 \443mph) and Great Dive abilities to get into position to outnumber the main Zero elements before the trailing pair, who were clearly "grabbing" for altitude to join the fight could get involved. It wasn't looking good for the Zeros

But somehow the Corsairs just couldn't seem to make it stick. They inflicted an early Boom Chit on the Zeros, but then one of them got caught tailing a Zero into a cloud by the (quite shocking) combo of Tight Turn and Aggressive Pilot, and took a burst of 20mm cannon shells that even his "Robust" trait didn't help with, evening out the Booms. A second quickly followed, which the F4U failed to dodge, first blood to the Japanese.

The Corsairs struck back with another Boom, but it was quickly clear they were trading rather than making their local numerical advantage stick. Meanwhile the two trailing Zeros burned advantage to dive towards a cloud, then used their pilot action to regain their neutral status.

Back in the Furball the Corsairs were still struggling to make their Firepower 2 stick as the Zeros just kept dodging, then ,finally they connected, hard, and a Zero rolled into an uncontrolled dive, a victim of the US Ace. Score was now 5 all with both sides having 5 planes left - next hit would decide it.

Remember those two Zeros stooging around in an innocent manner at the back? Turns out they were not quite as innocent as they seemed - they burned advantage to Dive through the cloud, which reset them to neutral and put them on the tail of a pair of Corsairs.

 They initially missed, but they dropped one Corsair to Disadvantage due to tailing, and a third Zero carved his way in and delivered the Coup de Grace. The Corsair tried to dodge but his Agility 2 didn't work and another Corsair went down in flames.

The F4Us tried to grasp a draw but just couldn't line up a shot, and they broke for home

Thanks to Paul & James for the game. A good time was had by all

(Edit. Apparently the Corsairs are VF17 The Jolly Rogers NOT the Black Sheep. Need to think of a catchy new title................)