Sunday 31 March 2019

A new challenge - Paint a Squadron a Week - Hold my Beer!

Stupid idea really but I was pondering on the embarrassing amount of unpainted planes I have for Blood Red Skies. I'm not sure how it happened but I have rather a lot of unpainted aeroplanes in the "to do" pile, and I need to reduce that.

Here's what I think I have to paint

Japanese
6 Ki 44 Tojo
3 Ki 48 Lilly
9 A6M5 Zero

German
9 Fw190A
4 Ju88

US
11 F4 Wildcats (some of these may become FAA Martlets)
5 B25 Mitchell
5 TBD Devastators
5 SDB Dauntless
2 B17E Flying Fortress

UK
1 Walrus (this is a lie I have 3 but I have no intention of painting more than 1!)

Soviets
2 SB2

I also have a selection of one offs that I picked up as comparisons but I'll leave them for now.

So I've decided to try and whittle that lot down before the next lot arrive by painting one "Squadron" a week - either 6 fighters or 3 bombers. There's no possibility of doing this of course, but I think its worth setting a target so you can measure just how badly you failed :-)


Wednesday 27 March 2019

Blood Red Skies - The WW2 plane I love the best

Isn't the Spitfire. It's the Lavochkin La5FN

I had better explain. Back in 1997 I got my hands on Airwarrior III. This was one of the first massively multiplayer on line games and was about WW2 dogfights and stuff. It was at the time the cutting edge of online gaming, in fact it was one of the first wave of games you could play online against other players over the internet. I stress you could play it, but given the nature of the dial up connections and the fact the server was on the other side of the world it did take some effort and cause quite a bit of frustration - particularly when the wife decided she needed to call a friend and picked the phone up mid dogfight, resulting in an instant disconnection. Needless to say the graphics were rather basic, but at the end of the day, if you shot an enemy down that was a REAL person you just beat, not a selection of computer code that always reacted the same way. This was really exciting stuff, and the skies were literally full of real people to fly with and against. It was a revelation.

The main player base was in the US, as far as I could judge. This meant the skies were full of P38 and P51 players, and the occasional "Death Star" B17 that would have spent half an hour dragging itself up so high that when fighters got up to it they were hanging by their prop and nearly stalling, and therefore an easy kill for any gunners. I didn't bother with that, because I had fallen in love with a little lady from the East, my beautiful La5FN, and she lived down low in the dirt and gutters. To be honest I knew very little at the time about it, but after trying it, I knew I liked it. Lightweight and agile, the La5FN was a joy to fly in Airwarrior because the sky was full of impatient Americans who firmly believed that the P51 was the best fighter in the world. The impatience was the key. Rather than fly their Mustangs up high and use the altitude to their advantage by Boom and Zoom, they were happy to come down low and turn fight with the cheap and nasty Commies in their La5s , with predictable results. I don't know how accurate the flight characteristics in Airwarrior III were, but in a turning fight against Mustangs the La's won every time.

After a while I moved on to playing the amazing IL2 Sturmovik series, and stuck to my La5FN. Il2 was a beautiful game, with for the time superb graphics, and a joy to play. The first time I took it up into the beautifully rendered skies I was almost breathless with the sheer prettiness of the game and my beautiful La5FN. Ok I liked my Spitfire, but I loved my La5.

Historically the La5s first saw action over Stalingrad, and the definitive FN version with it's cut down rear fuselage came slightly later. With the new generation of Yaks the Lavochkins wrested control of the skies over the Eastern Front from the Luftwaffe, and although it was never the same level of air superiority as the Western Allies achieved, it was enough to allow the Sturmoviks in to do their work, and the rest, as they say, is history.

So when I got into BRS I was rather keen to give them a go. At first I was disappointed with the raw stats, but once I understood both what they represent and how the plane works, I'm much more relaxed.  I bought six from Armaments in Miniature but got sidetracked and it took me a while to paint them, but after a recent "spurt" they finally made it to the table. Here they are, painted up as 32nd Guards from 1943-44. Decals from Miscminis


And here is a pair climbing into action somewhere over the Eastern Front - in this case Hartlepool Wargames Club, so possibly more the North Eastern Front :-)


Warlord are planning on releasing their own model later in the next month or so in metal. Initially this will be part of a mixed Squadron Pack based on the "Johnny Red" comic strip, but with a full Squadron release plus an associated Ace pack to follow later in the year.

In BRS the La5FN gives Soviet players a few interesting options. They're faster than most Me109s and although marginally less Agile in game terms to the superlative 109F they do turn better due to having the "Rapid Roll" Trait. In comparison to the Yaks they have slightly more firepower, at a cost in agility. Where they shine is the way their "Rapid Roll" and the synergy that gives with the Soviet's Low Altitude Performance doctrine, meaning they don't stay disadvantaged for long and can get back up into the fight. They do have the "Poor Quality" trait, which Andy Chambers thinks is reasonable due to some alleged production issues (as far as I am concerned nothing can be poor about my beautiful La5s but he wouldn't listen), and as a minor plus this does make them quite cheap too.

Like everything in BRS they have to be a little wary of the Fw190, but they're measurably cheaper in points which means you should always have either a pilot quality or numbers advantage over the FWs, but they give Soviet players a much needed high performance mid to late war fighter.

I did mention I liked them didn't I?

Tuesday 26 March 2019

Reds for Blood Red Skies (1) Some White Death

I have been painting a few new additions to my BRS collection , mainly fuelled by guilt at the build up of unpainted models, and also as I'm aware there are going to be quite a few new releases from Warlord in the coming months that I will want. I'm not that excited about the soon to be released Fw190 Dora's, I already have my hands full playing against the Fw190As, and the Me410s look cool but are not my thing, however there are several new Soviet packs due out that I must pick up, so I thought some work running down the VVS back log may be a good idea.

First up - my Little Pawns. I painted a Pe2 several years ago for our Wings of Glory WW2 campaign we ran at Hartlepool Wargames Society. The campaign went OK without being a great success, and the one "Peshka" sat lonely in the planes box for quite some while. I already have several Tupolev SB2s painted up for BRS to act as light bombers for the Soviets, but I thought I would need a more modern plane type for later battles as the poor old SB2s were shot to ribbons fairly early in the war and had pretty much vanished from service by 1942. The logical choice is the Pe2, so I ordered another two from Armaments in Miniature to make them up to a flight strength for BRS. The minor problem being in my WoGWW2 campaign I had painted the first one a very bright white winter camo. I could either replicate this or repaint the original - I went with replicate and I will have to explain away somehow why my bombers are in winter camo and my fighters are not.

The Pe2 was an outstanding light bomber. It's fashionable to compare light bombers to the superb DeHaviland Mosquito, and if there was going to be a Russian Mossie, the Pe2 is it. In truth that is a bit of a misconception, because the Pe2 was really inspired by the Ju88. The Soviets got to see the early Ju88 in it's dive bomber configuration, and quite liked the idea. The Pe2 followed the same general layout and like the initial batches of Ju88s was fitted with dive brakes to make it a rather handy dive bomber. As the war wore on the dive brakes were found to be an unnecessary feature and were deleted to simplify production and operations, just like the Ju88. Also like the Ju88 the Pe2 got dragooned into being a nightfighter \ heavy fighter as the Pe3, but that was not that common or successful.  Pe2s served from 1941 throughout the war and soldiered on after it. Throughout its service it was updated and still remained relevent and useful.

Anyway, after a bit of effort here are my trio of Pe2s. The stars on the upper wing are "non standard" but I couldn't resist as the contrast of the red on white is so pretty. I shall beat myself later in punishment. Theyve all been fitted with Hawk Widgts to get them to sit on the BRS stands, and I'm happy to say they seem to do this without the need of the bomber base extension. In BRS these give the Soviet player a very interesting fast bomber that can give the German defenders something to really worry about. The stat card for the Pe2 is going to be included in the Soviet Expansion set due out later in the year, but for the moment I am using the Beta stats of Speed 7 Agility 1 Firepower 0 with a flexible FP1 gun. Even when loaded that makes this a speedy and hard to intercept target.


Models from Armaments in Miniature link here

Next, the plane I love the most......


Monday 25 March 2019

Blood Red Skies RAF Expansion Pack "lands"

Sorry if I have not posted for a while - mainly been busy playing and painting Blood Red Skies stuff (Huzzah!) and working (sob!) but I just picked up the new RAF Expansion Pack for BRS so I think it's worth a mention. I also picked up the Ace expansion for Pierre Clostermann, but I'll look at that in more depth on another post.


The RAF Expansion pack is the first of what I hope will be many. There are six packs planned for release this year, one each for the RAF, Luftwaffe, USAAF, Japanese and Soviets, plus a "secret" sixth which I'm sworn to secrecy over. Unlike previous releases for Blood Red Skies these are card sets only, and remarkably for a modern games company Warlord have decided to release these without linking you in to using their models - in fact some models that correspond to these cards are only available at the moment from third party manufacturers such as Armaments in Miniature. Of course I expect Warlord will try and back-fill the range to cover them at some point in the future, but until then this is a brave move that should be applauded because it recognises the game needs more variety to thrive than they can cater for at the moment.

So what's in these expansions I hear you ask? Each set contains six new data cards for aircraft, plus the associated Trait cards to play them. There are also some Doctrine and Theatre cards, plus some Equipment cards. the Doctrine and Theatre cards are a mix of old and new, but the Equipment cards are a whole new addition to BRS that allow further tweaking of planes and their stats to represent design changes or special equipment. In the RAF set the obvious example is the Malcolm Hood, which can be fitted to all planes in your squadron at a cost in points. In real life this was a new cockpit canopy that helped improve visibility and was fitted to a number of RAF fighters, and similarly in BRS this new equipment reflects that by making planes with this equipment harder to outmanoeuvre - its a nice touch.


Back to the data cards. As I said there are six double sided cards included in the pack, in the usual BRS format. These are the Spitfire Vb, Spitfire XIV, Typhoon, Tempest, Wellington and Lancaster. They also come with the relevant Trait cards to allow you to play them, so Tight Turn, Great Dive etc etc, so the total pack includes 6 Data cards, 22 Trait cards, 3 Theatre, 3 Doctrine and 2 Equipment, plus a card to explain how equipment works in the game - a neat way to introduce this new idea into the game.

Production quality is good, with the usual art deco style.

There are a couple of niggles. The Agile card is included for completeness and to allow players to stat up and play less common planes, but the one in this pack has the old wording and layout which is being changed in the next set (Germans). It's still usable but not as nice.

The other issue that has been raised is duplication of Trait cards. It's possible if you have several different BRS Squadron boxes that you will already have enough of some of the Trait cards included here - Tight Turn for example, so there is an element of duplication going on. I understand that, but can't see how it can be avoided. On balance I think any criticism on the duplication question is not really valid - complaints would be far more vocal if there were Data cards that you could not use because the Traits were not included. Damned if you do, damned if you don't I suppose.

And the Lancaster Data card says Lancaster MkIII and it really should be Lancaster B MkIII but I'm 100% certain no sleep will be lost there. 

So all in all a really useful expansion to BRS. Price is £10 which I think is not bad at all in today's market. If you play BRS and the RAF in particular this is a good set to buy, particularly if you have recently, like the RAF did historically, ran into the new Fw190 and find your early Spitfires no longer cut the mustard. Never fear, the Mk IX Spit (now released as a Squadron box) will put the Hun back in his place, or at least restore parity, and the MkXIV is just superb.

Cheers