Back to the Bridges - Blood Red Skies Mig Alley

We (Paul my usual oppo) and me had sort of wandered into doing some F9F Panthers for Blood Red Skies \ Mig Alley to support our usual Migs and Sabres. He has a 3d printer which makes getting hold of less mainstream models easier. Once we had the models we went looking for scenarios and if you have F9F Panthers, well you can't avoid "The Bridges of Toko Ri". If you haven't seen the 1954 film, search for it on whatever streaming service you use. The film is based loosely around the US Carrier strike operations trying to cut North Korean communications by hitting bridges. There's the usual Hollywood romance plot but the film has several good points, including some excellent real life footage of Panthers both in the air and being readied and spotted on deck - well worth a look and almost contemporary with the "real" thing.

Anyway a couple of weeks ago Paul had a go at hitting a bridge with a squadron of six F80s escorting a strike of F9F Panthers - this was a 750 point game. I had four Mig 15s, and we milled about, had fun and achieved not a lot as far as the bridge demolition went. Paul was not a happy bunny as his first gen Jets were struggling against the 2nd gen Migs, but his numerical advantage told in the end and he managed to drive the Migs away but failed to damage the bridge.

So tonight we decided that MacArthur insisted the Navy had another go, and stepped up to 1200 points to make it really interesting. We are lucky to have access to the beta versions of the scenarios from the soon to be released Air Strike supplement, so we decided to use the "Priority Target" mission from that. Paul had obviously been thinking about how his F80s struggled last time, so this time he brought the "A-Team" - a full six plane squadron of F86 Sabres and a pair of F80s to make the numbers up. As he had more than three fighter elements he got two six plane squadrons of F9Fs as the Strike part of the mission - so the US had a total of 20 jets (gulp). Meanwhile the Commies (me) had a section of 4 MiGs with ahem Soviet pilots, and 4 much less experienced Chinese pilots, all deploying in two plane elements. There was also quite a bit of Flak - four points of both heavy and light at the bridge. The scenario allows the defender (me) to exchange some flak for some barrage balloons - this is not as daft as it seems as historically there are examples of the North Koreans stringing cables across valleys to bring down enemy planes, so I thought we would give it a try. The other new idea we were using from Airstrike was terrain. Airstrike can allow players to set terrain by area or usually quarters of the table for simplicity designating the area as flat, undulating, urban etc etc each of which has different effects on the scenario. As the area is very hilly and has some steep valleys, so we classed the terrain as "Elevated", which gives some cover from light flak but also reduced the number of dodge dice a disadvantaged plane has due to the abundance of hills that can interfere with his manoeuvres. Oh Boy was this going to get interesting later.

The game starts with the attacker having one or two of his escort elements on table and the rest in High Cover, plus his strike aircraft, all start Advantaged. The defender has one element near the target and the rest in High Cover.  In our game this was a pair of Rookie Chinese Migs. They took one look at the wall of US Jets heading their way and started to scream for help.

The heavy flak put up a barrage. In Air Strike a barrage effects anything that flies through at Neutral or better by forcing a Pilot Test - if you pass you held your nerve, if you fail, you must immediately turn 45 degrees and drop an advantage level, and pick up a Boom Chit. It's only really dangerous if you actually end touching a flak barrage - that can be bad (!). Mostly what this does is makes small planes avoid flak barrages and big ones just grit their teeth and take the chances. The lead element of Panthers decided to risk it and blow through the flak - and both failed their tests. This was a bit of a problem as the squadron starts the mission on one chit anyway, so was now on 3, with six planes in the air. Not a disaster but not great.

The pair of Rookie MiGs climbed for altitude and pulled their "man pants" up higher as all four Sabres forming the escort headed their way, backed up by a blue wall of US Navy strike aircraft. High Cover on both sides declined to appear.

Next turn the lonely Migs did their best, but got engaged by the escorts and could do nothing to stop the wave of Panthers lining up for their strike.

On the other side of the table however four silver arrows appeared to drop from the skies as the Soviet North Korean High Cover arrived. One pair went for the leading element of Panthers, the others headed for the rest.

Bounced from above and behind and still loaded with rockets the lead pair of Panthers had little chance and both were shot down by the Soviets (cough) North Koreans.

That caused one squadron of Panthers to abort due to excess Boom Chits. Both Chinese Rookies tried to get away from the swarm of attackers, but first one then the other went down under US guns, one to a P80 who was clearly punching above his weight.

Their more experienced flight leader and his wingman in High Cover disengaged due to their squadron having 4 Boom Chits and only 2 planes, which was somewhat irking to the Soviets North Koreans who were now seriously outnumbered.

The remaining Panthers swung in to attack. The lead pair were armed with rockets and their job was to suppress the flak around the target. The first dropped low, but before he could shoot he was hit by flak and unable to dodge due to all the hills, he crashed.

The second plane unleashed what should have been a devastating strike, with FP 2, Pilot 3, +1 (Heavy Hitter), +2 Strafing Ordnance - and missed with all 8 dice. The main strike of four then followed the lead pair in, but no-one managed a solid hit. (note - this isn't a surprise. The Panthers had 4 attack dice using their bombs - they had the "Bomb Shackles" card that allows them to use the bombing pilot action rather than strafing - something you need to actually bring the bridge down, but the Bridge is a "Hardened" target so ignores the first two successes of any attack - basically you need 3 hits on 4 dice. That's hard bit not impossible - in fact a one F80 did score 3 hits with 4 dice later in the game on a Mig, so it can be done).

Back with the Migs and Sabres, one of the Migs burned advantage and dropped in behind a Sabre. The Mig has the "Rough Ride" trait, so needed to pass a test to shoot, but this steely eyed Comrade didn't blink, and a Sabre went down in flames.

The odd were still stacked against the Migs, particularly now the US High Cover had arrived, and seeing the Panthers were disengaging and heading for the coast and their Carrier, the Migs also broke off.

All in all a really good game. What really surprised me was how fast turns ran, even with 20+ Jets on table at any one time. The terrain also made a big difference, making getting tailed and driven down low VERY dangerous. Flak was well balanced, being mostly an annoyance but on occasion being rather deadly. We played the scenario with a total of 28 jets (not everyone was on at the same time) and got our result in just over an hour or so, which is amazing if you compare it to other air to air games where you can spend half an hour trying to plot the exact move of each plane.

The game ended in a win to the defenders - just. Points were even but as the Bridge was not damaged the Commies were the happier of the two sides, and also claimed 3 air to air (2 F9Fs and a Sabre) plus one F9F to flak for the loss of two Migs.

I rather suspect we will be going back to those bridges again :-)

If you fancy trying out a bit of BRS MigAlley you need the rules and counters from the starter set and the Mig Alley supplement. If you don't have access to a 3d printer then Armaments in Miniature have a very nice selection of Korean War jets available. The rather beautiful game mat we were using was from Deepcut Studios, and the acrylic markers etc in the pics are from Just Lasered. All highly recommended.