Defining Advantage in Blood Red Skies

One of the regular questions that comes up in Blood Red Skies is "what is Advantage?"

If you don't play this may seem a bit cryptic, so I'll do a quick explanation. At the core of Blood Red Skies is the Advantage system. Planes have one of three states, Advantaged, Neutral, or Disadvantaged. Your status changes due to your own and enemy actions. 

Advantage status is EVERYTHING in BRS. It decides initiative, and also who can shoot at what - you can only target a plane at a lower Advantage level, and can only be shot down if you are disadvantaged. 

Status is indicated by the tilting model stands - tilted back - climbing, for Advantaged, nose down - diving, for Disadvantaged. 

Advantage in some ways replaces the concept of altitude. OK in a game about air warfare not specifically representing altitude may seem a bit strange, but in BRS it works very well. Gone are the tall stands that are impossible to move and topple over at the slightest touch, or counters and dials and all that, instead replaced by a simple three status system. The problem is of course that when we use terms like "Advantage level" and "climbing for Advantage" (a Pilot choice in BRS) and we point the nose of the model up, we tend to reinforce the idea that Advantage = Altitude. And it doesn't. Not always anyway.

Actually the best way to explain Advantage is to use the other end of the Advantage curve - Disadvantage. Disadvantage is the thing that gets you shot down. It can be anything that allows that. Energy state, speed, lack of awareness, and yes, sometimes altitude. 

There is a famous incident during the Battle of Britain that helps illustrate "Advantage" in action. On 15th September 1940 Ginger Lacey in a Hurricane of of 501 Squadron ran into a group of 12 Me109s. Lacey is an Ace, flying below them on a reciprocal course, however he is unseen, so Advantaged. The 109s are Neutral. Lacey has the initiative and "burns Advantage" with a climbing half loop to attack them from behind. Both are now Neutral (and that would normally prevent Lacey shooting) however he is now tailing the target which drops it to Disadvantaged and he shoots it down. He proceeded to claim a second before disengaging into some nearby clouds.

James Harry "Ginger" Lacey, the Ace we should of got instead of Bader in BRS!

The other point to make is Advantage is situational and can change as the game turn flows. You can start Advantaged, fly into a cloud (becoming Neutral) then come out the other side and climb for Advantage - back to Advantaged. Later you can be subject to an enemy Outmanoeuvre and become Neutral, or worse get tailed and become Disadvantaged - and vulnerable, all in one turn. It is this constant changing status that helps make BRS such a fun and fluid game that feels like a dogfight not a battle between sailing ships in 2 dimensions.

Cheers

Walking less trodden paths in Blood Red Skies 2 - the most useful bit of kit is.................

One of these

This is a Hawk "Widget". 

It's a small clear plastic connector designed for use with Hawk Wargames Dropzone Commander \ Dropfleet Commander games. You can glue one of these to your spaceship model and it will then slip snugly over the "flying" base giving a convenient method of attaching the spaceship to the base that can be easily removed for storage etc. Having spent several decades fighting with models that keep getting detached from their bases I can say it is a work of sheer genius. The real beauty is that by pure coincidence the triangular post on a BRS base also perfectly fits the socket on a Hawk Widget. The result is that you can use ANY third party model, drill a hole and attach a widget, and it will fit a BRS Advantage base. Suddenly one of the issues with third party models - that they don't fit the BRS bases, has gone! I've also heard of people who are struggling with Warlord metal models fitting them too, just to improve how they sit on the base. 

I would love to claim credit for this discovery, but it was Paul Davison who as far as I know first suggested it. Well done mate!

Fitting widgets isn't that difficult either. Rather than go into it in depth I would refer you to this blog post here by Chris Jarrett (hi Chris!)  https://spitsandschmitts.blogspot.com/2019/02/converting-3rd-party-planes-to-brs.html who explains the process with panache.

So how do you get them? Easy - bug your FLGS or send for them direct from TT Combat who now control the Dropzone line. There are 64 in a blister and they cost £8 here - TT Combat - that should keep you going for a fair few squadrons.

So now when you are looking to build a BRS Squadron from a minor nation and Warlord don't do the model, but someone else does, you can quickly convert them to fit BRS bases. 

Cheers!

Walking the less trodden paths in Blood Red Skies - Romania

I have to admit it, one of the reasons I love BRS is the attitude of the players. I mentioned before how when we started to make beta stats available I was expecting a flood of requests for some of the high profile late war super fighters such as the Ta152 or Tempest, but instead the community wanted .......sigh...... Brewster Buffalo. 

There is also a hard core of players who are not really interested in yet another Spitfire or 109 Squadron, but like to look further afield. It is easy to forget that World War Two was a World War involving many different nations, not just the big five, and also that the war was truly global. Many nations fought in the air in WW2 that (probably) will never get a mainstream release from Warlord, but maybe deserve some mention. This week I was invited to have a game against such an opponent by one of our local gamers Rob Hymer (Happy Birthday btw Rob!). Rob is a new BRS player and has a soft spot for the Romanian air force. 

I was vaguely aware of the Romanian air force in WW2, but I wouldn't want to say anything without at least doing some googling. Rob knows quite a bit more ! and wanted to try out his planes so I was happy to run a 4 v 4 game with my Soviet Yak 1s against his IAR 81s.

It was a fun game which the Soviets won eventually because I have much more experience than Rob in BRS, and also got lucky, but I hope he had a good game and I'm sure he will be back for another match up.

It also rekindled a nagging desire to go a bit out of the mainstream for my next BRS project. BRS does lend itself well to toe - dipping as you only really need 6 fighters and 3 bombers and you are good to go. Not sure what, but I suspect something like Hungarian or Dutch or maybe something out East?  

So without further ado here are some pics of the game, and also some of Robs other Romanian planes which I think shows just why getting out of the mainstream can be so interesting. Rob got his models from Shapeways as there are very few other sources at the moment - Cheers!    

And a couple of shots of some of Robs other planes - including a Plz11 

Err how many Gladiators is too many*? Blood Red Skies and the magic of 3d printing

I recently mentioned my first forays into the arcane art that is 3d printing here 3d-printing-world-turned-upside-down.html

and did a bit of an interview with Rich Carlisle about his new project RoCWorks here roc-works-is-taking-off-interview-with.html

So this is a sort of follow up to both of those as when RoC-Works started to put their .stl files on sale I decided to take the plunge and bought the Gloucester Gladiator.

I had a couple of failed prints, then shamefaced I read the instructions that helpfully came with the files, reset and levelled my print bed, and I'm now turning out Gladiators faster than the original factory! Moral of the story RTFM!

I think the key is the files come with the supports already in place, at a suitable print angle and tested on a Elegoo Mars (which is close enough to my Photon to make no difference). I can easily get three on a build plate. 

The prints are clean and well detailed, and although there is a lot of supporting material on the Gladiator, they clean up quickly and easily.

The file cost £11.25 (introductory price) and includes a licence to print for own use only - you can't sell them or give them away, but to be honest at that price it's an amazing deal, even factoring in the cost of resin and running the printer, so if a mate wants some I will tell him to buy the .stl and I will happily run some off for him.  

In fact it was so painless that I picked up the D520 file too. I thought I had zero interest in the French, however I'm now bugging Rich to do a Ms406! 

So this is all ok if you are a 3d printer owner, but what about the rest of us? RocWorks are making the physical models available for preorder now and are planning to ship on 17th August. Prices are more than the print your own, but still very competitive.  printed-resin-models-catalogue NB the prices are for multiple models not just singles!

I understand there are more models in the pipeline, and if so I will be running the printer for some time to come.

Musing time now, but with RoCWorks taking the hassle and strain out of the 3d printing process I suspect this business model may well start to gather some momentum. 

* Technically the answer is 8 if you are playing to the Air Strike force building rules...... 

Roc-Works is taking off - interview with Rich Carlisle about his new Blood Red Skies compatible range of models

Interesting news. I’ve been chatting to Rich Carlisle about his new project Roc-Works. For those who may not know, Rich was one of the guys at Warlord when BRS started and was very much one of the unsung heroes that helped get Blood Red Skies where it is. He left Warlord over the Christmas \ New Year and has been involved in a number of other projects since then, however he has always been a BRS guy at heart. Anyway, long story short, he has this new BRS related project “Roc-Works” which I think will be great news for all of us. I asked him to explain a bit more about Roc-Works and what it is about for the Blood Red Skis Ready Room, but the interview took in quite a bit more than I originally expected so here it is in full. 

RichC Hi Ken, you asked for a bit about what’s coming up for roc-works.co.uk, we’ll I’ve been busy putting together a place for everyone to come and find some fantastic sculpts by several talented people; including Aidan & Rowan Boustred and Steve Toth. Production-wise I’ve decided to go along the 3dSTL route to allow those with a printer of their own to build their airforces. I can also make these aircraft to order for those without a printer.

Ready Room (err me): That’s great – I’ve already got some of Steve’s work as we did a couple of crowd funding projects (ok not big crowds!)  to have Steve design and print models – his Meteor and Ki45 were beautiful. I’ve also see Aiden and Rowans excellent Fleet Air Arm stuff. So all 1:200 and ready to accept BRS bases?

RichC – yes! and I hope to have all available BRS products including bases on the store

Ready Room so I have to ask – what’s the price point? 

RichC Prices depend on the size of aircraft (and therefor sculptors time and materials etc) so an average size fighter is £13.50 for an STL and £4.50 for a single resin model. $USD prices will be similar based on exchange rates 

Ready Room. That’s not bad at all – what are you working on ?

RichC Our first releases will be the following:  Brewster F2A Buffalo ,  Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa (Oscar),   Gloster Gladiator ,  Fiat CR.42 Falco ,  Dewoitine D.520 . From the 2nd August, you’ll be able to order the STL files whilst the actual resin models will be ready for release from the 17th August. More models are to come asap; including the Messerschmitt Bf 109 F Tropical, Supermarine Spitfire Mk Vb/c Tropical, North American Mustang Mk1 and a Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber (with torpedo) I and the sculptors hope you’ll give roc-works.co.uk a look and keep an eye on our progress, we have a whole lot of aircraft we want to make including many not available in detail anywhere else.

Ready Room – I’m sensing a matched pairs theme?

RichC Partially, I had a wish list we (sculptors) talked priorities and it came together. We wanted Italians and Aidan had the Cr42 and already had a Gladiator. Whilst Steve was working on a Spitfire and we added the Bf109F to match it but mainly to fill gaps we think are needing filling

Ready Room – You mentioned Italians – is that going to be a thing?

RichC There are definitely a couple more that I'd like to do, some are already planned by Warlord (SPOILER ALERT - ITALIANS ARE A THING!)  So yes, I want to look at those smaller airforces and aircraft that are often overlooked.

Ready Room – Will the stls come with printing recommendations – angles , supports etc?

RichC The STL come with several files. Firstly the STL sculpt but also that sculpt pre laid up (Sprued) and saved as 2 types of common printer files. Lastly as a ChiTuBox workable file with spruces so you can see how it’s been approached. Oh and we’ll include a guide on the website

Ready Room – nods wisely (not sure I understand that but I’m sure it makes sense to people with 3d printers)

Ready Room – any plans for bigger planes?

RichC Bigger planes, absolutely. We may start with twin engined bombers initially and I’d love to see the first of them later this year. But first things first. Let’s see if people want them   

So if people are interested in new BRS compatible “stuff” get your names on the newsletter list for RocWorks at https://roc-works.co.uk

For the TLDR brigade here is the short version

New UK manufacturer of BRS compatible models

Available as either print your own or physical models

On sale 2nd August for stls and 17th August for physical models

How good is that 😊

Poor Quality in Blood Red Skies

Probably the most queried Trait in Blood Red Skies is "Poor Quality".  The text on the card is pretty simple :

"Rushed development and poor manufacturing practices held back many innovative designs. - In scenarios where a die roll is made for starting advantage, Deduct -1 from the roll for planes of this type."

The classic example is the Yak 1 in the initial "bendy" plastic releases. The Soviet aircraft industry was in disarray and quality control at the factories was suffering as the pressure to provide aircraft for the front. As a result some planes were rushed into squadrons with known defects - including parts becoming detached in flight. Similarly as the war situation deteriorated for the Axis forces some resources became scarce and were replaced by less ideal substitute materials ersatz rubber in aero engines for instance, which adversely impacted on performance in some cases. 

What Poor Quality does in effect, is to handicap such aircraft at setup, making it less likely to start Advantaged, or more pertinently, 50% of them will start Disadvantaged in Dogfight scenarios, which can be a PITA. There is no ongoing impact - they will still get to be Advantaged, they just take longer to do that, assuming the opposition doesn't get to them first!

 

That seems very simple. What has happened however is that as the game has developed the "team" has found some other uses for this card. The relationship between altitude and Advantage is a tangible but non specific one - you can be Advantaged or Disadvantaged at any altitude, but if you struggle with a sustained climb rate you are more likely to be disadvantaged at setup. There are a lot of aircraft types that we know due to design or other issues did not perform as well at climbing to higher altitudes due to lack of superchargers (for instance). A good example here being the P39 Airacobra. We struggled to represent this because we don't have low or high altitude. One option was to make climbing for advantage a test for such planes, however this would add another dice roll per plane per turn - lot of dice rolls, to a game involving such types. We really don't like adding layers of tests. BRS is about air combat, which is fast and furious, and one of the strong points is the quick turn sequence, so anything that adds tests and slows that down is avoided if possible. We did however already have a card that generated the right result in game - Poor Quality.  

Poor Quality is starting to appear more often because of this. It is morphing into a useful way of applying a negative to a plane's characteristics without inventing new Traits. We don't really like new Traits because they would have to be retrofitted to current releases, and the problems with cards etc make that undesirable to say the least. In the dim and distant future when we get V2 there will undoubtedly be more Traits added, but for now we are trying to keep to what we have.

So get ready for a bit more Poor Quality. Italian aircraft with battery powered radios*, or planes with no radios at all? PQ can work here because it can reflect the disadvantage these planes would be operating under without making them totally outclassed. Badly designed cockpits that overworked the pilot, same thing. There are many uses for PQ, so giving PQ to a beautifully build Macchi** doesn't mean it was badly manufactured, but that something about their design puts them at a disadvantage.

Cheers

*For some reason the Italian designers didn't think a dynamo \ alternator was needed on fighters. Instead of powering their radios by attaching them to the big rotating thing at the front that would generate copious amounts of electrical power, not the sons of Caesar, nope, they would use batteries. Like our mobile phones, battery life would deteriorate with use and age. The end result was the Italian fighter force in the early war period would only have enough power in their radios to communicate for a half hour or so, after which point they were down to wing waving and the like. Of course poor radios were not just an Italian thing. In 1940 it is fair to say most fighters had issues with radios, and Spitfire, Me109 and Zero pilots all struggled one way or another to reliably communicate with others in their flight, but these were mostly ironed out.  

** Saying nowt but I think our Regia Aeronautica players will be smiling soon(ish) once we start to get out of the Lockdown backlog :-) 

Back in the saddle - Battle of Britain Campaign game 1

This afternoon saw my first game against a real opponent since the lockdown began, and it was nice to get back to a table - even if we were socially distanced. 

The game was Blood Red Skies - actually the first of what we hope will be a series of BRS games that will run over the summer mirroring the phases of the Battle of Britain - so real time minus 80 years. I should add as this was our first game back we were quite rusty and also managed to forget the sea coloured gaming mat, so we made do with a spare from Cruel Seas that was in the shop, and also my camera was still charging so I had to use my phone - which is my excuse for some of the ropy pics that follow

I'm playing the Germans - in this case elements of I / ZG 76 in their Me110s. Todays game was part of the KanalKampf phase of the battle and was a Fighter Sweep mission over the Channel.

We ran into some RAF Spitfires and had a very interesting battle. The initial pre game and set up didn't go well for the Luftwaffe. The RAF played the "Restricted Airfields" Theatre card, meaning in the confusion and congestion on our new French airfield something went wrong and one of the 110s failed to join up. This wasnt a one way thing however as the RAF were suffering from the "Supply Shortages" Theatre card - still getting back up to strength after the Battle of France and this caused them to enter the game with one Boom (morale) chit.

Slightly less satisfying was the initial set up positions. Both elements of 110s were caught snoozing and were disadvantaged, with the RAF being much more on the ball, starting with one pair in High Cover, one Advantaged, and one disadvantaged. This was quite a blow as one of the quirks of the scenario - starting positions of Disadvantaged aircraft are chosen the opponent not the player. This was not good!  Here is the set up with the Luftwaffe circled in yellow and the RAF in blue.

The first turn saw the 110s form something vaguely resembling a Lufbery Circle with both elements trying to cover each other as the Spitfires came screaming in.

This was however a cunning plan (or at least it seems to have turned out ok , which is almost the same thing!). The 110s made judicious use of the Dive Away \ Great Dive combo to put some distance between them and the Spitfires, wrong-footing the RAF somewhat who were not expecting the Germans to be able to burn advantage to dive. It has been said many times that Great Dive on a Speed 7 plane isn't that great, but in this case it was a lifesaver, allowing the 110s a little time to claw for altitude \ Advantage. One lone 110 piloted by Lt Hubert Gruber bravely engaged a pair of Spitfires to buy time for the rest of the Squadron.

This allowed the COs pair to dive through the clouds and get into a position to turn on the Spitfires in the next turn (hopefully)

A fairly "active" furball then developed, however the 110s were careful to keep their discipline and not throw away their planes in risky manoeuvres, and also cover each others tails - clearly having read the  Dicta Doug!

The RAF seemed to be having an off day. The Spitfires were I think intimidated by the firepower of the 110s and started to use their Defensive Tactics doctrine a lot. This is quite an interesting card as it allows a plane to turn a normal shot into a much harder deflection shot, but at the cost of breaking up your formations. No Spitfires were shot down, but they did accumulate some Boom Chits and more importantly, they lost their cohesion and wingmen, and it was now the 110s that were in the driving seat. 

 

The RAF did manage to rally a little and regain their composure, with one pair of Spitfires latching on to the German leaders tail. Luckily he had the "Sixth Sense" Ace Skill, which stopped him becoming tailed. 

The game ended when the Luftwaffe managed to score enough Boom Chits to make the Spitfires head for home. It was a bloodless victory but a good way to blow the dust off the models and get a game in. Looking forward to the next mission where I hope to sink some British shipping in The Channel !