Designing Battle of Britain Games #1

Our group will be flying Battle of Britain missions for the first time in 2016 to:

• Offer a "Spectacle", Easy and FUN experience!
• We collectively have over 100 aircraft; 1/285 and 1/300 scale
• Simulating long flight distances and time aloft
• Main + Back Tables" 14'x28' with walkways
• Buckets of dice simulating MG rounds
• Adapted from Bag The Hun (Too Fat Lardies)
• Curved movement templates (Duel of Eagles)
• Hexless centimeter movement
• Fast paced and chaotic dogfight dynamics
• Each BIG Game Day: 2-3 simultaneous missions; 4-6 hours 
• Unfinished missions can be completed on weeknights
• BIG Game Days will occur every 1-2 months

Adolf Galland stated in The First and The Last, that primary RAF targets were Luftwaffe bombers. At first the Luftwaffe tried to knock out RAF fighters so bombers would have easier missions later. Early missions targeted ships in The Channel. Generally speaking 1940 missions were:

• July 24 - Aug. 8: "Free Chase" over Southeast Britain engaging RAF fighters
• Aug. 9 - Sept. 7: Attack RAF aerodromes, Sector Airfields and factories
• Sept. 8 - Oct. 20: London and other cities
• RAF attacks on Luftwaffe airfields
• Luftwaffe attacks on Radar and shipping too
• We anticipate each mission could consist of
• 8x Luftwaffe bombers (one player)
• 8x Luftwaffe fighters (one player)
• 6 or more RAF fighters (two players)  
• Elsewhere on the table another mission will fly at the same time.

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Very Early Terra-forming Images 

Click on images to enlarge them prodigiously!

Empty I know! We are very early in terra-forming looking east. The foreground shows runways for an aerodrome sans buildings. They are coming. 1/285 Spitfires are taking off. Far away are two flights of RAF Hurricanes. We'll look at them in a moment.

The same runways now looking north. Leven Miniatures in the UK make numerous aerodrome models in 6mm (1/285 scale). Elsewhere there will be a grass Sector Airfield. I don't know where yet.

Perhaps these Hurricanes have risen from that grass Sector Airfield - closer to the coast.

The Main Table. (You can see the Back Table in the upper left) We assume The English Channel is wider than the two foot width above. Again we do not have much terrain at this early stage but....

As we travel east, some terrain comes into view. A river empties into The Channel beside a large beach. There appears to be aircraft activity in the distance.

Six Luftwaffe JU-88 bombers escorted by six Me 109 fighters engaged by six RAF Hurricanes.

Turning around looking west we see The Channel encroaching into Southern Britain.

Tally Ho!  

Some ground terrain has been positioned. There will be more. However, we need to be careful not to clog things up too much. Care has been taken to make sure aircraft stands are not too tippy.

CLOSING REMARKS
1. Things will look very different in a few months. Wish us luck will you?

2. I changed the name of this blog adding Battle of Britain to the title. 

3. Let this serve as an invitation to all our regional gaming friends to fly with us in some of the games planned for 2016. You need not fly in every mission - but you might want to.

4. Looks like we will have a 15mm France 1940 game soon on this terrain. The historical time frame is just before the German offensive was halted en-route to Dunkirk.
5. Thank you for looking in.

6. Your remarks are welcome at the word Comments below. 
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