CY6 Jet Age at Targe

The Kirriemuir club presented their annual Targe show on Saturday and I was part of a small team from the Falkirk club that put on a couple of scenarios from the Crisis in Kashmir CY6 Jet Age scenario book.

The show itself had about a dozen traders and perhaps sixteen games along with a Bring and Buy.  I brought along half a dozen items and managed to shift all but one which paid for my purchases on the day which can't be bad.  It was all well organised and I enjoyed my day.

The first of the scenarios saw me flying a pair of Pakistani Sabres tasked with intercepting two Indian Canberra bombers, only for them to be jumped themselves by Gnats.  Kenny took the bombers and Doug the Gnats.  I got in a good firing position fairly quickly and put a lot of bullet holes in the Canberras, forcing one down.  The Gnats were all over me and their cannon firepower proved too much for the Sabres.  To give you an idea in terms of damage points caused the Sabres roll 6 x D6 and the Gnats 2 x D20.

The second scenario saw 4 Sabres being jumped by 4 Gnats.  It seems in the actual confrontation this was based on the Pakistanis never saw the Indian fighters and attributed the plane they lost to anti-aircraft fire!   Barry and I shared the Sabres and Doug took once again took the Gnats.  We also lost a plane before seeing our opponents and the game was a short and bloody affair with all the Sabres going down but not before Barry got a shot in throwing 34 on 6 D6 to cause the only Gnat shootdown of the day.

Doug had done all the preparation and planning and his was his excellent 1/200 scale planes we were using so it was probably only justice that he achieved a 6:1 kill ratio.  I would recommend CY6 to anyone looking to get into air combat.  We had lots of interested spectators throughout the day which always adds to the experience.

I was very pleased to meet fellow blogger Jim Duncan who came over to say hello, although I was saddened to hear of his loss of a close friend and fellow wargamer as reported on his blog.

We also took the opportunity to promote the next Carronade show (10th May 2014) and look to have signed up a new trader in Eagle Miniatures.

Congratulations to the winner of the best demonstration game which Rob Anderson of the Border Reivers club won with their Battle of Trafalgar Square 1984 and the RAF Leucars boys whose Divine Wind public Participation game was always going to be very hard to beat.

I managed a few photos:

 

A bit of a long shot but this shows the position where the sabres have turned and are about to take on the Cangerras rather than dogfighting with the Gnats

 

A shot of the main hall with our game in the foreground - that's Doug on the right talking to fellow club member David who was providing some moral support

 

The final Canberra with a Sabre on its tail which is just about to be taken out by a Gnat

 

A staged photo of the Canberrs and a Sabre

 

Another staged shot with a Mig 21 firing a missile at a Sabre - Doug had lots of positive comments about his pipe cleaner missile!

 

 

A rather poor shot of the Battle of Trafalgar Square game 

 

Historic Battles – two firsts

I like to play a game which attempts to recreate an historic battle.  They are usually a fair bit of work to organise so I don’t do them as often as I would like.  However both of my last two Monday night games at the Falkirk Club have fallen under this category, with not only my first ‘historic battle’ air game but also my first ‘historic battle’ naval game.

This Monday gone was the Battle of Ortegal, a set to between British and French squadrons in the aftermath of Trafalgar.  Four ships of the line were making a dash for a friendly port and were intercepted by four British ships of the line with some frigates in support.  Myself and Doug took the French and Kevan and Mark the British.  In the terms of the Kiss Me Hardy rules we were sans culottes and they were jolly jack Tars.

John, who had organised the game, evened things up a bit by giving the French crews a higher rating than he might but all to no avail.  Kevan skilfully used a frigate to slow us down (even if he did eventually have to strike) and Mark kept his ships together to give us a pounding.  Three of the French ships were attempting a slow exit when British reinforcements led by Chuck arrived and pretty much finished us off.

All in all an enjoyable game.   We were probably outplayed but the fall of the cards (typical TFL mechanism) was certainly cruel.  Very much an historical result.

A week earlier Doug had brought along CY6 Jet Age for another Indian Pakistan set to.  This was a scenario form the book entitled ‘Stake Through The Heart’.  It recreated the action on 1^st September 1965 over Kashmir.  The Indian army was in danger of being overrun by Pakistani tanks.  In desperation the Indians threw in some elderly Vampires to try and throw them back. The first wave got through but the second was intercepted by Pakistani Sabres (we used Mig 19s).

Doug took the Indians and launched a successful attack knocking out two tanks.  As the Pakistanis pounced some unlucky throwing of one’s meant that 3  of their opponents were unable to jettison their rockets which both slowed them and made them less manoeuvrable,

The superiority of the Pakistani aircraft soon told with 2 vampires biting the dust early on.  The air to air defences then came into play.  Not being able to distinguish friend from foe they let rip at the nearest aircraft.  A Mig 19 was hit by a burst of fire from one of the Vampire’s but then almost immediately had to jink heavily to evade ground fire (from his own side) and tore his wings off.

The outclassed Vampires broke for home but both were brought down, the last by a lucky long range shot.  All four Indian pilots were killed but the Pakistani pilot managed to bail out successfully.  When victory points were totalled up it was a dead draw with the early brewing up of the Pakistani tanks as well as the downing of the Mig 19 offsetting the loss of the 4 Vampires.

Two great games – thanks to Doug and John for organising them.  Both games I am keen to play again in 2013.