Battle of Britain Campaign #1

We've started playing the Battle of Britain Campaign that will come out with the Angels One Six kickstarter.

For our first session, we had three players: two British (one flying Spitfires and the other flying Hurricanes) and one German (flying Me 109s). They set up their flights and picked two pilots for the first mission over the beaches at Dunkirk. The Germans put up a pair of experienced Leutnants, while the Spitfire flight put up an eager young flying officer and an inexperienced flight sergeant. The Hurricanes, having already gained some experience over France, sent up their flight lieutenant and an experienced pilot officer.

While the German Messerschmitts were the standard Me 109 E-4 model, the British used some of the variant cards in the campaign pack to field early model Spitfires and Hurricanes without the new constant-speed propeller, dropping their power by one each turn.

The British sections met up over Dunkirk at Angels Two Zero (twenty thousand feet) looking for German bombers. Instead, they discovered a pair of Messerschmitts stooging about below them. Spotting the British, the Messerschmitts went for the Spitfires!

With the Hurricanes closing from behind, the aggressive Messerschmitts turned hard to get their sights on the Spitfires, with Yellow 13 climbing to reduce the height difference. With the shots being tricky with the height difference and a head-on pass, the cannon weren't going to be much use and the two nose-mounted machine-guns would need sixes to hit. Rolling fives, the Germans got some bullets close, but no hits.

The Hurricanes responded with much better shooting, with X for X-ray bringing down Yellow 13 which limped home for a belly landing on the airfield.

Yellow 10, distracted by the fate of his wingman, only managed two actions for its next turn. It elected to shoot twice and, having scored two hits, flashed past KL B.

In the British turn, the Spitfires, rolling poorly for actions (and in the case of, KL B, failing one of the two bravery tests from being hit), lost track of the Messerschmitt and began wide sweeping turns.

Meanwhile, the experience of the Hurricanes showed as they dove on Yellow 10, machine-guns blazing. Despite the difficult shots and the small calibre of their .303 Browning machine-guns, the flight lieutenant flying US A scored a hit. Then, in its turn US X moved, gaining a fright (shown by the red die on its stand) from ening its move on US A's stand, and proceeded to bring down its second kill of the fight.

Rolling on the Shot Down table, Yellow 10 managed to avoid serious injury or damage—the British mistaking black smoke pouring from the exhaust from the engine overspeeding as the Messerschmitt dove away as signs of a kill, but lost track of the Hurricanes. Putting discretion before valour, Yellow 10 headed home.

The Hurricanes did well, claiming two Messerschmitts shot down. The flight lieutenant scored two experience, one for surviving a dogfight and one for being on the winning side. The pilot officer got four, the same two experience plus two more for two aircraft downed. The pilot officer will use their experience to improve their skills for the next mission.

The Spitfires both gained two experience for surviving and winning, while the Messerschmitts picked up a single experience point for surviving.