This last Friday night I got out of the house and went and played some historical air fights over at our buddy Brian's house of Repple Depple using the Check Your 6 rules. I love these rules and I can see why they're a big draw at Cons, I'm by no means an experienced CY6 player, but after the first turn, you're square in the action and an entire complicated system is easily managed at your fingertips with just a few charts and diagrams. It doesn't handle modern day aircraft, but completely understandable given the speeds and armament of what's out there nowadays, but from biplanes to Korea, it's great.
Having a full blown CY6 game master (for lack of a better word) is an invaluable benefit too. Brian's got dozens of planes, from a variety of time periods and war theaters, in different scales, so any scenario is possible. He also has an ingenious altitude system that is simple to use, and looks awesome on the tabletop. The above pic is his, all of mine were too blurry (arrgh, camera phone!) to post, but to see more...lots more pics of the evening, you'll just have to head over to his blog and read (and see) all about it.
The first scenario: I played the Allied side somewhere over the Pacific Ocean against the Japanese. I had a couple of named veterans on my side too and was flying a cool plane, the P-38 Lightning that looked kind of like a sci-fi ship. Our mission was to go blast some bad guys who had just dropped some bombs on our buddies.
The second scenario: We were in Europe, trying to attack some bombers or something that were flying low, and we were the Axis bad guys. A storm front was moving in and created an impenetrable wall to one side of the board. I was flying fast and agile little planes that had a cool desert camo pattern; the 109's.
Brian's got a very thorough writeup of the evening, and as mentioned, he's got tons of great pics. So, what are you waitin' for?
Interesting game! I think I saw this in a gaming store in Paris at Easter. Unfortuneately here in Ireland there aren't many FLGS. Whilst I mainly game 40k and WFB I do enjoy historicals, even if I never get a chance to play.
ReplyDeleteWhat models does one use? Also the stands... are they changeable depending on height? I see in some of the pics the stands are shorter.
Enjoying the blog in general too, thanks for the add!
Just about any scale of airplane model/toy/miniature will work. The two games we played used two different scales, a larger toy plane and smaller metal miniatures. The stands are Brian's genius homemade solutions to representing different altitudes, each section is separate and they fit together. To top it all off they're capped with magnets that pivot to show climb and dive.
ReplyDeleteThe game's a blast, I highly recommend it!
Glad you like the blog, I try to keep it interesting, heh.
The smaller planes used in the first game are 1/300 miniatures from Scotia-Grendel (the Collectair range). I also use quite a few Navwar miniatures in that scale. The larger ones are prepainted 1/144th models either from toy stores or from various Japanese companies (via EBay)
ReplyDeleteThe altitude stands are section brass tubing that can be stacked to show altitude. You can play the game without these (using dice or some other marker to indicate altitude) but I really think the 3D aspect adds a lot to the feel of the game
I would go as far as say that if you haven't played the game before, start off right and try Brian's brass tube method. It really is SO much better, I can't imagine trying to play the game without them.
ReplyDelete