We recently tried our first game of Check Your Six, a WWII aerial hex based ruleset, using Franks excellently painted Tumbling Dice 1:600th scale Battle of Britain planes (get them at Dom’s Decals ).

As this was our first game using these rules, we played a very simple one on one (actually two on two) fight, featuring two Spitfires versus two Messerschmitts, all flown by Skilled pilots (basically trained well but with little combat experience). The result was surprisingly, though probably historically correct, bloodless.

Here’s a few of the players’ comments. First Frank:

So we had our first CY6-game on monday, with Koen, Eddy, Bart en me. All being new pilots we just had a little skirmish between 2 Spitfires Mk.1a en 2 Messerschmitt Be109’s, learning how to manoeuvre and shoot at the enemy. Fortunatly for me Bart had to play with Eddy flying the Spitfires, Koen und I veire fleyink ze Messerschmitt’s. The game felt very realistic, climbing and making sharp turns or extreme turns surely had it’s concequences on the speed which could make you a sitting duck or denied you a chance on firing on a plane which flew higher. Anyway for optimal fire you have to get close, preferably from behind. The Spits had the advantage on range because their light machine guns where overall better on medium range where the Messerschmitt’s low velocity canon’s made it hard to hit the British. My plane got the first hit giving it engine damage, reducing my max speed to half it’s original speed, climbing was very risky, there was a change of 2/3 that I got out of controle. My 3 attempts to climb for the remainder of the game all failed :-). But on the bright side Eddy the Noob emptied his complete stock of ammo on me :-). From there on Eddy’s purpose in game was to try ramming Koen or me, but that seemed harder than Eddy had in mind. Due to a difficult and failed manoeuvre Eddy dropped out of the Tacticale Airband which forced him to make a Pilot Skill Check which he failed, Eddy flew his spit in to the ground to never be heard of again… I fled the English sky, due to the fact that I wasn’t able to climb to engage Bart. Anyway my speed limitation made it impossible to engage Bart who was always flying higher than me. After that Koen left the battlefield as well an got home safely :) So score was 4 - 1 (4pts for a destroyed spit - 1pt for a damaged Messerschmitt), a well deserved victory for ze germans, although Eddy will not agree (see his mail which will folow soon) Conclusion: it was a nice learning game with limited damage at the end. From the moment on that we’ll deploy more aircraft casualties and carnage will rise :-) but the rules are pretty good making this a very tactical game.

Then Eddy:

Quite frankly this was the most undeserved victory in living memory. Not a single German bullet ever touched my British plane while I raked Frank’s Messy Schmidt with bulletholes from prop to rudder. Only pure chance, spit, and Got Mit Uns kept his plane above ground level as he was outmaneuvred, dare I say it : outclassed at every turn. Apart from that : pretty realistic rules really and once you get the hang of it, it can go pretty fast. We definitely need a couple more planes in the air to make it a bit more chaotic and to make sure the kill ratio goes up.

And finally myself:

(…)my view is pretty similar to Eddy’s - totally undeserved victory and realistic rules :). The rules take a bit of getting used to, but I quickly found myself thinking of the tactical situation (“I have to get above Koen’s plane and try and turn inside his turning arc”) before the mechanisms of the game (“I can do an L43 turn with a climb”), so that’s good. The lack of deadliness is also pretty much right on I think. Sure, I did most of my firing at long range (6 hexes or so), but I also fired two point blank bursts at Koen’s plane without any effect - unsatisfying but more or less realistic I think, when you think about the reports from the actual fights (typical engagement: “10 Spits attacked 42 bombers escorted by 18 fighters - 4 bombers and 2 fighters were downed for the loss of two Spitfires. The remaining Germans aborted their mission and went home.”)

Definitely up for repetition, I’d say.