Playtesting draft

OK. With holiday silly season behind us, the cricket season winding down and the procession of family events that all combine to make the summer so busy finally winding down my attention has again been allowed to shift back to getting BTH2 out for playtesting. The main body of text and rules is complete, and I am now just tidying up formations and reformatting the aircraft stats into something that makes best use of the page layout. Atop that, Clarkey has a booked the print run time so we are now on our final approach.

Sub Strike

Our most recent BTH2 playtest involved a strike by coastal command on a crippled submarine limping its way home along the coast of Norway. It may have sounded like a walk in the park for the guys of the Strike Wing but they hadn't reckoned on the Norwegian based Bf-109s that were able to give the Beaufighters a pretty hairy time.

Initially the beaufighters attention was drawn to a surface ship. It was definitely a minesweeper or sloop of some kind but was it the RN speeding in to finish off the sub or the Kreigsmarine hurrying to the aid of their stricken chum? An overfly soon drew a barrage of flak that convinced the fliers that this ship was no chum of theirs. The flak activity drew in the 109's and soon most of the beaufighters were tangling with the nasty little fellows, and only some terrible shooting by the Jerries saved them from what could have been a nasty mauling. Luckiest of all was Wing Commander 'Winko' White who twice found himself squarely in the sights of Ace Otto Plebb only to have the Luftwaffe man roll so bad that all Winko got was a cracked windscreen.

Meanwhile, a section of Beaufighters that had become detached from the main group sighted something in the water off to the south - the sub! Heaving round in a steady turn that kept them out of the melee further north, Basher Bishop and his four rocket armed beaufighters piled in on the flak firing sub and piled on the damage. A good fun game and a very pleasing playtest.

Sturmgruppen Playtesting

The cricket season is reducing the amount of time available for playtesting at the moment, but as England's Ashes hopes begin to dwindle after only two days, the prospects for more BTH2 work are brightening. In the couple of tests we've managed this week we've gone back to fighting late war actions with Luftwaffe Sturmgruppen versus the combat box B-17s with fighter escort.

With Tail Gunner cards aplenty the Combat Box is something to be reckoned with

Round One

In the first game, (March 1945) escorting Mustangs put in a great show and tussled really effectively with the Germans and tested just about all the available new manoeuvres on the way. But they were unable to stop a group of Me-262 who made it through for a stern attack with rockets. The R4M rockets are tested in a fashion akin to the old Donald Featherstone 'canister cone' method, with rolls made for all targets in the zone. The attack had some success, taking down one of the giants and forcing another out of formation. We made some tweaks to the procedure - and that's all part of the playtesting.

Round Two

In the second outing the Jagdfleiger did even better. Led by Top Ace Otto Plebb the germans, waiting at high altitude, were able to bounce Bob Uppendown's escorting Mustangs, taking down two before Bob knew what had hit them, but Bob recovered well against the bogey attack (the Fw190's had not been spotted which made Bob's life really tricky), and through some fancy flying was able to provide an effective defense, despite his reduced numbers, and bagged a hun in the process.

Not looking good for this big fella!

The fighter duel enabled some Fw190 Sturmbock armed with WfGr21 rockets to break through and unleash their deadly load , although they obtained no hits, they forced one B17 out of formation where it became the focus of attention for the surrounding hounds. Luckily for the Big Boys Bob Uppendown had shaken himself free from the fighter tussle and raced to the rescue, taking down an Fw190 that was closing in on the by now wounded B17.


Back to the text this week with a dedicated effort to get a draft out to the playtesters.

Wargaming and saving the planet all in one!

A great idea came to me the other day, quite literally in a flash. I was at a kids birthday party (well, I don't get out much) and the kids had indoor sparklers. Jolly fun and cheap as chips. Mrs Pitts was just about to throw out the left over sparkler sticks when I realised they were just perfect for smoke trails for damaged aircraft. Just snip off the excess wire, twist the end into a hook and they fit beautifully on 1/600th aircraft. Don't believe me? See the pics. You could even get away without painting them but they are a tad brittle so a PVA coating will firm them up and a white drybrush highlights them to perfection.
















Just one pack of sparklers gives enough smoke trails for most games and the fact that you are throwing hardly anything away means less landfill and saves the planet. Hurrah.

PS: Don't snatch sparklers away from your kids until they've gone out. It really upsets them.

Summer Special

If you haven't see it, the TFL Summer Special includes a preview of BTH2 as well as an article on the Winter War of 1939/40. www.toofatlardies.co.uk (great new website too btw)

Playtests of BTH2 have been going well but I would like to hear from guys prepared to playtest some of the new concepts before we get to the final published version.

Also got some great new drawings today from Clarkey - good enough to truly whet the appetite.

Next week at Lard Island we'll be testing Luftwaffe Sturmgruppen versus the 8th Air Force...should be a good one!

The Perils of Word

Well, if it ain't our old friend the corrupt file. BTH seems to be plagues with this. An article I wrote a few years ago on Hurricanes in Russia became corrupted when it was alost complete and I had to rewrite the whole blooming thing. This time, my BTH2 file has become corrupted. Lucky I learnt my lesson last time and so have a backup copy saved, but even so I have lost some sections on Bombing, weather and clouds which will have to be rewritten.
Could be worse.

Kriegsmarine Coastal Forces

A ha! Another goodie from the postman this morning from Amazon.

Kriegsmarine Coastal Forces is the latest offering from Osprey and is a must have for anyone intending to game the actions of the Coastal Command Strike Wings, or indeed any air games on German Coastal forces. The book provides limited - but sufficient - detail for the wargamer who wishes to include flakships, raumboote, minesweepers and the like in his games. Includes reasonable detail on AA capability and deployments, as well as helpful illustrations for seeing inspiration for a quality paint job.

Well worth a few quid.

Google Books

What an excellent resource the Google Books search facility has turned out to be. I've been using the search facility quite extensively ove the past weeks to seek little extra snippets of information for use in the new edition. There's plenty of stuff to get sidetracked with, including some wonderul WW2 era magazines that contain the true spirit of the period. Good stuff

Johnny Danger

Lard Island ace S/Ldr Johnny Danger will appear throughout BTH2. We'll be using him to give examples and other comments in the text in the same way as we've used Hugh Jarce for IABSM. Another cracking picture from Clarkey.

Artwork

Richard sent over some tasters for the artwork he's been putting together for BTH2, which we have decided will be in cartoon format similar to the classic Commando cartoon style that we all know and love.

I plan to include 'cut out and keep' cards in the rules and will be using Richard's illustrations for those plus - possibly - on the cover as well. Above is a taster of what we can expect. Superb.