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I am going to be running a balloon busting mission this weekend at our monthly game day. I have never run one before, so could someone give me a recommendation for a balanced scenario? Should the attackers have one more aircraft than the balloon defenders? Are there certain types of aircraft that are good matchups for this?
I’m not sure how many people are going to be playing… I’m guessing around six, but I want to be prepared for any number. I was figuring that I could play or just referee if we needed to even up or odd up one side or the other.
There are going to be mostly newbies playing, so I’m more interested in a balanced scenario than one that is historically accurate.
Camel 150’s Vs Fokker 185’s is very equal and if you have an odd number of players the advantage goes to the attacking force. I wouldn’t sweat it if you have an even number of players.
Well, we played this past Saturday, and it went pretty well, but the Allies got absolutely slaughtered. We had five players, including me, so we had three Sopwiths attacking a German balloon defended by two DVIIs. We (the British) managed to hit the balloon a couple of times, but were not able to take it down. The ground fire was absolutely devastating though. One pilot was hit for a light wound in turn one (also didn’t help that he jammed BOTH guns on turn one and was never able to unjam either of them). My pilot was hit for a Critical Wound in turn three. Subsequentally, our third British pilot had one of her wings shot off in turn five or so… the turn right after the balloon reached the ground, when she was trying to get out of the area.
Everyone still had fun though. The pilot with the light wound was the only Allied one to survive though. When I rolled for the location though, we were 22 turns into German territory, and the front was 22 turns long. With a 5% chance of passing out each turn, he wasn’t going to make it home, so he ditched it. Plane was destroyed, but his pilot survived. So, I decided that next month’s mission will be a rescue mission.
P.S. Since this was one of my first balloon busting missions, I have a bunch of rules questions, but I don’t have them with me, so I’ll have to post them later.
Quote:One pilot was hit for a light wound in turn one (also didn’t help that he jammed BOTH guns on turn one and was never able to unjam either of them).That would be the way my luck goes on balloon missions. Everyone else in our group loves them because they usually get a kill out of them. The secret is usually to go in as a squadron to divide the ground fire and don’t let the luckiest guy at the table roll for those AAs:P
Ron wrote:
Quote:That would be the way my luck goes on balloon missions. Everyone else in our group loves them because they usually get a kill out of them. The secret is usually to go in as a squadron to divide the ground fire and don’t let the luckiest guy at the table roll for those AAs:PI think that was the big problem. I had two newbies for wingmen (wingwomen?) and they both flew around the first turn and didn’t go after the balloon. I didn’t go for it on the first turn because I thought I would be out of range of the AA guns, but I wasn’t.
Yeah, that hurts. When the defenses have 5 or 6 AAs they are still likely to get you, even on a one.
I remember one balloon mission that went very well until the escape. We were heading out with me hugging the ground to avoid the AA fire and my wingmate decided to start climbing a little early to start to get some altitude, figuring at the worst he would have a 50 percent chance of getting hit by one AA. Well he did. He had no damage to the plane at all up to that point. The AA hit the engine and he rolled the crit and the engine blew up, the pilot died. Yes, one hit. Sometimes that’s all it takes.
Ron wrote:
Quote:We were heading out with me hugging the ground to avoid the AA fireHugging the ground? Does AA fire have a minimum altitude that it can affect? I don’t remember seeing that in the rules!
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