Game Title : Buffalo Wings
Publisher : Against the Odds
Game Designer : J.D.Webster
Game Thema : tactical air combat over Finland in Winter War and Continuation War
Game Scale
Period : 1 turn = 4 sec, 1 hex = 100 yards, 1FP = 50 mph
Map : tactical combat map
Units : 1 aircraft, 1 antiairgun
Game Components
1 map, 1 countersheet, 1 rulebook ( including Aircraft data, playaids, scenario data)
Background:
Brewster Buffalo F2A ( hereafter Buffalo ) is known to Japanese wargamers as poor performance fighter in early Pacific war from Malay to Midway. So, when I first heard this title on the schedule of ATO, I feel it would not be so successful in Japanese wargame market. As I concerned, until now, I’ve never heard any Japanese play report of this game.
But, I played this game last week with my friend, and found this game is entertaining enough for air-combat players.
About 25 years ago, I used to play the game “ Air Force ” and its expansion “ Dauntless ” both published by AH. It was difficult games for a novice wargamer like me at that time. But, once I can catch the concept and rules, it became one of my favorite games.
When combat wings series come to the market via COA, I didn’t try them. Because, for me COI games looks too professional, in other words too difficult.
This time, because this game comes as a magazine game, and it is announced a simplified version. So, finally I took this game.
Going back to the Buffalo’s story, though it was not successful in Pacific theatre at all, it was successful enough in scandinavian airfield against Russian aircrafts. They got 456 shoot down against 21 loss. And this made 35 Aces in Finn Air Force. They got the nickname “ Pearl of the sky ” due to this successful performance.
But, so far there is no appropriate wargame which describe this successful history in very Northern air fight. Now, there is.
gamesystem:
Though this is a simplified version, it is still complex for most wargamers. Unfortunately, air fight games must have game system which describe 3-d movement of aircraft. This minimal requirement make the game system complex enough for most wargamers who didn’t try air fight games yet.
Actually the rule is not so big. You only need only 5 pages of rulebook to fly a counter in 3-D. But, many concepts looks very unfamiliar for land fight wargamers.
Briefly speaking, you must understand 3 basic concepts to fly an aircraft.
The first is horizontal maneuver such as turning. In this game, an aircraft can swith its nose in 12 directions. Each turn is defined to change its nose 30 degree to either right or left. Before turning, it must go several defined number of hexes in straight. And, also turn causes some amount of decel when it is done.
In this game, the number of hexes you must go straight is defined in common table. In other words, every aircraft uses the same table. This means every aircraft can turn at the same turning radius. This sounds very strange for “ Air Force ” players like me. In that game, one of the most important difference between aircrafts is the turning radius.
On the other hand, in this game the difference is described as the difference of resulted decel. In case of high maneuver aircraft, it will have small amount of decel even in case of very severe turn. This gives that the aircraft can do acrobatic maneuver without losing its speed. In case of low maneuver aircraft, since it will lose certain amount of its speed due to its maneuver, it must have higher engine power or it must go down to get diving accel.
The second is vertical maneuver such as climbing or diving. In this game, this type of maneuver is described more in detail than “ Air Force ”. The vertical nose direction is defined into 5 status, such as level, climb, steep climb, dive and steep dive. For changing these status, you must do pitch control which is never defined in “ Air Force “.
These status will restrict the movement in vertical dimension and will cause accel or decel. First, it looked difficult for me. But, once I became familiar with this concept it is easy since it is very reasonable rule for aircrafts movement.
The third is speed change. As described above, variety of maneuver cause variety of accel and decel. In one turn, you must keep all these numbers and total them. If the total is beyond every +5/-5, the speed of aircraft is increased or decreased +0.5/-0.5.
In this game, the speed is defined into 0.5. If you have 0.5 in this turn, you do not use this fraction. And the fraction is carried over to the next turn. If you get 1 movement point due to this carry over and next turn’s fraction, then you can use this point to move.
These are the essences of the movement.
The game sequence is much easier than “ Air Force ”. In that game, everybody must plot his movement secretly on plotsheet and open them simultaneously.
In this game, everybody rolls a die and low roller goes first. So, you don’t have to worry about your movement legitimacy alone. Other player can advice or point out your error in open conversation. This make this game much easier for novice players.
In this initiative roll, there is a modifier for pilot quality. Recruit pilot has -4 modifier which make him move earlier. Veteran and Ace pilot has +1 modifier each reflecting their skill.
The combat system looks familiar for most wargamers. It uses regular combat ratio type CRT. You must check fire arc first. If you have a target in your arc, then you must decide which gun you use and total the number of firepoints in that range. Then the target must announce the defence factor of aircraft and it must be modified by the factor of relative direction. Then, you must divide the firepoints by modified defence factors to get the combat ratio. You may have some column shifts and/or die roll modifiers. Finally roll dice to get the result.
In this process, the game uses percentile dice from 01 to 100. The variability of the result is very very wide. Since as usual air-fight game, it is difficult to catch the target in fire arc, the number of shot is very limited. Since the result variability of limited number of shots is high, the game looks a little bit wild. If you have many chances and roll 90’s every time and only once you are shot and the enemy rolls 03 or something like this, you will be lost and definetely very frustrated without doubt. But, this is a nature of air fight.
Also, the rule of critical hit makes the game even wilder.
There are many scenarios included in this game only. You can see many Russian fighters which are not popular even for Russian Campaign games enthusiasts. Some of them are biplanes which are really out of dated.
There is a rule for bombers which fly almost automatically. This rule gives you several soritare scenarios.
Conclusion:
Honestly speaking, this game is better than I expected. The rule is short enough to be entertaining. Once you become familiar with the system, it is not so heavy to fly with 3 airplanes. Having several soritare scenarios is a very good point.
Many unusual Russian and Finn airplanes are interesting at least for me.
Unless you really don’t want to be included air fight games, this is a good magazine game on unpopular topic.
