Warfighter WWII: Capture the Bridge

 

I played a first game of Warfighter WWII today, thanks to isolating with Covid, and it was really good fun, if a little confusing to start with. I assembled a squad of four GI's, one player soldier with an M1 Carbine, one non-player soldier with a scoped rifle, another with an LMG and a squad soldier with a rifle. The objective was a bridge on step six of the mission path, which looked a long way off but was reached in the last three turns, only to be heavily reinforced before it could be captured. I lost the squad soldier early on but the rest of the team made it to the end, with the LMG gunner racking up seven XP's, even after spending some along the way. I"m sure I got some things wrong, in fact I know I did, but nothing too wayward to tip the game over or negate the outcome. I really enjoyed it after a wobbly start and I'll be playing another mission tomorrow, now that I'm stuck indoors with nothing better to occupy my time. 

IAF Leader 1967: Mission 5 Wipeout!

That's it! The fifth and final mission ended up just like the last two, with one hit less than required on the target and one aircraft shot down by enemy fighters. I'm not sure how you're supposed to win this campaign as the VP targets are pretty high (eight VP for only a Poor rating) while the targets often only have 1 to 3 VP's, at least the ones I've had to go for, not helped by the fact that the Recon track stays on 1 for most of the time. I have been unlucky with my dice in a number of games but even so it's a tough campaign to do more than badly at. My final score was a pathetic 1 VP and I ran out of SO's before I could get a crack at the sixth and final mission. Better luck next time perhaps but still great fun even if I got soundly thrashed!

IAF Leader 1967: Mission 4

 

This campaign is going from bad to worse and beyond. On the fourth mission I lost two Mirages shot down and only managed to get one hit on the target, which needed eleven to be knocked out. One of the Mirage pilots is MIA and the other one unfit to fly, while two of the three Vautour pilots have so much stress they are basically unusable for the rest of the campaign. Terrible! 

IAF Leader 1967: Mission 3

 

That was another total balls up by the IAF, with an attack on some Egyptian infantry going completely pear shaped. The strike package of two Vautours and an escorting Super Mystere had to deal with three defending fighters, with the Mystere damaged and then shot down on the way to the target. The Vautours got through to drop their bombs on the infantry positions but rolled absolutely terrible dice and only scored one of the four hits required, scooting off at low level to escape from the Egyptian fighters. The shot down Super Mystere pilot was picked up in no time, however, so scraped a single XP. A bad day for the IAF and with no chance of a secondary mission to scrape back a few VP's!

Red Winter

 

This is that latest of the second hand games that I've managed to get hold of via eBay and I'm really excited about this one, as it is a subject that I'm fascinated by, especially the air warfare side of the Winter War. Although this game deals with a specific battle in some detail and doesn't include any air component, it's still a very unusual and interesting conflict and the game itself is excellent, with a beautiful map and some very nice counters. I've heard that it's not too difficult to grasp either and ideal for solo play, which is what I'll be doing when I get round to it. Nice!

IAF Leader 1967: Mission 2

Mission 2 was a strike on some Egyptian Komar FAC's in the Gulf of Aqaba, which looked fairly straight forward as I was able to remove the two defending fighters using an event card, but ended up being a bit of a flop. I had loaded out the three Mirage with one AIM-9 and one Mk83 each which meant that they cost me extra SO's for the AAM's but then didn't have much hitting power when it came to ground attacks. In the end, I scored three hits with bombs and ground strafing but needed four to knock out the missile boats, so the mission was an embarrassing failure. The pilots did get an XP from the after mission event card, however, so it wasn't a total waste of time, even if I still only have one VP after two days of missions.

IAF Leader 1967: Mission 1

The first mission of the 1967 Six Day War campaign was a strike on an urban target in Jordan, with two Vautour fighter bombers escorted by a single Mirage III fighter. The event cards on the way to the target allowed me to remove the three defending AAA sites for the cost of an extra stress point, but this still left three fighters to deal with. One Su-7 was shot down by an AIM-9 fired by the Mirage on the approach to the target area but in the following turn, the Mirage itself was damaged by a MiG-19, forcing it to jettison the last remaining Sidewinder, leaving cannon as the only defensive armament to take on the enemy fighters.

The two Vautours and the damaged Mirage had now entered the target area and the flight leader - callsign Sky - dropped his four bombs on the town, causing a total of five hits on top of three hits that had already been caused by pre mission sabotage and successfully evading attacks by the enemy fighters at the same time. The only thing for the Israelis to do now was get out as fast as possible, while evading the enemy fighters or shooting them down with their guns.

One of the Vautours now jettisoned it's heavy bomb load and, rolling a ten modified up to an eleven, gunned down the MiG-17, with the other Vautour finishing off the MiG-19 on the way out of the target area. All three pilots racked up quite a lot of stress on this mission, so will need a good rest before they sortie again, but I did gain 1 VP toward the fifteen that I need for a good evaluation. It's a long shot to say the least!